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1yc9zg | Are there any good source material on the Warsaw Ghetto to be had online? | Hi guys, I have a project I'm working on which requires unbiased primary sources on the Warsaw ghetto (demographics, population density, supplies, mortality rates, etc.). I've been scouring the net and my library for information about it, but I mostly seem to find holocaust denialist websites and websites referring to a book I can attain within my timeframe whilst providing incomplete information.
I'd really appreciate it, thanks!
Alternatively: Are there any better subreddits where I could ask for help? I figure I'll post this to /r/favors and /r/ask, but if there are any other good subs for this kind of stuff I'd appreciate you mentioning them.
Cheers! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yc9zg/are_there_any_good_source_material_on_the_warsaw/ | {
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"Many of the relevant primary sources wont contain the those specific details in an aggregated way. There are a few great examples of diaries and reports coming from the Warsaw Ghetto. The statistics you are looking for would likely come from secondary sources.\n\nOne great example is the Stroop Report. This is written by a commander (Stroop) and it documents the suppression of the uprising. I've included a link to the National Archive where you can get the the full report [here](_URL_1_). This document was used in the Nuremberg Trials.\n\nI would recommend you check out the [Yad Vashem site](_URL_2_). That is the Holocaust Museum in Israel. They have spent a lot of time collecting primary sources, photos, personal accounts etc, about the Holocaust of the Jews (Shoah). I've linked to the overview of the Warsaw Ghetto, but check out the digital collection at the top.\n\nA last little tip is diaries of the time. I don't know where you're located, or which libraries you have access to but here are a few WorldCat records for some notable ones: [The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow](_URL_0_) and [Scroll of agony, the Warsaw diary of Chaim A. Kaplan](_URL_3_).\n\nHope this help.\n\nSource: I'm an academic reference librarian and Jewish history specialist"
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1j7pwx | Following the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, were there any cases of slave-owners attempting to continue the practice illegally? | I'm curious as to whether there were any remote corners of The South where slaveowners evaded the government and continued to hold slaves for a few months or even years after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Black workers were still treated terribly of course, and human trafficking via criminal organisations persists, but were there any cases of land-owners or rich households refusing to let go of their "possessions", so to speak? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j7pwx/following_the_passing_of_the_thirteenth_amendment/ | {
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"All across the South during the years following the civil war, a series of \"Black codes\" were passed into law. Their purpose was to effectively re-enslave the freed slaves by justifying their forced labor by labeling them vagrants, essentially making unemployment illegal and thereby allowing a state to force a former slave to work by arresting them and then using them as convict labor.\n\nSometimes, the black codes were simply pre-civil war slave laws with the word \"slave\" replaced with \"negro.\"",
"It was less a few dark corners, and more a concerted effort by large swathes of society, who attempted to keep slavery alive in all but name. Here is the Fourth Circuit discussing some of this history:\n\n > The South was far from wholly reconciled to the abandonment of the system of forced labor that contributed significantly to the economic success of its agriculture. *See* [R. Fogel and S. Engerman, *Time on the Cross* (1974)](_URL_1_). Many planters felt strongly that they simply could not work their fields without compulsory service. *A Georgia Leader on Reconstruction and Conversation of Alabama Planters* in *R.N. Current, ed., Reconstruction [1865-1877]*, at 39, 46 (1969). Moreover, the war-torn South had large numbers of homeless uprooted people who today would probably be characterized as refugees but were then commonly seen as roaming, \"dangerous\" vagrants.\n\n > Some local authorities responded by permitting employers to engage laborers on a basis that essentially bound the worker for life. [C. V. Woodward, *The Strange Career of Jim Crow* 23 (3d Rev.Ed.1974)](_URL_6_). Many states enacted so-called \"Black Codes\" that severely restricted the freedom of the former slaves and provided tough criminal sanctions for those who violated their \"labor contracts\" with employers. [J. H. Franklin, *Reconstruction After the Civil War* 48-50 (1961)](_URL_4_); [J. L. Roark, *Masters Without Slaves* 139-40 (1977)](_URL_3_).\n\n > ...\n\n > In [*Bailey v. Alabama*, 219 U.S. 219 (1911)](_URL_7_), the Supreme Court held invalid an Alabama statute that prescribed criminal penalties for laborers who breached their employment contracts without satisfying debts owed their employer. The statute established a presumption of criminal intent to defraud the employer by the fact of the mere breach of the contract. The Court ruled that the statute effectively required compulsory service impermissible under the thirteenth amendment because the compulsion inherent in the threat of criminal sanctions was as strong as that inherent in the use of physical force.\n\n > In [*United States v. McClellan*, 127 F. 971 (_URL_0_.1904)](_URL_2_), the district court refused to quash an indictment that charged several defendants with the sale of a man into forced labor, holding that the [federal statutes] broadly regulated behavior of this type and were neither unconstitutional nor were to be confined to the narrow circumstances of the particular evils which they were intended to redress.\n\n[*United States v. Booker*, 655 F. 2d 562 (4th Cir. 1981)](_URL_5_) (some citations omitted and some spacing added).",
"PBS produced a beautiful documentary on exactly this subject: [Slavery by another name](_URL_0_)\n > Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, the tpt National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.\n\n > Based on Blackmon’s research, Slavery by Another Name spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today. The program also features interviews with Douglas Blackmon and with leading scholars of this period.\n \n"
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3qr7uu | In medieval and pre-modern times, political entities made marriage pacts between heirs in order to secure peace. Often times, this didn't last for more than 20 years, if not even less. Why did they even bother? | this peace didn't last*... | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qr7uu/in_medieval_and_premodern_times_political/ | {
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"Twenty years of peace is much better than no peace at all. Twenty years is enough time for a generation of young men to forgo military service, time to build infrastructure, time to consolidate power, and time grow a treasury.\n\nThere are also plenty of examples of peaces that last longer than twenty years, or even result in permanent peace and consolidation. The nation of Spain was formed from [the union of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon](_URL_0_), a union that was set in motion when Isabella of Castile, the future queen, married Ferdinand the Catholic, a future king of Aragon. Their grandson Charles V and great grandson Phillip II would later become kings of a united Spain. James the VI of Scotland similarly oversaw the personal union of England and Scotland when he inherited the crown of England, becoming James I, in 1603. England and Scotland would later formally join together to become the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.\n\nYour question also implies that it is particularly unusual for a peace treaty to last less than twenty years. There are numerous examples of more modern treaties that did not maintain peace for much longer than twenty years. There were only twenty-one years between the World Wars (1918 to 1939) and only twelve years between the Gulf War (ended 1991) and the Iraq War (began 2003).\n\nI can try to include better sources if asked, but I don't think anything I've said here is controversial. "
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fvbxhi | What happened to German and Italian volunteers in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War after they were disbanded in 1938? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fvbxhi/what_happened_to_german_and_italian_volunteers_in/ | {
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31qce9 | What (if anything) did Native Americans think lay beyond the Pacific and Atlantic oceans? | Were there any religious or cultural assumptions about it being the edge of the world? Was there any speculation about there being other continents and civilizations? Mostly thinking of North America but if Central and South Americans had any ideas then I'd be interested to hear those too. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31qce9/what_if_anything_did_native_americans_think_lay/ | {
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"The desert people of the American Southwest generally understood the concept of oceans as not being fundamentally different from a large lake or stream. Among the [recorded] creation myths of the O'odham peoples, at least two contain gods or demigods turning small rivers into vast oceans, splitting apart the original peoples of the Earth, although the survival of remote peoples is left ambiguous. One of these stories later goes on to discuss the people who survived the flood on the other side of the ocean, who were conveniently white-skinned. Another passage from the same source states that another group of people over the ocean were in fact dark brown. Both of these groups were the result of mistakes in creation, after which the perfectly colored Hohokam groups were created. As prophetic as these may sound, our one source of these tales was recorded from a drunkard by a priest in the 1930s. Given that it is the only semi-complete history of the O'odham remaining today, we have no means to determine how far back the individual elements go. \n\nAmong the Hopi and other Puebloan peoples, we have an understanding that the oceans were not the complete end of land. At the very least they understood that people lived in the islands off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts from trade with groups living nearer to the sea. \n\nBoth groups had an accurate understanding of the geography of their continent between the oceans and an understanding that humans could live on the water as their neighbors did. It's not impossible that they conceived of other lands similar to their own across the water, which was understood to be similar to a large river or lake. The stories we have hint at this understanding, but the near-complete absence of historical records about the O'odham and Yuman people make that suggestion speculative at best. The situation among the Puebloans is little better. While they clearly understood the concept of sailing quite well, the myths make scarce mention of foreign lands that would not have been visible from shore.\n\nBahr, Donald M., et al. *The short, swift time of gods on earth: The Hohokam chronicles.* Univ of California Press, 1994.\n\nCourlander, Harold, ed. *The fourth world of the Hopis.* UNM Press, 1971.\n\n"
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1nfs65 | During the Cold War period, was Able Archer and The Cuban Missle Crisis the peak of tensions? | Were there any events that normal citizens wouldn't know about that would be even more tense than those moments? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nfs65/during_the_cold_war_period_was_able_archer_and/ | {
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"I would see a distinct difference between \"peak of tensions\" and \"closest we came to a nuclear exchange.\" The Berlin crisis of 1948 was potentially a higher \"peak of tensions\" than Able Archer 83, but because the nuclear situation was only one-sided, it is not cited as a \"close call.\" I would not consider Able Archer 83 a \"peak of tensions,\" as it was primarily one-sided, though it was definitely one of the top \"close calls.\" (What made it so dangerous was that the USA/NATO was so utterly unaware of how tense the Soviets felt about it.) \n\nSimilarly, there were other \"close calls\" that were not marked by \"peaks of tensions\" — such as the numerous \"false alarm\" scares that the US and USSR both suffered from errors in their early warning systems. \n\nI would disentangle these two categories. What makes the Cuban Missile Crisis so remarkable and interesting is that it is the rare confluence of the two — a peak of tension _and_ a close call. There were many other very tense moments that were not close calls, and many close calls that were not actually peaks of tensions."
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230tie | Is the shield wall fighting depicted on the show "Vikings" historically accurate? | It seems like they have made an effort to depict something other than usual hollywood 1v1 fighting but is it accurate for the times with them pushing as a group and occasionally creating gaps for people behind to stab/shoot? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/230tie/is_the_shield_wall_fighting_depicted_on_the_show/ | {
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1cpgy5 | I hear a lot about rape from the Red Army in Berlin during WWII. Did the German army (and SS) rape women too? If so, why isn't it talked about as much? | Particularly in their occupation of the Soviet Union, but in the rest of occupied Europe as well. I was just kind of shocked when I searched 'rape WWII Soviet women' on google and all that came up were articles about Soviet soldiers rapes. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cpgy5/i_hear_a_lot_about_rape_from_the_red_army_in/ | {
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"Yes, there was definitely rape committed by the Wehrmacht/SS. This is from Timothy Snyder's *Bloodlands*: \n > [The Wehrmacht] would also rape Jewish women, casually, as though this were not an offense for which they could be punished. When they were caught, they were reminded of German laws against racial mixing. \n\nRape of 'sub humans' was fairly common on the Eastern Front. I can't answer the second part of your question unfortunately. I'm in no place to speculate on that. ",
"There was far less documentation about rape under the Nazis, because Nazi race-defilement laws specifically forbid German men to have sex with Jewish women or even to kiss them. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, of course: [This page] (_URL_0_) addresses the subject in some detail.\n",
"Rape as a weapon and/or collateral atrocity of war was all too common in WWII, including by [American servicemen](_URL_0_) stationed in occupied Japan after the end of the war.\n\nAs my old Social History of War professor emphasized over and over, wherever there's war, there's rape.",
"A book that might interest you is: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. It's composed of transcripts of recordings made in British prisons, mostly Wehrmacht troops talking to each other. I've been meaning to get it for a while now but I haven't gotten around to it.",
"This topic is very well covered in two Russian books: [this one](_URL_3_), called \"For What the Soviet People Were Fighting\" and [this one](_URL_2_), called \"Unknown Faces of War\". The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in WWII with the overall mindset of creating Lebensraum and the getting rid of most of the local population (keeping some for slave labour), since Russians, Belorussians, Ukranians and Jews alike were all considered Untermenschen. When the Soviet Army was pushing the Nazis back and liberating captured towns and villages it was very often the case that they were discovered entirely empty. Houses were burnt, wells were filled with bodies and trenches filled with bodies were all over the place. \n\nRape of the local populace by the advancing Nazis was as commonplace as the fighting itself and in addition to the \"unorganised\" rape carried out normally, organised brothels were set up to service the officers and soldiers. [Here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_) are fragments from the respective two books which summarise the extent of what was going on. The sources for the books are Nuremberg trial materials and eyewitness accounts from both sides. \n\nEDIT: The following is a particularly telling excerpt: \"We went to the village near the town of Gatchina Rozhdestvenno - told who served on the Seversky airport Private Peter Shuber. - We had a mission: to bring the girls the officers. We have successfully carried out the operation, all cordoned off the house. We collected a truckload of girls. All night the girls kept the officers, but in the morning they gave us - the soldiers. In large cities, organized stationary brothels. It was standard practice Wehrmacht. \"There were soldiers' brothels,\" puffs \"were called - remember shturmbannfyurera SS Avenir Bennigsen. - Almost all fronts. Girls from all over Europe, of all nationalities, from all camps collected. By the way, an indispensable accessory of a German soldier and an officer were two condoms, which are regularly issued in the army. \" But while in Europe the Wehrmacht brothels staffed with more or less voluntarily, on Soviet soil invaders such delicacy is not going to show. Girls and women for the German soldiers for the most part collected by force - a scene that will forever remember the people trapped under the occupation. In Smolensk, for example, women dragged by the arms and hair, dragged on the pavement - in the officer's brothel, organized in one of the hotels. In case of refusal to stay in a brothel followed the shooting. After the Red Army drove the Germans out of Kerch, views of Red terrible sight presented itself: \"In the prison yard was found mutilated shapeless pile of naked girls' bodies, wild and tortured by the Nazis cynically.\"\n\nThe way the advancing Nazi army treated the captured territories was known to the people fighting in the Soviet Army, and after the turning point occurred and the captured territories were liberated, the extent of the brutailty only served to increase the anger felt by the Soviets, resulting in the mass rape that occurred in East Germany when the war came there. The Soviet materials regarding the matter are still classified, but the German director, Helke Sander, states that a million women were raped by the Soviets in [this film](_URL_4_). However, reading the accounts of what the Germans did, it's really no wonder that the Soviets responded in kind, and helps explain why Victory Day (VE Day) is marked on a much larger scale in Russia today than in the Western Allied countries.",
"Possibly because the Nazis killed so many soviets and burned their villages that it takes a lot of attention away from the rape. Soviet causalities were obscenely high for both civilians and military. ",
"The German army raped, and that has been well documented. Maybe interesting to note because it's seldom talked about, is that (for example) a lot of women were raped in Normandy by the allied forces. It's not really talked about much because the allied forces were the liberators of France, and as the liberators and it was ... uncouth to talk about the bad/horrible things the allied forces did to the local populace, or seems to have been considered so by the French authorities/populace. \n\nThis continued on to road into Germany as well - where the allied transgressions are far less publicized as well.\n\n[BBC article](_URL_0_) based amongst others on Hitchcock's Bitter Road to Freedom.",
"The answer to the second part of the question is quite obvious.\n\nCold war , the war that still exists partially today. One of the most common tactics of psychological conditioning of your own troops, was imprinting the fact : you represent order , morality , your men are best and showing that the enemy is worse trained ,equiped poorly and will inflict major attrocities on the people. In order to increase the effect you should remove the enemies reason to do so and display it as their nature.\n\nThis is the reason why we have these myths :\n\nRed army had 1 rifle per two men . (this was an isolated incident during defense of Moscow).\n\nRussians had no other tactics than frontal assaults.\n\nMillions raped on territory of Germany. (In the begging there were many incidets , but there was an order according to which any attrocities against the local population were punshable by death.) ",
"I'm not surprised that a lot of Historians don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.. .particularly the ones on here that are knowledgeable about Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or World War II.\n\nThere are misconceptions about the Soviet Army in World War II, particularly when it comes to their level of technical and Organisational sophistication. \n\nThey weren't some sort of Asiatic horde riding out from the Steppes, they were an Army with a high degree of discipline and professionalism. Which makes the mass rapes that took place all the more horrifying as they couldn't have taken place without the support of the chain of command.\n\nAs for the German military, a rape would have been punished because It violated the NAZI race laws, military discipline was unconcerned about whether it was rape, but having sex with someone that was classed as less than Aryan was something that was punished serverely.\n\nDuring the NAZI occupation of western Europe, rape by the Germans of local civilian women was actually far less common than by the Allied liberators... largely because German military discipline was far harsher."
