{"q_id": "48hjn0", "title": "Rules Roundtable #6: The \"No 'Poll-Type' Questions\" Rule", "selftext": "Hello everyone and welcome to the sixth installment of our [continuing series of Rules Roundtables](_URL_0_)! This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.\n\nToday's topic is addressing [the rule concerning \"No Poll-Type Questions\"](_URL_1_). So first, the rule. \n\n > \"Poll\"-type questions aren't appropriate here: \"Who was the most influential person in history?\" or \"Who was the worst general in your period?\" or \"Who are your Top 10 favourite people in history?\" If your question includes the words \"most\" or \"least\", or \"best\" or \"worst\" (or can be reworded to include these words), it's probably a \"poll\"-type question. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion - and, as such, are banned here.\n\nWhile it might seem to be pretty straightforward, I'm here to break it down, and provide some explanation as to why this rule exists, and why it is an important one!\n\n##What's wrong with those type of questions? \n\nQuestions about \"best,\" \"worst,\" \"favorite,\" \"most,\" \"least\" and the like can be great pedagogical questions, because they get to issues of historical methodology. A question such as:\n\n >  Who was the most influential person in history? \n\ncan be really useful in the classroom, because it forces us to ask a lot of questions: what is influence? how is it measured? does the nature of influence change over time? can a person from the past be more influential than modern leaders with access to nuclear weapons? is influence about military power, or the power of ideas, or the power to inspire? etc ... \n\nBut the major drawbacks of asking that type of question on this type of forum are made apparent by the above paragraph: \n\n1) the question by itself raises more questions; \n\n2) the answer to the question is largely dependent on how you frame it, as in how you answer those other questions; \n\n3) because of 1 and 2 above, there's unlikely to ever be a definitive, well-sourced historical answer to that kind of question.  \n\nBecause the goal of AskHistorians is, after all, to *answer* questions about the past, we find that allowing questions to stand that aren't answerable runs counter to that policy. Answers to questions like this are inherently opinion-based, not facts-based, and this isn't the right place for them. \n\nOn a more practical level, threads that are poll-type question threads really quickly devolve into half-baked, half-remembered answers with little to no focused discussion. And they're nightmares to moderate, and while our mod team is legion, we are all volunteers who are not unlimited in our time we have to spend on the sub. \n\n##But I really want to know why historians think some people, events, or time periods are more important than others! \n\nSomething to keep in mind about this is that we all study what we find interesting; I'm a naval historian because boats and ships fascinate me. Other people on our sub study gender, or politics, or military histories; or the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance; or areas or regions; or some mashup of the above. A lot of times that's just because it's what we think is cool, or what we became interested in through our coursework or an inspiring professor or a book we read when we were 10, and so we're leery of ranking our field in comparison to others. \n\nBut, that said, in our fields we are generally comfortable discussing what things are more influential than other things, or that are studied more than other things, and we do allow questions that ask about methodology, such as: \n\n* Lincoln is generally rated as the best president. Why do historians think this, and what criteria are they basing their arguments on? \n\n* What skills did Horatio Nelson possess that lead us to characterize him as a brilliant admiral? \n\n* Why is St. Augustine considered the most influential early Christian theologian? \n\n* Why are the Councils of Nicaea considered foundational in early church history? \n\nand so on. The basic idea is that asking how historians have ranked things will produce more insight into how history works than simply polling a group of people online. \n\n##Where can I ask a poll-type question, then? \n\nThere's always our Friday Free-for-All thread, where (almost) anything goes and which is generally lightly moderated. You might also consider posting questions of that nature on our less strictly moderated sister sub, r/history. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48hjn0/rules_roundtable_6_the_no_polltype_questions_rule/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0jqwvn"], "score": [17], "text": ["One of the forms of question that I find I struggle with quite a bit is \"What is the earliest X\". I understand that this isn't a poll-type question per se, as it may very well have a correct answer, a tentatively correct answer, or at least a well-constructed proposed answer, I feel like they are nonethless quite often somewhere between poll-like and trivia-seeking, as there is simply no way that I can conceivably know if I have the correct answer or not. So looking over the past year of such questions, for example: _URL_0_\n\n\nI can talk about early Arabic biographies of commoners. I can talk about early works of Arabic literature that are regarded as being bad. I can talk about early games in Arabic culture, but I often don't bother A: because I can typically assume that a classicist will throw out something earlier, and B: if both an Arabist and a Classicist were to answer the question about early things in our respective fields it would basically be a throughout history question, even if it wasn't precisely phrased that way."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=earliest&sort=top&restrict_sr=on&t=year"]]}