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1ukppx | Just finished watching "12 Years a Slave": Was life for slaves in the southern U.S. during the 1800's really as bad as these movies depict? What was the average life like for an average slave on an average plantation? | Believe me, not trying to undermine the abhorrence of slavery but these plantations in these slavery movies (Django, 12 Years...etc.) are always depicted so horribly, where the slave masters are literally the second coming of Hitler/Satan. I wonder if this done for effect because these are movies. I find it a bit hard to believe the average slave owner was so cruel, I can see being raised to think slaves are your property, just as you might oxen or horses, but people don't beat their horses to within one inch of their life. Because most people are just not that evil/sadistic and why do that to your property? Better to treat your property well and take care of it so it is a well performing asset. But maybe it really was so bad. Anyone have any idea? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ukppx/just_finished_watching_12_years_a_slave_was_life/ | {
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"I wrote a report on slave narratives. I read Frederick Douglas', Harriet Jacob's and W.E.B. DuBois (although DuBois was not a slave himself). Not every slave owner was cruel to their slaves. Although there was a stigma of a man that wasn't stern with his slaves, as the community would think that he was not doing his job as a slave owner. However, Douglas had an awful story about how he was nearly beaten to death. And Jacob's story was about how she lived in an attic for 7 years in order to avoid her master in the hopes of one day finding an escape. \nRegardless, the average slave was property, therefore given the bare essentials and often lacking that. The system was all about making money. If a slave owner thought that he'd make more productive slaves by beating them and occasionally making serious examples, then it was reasonable to do so. \nBut regardless of how they are currently depicted or whatever stories we hear from that time period, we need to be respectful of what happened and realize that it was despicable because of their status, not only their conditions. \n",
" > but people don't beat their horses to within one inch of their life. \n\nOf course they do. \n\nIn the 1930s the WPA interviewed more than 2000 slaves, who describe their treatment in detail. These are available [online](_URL_1_). [Here](_URL_0_) is a selection with brief descriptions of their contents. The first link takes you to a master link of narratives. They're quite brutal. It is not pleasant reading in any sense. Of course, Solomon Northrup's own account can also be found online, [here](_URL_1_) for example. ",
"There was a reason why masters beat slaves much more severely than they beat animals--slaves were a lot smarter. Tie an animal to a post and the animal won't and can't run away. Not so with people. If you read the book upon which 12 Years a Slave was based, you'll learn that 24/7 policing was necessary to prevent slaves from running away. You'll also note that in 12 Years a Slave, the cruelty and torture to which Northup was subjected, was not limited to just one person--it was a large number of different people in different circumstances and different states who committed it. As the WPA interviews, and other slave narratives, demonstrate, such cruelty was indeed widespread. Some slaves were lucky enough to avoid some of it. But most could not. White men could basically rape their enslaved women any time they felt like it, with no punishment or even acknowledgement that anything was wrong. In the delicate language of the 19th century, this is described in all the literature. Every slave was subject to being parted from their loved ones at any time, forever. In short, yes, things were as bad for the average slave as were depicted in the film. Not for every slave, but for a very large percentage of them. And actually, if you read the book, you'll see that things were quite a bit WORSE than were depicted in the movie. But if they had depicted it accurately, it would have become redundant and the audience would have been desensitized to the violence and degradation. What we today say is evil, was at that time considered to be normal, necessary, and GOOD. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Bible passages were quoted aplenty to show why it was important to make slaves obey and work. ",
"I didn't want to make another thread about the movie, but I wanted to ask a side question: How often were black people kidnapped and forced into slavery. It always seemed like a very plausible thing to do as record-keeping was spotty.",
"There was no average life for an average slave on an average plantation -- that's one of the reasons I really enjoyed the film *12 Years a Slave*. It shows the multiple ways that slaves existed, and the numerous strategies that slave owners adopted. One strategy was essentially a paternalist approach, epitomized in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch's character. The idea is that the slave owner won't face as much resistance from slaves if he treats them with some measure of decency, and develops a bond of some kind between slave and master. In case you're interested, this way of mediating between master and slave was famously charted by Eugene Genovese in his book *Roll, Jordan, Roll*. \n\nThe other major strategy was to inspire terror. I think that you err in assuming that these slave owners' infliction of violence on their slaves was irrational. Your comparison between them and \"Hitler/Satan\" and your example of people not beating their horses suggests this, at least to me. Rather, slave owners' violence was often quite calculated and strategic. As someone else noted in this thread, slaves were much smarter than horses. They saw that they could be beaten or killed for any act of defiance. In the antebellum South, many slave owners maintained a constant atmosphere of violence and fear, in order to keep slaves under control. Slave owners were not simply cruel for no reason. Admittedly, in the film, Epps seemed to be motivated by simple malice. Fassbender's portrayal didn't allow for much nuance. However, slave owners would have known precisely why they were attacking or beating their slaves. \n\nA final point I'll make tonight is that if we look beyond the antebellum South, prior to the abolition of the slave trade, it was not uncommon for slave owners to beat or work their \"property\" to death, knowing that they could cheaply replace them. Admittedly, this changed to an extent after the slave trade was abolished, but I would argue that the logic was not really that much different in the mid-nineteenth century United States. Slaves were replaceable, and a slave that resisted his/her master's tyranny in any way might seem to be more trouble than he or she was worth. This logic certainly holds for other kinds of property - horses, in your example.",
"I'd respond to your question with a definitive yes. I'd suggest reading up on how Cecil Rhodes exploited black South Africans in the 1800's as a way to extract minerals that were plentiful in the area, or how black people were treated in King Leopold's Congo Free State. To imperialists like these, blacks were considered to be less than human beings,were seen as instruments for economic advancement, and were treated accordingly. ",
"I find your question fascinating in that it proves that the post-war propaganda of former confederate leaders was really successful. They managed to make it sound, against all evidence, like the war was not about slavery, and that slavery was not that bad. Their declarations during or before the war attest to their dishonesty. \n\nAs for your comparison with Hitler, as far as I know he never got his hands dirty killing jews. In fact if I'm not mistaken he saved at least one, his childhood doctor and his family. At the same time, the actual perpetrators were, in their own words, \"just following orders.\" Even if the end result is similarly horrible as what you describe, nazism was thus actually much easier for the human psyche. \n\nThus it took extremely bad people, or a system powerful enough to turn normal ones into very bad ones. That's probably why racism is still so rampant in the Southern US, it had to be extreme so as to have cognitive dissonance resolve towards treating slaves like chattel.",
"Note: strictly speaking this is not an answer to this question, it is more of a meta-answer, but it provides some points which I think are important so I'm posting it regardless.\n\nFirst off, realize that it is fundamentally impossible to truly understand the nature of slavery (anywhere) through any narrative, no matter how intimate. The fact is that without spending years and years of your life as a slave, without having the sure certain knowledge that you will live all the rest of your years and die as the property of another man burned into your consciousness you can only possibly understand the rudimentary outlines of slavery.\n\nSecond, the truth does not solve this problem. The truth is, was, that the day to day life of many slaves wasn't all that bad. In fact, compared to the average experience of the average \"free\" citizen of North America through the mid 19th century it really wasn't so bad at all, and some slaves lived lives that might seem preferable compared to many non-slaves in America, even up through, say, 1850. If you were an alien from a remote stellar system who had no knowledge of the history of slavery and through some high-tech device you were able to watch, say, an entire week's worth of footage of some random subset of American slaves circa 1850 you might not think it was such a bad deal.\n\nBut such conclusions would be erroneous, and hugely so. The problem here is that humans are great at coping, it's one of our most powerful features, and statistics can lead you to incorrect conclusions because outlier events can be so important that they define the nature of a thing. As a hypothetical, imagine a father who rapes his pre-teen daughter every year on her birthday. Statistically that incest/rape is an outlier, but that event is so important that the fact that it happens at all, let alone repeatedly, makes a huge qualitative and categorical difference.\n\nAnd that's the situation with oppression in general and slavery in particular. If the master only whips one of many slaves on a plantation once over a period of a decade the fact that such a thing ever happened and that it's possible for such a thing to happen utterly characterizes the master/slave relationship. You can look into someone's eyes, you can talk with them, you can spend hours and hours with them, you can think you know them but there is a good chance that you may never learn that for them every waking moment they are living in fear. There are thousands of abused spouses in this county who are living in fear and hiding their fear from even their closest friends. Imagine what it must have been like to live as a slave in 19th century America. To know the degree to which it is codified in the informal and formal rules of society and in the laws of the land that you are less. That any white man can say anything he wants to you or order you around. That your master controls your fate not you. That your master could force you to marry whoever he chose. That your master could sell your children or your wife and you could do nothing about it. That your master could rape your wife or your daughter and you could do nothing to stop it. Less. Powerless. Worthless. Hopeless.\n\nCould you imagine how that would affect your thinking, your personality, your capacity for happiness every single waking moment of your life? And imagine how it must feel to build up little mental rationalizations in your mind, to think that your master isn't so bad, that he doesn't seem likely to ever rape you or your friends or loved ones, or sell you or them off to some other plantation. And then one day something happens that's just slightly out of character for your master, maybe he gets angry and is verbally abusive when he's never been before, who knows. Or maybe he just takes ill for a little while and you're faced thinking about what will happen if you're forced to work for another master. Suddenly your little house of rationalizations is in doubt, suddenly there is nothing that you can depend on in your life. Suddenly the possibility of being whipped repeatedly, casually executed for sport, raped or see your loved ones raped, all of that becomes a lingering possibility at the back of your mind.\n\nThat's the true horror of slavery. And it's that sort of thing that is impossible to get across without dressing up slavery in \"stage makeup\" and focusing on abuses more than ordinary daily life, because those events are by and large more relevant.\n\nAbuses were not universally the norm, they were often the exception. But the fact that they did still happen and the fact that they could happen at any time is what characterized slavery in that setting and time period. As I said, there is absolutely no way to get across the entirety of the experience of slavery through the medium of film, television, or literature, so then it becomes necessary to provide a sketch, an impression of the nature of slavery. And any such sketch which does not include abuses as a fundamental aspect of the nature of slavery in America is one that is irredeemably flawed.",
"It depends (as everything else) on *when* you are talking about. Before Slavery began to be restricted in terms of import/export, it was cheaper in French Caribbean and British West Indies sugar producing colonies to import slaves, and simply work them to death and purchase new ones, afterwards, it was not. \n\nIn that time before restriction, on sugar plantations, your idea of a slave as a performing asset held little weight and the death tolls were staggering, and are often overlooked. \n\nBut, post 1807 for the Brits, and 1808 for the US, the actual trade if not the condition of slavery ended. This made it harder to obtain slaves. The British on one track, having not had slavery in Britain itself, were on the way to freeing slaves in the imperial colonies by 1834. The US on the other hand, demurred from making a nationally binding decision and continued chattel slavery in their slave states until the American Civil War decided the question. \n\nThis makes the idea of a slave as a performing asset somewhat more valid, as simply buying up a load of new people became far more expensive, new slaves had to be bred, or bought instead of simply harvested. \n\nBut the literature and narratives often show us that far from being the kind of class that would treat a slave like one should a productive asset, and ensure full output, they instead opted for what is called the BPM in Poli/sci and economics, and that is do just enough to succeed and no more than necessary. So slaves were fed, and clothed, but not exceptionally well. They were disciplined, sometimes harshly, sometimes to death. And let us not be naïve, part and parcel of the condition of being a slave was the mental conditioning that kept them from rebelling or running away, which to the present mind, is cruel beyond comprehension. And the possibility of rape, the division of family, and of punishment unto death, hangs heavy on the present mind. These all existed, like Damocles’ sword above their heads, whether they were inflicted or not. \n\nAlthough, it also has to be said that not every slave tried to escape and some didn't see any hope in an attempt, the condition and conditioning thereof was designed to convince them of same, round the clock, their entire life. \n\nAnd furthermore, underneath that conditioning, that lay upon the human spirit like a blanket, the slave was still a thinking human being who without that conditioning, had a natural desire for freedom and a natural desire to use all of their powers to obtain that freedom, if they had not been broken. This made a strong motivation for the owning class to keep them alive and working, but not too much else, less they gain enough faculty or strength to overcome their condition by force. So treating them too well, was expressly against good management practice of the time period. \n\n\n",
"I wrote an essay in my undergrad on the sexual lives of slaves in antebellum south. [The primary source I used were interviews with surviving slaves, most of whom were children during the war.](_URL_0_) The conclusions I drew were that masters controlled virtually every aspect of a slave's sexual life, except that which the slave could carve out for him/herself in private. \n\nMasters controlled who slaves had sex with, and would \"breed\" them. They would separate them from their spouses and chidlren, and *might* consider selling families together, but pretty much only if they were convinced that such a sale would increase their productivity. \n\nMasters would have sex with their female slaves, who had virtually no way of resisting. They would use rape as punishment, as well as just because they could."
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2qrl9b | Why are pipe organs used to play songs or jingles at hockey games? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2qrl9b/why_are_pipe_organs_used_to_play_songs_or_jingles/ | {
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"For the same reason that they're used (or used to be used) at baseball games: volume. Even a small hockey stadium is a huge place, filled with screaming fans, and the pipe organ has the oomph to be heard in that environment.\n\nNowadays, most use \"electronic pipe organs.\" The one in Chicago's United Center, for example, uses recorded pipe organ sound, and cost something near $150,000.\n\nIt's not as fun as the one that was demolished with \"The Madhouse on Madison,\" but it still sounds good."
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efpfyw | What was the Roman Empire's opinion of the crusades, and how did they feel about the outcomes? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/efpfyw/what_was_the_roman_empires_opinion_of_the/ | {
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"I'm not well versed on their reaction to all of the Crusades, but their opinion of the First Crusade was initially very positive. Emperor Alexius had extracted oaths of loyalty from the prominent Crusader leaders, and promises to restore reconquered territory in Anatolia to the Romans, and this is what happened initially. Alexius gave the Crusader armies extensive supplies for their journey, as well as knowledgeable guides. He sent his navy along the coasts to help them whenever possible, and eventually sent armies in their wake to protect the conquests of the Crusaders (which, naturally, he wanted to see restored to his empire). Cooperation between the Romans and the Crusaders was effective and relation were relatively positive - both parties had the same objectives; to defeat the Seljuks and restore land to the Christians. However, things took a sharp turn when the Crusaders refused to hand over Antioch to the Romans following its capture in 1098. Alexius was understandably angry, since it was in direct violation of their previous agreements. \n\nThings took a further negative turn when the Crusaders revealed their intention of invading the Fatamid Caliphate and retaking the Holy Land. Alexius was on good terms with the Fatamids, since both of them viewed the Seljuks as a more serious threat than each other, and they agreed that it was in both of their best interests to focus their attention on defending against the Seljuks rather than fighting each other. Alexius warned the Crusaders not to start a war with the Fatamids, but they ignored him and marched down the Levant coast. The Emperor was furious and promptly cut off all aid he was giving them, including supplies and naval assistance. For the rest of the First Crusade (which at that point continued for only a few more months) there was no cooperation between the Romans and Crusaders. Alexius saw the invasion of the Holy Land as pointless from a strategic perspective and in nobody's best interests, and quickly distanced himself from the Crusaders and tried to maintain positive relations with the Fatamids, telling them he had nothing to do with it.\n\nThe only Crusader state that the Romans had somewhat positive (or at least not overtly negative) relations with was the Principality of Antioch, since its prince, Bohemund, swore fealty to Alexius as his overlord. This took some of the sting off the Crusaders' refusal to hand over the city, although Roman control of the principality was minimal and tensions were always high, since the princes simultaneously were influenced by the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well.\n\nSource: *God's War: A New History of the Crusades* by Christopher Tyreman",
"u/Wonderfully_Mediocre’s not at all mediocre post already goes over the First Crusade, so I’ll just link to some previous answers of mine about that: [When the Crusaders left Anatolia, was the Levant still covered by their oath to return territory to the Byzantine Empire?](_URL_2_) and [Why did Bohemund declare himself the Prince of Antioch, not the King?](_URL_1_)\n\nAfter the First Crusade, the Byzantines were happy that Jerusalem and the other holy sites were in Christian hands again, but they wanted to make sure that the rights of Greek Christians were respected (which they were very often not, under crusader rule). Otherwise they didn’t really think anything of it from a political point of view, since Jerusalem was strategically unimportant to them. They did have a fairly good relationship with the crusader kingdom in Jerusalem; the royal families intermarried, and they tried to conduct military expeditions together (particularly against Egypt), but the Byzantines didn’t really want to rule anything except Antioch.\n\nFor the Second Crusade, both Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany travelled through Constantinople, as the First Crusade had done. In that case, the Byzantines were fairly worried: \n\n > “The appearance of a large crusading army was a cause for grave concern in Constantinople. Unlike in the background to the First Crusade, when Alexius I had requested a western force to come to his aid, there was no such invitation in 1146-7.” (Phillips, *The Second Crusade*, pg. 170)\n\nSicily had been attacking Byzantine territories around the same time, so the Byzantines worried that the crusaders were working with the Sicilians. They were also worried that the crusade would besiege Constantinople, but the crusaders had no intention of attacking the empire and they were eventually ferried across the Bosporus and made their way to Jerusalem. \n\nConrad wasn’t technically the Holy Roman Emperor, so there was no problem with two emperors both claiming to be the Roman Emperor, as there was on the Third Crusade. I answered [a previous question](_URL_0_) about that as well: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Byzantine Emperor Isaac II both claimed to be the legimitate Roman emperor so it was extremely difficult for them to agree to anything. The other problem for the Third Crusaders was that the crusaders believed the Byzantines were [secretly allying with Saladin](_URL_3_) to destroy them. The Byzantines were probably just exploring all their diplomatic options though, not conspiring against the crusade specifically. \n\nIn any case, the problems on the Third Crusade were also overcome and the German crusaders made their way to the Holy Land (although Emperor Frederick died along the way). The other contingents from England and France avoided the overland route and took the sea route, but the English managed to somewhat accidentally conquer the Byzantine province of Cyprus. The Byzantines were not particularly happy about that, but Cyprus was ruled by a rebellious lord, so it was really already outside of the authority of Constantinople.\n\nThe Fourth Crusade is of course an entirely different matter…the Byzantines, in hindsight, obviously felt that it was a huge disaster for them. Very briefly, the emperor at the time, Alexios III, had deposed the previous emperor, his brother, the aforementioned Isaac II. Isaac’s son Alexios IV came to an agreement with the leaders of the crusade to divert it from its original target (Egypt) to Constantinople to restore Isaac to the throne. So, there were at least some Byzantines who were in favour of that…but not many, since the people actually living in Constantinople were opposed. Alexios IV and the crusaders did manage to restore Isaac to the throne, with Alexios IV as co-emperor, but then Isaac died. Alexios IV was then overthrown and murdered by yet another Alexios, who became Alexios V. The crusaders were still there though so they attacked and conquered the entire city. The disastrous part of this in Byzantine eyes was not the rapid overthrow and murder of various emperors (which happened often enough), but the crusader sack of the city. The Byzantines were always paranoid that a crusader army showing up at their door would sack the city, and finally with the Fourth Crusade, it actually happened. \n\nThe other crusades then largely bypassed Constantinople, because it was already under Christian control - interestingly, the problems faced by the First, Second, and Third Crusades, arriving at a somewhat hostile Constantinople, would have no longer been problems for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Crusades, but the later crusades avoided it anyway and took the faster sea route.\n\nSources:\n\nCharles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West (Harvard University Press, 1968)\n\nJonathan Harris, *Byzantium and the Crusades* (Hambledon and London, 2003)\n\nJonathan Phillips, *The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople* (Pimlico, 2005)\n\nJonathan Phillips, *The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom* (Yale University Press, 2007)"
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7pw6gm | How was the East India Company able to maintain rule over the massive subcontinent for over 100 years? Was it stable? Was it more than a loose administration? How much indigenous resistance was there? Did this change under direct British rule? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7pw6gm/how_was_the_east_india_company_able_to_maintain/ | {
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"While there were a numerous way in which the English East India company were able to maintain control over their massive Indian territory , I will cover some important ways in which they exerted control :\n\n#**Part 1**\n\n#**Control over the rulers**\n\nOne of the important pillars of power of company support were a loyal class of local rulers . These rulers were helpful because \n\n1) They helped maintain an illusion of indigenous rule when in reality they were nothing more than company stooges .\n\n2) They helped in suppression of local rebellions and other minor disputes that were not big enough or important enough to warrant the use of the company army\n\n3) By getting support and loyalty of these indigenous rulers , They hoped to obtain a sense of legitimacy as they often touted themselves as the protector of mughal empire and in later years as successors of the mughal state\n\nBut how did the company develop this class of royal rulers?\n\nThe Company exerted control over the rules and various kingdoms via mainly the \n\n* Subsidiary Alliance system \n* Protection alliance and protective custody \n* Picking sides in succession disputes to install a puppet \n* Doctrine of Lapse and Adoption \n* Using wars between rival Indian kingdoms to their advantage\n\nLet us understand each of the above in a brief manner\n\n***Subsidiary alliance system***\n\nUnder the subsidiary alliance system , The ruler agreed to enter an alliance with the company . The terms of these alliance were as follows:\n\n > An Indian ruler entering into a subsidiary alliance with the British would accept British forces within his territory and to pay for their maintenance.\n\n > * The ruler would accept a British official (resident) in his state.\n\n > * The ruler who entered into a subsidiary alliance would not join any alliance with any other power or declare war against any \n power without the permission of the British.\n > * The ruler would dismiss any Europeans other than the British and avoid employing new ones.\n > * The ruler would let the British rule on any conflict any other state.\n > * The ruler would acknowledge the East India Company as the paramount power in India.\n > * The ruler would have his state be protected by the Company from external dangers and internal disorders.\n > * If the rulers failed to make the payments that were required by the alliance, part of their territory would be taken away as a penalty.\n > * Indian rulers have to maintain British troops in his state. \n\nAs you can see after reading the above terms , Any kingdom which entered / or was forced to enter into a subsidiary alliance was reduced to nothing but a kingdom with a rubber stamp ruler who were official puppets of the company on almost all matters of importance \n\n*Examples of kingdoms which entered the subsidiary alliance system : Awadh , Many maratha princely kingdoms ,Tanjore , Indore etc*\n\n***Protection alliance or protective custody***\n\nMany Indian rulers or royal families who were afraid of being attacked by their rivals or by members of their own house often entered British protective custody . These forms of agreements generally involved the Company defeating/killing/driving off the enemies of the person seeking protection . In return for these , The ruler would become predisposed to the company and do what the company advised them in case they needed the company protection in the future again \n\n***Picking sides in succession disputes to install a puppet***\n\nThe company often took advantage of succession disputes to further their own advantage . They would select one of the people involved in the disputes and offer their support , resources and help to get the throne . In return , the ruler would have to promise to be favor and have good relations with the Company when he becomes the ruler \n\nSuch actions were also often done when they felt that a ruler soon to come to power in a throne would be bad for the prospects of the company \n\nIn most of the cases , Getting the official support of company on your side generally meant that the game was over for the opposing side more or less\n\nThus , by helping these rulers ascend the throne , they got a loyal group of rulers who they could rely on in times of difficulty \n\n***Doctrine of lapse and adoption***\n\n > Under an ancient Hindu custom, to avoid a disputed succession to the throne, a ruler with no born-to heir could adopt a male of any age from another branch of the ruling family and appoint him heir apparent. This parallels similar customs in ancient Rome and during the Chinese Qing Dynasty.\n\n > When the British Empire came to India in 1757, among the land-grabbing stratagems devised was the Doctrine of Lapse, which abrogated the ancient custom. Under this doctrine the British arrogated to themselves the right to veto the succession of an adopted heir, and instead, to annex the territory concerned, although the adopted successor and his heirs were usually allowed to keep their titles and a substantial annual allowance. \n\nThus , this one more method to install a puppet regime in many kingdoms . Many big Indian princely thus fell to this policy \n\n~~**# Part 2 to follow soon**~~\n\n# ***Part 2*** \n\n# ***Military power of the company***\n\nThe army of the East India Company were one of the most feared and powerful in the subcontinent uptil its dissolution in 1857 \n\n* Company army had massive superiority over indigenous kingdoms in terms of artillery , firepower and firearms ,military discipline and military tactitcs\n\n* To help the company further , they had a exceptional and experienced class of military commanders and officers who had experience fighting in many terrains and countries in different parts of the world . In many wars , the company won not to due to superior quality of equipment , but rather due to the experienced officers and commanders leading the charge during the war .\n\n* The trademark red coat and bucket coat that the company is now famous for stuck fear in many Indian kingdoms. In order to increase troop morale , many Indian kingdoms introduced a similar looking uniform for their own army \n\n* The payment system of the company was **extremely punctual**. The company placed a great emphasis on ensuring that due salary payments were done to all troops . This ensured that the Company army became a lucrative job for many Indians . The best and smartest of various kingdoms often tried their hands to get a job in the company army \n\n* Any disturbance anywhere in the country that had the potential to weaken company hold over power invited a visit from the Company army . Many regiments in the company evoked special fear such as the Bengal regiment which were the backbone of company power in the country \n\n# Part 3 to follow soon\n\nMeanwhile you can read my answer regarding opinion of various sections of the Indian society towards East India company to understand the flames of discontentment that were rising in the Indian society\n\n[Answer](_URL_0_)\n\n\n# ***How much indigenous resistance was there?***\n\nLet me quote you a section which will directly answer this part of question\n\n > Among the myths which became current in the wake of the rebellion of\n1857-8 was the idea that it was a unique event, something that had to\nbe explained in terms of the peculiar folly of the revenue policy of the\n\n > With this in mind, several broad types of dissidence can be isolated\nfrom the great range of revolts between 1800 and i860. Most notable\nwere the periodic revolts of zamindars and other superior landholders\nfighting off demands for higher revenue or invasions of their status as\n'little kings' in the countryside. Then there were conflicts between\nlandlords and groups of tenants or under-tenants objecting to the\ntransformation of customary dues into landlord rights or to some violation of the obligations between agrarian lord and dependant.\nNext there was a range of conflicts arising from tension between wandering\nor tribal people and settled peasant farmers which usually\ncentred on the control of forests, grazing grounds or other communally\nexploited resources. Finally, there were frequent revolts in cities\nand towns. These had many causes: some were riots over market control\nand taxation. Some involved bloodshed between religious or caste\ngroups or the protests of embattled artisan communities. All these\ntypes of conflict were widespread but they surfaced in exaggerated\nform in the course of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857.\n\nSource for the above quoted text :Indian society and makings of british empire",
"[1/2]\n\nI would like to add a few points here, because u/HarshKarve's posts seems to me very strongly (if not to say solely) informed by a British perspective, leading to a rather positive overall assessment of the East India Company. Although they quote a short paragraph on resistance at the end, it basically seems in the post as if the British were in control due to their superior strategies and military. This is misleading, because in fact indigenous resistance to colonial rule was continuos from the beginning in the Raj in the late 18th c. roughly until the rebellion of 1857, which led to the British Crown taking over. Also and crucially it reinforces colonial stereotypes that don't ascribe agency to non-Europeans (here from South Asia), effectively writing them out of history. So it's important to keep in mind that British rule was far from secure even as late as 1857, where in the first months it was not clear at all that the British could regain control. \n\nHaving said that, I'll especially focus on two points below: 1) native resistance, and 2) (more briefly) changes under British rule. \n\nThe EIC increasingly formed a parallel state in India, with private armies and great administrative control. It had managed over decades to take over princely states and form an economic basis. To do so it had increasingly built on indigenous sources and networks of information gathering since the 1760s (cf Bayly, Empire and Information). However, all this came at a cost (C.A. Bayly, Indian Society making British Empire, 106):\n\n > The [EIC] rose to power because it had provided a secure financial base for its powerful mercenary army. The land revenues of Bengal, combined with the capital - Indian as much as European - generated in the coastal trading economy, allowed the Company's Indian operations to sustain the massive debts incurred in its fight to finish with the Indian kingdoms. However, political dominion did not solve the Company's financial problems. The ominous presence and constant pressure of this part-oriental, part-European state continued to tempt petty rulers within and outside its domains into revolt. Though aspects of the social and political conflict which had drawn the Company into expansion were suppressed under its ruler, so too was much of the economic dynamism which had given rise to that conflict. India's huge agricultural economy was not performing well enough to underwrite the costs of European dominion. The [EIC]'s rule widely came to be seen as a dismal failure long before the Great Rebellion of 1857 blew up its foundations. \n\nWe should note that this perception of the Company's failure was not just from Indian perspectives, but that there were important discussions in British parliament in the 19th c. over restricting the company's influence. One major criticism there was the perceived corruption of the EIC's leading administrators. Another point to add here is that the perceived \"low performance\" of the native economy is connected also to British tactics of importing British textiles to India which would over the long-term weaken this important branch of South Asian economies (among other influences). Adding to this was that the \"*needs of its financial and military machine had tended to snuff out that buoyant entrepreneurship of revenue farmers, merchants and soldiers which had kept the indigenous system functioning*\" (ibid). As mentioned such developments taken together led to resistance in various forms and for various reasons.\n\n.\n\n**Indigenous resistance to colonial rule**\n\nI'll begin by quoting [an earlier reply of mine](_URL_1_) on the time preceding the rebellion of 1857:\n\n > The rebellion took place 100 years after the beginning of the rule of the Easty India Company (EIC) in South Asia, and has to be understood as a continuation of a long tradition of local resistance to colonial rule (that continued up to independence). In this light, the rebellion was particular in its scope, but not in its goals and demands. There were many different kinds of and motivations for resistance: Among others religious insurrections, banditry, acts of revenge – but also peaceful opposition. Most of those insurrections were connected in some way to the very common economic exploitation and political marginalisation through the EIC, and thus to popular discontent. \n\n > It's also interesting to note that such discontent ran through all social classes. As a common ideology we can identify the central role of the community principle to the rural populace (including the caste system), and that of traditional land rights. Most (if not all) of these motivations for and forms of resistance played major roles during 1857. On the other hand, the lack of a coordinated, unified organisation meant that the British could count on parts of the local population, and was a major influence in the rebellion's failure.\n\nLet's look a bit closer at those earlier revolts: At almost any moment during colonial times a rebellion or revolt took place somewhere in SOuth Asia. There are reports of hundreds of revolts already in the 17th century, and according to Kathleen Gough there were at least 77 agrarian revotls from the 18th c., drawing tens to hundreds of thousands of peasants. While they were officially called 'localized', they actually took place on larger territories than those of the well-known European agrarian revolts when considerian South Asia's huge size. Certain areas had more frequent revolts taking place, esp. Bengal, but also tribal areas of modern-day Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad) und Kerala (in the South West).\n\nAs a larger ideology behind such resistance we can see the central role of the *community* principle for the rural populace, especially the spiritual foundation of the caste system and traditional land rights: \"*Community as 'the characterisitc unifying feature of peasant consciousness*\" (Chatterjee). This served to seperate friends from traditional foes during revolts - between, but also within religious groups. Another feature of the community was the major role of politico-social justice. Justice could take the form of rights to complaint, peaceful forms of protest such as migration. An important result of this was that even people of the lower classes could reclaim their rights before local authorities -- which was not possible anymore in this way under the _URL_0_ many revolts can be connected to a pre-colonial sense of justice not compatible with British conceptions, which because of this were often not succesful. Then again, revolts often led to adaptions of the colonial system, e.g. throiugh agreements with local leaders and groups from which they could profit. \n\nI'll now look in a bit more detail at forms of resistant other than those agrarian revolts, and then turn to consequences of the revotl of 1857 (1857 itself falls sort of outside of the scope of this):\n\n- Revolts of land owners/ *zamindars*: These went against larger tributes and the lowering of their status. E.g. when the British tried to move one of their candidates onto the throne of a realm (as mentioned in the above post), contrary to the political alliances of a given region. Especially frequent was resistance in regions that had never been under Mughal control, but were now supposed to be controlled by the EIC (or its rulers). Examples include Awadh and Bundelkhand. Privileges were accorded by the British to local leaders in order to thwart further rebellions.\n\n- *Resistance of village leaders:* Here often the sole possibility was moving away or deserting, but also revolts took place (Dekkan 1850s/'60s, Konkan 1857-'59). In addition there were conflicts within rural societies, between landowners and tenants, which only increased with the stronger influence of cash cropping. Tenants often reisted the transformaton of their land rights; and conlficts between non-sedentary tribes and sedentary farmers were also quite frequent.\n\n\n\n- *Religious unrest*: Oftentimes agrarian conflicts took on religious character through the influence of reformist Islam. This was the case with the Faraizi movement in Eastern Bengal (1820s to '50s), which revolted in favor of weavers and their taxation, and attacked Hindu money-lenders as well as European indio-estates. Moreoever there was an increase in revolutionary messianism taking place, esp. in Muslim (but also in Hindu) communities reeling from theri increasing social deracination. These were collective movements looking towards a sacred realm on earth, and for an imminent huge change through supernatural means. Apocalyptical preachers (like Tipu Sahib in East Bengal) prophetised the end of British rule and mobilized mountain tribes in this way.\n\n\n\n- *Urban revolts*: Were connected to economic and religous difficulties. Once more the decrease of urban weavers and artisans led to revolts of these groups. In their own organisations muslim faith would often strengthen communal ties, and strikes against local officials and traders happened often. The most frequent resistance in cities came from the elites -- they were against colonial taxations and taxation of houses. The replacement of traditional guardians of the law through colonial officials further led to agitation.\n\n.\n"
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35ej48 | Do Historians studying Colonial America *need* to be fluent in Native American Languages? | I'm an undergraduate History student interested in studying Colonial America (and more specifically, relations between Europeans and Natives) as a graduate student. All programs I've looked into require reading proficiency in only one language (I'm learning French).
I've had it mentioned to me that as a Historian of Early America, I'll also need fluency in Native American languages to translate primary sources. All primary sources I've been able to locate are in English, even those from Native Americans to Europeans.
Is this true? I'm not opposed to learning a NA language, but there doesn't seem to be much opportunity to do so in my surrounding area, either. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35ej48/do_historians_studying_colonial_america_need_to/ | {
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"Probably not. Many of the indigenous languages at that point were only spoken languages and were not written, which is why you aren't finding many, if any, sources in an indigenous language. You should be fine if you focus on one of the European languages (French or Spanish if you are studying an area colonized by the Spanish). In the unlikely event that you need an indigenous language for your area of research, your future advisor will tell you and help you find a way to learn it.",
"To move through graduate school you would not *need* to be fluent in Native American languages. It sounds like it could not hurt, given what you would like to study, but the fact is, most historians of colonial America do not know any Native American languages, much less have fluency. The major reason for this is not necessary euro-centrism, though that doesn't help, but rather that most historians gather their data and evidence from written sources, which, almost by default, are filtered through Europeans and European languages before being recorded (or as they are recorded). This means that there are few truly Native American sources available in that form, so many historians, even of those who look at European-Native American interactions, are not what you would call fluent in any Native American language. Of course, if that will be your main focus, it cannot hurt to learn as much as you can, and also to investigate the Native American cultures you'll study such as they exist today. Generally, a historian of such interactions tries to get as much perspective as possible, by approaching the subject from as many angles as possible. I highly recommend \"Facing East From Indian Country\" by Daniel Richter for you, as his introduction discusses exactly this issue of recovering Native American perspectives and opinions when the overwhelming majority of information about them and their interactions has been filtered through Europeans and Colonists first. The rest of the book attempts to engage in just such recoveries in a number of instances.",
"A lot of this depends on your particular subject. For example, if you're doing work that connects to extant groups and potentially their oral histories (a methodology that requires mastery in itself!) you may. However, often the acquisition of those languages happens in the field, precisely because they are not normally taught in an instructional setting. In learning certain southern African languages, that was my only choice--even going to teachers who work in the language wouldn't help, because they were already dealing with native speakers, not second-language speakers. So you may well not be able to acquire a relevant one to you until the need is apparent.\n\nI will say that having such a language, and more importantly a demonstrated ability to work in that language, is a helpful differentiator on the market. But for the era you're discussing, it's not an absolute requirement for the general field. When we did our colonial US search, none of the finalists had a Native American language. Constrast that, if you're curious, to our most recent US West/18th-19th search, where two of the four finalists had research ability in a Native American language. As /u/Mictlantecuhtli points out below, the need is very subject- and geography-dependent.",
"Even if you don't need it for translating primary sources, I think that it would be a sign of respect and thoughtfulness to learn the language that is or was most prevalent in the main location of your research. It might give you insight into the structure, interests, and investments of the culture you're studying\\*. Studying the protocols that go along with language in conversational settings with peers and with elders may help you to develop relationships, and thereby gain appropriate, respectful access to oral histories directly from the source in an ethical, non-exploitative manner. \n\nCould you do some research without this knowledge? Absolutely. Could you do more, more interesting, and maybe more groundbreaking research with it? I think so. But you'd probably have to seek out a graduate institution with the programs, training opportunities, and community links to help you on your way. \n\n\\*For example, as far as I understand it, the Cree language uses different grammatical structures for animate vs. inanimate nouns, but the dividing line does not line up with a Western scientific/biological understanding of what constitutes an animate object. "
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3j5hm7 | What role did pike phalanxes play in late 16th and 17th century warfare? | With the prevalence of firearms and artillery, it seems to me like dense formations of pikemen would be slaughtered on a battlefield in the late 1600's. My question is: How would a typical commander of the time deploy and utilize his pike infantry effectively? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j5hm7/what_role_did_pike_phalanxes_play_in_late_16th/ | {
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"By the time period in question, the pike blocks [(*not* phalanxes)](_URL_0_) have taken further and further secondary roles to shot/firearm troops. \n\nIn the early 16th century, the shot troops are there to support friendly pike blocks and harass enemy pike blocks when contact is made. By the 17th century the proportions have changed drastically. A figure from *\"Fighting Techniques of the Early Modern World\"* shows:\n\n* 1622: 10 deep formation, 3 pikes for every 2 muskets.\n* 1630: 8 deep formation, 1 pike vs. 1 muskets.\n* 1650: 6 deep, 1 pike vs. 2 muskets. \n\nYou can guess where the trend was heading. Swedish infantry in the 30YW deployed about 1-1 pikes-muskets, and this isn't much different from what the Imperial and Spanish troops deployed, even if the Swedish ran smaller squadrons than their adversaries. \n\nBy the 1650s period, the pike block was a smaller contingent with muskets on both sides. Or rather, perhaps it is more accurate to say that an infantry squadron was a 6-deep line of muskets with a few pikes concentrated in the center. If that squadron is threatened by horse, the pikes then move forward and muskets back behind them to get protection. \n\nYou may want to read through [previous answers](_URL_1_) on pike and shot formations in battle. "
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2vmvdt | Did fighting cease at night during the Battle of Stalingrad, or did soldiers fight 24 hours a day? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vmvdt/did_fighting_cease_at_night_during_the_battle_of/ | {
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"Since I would imagine fighting never stopped and only slowed , I would like to ask an additional question. Did either the Russians or German troops have any tools to aid in thier night vision? I always hear about the Japanese Navy having great night optics but did generals or armies have access to night optics? ",
"Please keep in mind that answers in this subreddit need to follow our rules. An answer consisting of four sentences is not an acceptable answer. We value answers that are **in-depth** and comprehensive.\n\nTo quote our rules:\n\n > Answers in this subreddit are expected to be of a level that historians would provide: comprehensive and informative. As such, all answers will be assessed against the standards of Historiography and Historical Method. You should cite or quote sources where possible. A good answer will go further than a simple short sentence. As described here, \"good answers aren't good just because they are right – they are good because they explain. In your answers, you should seek not just to be right, but to explain.\"\n\nIf you are not completely certain about what you're writing, then refrain from writing. Also refrain from writing if all that you can contribute is a quote from a website, a link to a website or if you do not have the time to contribute more than a couple of sentences. This applies to **all** answers, not only the top level comments.",
"In reading just now excerts from \"Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 By Antony Beevor\", Its talks of how Chuikov had ordered an emphasis on night raids because the Luftwaffe could not respond and that he was convinced it struck fear into the Germans. It talks about the use of flares to constantly trick soldiers into a belief of an imminent attack. \n\nIn addition a comment from a corporal about the \"eerie change in sound\" of the U-2 bi-planes used for night time bombing as the pilot would turn off the engine on assault until the bomb hit. \n\nSo a constant psychological onslaught from the Russians, the author comments as well that the Germans were exhausting ammo as they would fire at anything during the night. \n\nedit: type in: \"Stalingrad night raid\" the piece i read should be in Google books.\n\n"
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1hi562 | Homophobic slurs in turn-of-the-century/WWI Britain? | This is for the subject of writing research. Obviously the topic of homosexuality was not discussed openly in polite society, but I'm thinking impolite society, or soldiers at war. I'm familiar with the term ponce but I was wondering about the existence of something equivalent to the way "faggot" is used in the US, with a clear contextual hatred behind it. Would a Brit have called another a "cocksucker" during this era (maybe I'm just thinking of Deadwood)? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hi562/homophobic_slurs_in_turnofthecenturywwi_britain/ | {
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"Just to clarify, in the TV show Deadwood, the profanity was anachronistic (in other words, no \"cocksucka\"). The show creator chose to go this route because he felt using period-appropriate slang would have sounded silly rather than profane.\n\n_URL_0_",
"*Sodomite* and its variants were certainly in use at that time in Britain. The Marquis of Queensberry left a calling card at Oscar Wilde's London club in February of 1895 that was addressed \"To Mr. Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomist\" (sic). His handwriting was so poor that some have suggested that the card was actually intended to read \"ponce and sodomist.\" Either way, Wilde sued for libel, lost, then was tried and convicted of indecency.\n\nEnglish sexologist Havelock Ellis, in his *Studies on the Psychology of Sex* from 1897, used the word *pervert* to refer to a homosexual; the word definitely had negative connotations at the time, but lacks the level of disdain that you're probably looking for.\n\n*Punk* has evolved through several meanings, but it was at the turn of the century that it took on the meaning of the less dominant of two men that are having sexual relations. It was used most frequently in all-male societies such as hoboes, sailors, and prison inmates. A similar term from the time was *prushun*, referring to a young man who served as traveling companion, beggar, and bedmate for an older hobo (who was known as a jocker in such a relationship). In both cases, there is the inference that the less dominant of the two had been coerced into it.\n\nThe word *queen* can be traced back to 1924 in the *OED*, but the use of the word to mean a homosexual man (rather than being a disparaging term for a bold woman) can be traced back to the 1880s, in testimony from London's Cleveland Street Scandal. That testimony also shows us that the word *gay* was used at the time to refer to both homosexual men and female prostitutes. It is believed that because those two groups lived in close association in big cities during the nineteenth century, they used many of the same slang terms, and that was one of the reasons that the use of so many slurs evolved, in that they first referred to one gender, then the other.\n\n*Mary* dates back to the 1890's, and *Nancy*, *nancy-boy*, and *Miss Nancy* to the 1800's. [Andrew Jackson](_URL_1_) even referred to William King, the 13th American Vice President, as \"Miss Nancy.\"\n\nSince you mentioned *cocksucker*, it was included in Farmer & Henley's 1891 dictionary *Slang and Its Analogue*, published in London, with the one-word definition \"feliatrix.\" It was in use there at the time, but was not gender-specific.\n\nAs far as the written record goes, *faggot* as a gay slur dates back to 1914; it is generally regarded as an Americanism, and in fact *to faggot* meant 'to have sex with loose women' in nineteenth century Britain, according to Farmer & Henley.\n\nInfo from Hugh Rawson's *Wicked Words*, 1989, and [The Straight Dope](_URL_0_)"
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1jsssx | How big were vegetables 2,000 years ago? | I've read that carrots were much smaller in early history. Is that true of all fruits and veggies? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jsssx/how_big_were_vegetables_2000_years_ago/ | {
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"I don't know about 2000 years ago but the size of vegetables sold to consumers has certainly increased significantly over the last century. One reason for this is crop breeding for increasing fruit weight, and this has been successful for pretty much everything you'll find in a supermarket. The other important factor are growing methods like fertilizer, greenhouses, and hydroponics that all result in larger crops. Not only that a U of T study comparing fruit sold in a 50 year period found significant decreases in nutrient levels per weight in almost all crops, including 38% decreases in riboflavin. \n\nDo you have a specific plant in mind? 2000 years ago you wouldn't be able to recognize bananas or corn. I'm speculating now but it seems unlikely that crop breeding for size didn't occur in ancient times. All it would take is a farmer planting seeds from the biggest plants every season and we know they were breeding animals. And there was some absolutely prime agricultural soil back then compared to what the soil in many of those farmlands is now.\n\nHowever neither would touch the maximum sizes way back in the days when CO2 and global temperatures were much higher than they are now.",
"I can give only one example and that is of corn and the domestication was much earlier then 2000 years ago. It was first domesticated in Southern mexico by 4000 to 3000 B.C.E.. The ancestor of corn was a mountain grass called teosinte. It does not look like modern corn. Thousands of years of selective adaptation were required to develop a large cob. Teosinte was about the length of two quarters long.",
"While we're on the topic, does anyone know how big Diocletian's cabbages would have been?"
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3u6z3m | Was the fear of communists in the US mostly about the military threat, or the fear of the idea and it leading to a revolution from within? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3u6z3m/was_the_fear_of_communists_in_the_us_mostly_about/ | {
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"There were many periods of anti-communist sentiment in the United States, each having its own set of domestic and international issues. Many consider the 1930s to be the \"heyday\" of American Communism (see [Harvey Klehr's book](_URL_0_)) because that's when the US was closest to revolution (due to the 1929 stock market crash and millions of unemployed workers- i.e., Communists' ideas seemed pretty good to the downtrodden). So, in the 1930s, the anti-communist sentiment was very much a fear of a domestic revolution- it seemed that Marx was right (in some regards), and that capitalism couldn't support itself. In 1935, the Party entered the Popular Front era, meaning it was more acceptable for communists to associate with liberals, democrats, moderates, union organizers, etc. to push for rights for the working class. So Party influence was at an all-time high. Many historians note that if the US was ever to have a communist revolution, it would've been then due to the Party's influence on politics and culture (and would have been very different from Maoist China or the Bolshevik revolution). This all fell apart when Stalin signed the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, essentially making nice with the Popular Front's greatest enemy: fascism.\n\nIn 1938, the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC established the Dies committee to hunt for Nazi's in the country, which led to suppression of other political groups, like the communists and socialists. From there, there was no real turning back. After the US entered WWII, the threat of attacks on the US gained credence, and political suppression was seen as a legitimate way to preserve domestic and international peace. I have less expertise in the post-war era and communism, so if someone wants to step in on that, that would be great. But in general, after the communist witch-hunt of the 1950s, most Americans no longer feared the communist revolution, but instead feared espionage and Soviet attacks."
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28qfjj | Did medieval cities have street names?/ How did people in urban areas tell each other where they lived? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28qfjj/did_medieval_cities_have_street_names_how_did/ | {
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"hi! feedback on street naming in medieval Europe is welcome, but meanwhile, you might be interested in a couple of posts that discuss other times/places without street names, to get an idea of how it works:\n\n[Did streets in Rome use street numbers during the Republic and/or Empire period?](_URL_1_)\n\n[Why does Tokyo have such unusual street address designations?](_URL_0_)"
]
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25yj2w/why_does_tokyo_have_such_unusual_street_address/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yxmba/did_streets_in_rome_use_street_numbers_during_the/"
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4zb3d1 | In Classical-age Europe, how pervasive was the ability to speak Greek? | For example, I know the bible isn't to be considered a reliable source and all but there are other examples of this phenomenon. In the bible, Jesus and Pontius Pilate were seemingly able to understand one another. Jesus, the son of a carpenter, doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose education extends much beyond the basic literacy and understanding of the bible strongly implied in the text itself. Likewise, Pilate, the well educated Latin governor of Judea doesn't strike me as someone who would be able to speak the Aramaic of Jesus's native tongue. That signals to me that the exchange was held in Greek. Would it be unusual for non-noble commoners to know Greek to some extent? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zb3d1/in_classicalage_europe_how_pervasive_was_the/ | {
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"The flaw in your premise is asking about Europe, when your question is about Judea.\n\nPretty much west of the Balkans, Latin was the dominant language of the Roman empire, though Greek was very prevalent among educated Romans and among the upper classes diglossia (switching between two languages to talk about different fields/areas of life) appears common. It's extremely likely that Pontius spoke Greek well.\n\nEast of the Balkans , Greek was the dominant lingua franca. Even in areas where another local language was spoken, e.g. Aramaic, Greek was in widespread usage. It was not rven necessarily about formal education, widespread usage of Greek meant that many people were bi or trilingual. For this reason it is not at all unlikely that Jesus knew Greek and could speak in it, even though he was probably not educated in it nor spoke it as well, say, as Pilate.\n\n"
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1w7ei1 | I have a few questions regarding colonial-era naval battles. | [I found this image](_URL_0_) while satiating my curiosity over old naval battles.
Can someone tell me a little about the processes of a battle like this? Were there set methodologies for taking a ship, strategies that were trained onto the crewmen for this kind of event?
How risky was it for a captain to engage in such fighting on the seas? Were there times that it was generally considered not-good to engage in a fight like this? (times when both ship parties would wait to attack, such as a storm)
Did battles like this happen in the middle of the sea or was it almost always done near land?
How effective were their cannons toward one another? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1w7ei1/i_have_a_few_questions_regarding_colonialera/ | {
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"The image which you attach is of the battle between the USS Wasp and HMS Reindeer in the War of 1812.\n\nLike most naval battles, this was fought near land (in the approaches to the English Channel) rather than in the middle of the sea. It is hard to find enemy ships (or fleets) in the vast reaches of the open sea, so most battles occurred near ports or other strategic locations close to land.\n\nIn this case, the Wasp's mission was to raid English commerce in the English Channel (a very strategic location, as a vast number of merchant ships trading in or out of England would have to pass through the Channel). The Reindeer was sent out to attack the Wasp once the British learned that she was there, raiding their commerce.\n\nThough it was risky (and not always strategically wise) for a captain to engage in ship on ship battle, sea captains in this era rarely refused battle. It seems to have been a point of honor.\n\nIt could be argued that continuing to destroy British merchant shipping in the Channel approaches was more valuable to the American War effort than destroying one small British warship. (Though the morale and propaganda value of ship to ship victories in the War of 1812 was high). Even though victorious, the Wasp had to put into a French port for repairs, and was out of action as a commerce raider for seven weeks as a result of the battle.\n\nThe Wasp and the Reindeer do not seem to have engaged in much of a tactical duel. The two ships sailed towards each other in very light winds. When they were close, they went broadside to broadside and began firing the cannon. After twenty minutes of cannon fire, the two ships were alongside of each other, and the British tried to board the Wasp but were repulsed. The Americans follwed up by boarding the Reindeer (this is the moment shown in your picture).\n\nThe Wasp had heavier cannon (22 32 pounder carronades vs 18 24 pounder carronades) and more crew (178 vs 118), so had the advantage in both phases of the battle. The Reindeer was too damaged to sail back to port, so she was burned. Reindeer had 25 men killed and 42 wounded when she surrendered. Wasp had 11 killed and 15 wounded.\n\nThere often would be more strategy and maneuvering in a ship on ship battle than there was in this one. \n\nIn the Napoleonic wars, the British liked to try to achieve the \"weather gauge\" (that is to get their ship to windward of the enemy). The ship that had the weather gauge could better control the action and prevent the enemy from escaping. The French often preferred the lee gauge, from which they would try to keep the distance open from the enemy and shoot at sails and rigging, hoping to disable the British ship and gain a maneuverability advantage that might allow them to achieve a raking broadside.\n\nTo be able to \"rake\" the enemy was often a decisive blow. Raking meant to cut across the bow or stern of the enemy ship, so that you could send a broadside down the entire length of the enemy gun deck, while the opponent could not shoot back (having very few guns pointed fore or aft).\n\nMostly, it was hard to out maneuver the opponent well enough to achieve a raking broadside. The USS Constitution, however, seems to have been able to do this in several of her victorious engagements in the War of 1812. Perhaps because she was unexpectedly faster or more maneuverable than her opponents expected.\n\nCannon were very effective in naval combat. They rarely sunk wooden ships, but they crippled them and killed the crew until the ship would no longer function as a fighting force. Ships could be defeated by cannon fire alone (and most often were) but it was also not uncommon for the final action of a battle to be boarding the enemy and hand to hand fighting on the decks (as in the battle between the Wasp and the Reindeer).\n\nSources:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n"
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"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Marines_Aboard_USS_Wasp_Engage_HMS_Reindeer._June_1814._Copy_of_painting_by_Sergeant_John_Clymer.%2C_1927_-_1981_-_NARA_-_532579.tif"
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"http://www.history.navy.mil/ussconstitution/history.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_HMS_Reindeer"
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drzr5f | How did people "optimise" crops for better yields in ancient civilizations or in the middle ages? | What I'm more curious about is how they started creating more iterations of the same crop. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/drzr5f/how_did_people_optimise_crops_for_better_yields/ | {
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"Interestingly enough, this question coincides with “How was the cow domesticated?”\n\nA little bit of context, the cow (aurochs) before domestication was an absolute brute. They were violent beasts much larger than humans and much larger than the modern cow. So how the heck did it get domesticated???\n\nWell humans didn’t choose to domesticate the cow. It was a symbiotic relationship that developed because both sides learned about the benefits of keeping each other around which develops a tolerance between each other and eventual direct interaction. But that still doesn’t go all the way. Why the heck would humans tolerate such a beast??? (Some surviving documents from Rome/Greece reference the aurochs as an untamable beast. I can track those down if you’re interested. But the aurochs survived until the 1600s while cows were already domesticated.)\n\nSo! If we need them to hang around each other for long enough to realize that they benefit from each other, then what could bring them together in the same place?? WHEAT!\n\nIn Ancient Rome it was punishable by death to let your cows eat from the wheat fields of another farmer... except for certain months of the year. The months of the year where the wheat’s seeds haven’t sprouted yet and we’re just leaves.\n\nWhy? Because the cows would eat the leaves, allowing the wheat to reserve their energy for growing seeds (the substance humans were interested in). This was a practice that was developed well before the cows were domesticated (aurochs at the time), and continued through Rome (recorded in agricultural guides which I can also track down if interested) and the medieval world. \n\nSo to sum it up/tl;dr: A practice of ancient civilizations through the Middle Ages to optimize wheat yields were to have cows eat the leaves off of wheat before the seeds sprouted. This meant the wheat plant would have energy exclusively for growing the seeds which made more larger yields. \n\nSorry for grammar mistakes, I’m at work typing frantically."
]
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1tomsr | Can someone describe with good detail how exactly the sacking of a major city by Roman troops would occur? | What happened to people inside the city, what happened to soldiers and officers still alive (the enemy of Romans), what happened to commerce, trade and daily routine in the city. How long would the Romans stay in a city, is there a reason to raise the city, or keep the city? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tomsr/can_someone_describe_with_good_detail_how_exactly/ | {
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"This is a pretty broad question and there is no hard and fast rule for every aspect of your question. One of the chief concerns for a Roman soldier was booty, particularly during the Republican when such booty would make up the majority of their pay during their soldierly career. The types of deprivations inflicted upon a city were going to be based on highly complex factors. Sometimes a city was not sacked, other times it was. Sometimes that sack was orderly, often times it was not. In general, if a city was to be sacked, a commander would grant his men leave to basically be scoundrels, and sometimes this played out with horror. \n\nSo, let's begin:\n\n > What happened to people inside the city\nA quote from Polybius:\n\n > The incidents of the capture of Corinth were melancholy. The soldiers cared nothing for the works of art and the consecrated statues. I saw with my own eyes pictures thrown on the ground and soldiers playing dice on them; among them was a picture of Dionysus by Aristeides---in reference to which they say that the proverbial saying arose, \"Nothing to the Dionysus,\"---and the Hercules tortured by the shirt of Deianeira. . .\n\nThe holy places of even your enemy had power and deserved respect in the ancient world, so to treat them with such disrespect was as sacrilege and brutish as it gets. The fate of the Corinthians was not particularly pleasant either of course. According to Diodorus Siculus\n\n > This was the city that, to the dismay of later ages, was now wiped out by her conquerors. Nor was it only at the time of her downfall that Corinth evoked great compassion from those that saw her; even in later times, when they saw the city leveled to the ground, all who looked upon her were moved to pity. p443No traveller passing by but wept, though he beheld but a few scant relics of her past prosperity and glory. Wherefore in ancient times, nearly a hundred years later, Gaius Iulius Caesar (who for his great deeds was entitled divus), after viewing the site restored the city.\n\nSo this city lay in ruins for a century before being rebuilt. For the record, Corinth was basically sacked to the ground, with all women and children carried off into slavery. Those that were not enslaved were slaughtered. The Romans could be quite brutal. You'll note from the writings here that even they were quite shocked by what occurred in Corinth, and it could be called a bit of an over-reaction. It did serve a purpose though, which was to put the Greek (and Mediterranean world) on notice that to challenge Rome wouldn't mean you would be conquered, it meant you would be annihilated. Twenty years earlier during the Third Macedonian War, Epirus had seen a reported 150,000 people enslaved, and was devastated to such a point that centuries later it was noted that what had once been a highly populated state was still barren and empty.\n\n > what happened to soldiers and officers still alive\n\nGenerally, common soldiers were slaughtered at worst and enslaved at best. Leaders would be spared for a triumph, which would see them paraded in Rome in chains before being strangled. This is assuming they didn't commit suicide to avoid such shame.\n\n > what happened to commerce, trade and daily routine in the city\n\nWe can assume that if a city was destroyed, such commerce would end. However, in many cases, as with Corinth, the city itself occupied a position that was valuable (thus explaining the existence of the city in the first place). Both Corinth and Carthage would be rebuilt and occupied near or on top of their former sites as Roman colonies. If the city remained unsacked and simply surrendered, we can assume trade would continue (as it did for Carthage after the second Punic War).\n\n > How long would the Romans stay in a city, is there a reason to raise the city, or keep the city?\n\nThis depended entirely on the period and the situation within the city. During the Republican Period, particularly prior to the integration of the provinces after the sacks of Corinth and Carthage, permanent Roman garrisons were not a common thing. Roman policy was designed not around direct occupation and control during these years, but around force projection and client states/tribes. Tribes were expected to police themselves, and when they didn't, incidents like Corinth would occur to set the rest straight. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. \n\n\n"
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4usx5s | Why did Standard Oil continue to drop prices as their monopoly went on? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4usx5s/why_did_standard_oil_continue_to_drop_prices_as/ | {
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"I didn't know that happened. I do know that Standard Oil took a huge advantage in economies of scale and scope, that allowed it to drastically lower its cost compared to potential competitors. If Standard Oil did drop prices as you claim, then they valued market share over pricing in order to maximize revenue. If they continued to lower their prices, then competitors, who would have naturally higher costs, wouldn't be able to compete and would have to leave the market, allowing Standard Oil to occupy even larger market share. If the amount of petroleum they sold increased faster than the price drop (through increasing market share and generally increasing demand as the market for petroleum grew very quickly as Standard Oil developed), then Standard Oil would see its profits balloon, while competitors would face intractable barriers to entry.\n\nIn all, with a naturally growing market in petroleum and lower relative costs compared to competitors, Standard Oil preferred to maximize market share over optimal price setting in order to erect more barriers to entry for potential competitors by setting artificially low prices."
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1mnsvi | What would a standard English soldier during the late 1300s be composed of? | I'm thinking during the 100 Years war, late 1300s. In the movies I've seen, it seems like most of the standard grunt soldiers were pretty well equipped with mail, a helmet, a sword and a buckler perhaps. How accurate is this? What would the average grunt be equipped with? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mnsvi/what_would_a_standard_english_soldier_during_the/ | {
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"Some mail would have been in use. Much would have already shifted to plate harnesses. Since you didn't specify, I'm going to cover basics, using manuscript illustrations for reference, [sourced from here](_URL_1_)\n\n[BL Yates Thompson 35 La chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin, dated 1380-1392](_URL_0_)\n\nLooking at this particular illustration, we see multiple figures, from various social classes. On the side of the defenders, we see first a crossbowman, with a simple kettle hat and what may be mail on his arms and torso. Note that he has no gauntlets nor any indication of plate armor defenses. \n\nNext we see members of a higher class, one holding a shield and spear, the other a boulder. They're wearing more extensive defenses. They have houndskull bascinets, plate arm harnesses, breast plates and mail defenses around the neck. They are also equipped with gauntlets on their hands.\n\nOn the side of the attackers, the higher class members are wearing defenses almost identical to that of their class counterparts on the defending side. Take note of their weaponry. The carry weapons such as two handed axes and spears, with swords in reserve. \n\nNext on the attacking side, we see three bowmen. One is wearing a kettle helm, the second an open face bacsinet (with mail defenses at the neck) and the third a closed face bascinet (which is very unusual for this time, it may be a mistake in drawing or in my interpretation). They may be wearing some sort of torso protection underneath an arming garment, but they are certainly not wearing an defenses (past possibly an aketon or gamebson) on their arms. \n\nBehind them, there are foot soldiers, equipped with spears, most likely swords as well, and leg harnesses (and no doubt arm harnesses as well). Though we cannot see to be certain, their helms may have visors. They certainly do have mail protection at the neck. "
]
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"http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?manuscript=4186",
"http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?year=1380&year_end=1399&country=8&country=9&tags=&manuscript="
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|
12xnh5 | Did Vikings or pirates ever develop moral codes limiting what they could do to their victims? | I'm curious both about legal or social rules in the case of Vikings, and moral decrees from pirate captains. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12xnh5/did_vikings_or_pirates_ever_develop_moral_codes/ | {
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"A very curious bit of Viking morals: it's wrong to steal, but it's right to take by force. One of the Icelandic sagas tells of a Viking raid in the Baltic, where the Viking party manages to steal stuff from a farm under the cover of darkness without the occupants realizing what's going on. Halfway back to the boats, the Vikings feel ashamed and return to murder the men and burn the farm down with the women inside, so that they're not thieves, but raiders. This was not done to hide their act, but to legitimize it. Generally, victims of raids were expected to take revenge by counter-raiding, or be entitled to financial compensation; inability to properly respond to a raid was seen as a loss of honor of the victim, not of the raider.\n\nThis culture of 'might makes right' also included the practice of Holmgang; to settle disputes through single combat. Occasionally, this got so much out of hand that some berserkers just went around Iceland making fights with everyone so they could challenge (or get challenged) into a Holmgang and take the loser's stuff. This possibility for abuse led to complex rules and restrictions, and eventual abolition. Normally disputes were settled peacefully at councils.",
"Pirate ships would have their own moral code agreed on by the sailors (or enforced by the captain) so it would vary from ship to ship. Some were extremely brutal in their treatment of hostages, some quite gentlemanly.\n\n\nThe pirates themselves have been frequently documented repenting for their sins upon being sentenced to death, so while European pirates could commit some atrocious acts when at sea they very quickly changed their tune about morals when death was a certainty.\n\n\nThere is at least one instance of a privateer captain being stripped of his licence after his crew reported his abuse of them to the British authorities, however I can't for the life of me find the reference in \"The Pirates Pocket Book\". A great little read with some good source material, but poorly organised for finding the quotes you want...",
"Pirates, surprisingly enough, did have moral codes, but they did not generally deal with treatment of victims. Bartholomew Roberts prohibited gambling and women on board his ship, though his [flag](_URL_0_) specifically indicates the exact opposite of leniency for citizens of Barbadoes and Martinique.\n\nMarcus Rediker (and subsequent scholars of piracy) talks at length in Villains of All Nations and Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea about the implicit camaraderie between pirates which extended to the sailors of the ships they captured - since most of them had been recruited from merchant vessels themselves. As Wibbles mentions, it varies from vessel to vessel, but in general, pirates were lenient toward merchant vessels (especially if they yielded) and less so toward sailors and marines from royal navies.\n\nPirate captains were fond of decrees, but as far as MORAL ones go, they were few and far between (except in rare cases like Bartholomew Roberts).\n\nEdit: looks like I've been downvoted to zero. Anyone want to enlighten me?"
]
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cvh80l | Why did the IWW decline so much by the early 1920s? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cvh80l/why_did_the_iww_decline_so_much_by_the_early_1920s/ | {
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"The 1907 trial of Big Bill Haywood in Idaho for the murder of former Governor Frank Steunenburg was a first ordeal for the upstart union, and also the most amazing event in US labor history. Read *Big Trouble* by J Anthony Lucas for the incredible story, a tapestry of American society of the time. Haywood's lawyer was Clarence Darrow. Pinkerton James McParland managed the prosecution's efforts. He had been instrumental in defeating the Molly McGuires, and was the go-to guy for anti-labor dirty work.\n\nAstounding shenanigans abound, with jury tampering the mildest of the cheating and skullduggery. The trial was a near-perfect reflection of the struggle between capital and labor at the time. While the trial brought attention to the IWW, it also depleted its meager resources, which might have been better used fending off trade unionism, which was already stronger and easier to sell to American workers. \n\nBy 1917, the Espionage Act allowed the government to characterize the Wobblies as enemies of the state. Haywood was convicted in 1918, and fled to the USSR in 1921. His energy and personality were lost to the Wobblies.\n\nThe emergence of the Bolsehvik regime in Russia, and the Red Scare in the US, marginalized the IWW. Its leadership had been convicted under the Espionage Act, and supportive voices like Emma Goldman's were also lost to Attorney General Palmer's continual suppression of radicals, especially foreign nationals. Also, the US entered the war in 1917, and the resultant nativism pulled workers away from the more radical, and European, approaches to the struggle. \n\nOverall, considering the reliance on Haywood as a leader, the direct efforts of capitalists to destroy the IWW, the legal attacks by the AG, the effects of the war on labor and the attitudes of workers, and the comparative attractiveness of trade unionism to American workers, it shouldn't be too surprising that the IWW lost its appeal and its power. Had the war not intervened, the Wobblies might have continued to grow after its success in Lawrence. \n\nAgain, read *Big Trouble.* It's an amazing telling of the intertwined social forces in play at the time."
]
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3hovx6 | What other dating systems were widely used other than B.C. and A.D.? When were those systems replaced? | Particularly how did they measure time in China and Japan before European influence. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hovx6/what_other_dating_systems_were_widely_used_other/ | {
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"The Japanese used *nengo* (年号), eras declared by the imperial court. They didn't have a set length and a new era could be declared for any of a number of reasons: a new Emperor taking the throne, a natural disaster, astrology, etc. The longest *nengo* lasted for thirty-five years, but the majority were less than a decade long.\n\nTo give some a few specific examples, the Genroku era began in 1688, but when a massive earthquake struck in Genroku 16 (1703), the court declared the beginning of the Hoei era. That lasted until Emperor Nakamikado took the throne in Hoei 8 (1711), at which point it became the Shotoku era. Then when Shogun Tokugawa Ietsugu died in Shotoku 6 (1716) the Kyoho era was declared. If this sounds like a mess, you're not wrong.\n\nI should also mention that these continue to be used in Japanese-language history books. They'll usually define an era once, telling you that Genroku 1 began in 1688, for example, and then just use the *nengo*.",
"/u/cckerberos has already mentioned era names, or 年號, but it should always be mentioned that they were originally a Chinese tradition. The era name, or *nianhao* in modern Mandarin, was an essential component of the imperial register in East Asian languages. For a Vietnamese or Korean monarch to take an era name independent of the Chinese one(s) was tantamount to declaring autonomy or independence from the authority of the Son of Heaven, and for a tributary state to use a certain state's era name represented subservience to that state. This was why, in the 1630s, the [Manchus](_URL_0_) who had recently conquered Korea forced the Korean court to use the Manchu era name instead of the Chinese era names the Koreans had used for centuries. Era names were all meaningful and represented the circumstances of the period. For example, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty used the era name *Hongwu* for the rest of his life, which means something akin to \"vastly martial.\" Like other era names this was an intentional decision, highlighting the emperor's military origins and prowess.\n\nThe era name began to be used under Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, who reigned from 140 to 87 BC and first took the era name *jianyuan*, roughly meaning \"establishing origins.\" He would take nearly a dozen era names during his long reign - as in Japan, era names were flexible and changed regularly according to the circumstances for most of Chinese history. Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty used *fourteen* era names during his rule of 34 years!\n\nThe frequency with which era names changed was reduced greatly by the Ming dynasty, where the tradition of the emperor having only one era name for the entirety of his reign was established. Hence we generally refer to Ming and Qing emperors with their era names: the Hongwu Emperor (\"the emperor of vast martiality\"), the Yongle Emperor (\"the emperor of perpetual happiness\"), the Qianlong Emperor (\"the emperor of lasting eminence\").\n\nKorea, being a weak power and often with a strong Neo-Confucian overtone, used Chinese era names. An interesting quirk: even when Beijing was captured by the Manchus, many of the Korean intelligentsia did not consider the \"barbarians\" to be a legitimate Chinese dynasty. This meant that there were some Koreans who used the last Ming era name, *Chongzhen* (\"honor and auspiciousness\") which began in 1627 and ended in 1644, for centuries after the Chongzhen Emperor died. In fact, there were Koreans who wrote the year 1861 as \"the 234th year of Chongzhen\"! Vietnam is a bit more complicated case, but the monarchs there typically used the title *Hoàng Đế*, or emperor, and thus independent era names.\n\n**Sources:** I don't know of any good book on East Asian imperial language as a whole, and era names will generally be mentioned as a side fact in a book discussing other topics, so you might just want to check [our wiki.](_URL_1_) For Korea perhaps try the article *Contesting Chinese Time, Nationalizing Temporal Space: Temporal Inscription in Late Chosǒn Korea* in the anthology \"Time, Temporality, and Imperial Transition.\""
]
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42ujob | By the 15th century, was the army of the Holy Roman Empire, an army of the empire, or of the emperor's own vassals and land? | After reading multiple different documents about the Italian Wars, the army of Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian the first and Charles the fifth are referred to as "the Imperial Army". Was this army actually an empire drawn from across the empire, and thus truly the army of the Holy Roman Empire, or was it the army that the emperor could draw from his own lands and vassals? Thanks for any responses! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42ujob/by_the_15th_century_was_the_army_of_the_holy/ | {
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"Not to be a pedant, but I believe you mean the 16th century (1500-1600) as the two rulers in question ruled then.\n\nIt's a little tricky to answer but my interpretation, is that the only army in continental Europe at the time which could truly be considered an 'imperial army' or an army directly linked to the state would be the Ottoman Army, with its large contingent of Janissary corps always ready for active military service.\n\nWars in the 16th Century, as Geoffrey Parker demonstrated, were fought with foreign mercenaries for the most part, but usually with some leadership and high command from the native country. For example, at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, the whole empire of Charles V was used to draw in soldiers and commanders, with the army led by a man from modern-day Belgium and the Garrison of Pavia led by a Spaniard. Henry Kamen states that the army itself had no clear national origin. Some 50% were German, 30% Spanish and the rest from all over Europe.\n\nFurthermore, land and vassals in the Empire of the 16th century would have provided the emperor with little troops, but probably some money via taxation and loans. This was spent, along with all the new world gold, on mercenaries.\n\nAt no point in the history of the Holy Roman Emperor was their a standing army of the kind which would be familiar today. Until the 15th century, it would have been drawn as you say, from vassals and the king's lands, but fairly early on in that century, such troops were entirely ineffective against professional mercenary types which rich emperors could make use of.",
"One of the big issues when it comes to English speakers and the Holy Roman Empire is that we translate two words as 'Imperial' that have different meanings in German. We tend to translate both *Reichs-* and *Kaiserliche-* as 'Imperial', when--in German--the former refers more to the institutions and idea of the realm/empire, whereas the latter focuses more on the personhood of the Emperor. So, when something is called 'the Imperial Army', it can either mean 'the Army of the Empire' or 'the Army of the Emperor'. This can lead to confusion in the Early Modern period, espescially when we're dealing with politicking in the Holy Roman Empire. However, as I understand it, convention is to call the army fighting for the Emperor--whoever that may be--gets to be called 'the Imperial Army', regardless of where it came from. Hopefully, this should answer your question. Simply being called 'the Imperial'--or as I often see it, the Imperialist Army--does not imply it was an army of the Holy Roman Empire, but rather could just be saying that it was the army fighting for the Emperor. \n\nHowever, to go into more depth, another concern is that armies did not tend to draw exclusively on one group. A Scotsman might very well find himself fighting for the Emperor against the French, even though his King is supporting the French against the Emperor.^1 So, almost all armies would consist of troops drawn from around Europe, even though they might pre-dominantly consist of recruits from one area or another. We tend to call these 'the Spanish Army' or the 'French Army' based off who they're fighting for, rather than where the troops came from. Charles V's army no doubt includes Germans, but also likely consisted of a great deal of Spaniards, Flemish, Italians, and other peoples from across his realm. \n\nA better question to ask if we're wondering whether the army is the army of the Empire or the Emperor is: \"Who is paying for the war?\" Is the army being paid for out of the Emperor's treasury, through his own incomes, or is it an army voted for and paid for by the *Reichstag* and Imperial Estates? Unfortunately, I don't know that information about the army Charles V brought with him to Italy, so I can't answer you there, but hopefully I would have helped you out somewhat with this issue. \n\n1: This is a hypotheticaal situation, not a statement about the Scottish king's position vis a vis the Italian Wars. "
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5un7d5 | Did nations/national identity exist before the modern age? | An anthropologist told me they national identity did not exist before the modern age, but I did read in some articles that many historians do not think that this is true.
So I wanted to know what is your take on this. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5un7d5/did_nationsnational_identity_exist_before_the/ | {
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"It really depends on what you mean by national identity. National identity definitely did exist to a degree but was not expressed in exactly the same ways as we do in the modern era. Pre modern national identity is not the same as modern nationalism and the reason why this is the case but I recommend the 'Invention of Tradition' edited by Hobsbawm and Ranger for a good series of discussions on this (especially the final chapter by Hobsbawm). Anyway I can give you an overview of some pre modern examples of what might be described as national identity. \n\nFirstly the term nation comes from the Latin 'natio' which, unsurprisingly, is not a modern invention but goes back to ancient Rome - so the term is pre-modern. From the Roman period and through the Middle Ages nation was only one word used to describe a group of people along with others such as gens (people although translated as race in a lot of earlier published texts) or lingua (tongue, language or people) and all of these mean more or less specific things depending on context. Nevertheless the idea that you can identify and demarcate discrete groups, including your own, goes back a long way. Herodotus in his histories gives an account of different cultural groups who are defined by their customs, political organisation and language and he even provides many of them, like the Scythians, with a mythical ancestral origin - so shared customs and origin of peoples this is very much like a picture of a nation. Various Greek thinkers also offered theories as to why different cultures existed including the idea that climate or location affected the temperament of peoples (which was advanced by Hippocrates but significantly developed by Galen) or notoriously Aristotle's assertion that some people are natural slaves. As might be expected this differentiation of other cultures or peoples solidified Greek self identification - they were in the temperate zone, they were not natural slaves. Likewise in Rome you can see a form of national mythmaking in the Aeneid and Tacitus' Germania is a very developed ethnography of different German tribes. Moreover Romans stressed a form of cultural self identity of 'Romanitas' (Romanness) which differentiated Romans from barbarians. This belief in Roman cultural superiority persisted even as the barbarians were at the gates - one letter writer Sidonius Apollinaris writes mockingly in private about how slurred and bad a Germanic king's Latin is all while writing Roman panegyrics for him (in an irony of history the Loeb edition of Sidonius' writing has an introduction from the translator moaning about how bad *Sidonius* is at Latin).\n\nAnyway so now Rome has fallen but in the middle ages we have a lot of evidence for national identities of one sort or another. Early Anglo-Saxon lawcodes have differences in wergild based on rank which seems to include a reduced amount for a free non Saxon. The Exeter Book riddles includes disparaging comments on the Welsh including differentiating them as physically distinct (\"dark Welshmen\"). Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English people makes sure to show the differences between nations and makes sure to stress the unity of the English in spite of political division. Nationality was, therefore, noted in the early middle ages even if there was not really a notion that the nation had to have a political entity to represent it - in fact for a king to have the allegiance of many peoples is prestigious (Asser proudly talks about how Alfred the Great had the allegiance of the different peoples of Britain). During the Viking age there are also explicit references to Englishmen and Danes in decrees - even when they are under the same ruler. The English and Danes also had recognised differences in grooming habits - as can be seen when an Anglo-Saxon monk (Alcuin) writes a letter saying that the English were basically asking to be invaded by Vikings as they had started trimming their beards like them! All throughout this period different peoples associate themselves genealogically as a group and trace descent - the Trojans are especially popular for this. \n\nLater on we see even more evidence of nations being identified with. After the Norman conquest Englishmen sometimes kept their beards as a sign of defiance. Histories of nations appear in which nations have a set character and sins (such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain). Ethnographies start to be written again by writers such as Gerald of Wales (who argues that different nations inherited traits from the climates of their ancestral lands). The importance of nation can also be inferred from the fact that having no nation is not viewed positively - one particularly furious pilgrim to Spain says that the Navarese were no true people (ne veres) and could not trace their ancestry back to a single nation and that this explained their nefarious behaviour (such as poisoning his horse). All of this, however, occurs in a context where a single all encompassing nation (to the exclusion of all others) is hard to find - Lowlanders and Highlanders in Scotland, for example, are sometimes presented as different peoples (gens) but other times as members of the Scottish people - by the same author! The easiest place to find strict national character defined, moreover, is where it is falling apart such as in the Statutes of Kilkenny in the 14^th century. These identify Irish characteristics and forbids English colonists to engage in Irish practises for fear of being tainted by Irishness - this was evidently not working. Nevertheless notions of national identity do exist in Pre-Modern Europe and they could include many ideas we see today - shared genealogy, language, culture, dress, methods of fighting etc. - and existed alongside other forms of identity such as religious.\n\nIf you want to read more I recommend you read the article by Robert Bartlett 'Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity' as it especially gets into the problems of language when addressing nation/ethnicity/race in the pre modern period. "
]
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2t36il | How did the USSR tackle the issue of employment during the decade following WWII? | Were many returning veterans kept on as soldiers, or were they expect to return to their families and farms?
What was the largest source of employment for veterans (obviously the state, but what do they have them doing?)?
How many enlisted soldiers in 1945 became career soldiers? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2t36il/how_did_the_ussr_tackle_the_issue_of_employment/ | {
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"The USSR went through an extensive demobilisation process following the war. This was part of the vast, and generally quite successful, programme of reconstruction that retooled and rebuilt the economy. By 1950 the Soviet economic production had surpassed its pre-war levels. But on to the soldiers.\n\nFrom a starting point of 11m Soviet soldiers in 1945, at least 8.5m were demobilised in batches over the period 1945-48. As was typical in the USSR, the process was 'difficult' (to quote Harrison) with the state simply unable to manage the transportation and promised material support of returning veterans. (That 1946-47 were also famine years didn't help.) Many soldiers were simply handed their papers and told to make their own way home.\n\nBut if these were years of hardship then at least employment was not a problem. If the veterans did not return home as a privileged cohort (and the degree to which they did is still debated) they had the advantage of a strong labour market. Labour shortages had emerged as a chronic feature of the Soviet economy in the pre-war years and the immense loss of life during the war had only sharpened this. The returning veterans did not come close to filling this gap, hence migration of peasant labour continued to be a feature of the post-war economy.\n\nCrucially, demobilisation furthered this shift towards an urban economy. Approximately half of all veterans found their way into the cities, as part of the industrial workforce. Given that most soldiers had been recruited from the peasantry, this itself represented a significant demographic shift. Flitzer has some detailed figures on industry recruitment (see below, I unfortunately don't have the source to hand) but by and large they would have followed the patterns of pre-war industrial growth - eg metallurgy, mining, construction, etc.\n\nI can't say how many career soldiers emerged from the war. From a macro perspective however, the Soviet economy never entirely demobilised. Many of the war industries, and formations obviously, were maintained into the Cold War. Despite a brief respite under Khrushchev (with a further round of demobilisations in 1953-60) the USSR emerged from the war with an economic 'defence burden' as high, or higher, than that of 1940.\n\n**Sources**\n\nObviously my background is largely the economic and social impact of the war and demobilisation. In this I'm primarily drawing on Donald Filtzer (*Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism*), Mark Harrison (*The Soviet Union After 1945*, *The Soviet Industrial Defence Complex in WWII*) and Michael Ellman (*Socialist Planning*).\n\nI've not read it myself but I've heard good things about Mark Edele's *Soviet Veterans of the Second World War*. I suspect that that work would answer most of your questions."
]
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7q26cj | Is it true that Vikings let women handle their finances because they thought it was witchcraft? | I keep seeing this statement "Vikings made their women take care of their finances because they thought math was witchcraft" and can't find any proof to back it up. Does any one know about this? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7q26cj/is_it_true_that_vikings_let_women_handle_their/ | {
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"We think women controlled the material wealth of Viking-Age households because many wealthy women were buried with a [key](_URL_1_). We assume that within the longhouse, there would have been a locked pantry, and only the matriarch of the household had access to it. Presumably this included food, possibly alcohol, and I would guess textiles as well. [Silk](_URL_2_) or [sails](_URL_3_) were both extremely valuable. It would make sense for a matriarch to control the household food distribution and textile production/consumption, and this seems like a pretty solid interpretation of the archaeological evidence. In contrast, textile production became a male industry in the later middle ages.\n\n[Coins](_URL_4_) might also have been kept in these cupboards, although some hoards seem to have been buried in farmhouse floors. I suspect this would have been the safer option, since anyone with an axe could break through the pantry door, but you'd need to convince someone to tell you where the family purse was buried before you could get at the money. If a household were attacked, you could abandon the house, and even if it were burnt down, you'd still be able to dig any buried coins back up.\n\nSo women were probably in charge of managing food and textiles—which were the major material wealth of a Viking-Age farm—but there's less evidence that they were responsible for coins. Of course, much of the stuff that got moved around during the Viking Age was probably traded or gifted, rather than bought for cash. So although there was no such thing as a household 'budget' and even 'finances' seems like an ill-fitting word for Viking-Age households, women seem to have been in charge of the bulk of a farm or family's wealth.\n\nThe rest of the statement you're interested in seems much more dubious. Witchcraft or [seiðr](_URL_6_) wasn't solely associated with women, although some sorts of things that we would consider 'magic' were considered feminine. (Admittedly, 'magic' isn't quite the right word since 'magic' often suggests superstition or illusion.) I've seen no reason to assume that math was considered magic or a particularly feminine form of magic. Instead, [scales](_URL_5_) and [weights](_URL_0_) for measuring silver are often found in apparently male graves. So the reason you can't find proof that women and witchcraft and math and finances all went together as a regular thing ... is probably because there's no proof to find."
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1rea1r | Why is the "Water Erosion on the Sphinx Theory" Not Correct or More Popular? | I have a friend who really really believes this theory. Schochs and West and a couple of other Egyptologists have been trying to convince historians that the sphinx is older than previously thought, using evidence of water erosion in the monument as their proof.
I see the photos of it and it looks like water erosion to me, but I also know nothing about how it should look. Im no geologist.
Why isnt this theory being more seriously considered. Despite some hours of googling, I'm mostly only able to find stuff written by the main proponents of the theory. Anything that seems to refute the theory is either really difficulttounderstand or is made out to be oly half a refute.
So Im hoping someone here could help explain this?
Thank youin advance. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rea1r/why_is_the_water_erosion_on_the_sphinx_theory_not/ | {
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"I had a professor by the name of Peter Lacovara who explained this theory in class and why it is wrong. The body of the sphinx is made up of limestone from a former quarry. Everything around it was cut up and taken away to build the nearby pyramids. Not wanting to leave this hunk of rock sticking above the ground they turned it into a statue by importing some other nearby rock to do the head, legs, and arms. It isn't erosion from water, it is quarry marks. It doesn't help that the limestone that makes up the body of the sphinx is of a poor quality and can more easily erode."
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42icnn | Why has the south of Germany been richer than the north? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42icnn/why_has_the_south_of_germany_been_richer_than_the/ | {
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"South Germany being the richer half of the country is actually a very recent phenomenon. Over the course of history, the distribution of wealth has changed a lot, depending on political factors as well as the importance of various technologies and industries. The north used to be very rich due to trading etc. and Hamburg remains a rich city, while the south was very rural and agriculture-focussed up until the 20th century.\n\nFor post-war Germany, a good indicator is the \"Länderfinanzausgleich\". This is a fund into which the richer states (Bundesländer) pay money while the poorer states receive money in the form of subsidies. How much every state gets/pays is determined yearly.\n\nIf you look at the timeline of subsidies on the [Wikipedia page](_URL_0_) (section \"Finanzvolumen\"), then you can see for example for Bavaria (\"BY- Bayern\") that up until the mid-eighties, they were considered poorer than the national average and therefore got money from the fund. At this point, the manufacturing and high tech industry took off, propelling Bavaria into todays top position.\n\nNorthrhine-Westphalia (\"NW - Nordrhein-Westfalen), on the other hand, used to be \"in the green\" after the war on account of their massive coal and steel industry. But here we see a decline in the 80's due to rising competition of foreign steel and coal and the closing of mines and steel mills.\n\nAlso, the statistics are a bit skewed due to the fact, that the poorer, former East German states are all in the north, or at least in middle Germany.\n\nBut at the moment, it is basically the powerful automobile industry, their suppliers as well as high tech firms (optics, medical technology, manufacturing, etc.) that cement southern Germany's economical lead.\n\n"
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[
"https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nderfinanzausgleich"
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343yc8 | Have there been riots in history that sparked the change they asked for? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/343yc8/have_there_been_riots_in_history_that_sparked_the/ | {
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"I recently read a great overview of US riots-- Paul gilje's \"rioting in America\". He identifies many, many riots that achieved their goals, from the 17th c to the present.\n\nAmerican rioting, he argues, has strong roots in the medieval English system of collective violence by the plebeians, which was generally considered an acceptable form of expressing grievances because the patricians were understood as playing a paternalistic role, and therefore allowed their \"children\" to act out, and then made economic or political adjustments to make the people happy. Other successful riots regulated moral behavior in communities. All of these practices were continued in colonial America, frequently with success.\n\nI think it should be pointed out here that Gilje, like many others who've written on the topic, emphasizes the fact that the term \"riot\" is usually a very loaded word that is often only applied to people the speaker does not feel have legitimate justification for their actions, and frequently incorrectly assumes that it does not have a strong organized element. He defines riot as \"extralegal collective violence\" and does not draw a sharp distinction between riots and rebellions or mob-based vigilante violence. So, for Gilje, other examples of \"successful\" riots in American history are the hundreds of mob lynchings of blacks in the American South, whose ultimate purpose was to terrorize and oppress African Americans.\n\nEDIT I think it's also important to highlight gilje's argument that in the 20th c rioting, especially in urban ghettos, became MUCH LESS violent towards people, but more diffuse and destructive of property--being more of a venting of frustrations with a social and economic system that is far more depersonalized than that which existed previously, and this has led to a lesser ability to create change in the way many 17th and 18th century riots--which were often very unorganized themselves--were able to.",
"Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory."
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1ge3zx | How could a country like Afghanistan change from being a fairly liberal country to very strict religious? | After seeing [pictures of women from Afghanistan in the 1950s](_URL_0_), I became curious of how this could happen. Which elements needed to be there? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ge3zx/how_could_a_country_like_afghanistan_change_from/ | {
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"Rodric Braithwaite points out in Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, that the 'liberalness' of Afghanistan was only ever really confined the urban middle and upper classes, who were very much a minority, the majority of the rural population were pretty conservative add the ruthless brutality of the Taliban into the mix and the 'fascism' of the 90's becomes possible."
]
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"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/100527_19-Afghanistan-148.jpg"
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3g3ja3 | Why don't Japanies swords have crossguards? | Simply question really. All of the Japanese swords I have seen or heard of have a tsuba, or some variation of disc guard. Disc guards have always struck me as offering very limited hand protection, especially on a two-handed sword, so why didn't Japanese swords evolve beyond the tsuba? Was there any real advantage or reason behind the use of disc guard's, or did Japanese swordsmiths just never come up with anything better? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3g3ja3/why_dont_japanies_swords_have_crossguards/ | {
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"Swords are designed for specific styles of fencing and combat. Also, while a crossguard protects your hand, it also hinders your movements, determining how you attack and defend. ",
"While there were some (elaborately decorated) cross-guards invented in the Edo period called *katanatsuba* (刀鍔) and another type called *mamorokobushi* (護拳) katanas generally lacked cross guards and hand protections for the simple reason that they were quick withdraw* (not primarily for thrusting however, as I've been corrected) weapons, whereas European swords with the exception of rapiers (which usually have hilts like 刀鍔) were usually broad weapons.\n\nJapan had a different style of combat with the sword--Katanas were quick withdraw weapons, meant to be compatible with a Japanese concept called *Ieaidou* (居合道). The Japanese have developed a whole artform around this concept of swordplay, and it has developed into the sword tradition that Japan has today, with a focus on quick movements as opposed to slower, heavier striking.",
"They had no need to - the tsuba was more than enough function as a guard to protect the wielder's hand, as the various other functions of larger crossguards (e.g. to lock swords) were not seen in most styles. A small, round disc to simply ensure you didn't accidentally slip was all that was needed. Swordsmiths were (relatively) more focused on the design of the blade itself, such as the curvature of blades (which you can definitely see the progression of in naginata and katana), were of a larger concern. You could mention too that the katana, being a primarily slashing weapon (note - primarily), combined with how it was used against its contemporary armour counterparts, meant that a larger crossguard had no specific function or significant advantage over a smaller one, such as the tsuba. Not even to mention that the katana was rarely used anyway.",
"A related question - why would Japanese swordsmen just attack the hands of someone wielding a Japanese sword?\n\nI come from a fencing background, and in Sabre and Epee (weapons where the hand is target), the hand could be considered one of the main targets to go for (cus it's closer). These sport weapons have much more complete guards that protect the entire hand much more than the Japanese tsuba - yet hands still get hit all the time, with both a cut in sabre and a thrust in epee.\n\nIt seems to me like it would be strangely easy to strike the hands (namely the part holding the sword, not the wrists) of someone holding a japanese sword. What prevents this? Is it cultural? Or is there a technique or something that makes it a poor strategy?\n\n"
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27ah4j | Was oral hygiene, or lack thereof, ever a deterrent for people to kiss before contemporary methods became available? | Whenever I'm watching Game of thrones or think about times where, presumably, oral hygiene is not near where it is today, and I can't help but think how horrible it must be to kiss someone at the time. Am I seeing this accurately? Has kissing always been a part of people's love lives? And, if so, has this ever been an issue, so far as our knowledge goes? I'm sorry if this isn't the type of question one should ask here. It's been plaguing me for a while and I don't know what the experience would have been like for those at the time. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27ah4j/was_oral_hygiene_or_lack_thereof_ever_a_deterrent/ | {
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"I am not knowledgeable enough on historical oral hygiene practices to answer the first part of your question.\n\nHowever, I can answer your second question:\n\n > Has kissing always been a part of people's love lives?\n\nWell, prior to written history, we have a hard time concluding whether or not people kissed. There are various hypotheses for how kissing developed, ranging from \"feeding\" hypotheses, akin to canines and birds who pass food to juveniles through their mouths, to hypotheses which imply that kissing is a way of exchanging olfactory information. It's a very interesting anthropological discussion.\n\nBut from a HISTORICAL perspective, kissing is mentioned in writing about 5,000 years ago, in Sumerian poetry: (Kramer, Samuel Noah (1981). History Begins at Sumer (3rd revised. ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press., _URL_1_)\n\nLater examples from Egypt also mention kissing, and are fairly specific: _URL_0_, _URL_2_\n\nSo I can't tell you about how people felt about kissing due to oral hygiene, but people were definitely kissing in a romantic context since almost the beginning of recorded history.",
"I'd like to try to answer this, but the way you've worded this questions makes it difficult. \n\nKissing has been around quite a while - some early evidence we have for kissing dates back to around 1500 B.C.E. from The Four Vedic Sanskrit Texts (The Vedas). There's no mention of the word “kiss,” (or the Sanskrit version of it, rather) but there are references to “licking,” and “drinking moisture of the lips.” By the third century C.E. we have the Vatsyayana Kamasutra (better known as the Kama Sutra), which includes a chapter describing how to kiss.\n\nIndia wasn't the only part of the world kissing that far back (e.g. kissing is mentioned in Homer's epics), but it's a convenient example.\n\nSome experts - I'm citing Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A & M - have speculated that kissing came from sniffing. Basically, that there was a lot of sniffing / sniffing greetings going on, and \"at some point, they slipped and ended up on the lips, and they thought that was a lot better.\" (Bryant). Another good source for this kissing / sniffing theory is *The Science of Kissing*, by Sheril Kirshenbaum. \n\nWhen you say \"oral hygiene\" and \"contemporary methods\" is where I lose you. I'm not sure what you mean by these terms - people have been cleaning our teeth as far back as written history goes. Assyrian cuneiform medical texts from 3000 B.C.E. mention teeth-cleaning procedures and toothpicks from roughly the same time have been found in Iraq (Mesopotamia). Greek writings note that Aesculapius - the Greek god of medicine - advocated for oral hygiene. \n\nSo I suppose my problem is that, without knowing what you consider \"oral hygiene\" or \"contemporary methods\", your question can't be answered. Based on what I remember and what I've read, at least, there's no record that a lack of oral hygiene was a deterrent to kissing. \n\nSo I guess, no?\n\nEdit: Poorly researched sidenote - I remember reading that body odor being considered unpleasant is a relatively recent phenomenon, associated with a lack of cleanliness, and that for a long time people liked the smell of BO. Perhaps hand in hand with that is not minding bad breath quite as much. \n\nAnyway, this isn't really my area but I hate to see this thread look so raggedy. Best answer I've got for you, sorry I cant' do better.",
"The \"Jests of Hierocles\" has a whole section related to bad breath and it references the issues it caused for romance. I know \"AskHistorians\" isn't normally a venue for jokes, but it seems apropos given the context...\n\n#234:\n\"A person with offensive breath asked his wife, 'Why do you hate me?' She replied saying, 'Because you love me.' \"\n\n\nAvailable on Google Books:\n_URL_0_",
"Isn't it worth mentioning that before the advent of processed foods, oral hygiene was not as necessary as it is today? For example, tribal people still have very healthy teeth. Or is this a misconception?",
"I can't answer for kissing on the mouth, but I do know that, *tragically*, oral sex was considered taboo in Ancient Greece and Rome due to a fear of \"pollution\" - and not just limited to worries of hygiene. In Greco-Roman society, where there was so much interaction by way of conversation, kisses on the cheeks and mouth, and communal eating and drinking, there was a fear that oral sex could cause some sort of moral pollution, with a physical manifestation comparable to a curse. Additionally, it was thought that oral sex was a form of penetration, so a man who gave head would probably be treated rather similarly to a man who enjoyed getting pegged in the modern day (sort of).\n\nAs a result, there's a lot of poetry by more salacious Roman poets on the subject - Martial has over sixty poems that mention it, and one of the Latin schoolboy's favourite poems, Catullus 16, is bookended by the phrase, \"I'm going to bum you both and make you blow me.\" Also, there's a graffito from Pompeii which rather succinctly sums up Roman attitudes to cunnilingus:\n\n > III.5.3 (on the wall in the street); 8898: Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog\n\nThink on that next time you watch that scene with Jon Snow and Ygritte in the cave.",
"It's important to remember that oral hygiene wasn't always lacking in the ancient world. It depends very much on which population and which time period you're talking about.\n\nFor example, Indians have been using twigs from the *neem* tree to brush their teeth for thousands of years (and still do today). The way it works is that they take a twig and chew on it for a few seconds until the fibers separate, and then it becomes a toothbrush. They then use this to brush their teeth.\n\nThe mechanical action of brushing, as well as antimicrobials present in the *neem* tree, are very effective at combating tooth decay. In fact, studies have [found no statistically significant difference](_URL_0_) between the incidence of plaque, cavities and gingivitis using this method, compared to a modern toothbrush and toothpaste.\n\nSimilarly, in many Arab countries the twig of the *Arak* tree (called a miswak) is used as a toothbrush. [Studies have also shown](_URL_3_) that [using a miswak](_URL_1_) is just as effective as using a modern toothbrush/paste.\n\nIt's also good to remember that the incidence of tooth and gum diseases is very related to one's diet. Specifically, diets that are high in sugars and simple starches, or carbonated drinks, predispose to tooth decay and gum disease. Such diets were not widely available in the distant past, so the incidence of these diseases was also low. There are [studies on populations living thousands of years ago](_URL_2_) that show many ancient populations had exceptionally healthy teeth.",
"If I remember correctly, in Chaucer's \"Miller's Tale,\" Absalon sweetens his breath with cardamon and licorice in hopes of stealing a kiss from the adulterous Alison. I think this could possibly suggest some awareness of bad breath in the 1300s when the *Canterbury Tales* are thought to have been written."
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"http://books.google.com/books?id=OtMb_pzRnOoC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=jests+of+hierocles&source=bl&ots=jCnIp0LSmP&sig=MmNtKc_OVkvrlzjJbL7EWkMqNr4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W1-PU6-AGo_6oASJs4LoBQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=breath&f=false"
],
[],
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"http://www.ispcd.org/~cmsdev/userfiles/rishabh/09%20ajay%20bhambal.pdf",
"http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/14973564",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3227510/?report=reader",
"http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/15224592"
],
[]
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|
26e82d | Did people in British colonies (eg. Canada, Australia, New Zealand) consider themselves British or did they moreover identify with the colony? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26e82d/did_people_in_british_colonies_eg_canada/ | {
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"You may be interested in my answers in these previous threads:\n\n* [At what point did Australians and New Zealanders begin to consider themselves as distinct from the British?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Why did Great Britain grant independence/autonomy to Australia and Canada? Was it political necessity or were there economic concerns?](_URL_0_)\n"
]
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ob29o/why_did_great_britain_grant_independenceautonomy/ccqi7fx?context=3",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sp0tr/at_what_point_did_australians_and_new_zealanders/cdzw49h"
]
] |
||
39xjh9 | How widespread was anarchism as a political movement? | I'm trying to figure out: how relevant was anarchism as a political movement? (I'm thinking primarily of the period of time between when Proudhon was writing in the mid-19th century and the Russian Revolution in 1917.) Was it ever seen by large numbers of people as an alternative to whatever the current state of politics was at the time?
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39xjh9/how_widespread_was_anarchism_as_a_political/ | {
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"Here's the start of an answer: \"Anarchism\" was not a widely used keyword until 1880 or so, around the time of the establishment of the The International Working People's Association or \"Black International.\" Prior to that, anarchist ideas played a role in organizations like the International Association of the 1850s and the First International, and informed some elements in uprisings like the June Days of 1848 and the Paris Commune. In North America, they were also part of the movement for \"equitable commerce,\" informed the radical wing of the abolitionist movement and inspired the organizers of the various New England reform leagues. But they were, in this early period, generally expressed in the context of larger socialist and/or internationalist movements. Those movements were marked by all sorts of internal struggles, including significant disagreements between anarchistic factions. It was arguably not until after the splits in the International that the various elements, anarchists among them, would emerge as movements in their own right, with the new divisions drawing anarchists together as socialism and the international labor movement split apart. "
]
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[]
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|
601a4c | Why is the Bering Strait never mentioned in the Cold War? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/601a4c/why_is_the_bering_strait_never_mentioned_in_the/ | {
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"It's something like 4000 miles from there to Moscow, and 2000 miles to California. In both cases most of the trip would be across wilderness terrain with no major roads or infrastructure to speak of. In the age of nuclear weapons, the war would be over long before an army crossing the Bering Strait reached anything remotely important. Even if nuclear war did not break out, a large ground force making such a long and difficult journey would have little hope of survival. They would be hit by air strikes for weeks or months, and then would face a prepared defense if they ever made it to their goal."
]
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[]
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|
g2uthz | In Ancient Rome, who would act as the police detectives? Who would try to figure out who’s guilty for murders so they could have a trial? What methods for investigation would they use? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g2uthz/in_ancient_rome_who_would_act_as_the_police/ | {
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"There have been a few previous answers that might be helpful here:\n\n[How easy was it for fugitives to evade capture in the Roman Empire?](_URL_3_) by [u/mpixieg](_URL_2_)\n\n[How were crimes investigated in Roman times?](_URL_1_) by [u/AwesomeDog59](_URL_4_)\n\nAnd a couple by me:\n\n[Prior to DNA evidence, finger prints, etc. how did they solve murders and actually know if they convicted the right person?](_URL_0_)\n\n[I'm living in Ancient Rome and I just murdered someone. What chances do I have of getting caught?](_URL_5_)\n\nIn short - no one! If someone got murdered, that was a problem for the murdered person's family. If they could bring the murderer to court, then the government would deal with it. If not, then there was nothing to investigate. In Rome, the praetor was in charge of investigating, if someone was brought to him. But the government did not investigate crimes on its own."
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cu1eet/prior_to_dna_evidence_finger_prints_etc_how_did/exw5x58/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avdbto/how_were_crimes_investigated_in_roman_times/",
"https://www.reddit.com/u/mpixieg/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f3sttl/how_easy_was_it_for_fugitives_to_evade_capture_in/",
"https://www.reddit.com/u/AwesomeDog59/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c0nyec/im_living_in_ancient_rome_and_i_just_murdered/er8s1v9/"
]
] |
||
4zqe1r | How common was interfaith marriage on the medieval ages? | Also, how unstable was a Christian-Muslim alliance as opposed to a normal union between European christian lords?
And finally, how likely was a lord of a specific religion to give millitary support to their Interfaith friends? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zqe1r/how_common_was_interfaith_marriage_on_the/ | {
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"Great question!\n\nIn the twelfth century Latin Christian attitudes to this question were rather conflicted. On the one hand you have categorical prohibitions against miscegenation and on the other you have early depictions in chronicles and popular literature where such relationships are romantic and quite beautiful. \n\nWith respect to the former, two decades after the establishment of the Crusader states and Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem the religious and secular elite of these nascent communities met at the Council of Nablus in 1120 to pass sweeping new legislation aimed at policing the sexual ethics and morals of Latin Christians and multi-confessional neighbours. According to canons 12 and 15 Christian men and women who voluntarily had sexual intercourse with Muslims would suffer mutilation; men would be castrated and women would have their noses cut of (rhinotomy). \n\nThis was motivated in part due to a recent history of military defeat, exemplified most dramatically in the annihilation of the Antiochene field army in 1119 at the *Ager Sanguinis* or Field of Blood. The death of Roger of Salerno on the field with the majority of his men signalled to some Latin Christian observers within the Levant that God was punishing the faithful for their moral depravity and lasciviousness with non-Christians. \n\nHowever I should note that there is little evidence of the canons of the Council of Nablus being enforced, so it is uncertain whether or not local administrations had the capacity or will to enforce such laws.\n\nFinally on the other hand we have popular literary depictions of twelfth century knighthood. One of the most famous is the *Cycle of William of Orange,* a collection of tales involving the eponymous protagonist who fights valiantly in a fictionalized and deeply fantastical ninth century context against the enemies of Louis the Pious (the son of Charlemagne). \n\nIn the *Prise D'Orange* the tale recounts how William of Orange seduces Orable, the Muslim wife of the similarly \"pagan\" ruler of Orange, Thiebault. This romance is made licit in the tale through her conversion to Christianity, which obviously complicates the interfaith element of your question. However the point I am making is that Muslim individuals were not necessarily seen as being a maligned *other* and could themselves have great internal virtue making them worthy of Christian affection. Her confessional identity does not complicate William's desire and love, and her conversion is therefore a culmination of her joining him, his house and his faith. Also the emphasis upon a dazzling and beautiful foreign princess who would willingly submit to the sexual prowess of a Christian hero should not be terribly surprising given our enduring tendency towards eroticization and orientalism. \n\nThe earliest chronicles of the First Crusade also discuss how quickly Latin Christian settlers adapted to their new cultural and religious surroundings. Fulcher of Chartres explicitly records in Book III how Catholics took non-Catholic wives and came to embrace some of the local customs and dress. Although once again even Fulcher is careful to state that those saracens who were taken as wives had nevertheless been received into the church through baptism. Whether this is true or not is another matter, although given his clerical perspective it is easy to see why such a detail would be worth emphasizing. The First Crusade: Edward Peters, *The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres\" and Other Source Materials* (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 281. \n\nPerhaps the canonists of Nablus were troubled by the scale of the issue but simply had no means of confronting it despite the notional authority granted by these new legislative prohibitions. \n\n\n\n \n\n"
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|
5vc22s | How much did the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front know about the German atrocities and the holocaust? For those that were aware of these events (or even participants), how did they rationalize these actions? | I know that the Wehrmacht, though technically separate from the Nazi Party, were instrumental in carrying out the Holocaust on the Eastern Front. But not every soldier of the Wehrmacht could have been an active participant. How much did they know, and how much did they care? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vc22s/how_much_did_the_wehrmacht_on_the_eastern_front/ | {
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"**Part 1**\n\nI have previously wrote answers to similar questions [here](_URL_0_), [here](_URL_2_), and [here](_URL_3_) and it is not really possible to gauge the number of how many members of the Wehrmacht were directly involved in war crimes, not at least because the difficulty of establishing what \"directly\" means in this context: E.g. was a group of soldiers guarding an Einsatzgruppen mass shooting directly involved or not?\n\nThe question of how many knew of war crimes and what they knew of them is easier to answer, especially in light of the newer research by Felix Römer as well as Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer. They worked extensively with Allied protocols of conversations between German POWs recorded in Allied camps when they didn't think anybody was listening. Their research uncovered that knowledge of war crimes was ubiquitous among members of the Wehrmacht. Every soldier knew of atrocities that had been committed against Jews and other civilians because they had either been present, had participated or had been told about them by their comrades. During their time as POWs, they quite freely discussed these crimes. To exemplify this, Römer cites among others the following exchange between the Viennese Artillerie-Gefreitem Franz Ctorecka and the Panzer-Gefreiten Willi Eckenbach in August 1944 in Fort Hunt (translation my own):\n\n > C: And then Lublin. There is a crematoria, a death camp. Sepp Dietrich is involved there. He was somehow caught up in this in Lublin.\n > \n > E: Near Berlin, they burned the corpses in one of these thingies [\"einem Dings], the people were forced into this hall. This hall was wired with high-voltage power-lines and in the moment they switched on these lines, the people in the hall turned to ashes. But while still alive! The guy who was in charge of the burning told 'em: \"Don't be afraid, I will fire you up!\" He always made such quips. And then they found out that the guy who was in charge of burning the people also stole their gold teeth. Also other stuff like rings, jewellery etc.\n\n[Römer, p. 435f.]\n\nWhat this passage shows is that these Wehrmacht soldiers, who after all were both on the lower side of the ladder, being only Gefreite (lance corporals) were uncannily well informed even if the story about using electricity for executions wasn't true. But knowing not only of the Majdanek death camp near Lublin but also knowing about Sepp Dietirch's involvement proves them to be very well informed.\n\nOr take this exchange between two Wehrmacht soldiers, Obergefreiter Karl Huber and Pioniersoldat Walter Gumlich, in Fort Hunt:\n\n > H: One day, one guy just came and stole this Russian's cow and so the Russian defended himself. And then we had to hang fifty or a hundred men and women and let them hang there for three or four days. Or they had to dig a trench, line themselves up at the edge and were shot so they fell backwards into it. Fifty to a hundred people and more. That were the so-called \"retributions\". But that didn't help anything. Or when we set the village son fire [...] Partisans were naturally dangerous, we had to defend ourselves against them but this was something different [...]\n > \n > G: Ach, that were war operations. They [the people who did the above] are not really criminals.\n > \n > H: Exterminating whole families, shooting their kids etc., literally killing whole families? We are guilty if the military without any right or any order steals the last bread of some farmer.\n > \n > G: Oh, come on.\n > \n > H: Ach, don't defend them.\n\nThese and so many more conversations of this kind between Wehrmacht soldiers show that virtually every soldiers had either heard or seen these crimes if he had not participated in them himself. And given how numerous the crimes of the Nazis and the Wehrmacht were in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, this is hardly surprising. You already mentioned it in your expanded text above and I go into this in the linked answers but it is imperative to realize that the war against the Soviet Union was planned, conceptualized and fought as a war of annihilation, being in itself basically a huge war crime. Nobody is this fact more obvious than in the OKW's Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit Erlass, which actually forbid Wehrmacht soldiers from being persecuted for war crimes in the Soviet Union. That this was seen as necessary, tells you not just how deeply the Wehrmacht was involved but just what kind of war they planned to fight: One where combat operations and war crimes bled into each other seamlessly.\n\nThe background of this is touched upon in my linked answers as well as by Dr. Waitman Beorn in the linked AMA [here](_URL_1_).\n\nNow when it comes to the question of rationalization, the protocols reviewed by Römer et. al. are also rather enlightening. As you might have noticed in the converstaion between Huber and Gumlich above, these crimes were sometimes regarded as controversial. Römer in his analysis proposes based on the protocols that Wehrmacht soldiers did indeed distinguish between what they viewed as legitimate and illegitimate violence.\n\nTake this exchange Römer cites between soldier Friedrich Held and Obergefreiter Walter Langfeld about the topic of anti-Partisan warfare:\n\n > H: Against Partisans, it is different. There, you look front and get shot in the back and then you turn around and get shot from the side. There simply is no Front.\n > \n > L: Yes, that's terrible. [...] But we did give them hell [\"Wir haben sie ganz schön zur Sau gemacht\"],\n > \n > H: Yeah, but we didn't get any. At most, we got their collaborators, the real Partisans, they shot themselves before they were captures. The collaborators, those we interrogated.\n > \n > L: But they too didn't get away alive.\n > \n > H: Naturally. And when they captured one of ours, they killed him too.\n > \n > L: You can't expect anything different. It's the usual [Wurscht ist Wurscht]\n > \n > H: But they were no soldiers but civilians.\n > \n > L: They fought for their homeland.\n > \n > H: But they were so deceitful...\n\n[Römer, p. 424]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qhz7o/ama_the_german_armys_role_in_the_holocaust/dczdhhm/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r8pzp/how_often_did_the_regular_german_army_werhmacht/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4skjkq/is_the_depiction_of_nazi_or_german_soldiers_in/"
]
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|
15qie7 | How often did people trade in money for gold? | Economics has always been an interest of mine. Today, all (most?) countries use a fiat monetary system, but for much of civilization the money system was backed by precious metals (gold or silver, usually).
The economics texts I've read explain that in a country that followed the gold standard the central bank would peg the currency to a certain value of gold, such as one dollar being equivalent to an ounce of gold, say, and that one could go to the central bank at any time and trade in a dollar and get back an ounce of gold in return.
My question is this: could *anyone* go to the central bank and transfer paper currency for gold, or was this option only available to banks or other large players? If anyone could do it, how often did people use this exchange? Was it a common occurrence for the business class or was it more rare? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15qie7/how_often_did_people_trade_in_money_for_gold/ | {
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"Under a \"classical\" gold standard, money is not convertible into gold; money IS gold. The monetary unit is defined in terms of a weight of gold, and the law defines a right of any individual to go to a mint and turn that weight of gold into an official coin.\n\nThe circulating media of exchange consisted of both these coins, bank notes issued upon those coins, and checking. In many places these bank notes were central bank notes; but many countries lacked central banks, and privately-issued notes traded instead.\n\nThese banks notes were roughly analogous to banking deposits in a checking account. They are a promise to pay backed by a specific banking institution. So just as you usually spend most of your checking account balance without taking cash, but do withdraw some physical currency, people mostly used bank notes, but did redeem some for metallic currency. The metallic stuff was also used between banks.\n\nSo the answer is: yes, during the \"classical\" gold standard period, individuals could turn to the banking system and exchange their dollar-denominated assets for physical gold; and when the financial system was underdeveloped or malfunctioning, they would.\n\nLater, after WWI in Europe, and after the Gold Seizures in the U.S. there existed various gold-exchange regimes. These were not \"classical\" gold standards, and under them, only certain people and foreign governments could exchange paper tender for physical gold. Under these systems it would be more accurate to say that money was \"backed by\" gold (often imperfectly) than to say that money \"consisted of\" gold.\n\nThe answer I have just given is substantially drawn from the following excellent article, which discusses your question in greater depth, and which demonstrates the limited historical scope of a true gold standard:\n\nSelgin, George, The Rise and Fall of the Gold Standard in the United States (August 27, 2012). Available at SSRN: _URL_1_ or _URL_0_"
]
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"http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2139115",
"http://ssrn.com/abstract=2139115"
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|
epzwgf | Literary Works on European Attire/Fashion | Hello, I have been looking around for good scholarly works on the history of European attire (all aspects of life military, sleeping etc..) and i'm wondering if there is considered a great work for somebody who wants to start reading on the subject.
Thank you for reading. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/epzwgf/literary_works_on_european_attirefashion/ | {
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"This is such a very broad topic that there are no scholarly works that deal with the whole thing. On the one hand, you can try Phyllis Tortora's *Survey of Historic Costume*, which is a textbook that can give a broad overview; like all textbooks, though, you lose the nuances and sometimes it's incorrect on the details. On the other, I list more specific works [in my profile](_URL_0_), which won't give you the complete history of high fashion/everyday dress/military uniforms/etc. but are helpful for more specific periods."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/mimicofmodes"
]
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|
496gjq | How did outsiders view the relationship between the emperor and shogun of Japan? | In particular, I'm interested in how it was seen by the Europeans and the Chinese. Did they remark on the unusual nature of this arrangement? Would official correspondence be addressed to the emperor or the shogun? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/496gjq/how_did_outsiders_view_the_relationship_between/ | {
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"You don't really specify an era, so I'm just gonna talk about the 19th century and the Perry expedition as an example.\n\nWhile planning for the expedition, the US understood Japan as having two emperors, a religious emperor and a military emperor. They addressed the letter it was the mission of the expedition to deliver to the \"Japanese Emperor\", with the intent of giving it to the Shogun in Edo. This lead to some confusion at first. They would become more familiar with the situation given some time after the opening of the country."
]
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[]
] |
|
u1nof | Why No American Aristocracy? | Why was it that the British Crown did not attempt to create an indigenous aristocracy in colonial North America by dispensing land grants with titles? In other words, why no American Peerage? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u1nof/why_no_american_aristocracy/ | {
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"There were attempts. In some ways that's what the proprietary colonies were, and their owners were the Lords Proprietors \n\n*spelling",
"William Penn's father lent the King of England so much money during the three Anglo Dutch wars in the mid-1600's. There was no way the King of England could pay these loans back, so he granted William Penn, a large tract of land that became the colony of Pennsylvania. ",
"I've got a literal answer to your question of an \"indigenous aristocracy\", but it was long before secession or independence. Walter Ralegh created a Croatan Indian man named Manteo as the first peer of American land. \n\nHe was styled Baron Manteo, Lord of Roanoke and Dasamongueponke, and I can't help but find the whole thing hilarious. Something about the English making a peer of a Native man - as if they were conferring a huge honour - and then depending solely on Native assistance to survive really does it for me. ",
"For one they didn't want to create any titles that would have been eligible for representation in the House of Lords which was quite powerful back then.",
"I have wondered about this as well, and have asked a number of people and never gotten a straight answer. For example, William Penn was given Pennsylvania, but he just got the land, he wasn't created the Earl of Pennsylvania. The only answer I can come up with is carters, that the lords were against it because they didn't want to dilute their power, and the king didn't want to piss them off.",
"Some guesses. I am sure some of all of these are contributing factors.\n\n1) Despite being a corrupt system (ie buying titles) most people within the english aristocracy saw the nobility as being connected to their land and the lineage. Creating a new aristocracy structure at of whole cloth would undermine that illusion that the aristocracy was \"natural\"\n\n2) Many of the folks that setled the north openly rejected the aristocracy. They moved to boston explicitly to get away from it.\n\n3) granting noble titles to colonists would mean that they would have to give those people a position in parlement and thus equal status within the government.\n\n4) colonists were sent to america not to extend the realm, but to extract natural resources and value from the land. there is a built in impermanence to colonization. ",
"Titles and the like aren't just something that can be created. the Crown is technically able to enfeoff anyone, but the nature of monarchies is that they are heavily bound by custom and the social order.\n\nIf you wonder why one never developed, there is nothing \"natural\" about the creation of a feudal society. Some societies are feudal, some aren't.",
"Not to mention that the sort of Americans who had amassed the lands and wealth to qualify to be ennobled were all slaveholders, like George Washington, who was among the richest men in North America. The Whig aristocrats who advised 18th Century British Monarchs, who while not doing anything to stop slavery and often profiting to varying extents from, did find it somewhat 'icky' ",
"The original rules for South Carolina drawn up by John Locke, though never implemented, included hereditary peerage, though different in name from Englands.",
"Feudal societies existed in Europe because land was limited. In America, there was no way to keep peasants working on manors when there was plenty of land for them to take for themselves.\n\nNinja edit: I'm not a professional historian ,but I believe this is what Carl Degler argued.",
"There was some landed aristocracy earlier on. In its 1663 charter, the Province of Carolina was distributed to eight Lords Proprietors for helping Charles II reclaim the throne. However, after Cary's Rebellion and conflicts with Native Americans in the early 1700's, the colony split into North and South Carolina, and the Proprietors sold their their interests back to the Crown, making NC and SC royal colonies."
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c51soh | Are Palestinians to a significant extent Arabized Jews? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c51soh/are_palestinians_to_a_significant_extent_arabized/ | {
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"Apologies, but we have had to remove your submission. We ask that questions in this subreddit be limited to those asking about history, or for historical answers. This is not a judgement of your question, but to receive the answer you are looking for, it would be better suited to /r/AskScience.\n\nIf you are interested in an historical answer, however, you are welcome to rework your question to fit the theme of this subreddit and resubmit it."
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