{"q_id": "20wt9u", "title": "Alaska Disasters AMA: 1964 Good Friday Earthquake and 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill", "selftext": "On March 27, 1964, the second-largest earthquake in recorded history struck southern Alaska. \u201cSuddenly 114 people were killed, thousands were left homeless, more than 50,000 square miles of the state was tilted to new altitudes, and the resulting property damage disrupted the state's economy,\u201d wrote USGS geologists in a paper that followed the event.\nTwenty-five years minus three days later, the massive oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. The resulting 11 million-gallon spill is today considered one of the world\u2019s worst ecological disasters.\nThis week, Alaska is commemorating the anniversaries of two of its worst disasters with events across the state. Here today, we have a panel of experts ready to answer your questions about the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Good Friday Earthquake.\nThe panel:\n\n\u2022 **Angela Day**, doctoral candidate and author of [*Red Light to Starboard: Recalling the Exxon Valdez Disaster*](_URL_1_)\n \n\u2022 **John Cloe**, Alaska historian\n\n\u2022 **Sara Bornstein**, Alaska State Library historical collections librarian\n\n\u2022 **David P. Schwartz**, geologist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.\n\n\u2022 **Gary Fuis**, geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.\n\n\u2022 **Andrew Goldstein**, curator of collections at the [Valdez City Museum](_URL_0_)\n\n\u2022 **Cindi Preller**, tsunami program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Region\n\n\u2022 **Joel Curtis**, Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau\n\n\u2022 **Toby Sullivan**, director of the [Kodiak Maritime Museum](_URL_3_)\n\n\u2022 and **James Brooks**, editor of the Capital City Weekly newspaper and author of [*9.2: Kodiak Island and the World's Second-Largest Earthquake*](_URL_2_). \n\nPanelists will be rotating in and out throughout the day as their schedules allow. If your question isn't answered immediately -- don't worry! Someone will get to it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20wt9u/alaska_disasters_ama_1964_good_friday_earthquake/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg7gns9", "cg7gr92", "cg7gtrt", "cg7gvyb", "cg7h7b3", "cg7inbj", "cg7j7wt", "cg7n3jf", "cg7ntf7", "cg7p0z9", "cg7pl2d", "cg7r4cr"], "score": [4, 6, 10, 13, 20, 3, 7, 3, 5, 3, 5, 3], "text": ["Thanks for your time, you mention the \"second largest earthquake in recorded history\", what did this earthquake measure on the Richter scale? ", "How is the state commemorating the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Is blame assigned? I wonder if you could reflect briefly upon how the efforts to memorialize these events treat the natural event of the earthquake, which caused many deaths, versus the Exxon spill - which caused no deaths but an environmental calamity. Does the recentness of the second event alter the discourse of those involved in the commemorative activity? Do people still feel victimized?\n\nThanks for the AMA!", "Thanks for doing this AMA! \n\nAlthough Alaska is certainly part of the Pacific \"Ring of Fire,\" it doesn't spring to mind as quickly as say California when it comes to earthquake risk. A couple of questions: \n\n1) What new regulations (if any) made their way into building plans, building codes, or in general the way structures were built and/or cities were planned in Alaska in the wake of the earthquake? \n\n2) Before the Kodiak Island quake, what were some other notable quakes in Alaska's history? \n\n3) What (if any) precautions did Alaska natives take to mitigate risk from quakes? What does Alaska native lore have to say about quakes? \n\nThanks again for doing this! Any answers are appreciated. ", "The magnitude estimate is 9.2.We don't use the term Richter magnitude anymore. That was a a specific magnitude measurement from a specific instrument that is no longer in use. This magnitude is called a moment magnitude and it is based on length and width of the rupture (its area) and the average amount of slip along the rupture plane. The largest recorded event is the 1960 M9.5 Chile earthquake. Both are huge ruptures", "Prior to *Exxon Valdez*, what kinds of safety measures existed - both on the tankers as well as land based reaction  - to deal with these kinds of spills?\n\nWas the scope of the damage simply due to unpreparedness for a spill of that magnitude, or were there mistakes leading up to it and in the response that might have prevented it from reaching the levels that it did?\n\nWhat kind of reforms in the tanker business have we seen in reaction to the spill, and have they proven effective?", "Why was third mate Gregory Cousins not prosecuted for his role in the Exxon Valdez disaster?  From the research I have done, it seems like he is the person most responsible for the grounding of the ship.\n\nA few years ago a Tanker captain did an AMA and claimed that Cousins was arguing with his girlfriend(who was the lookout) and his inattention during this time lead to the grounding. \n_URL_0_\n\nIs this an accurate assessment?", "So I looked around, and I noticed that there've been a number of oil spills larger than the Exxon Valdez.  Were those comparable ecological disasters?  If not, what made the Exxon Valdez so damaging?  If so, how did their cleanup efforts compare, and do those disasters have similar levels of awareness as the Exxon Valdez in the US?\n\nThanks!\n\nedit: And a huge thank you for the comprehensive answers!", "Pictures of the Alaskan earthquake show huge fissures or cracks in the aftermath.  \n\nHow deep were the fissures in this earthquake and were there any stories of people getting swallowed or lost in these cracks?", "The 1964 earthquake is something that those who live in the mainland US don't usually hear about, other than rare, vague references. What was the impact of the change of altitude of the state, if there was one? Were there any positive results from the quake - say, an increase in regulations, a new method of detection, etc? How deeply remembered is this earthquake in Alaska, and was the public memory of the event comparable to Hurricane Katrina in the years following the quake?\n\nThanks so much for your time! :)", "Does anyone have questions on the 1964 Tsunamis? ", "How far did the oil spread? Did the spill hitched a ride on the currents and spread to Canada or Japan?", "Has there been any significant progress in changing the way oil companies operate after these disasters happened in Alaska?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.valdezmuseum.org", "http://wsupress.wsu.edu/shop/showbook.asp?id=383", "http://kodiakdailymirror.com/Book_Order_New/?cache=false", "http://www.kodiakmaritimemuseum.org"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9sszo/iama_captain_of_an_oil_tanker_amaa/c0ea0qh"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "fibbb8", "title": "How do we know that philosophers like Socrates or Diogenes actually existed rather than just being characters fabricated by later philosophers to teach specifics schools and ideas?", "selftext": "When studying various philosophers I find that many of their teachings come from 3rd parties years after their supposed death's. Not to mention many of their discourses and experiences (e.g. Diogenes encountering Alexander the great) can seem somewhat fantastical and fictional. It gives me an impression that these men may have not existed the way we know it but rather future philophers used these men as characters in teaching various schools of thought.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fibbb8/how_do_we_know_that_philosophers_like_socrates_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkgjbqd"], "score": [86], "text": ["Socrates himself would counsel us (via Plato\u2019s *Apology*) that \u201cwhat I do not know I do not think I know either\u201d: the point of the quote being a humility around knowledge. There are many things about Ancient Greek philosophers that we simply do not know, simply because we have a very imperfect and incomplete record of their philosophising. Many modern books have been written about the tiny, disjointed scraps of philosophy left behind by the pre-Socratic philosophers, most of which make a mountain out of a molehill. A lot of the time, our knowledge of figures like Diogenes or Thales or Anaximander is either based on a) scraps mentioned in passing by other philosophers, or b) is based on a 3rd century AD book by Diogenes Laertius which is frequently gossipy, quite credulous, and frustratingly shallow in its understanding of the philosophy.\n\nThat said, for Socrates himself, while we should be careful making claims about what we definitely know for certain, it is extremely likely that he was a real historical figure. He is caricatured in Aristophanes\u2019 play *The Clouds*, he is the central character in a large amount of dialogues written by the philosopher Plato and several dialogues written by the historian/soldier Xenophon. These all basically portray Socrates as a real historical figure who was in the habit of talking to other real  historical figures in Athens (though there is traditionally thought to be a divide in Plato\u2019s writing between the earlier dialogues that are more faithful to Plato\u2019s understanding of what Socrates argues, and the later dialogues that are more clearly Plato putting words in Socrates\u2019 mouth). \n\nPerhaps most convincing about Socrates\u2019 existence, in a funny way, is the very different Socrates characters that appear in Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. Aristophanes\u2019 caricature of Socrates is from when Socrates was still alive, and the humour in the play often fairly clearly derives from its ability to parody the kind of crap Socrates would say, as far as the average Athenian would understand. Aristophanes presents Socrates as a sophist of sorts, a glib, unworldly weirdo, and it\u2019s fair to say that a bunch of the comedy comes from tearing down a public figure, along the lines of every comedian doing Bill Clinton jokes and impersonation in the 1990s. \n\nPlato\u2019s version of Socrates is the famous one - that\u2019s where you hear Socrates say things like 'the unexamined life is not worth living\u2019 and practicing the Socratic method on unsuspecting Athenians in the agora. And it seems likely that Plato\u2019s writing about Socrates was to some extent originally motivated by trying to rehabilitate Socrates\u2019 reputation and explain what the philosopher was really about and what he really argued; Plato clearly attempted to put forth the idea that the unfair caricature of Socrates put forward by Aristophanes played a role in Socrates\u2019 trial and death.\n\nIn contrast to Plato\u2019s high philosophy Socrates, Xenophon\u2019s Socrates is portrayed quite differently, as an eminently sensible wise man of the era, with lots of useful, positive advice. But Xenophon\u2019s Socrates nonetheless meets the same fate as Plato\u2019s Socrates - the trial and death - for relatively similar reasons; the two accounts, read together, read like two different accounts of real events by people with different biases. \n\nHaving three separate writers all write about the same philosopher in quite different ways and contexts (either during his life or relatively soon after) is pretty good evidence for Socrates\u2019 existence - given how few primary sources survive from the era, we basically have more legitimate primary sources about Socrates than we have for most ancient figures.\n\nWhat we know of Diogenes of Sinope, in contrast, largely comes from Diogenes Laertius, who wrote hundreds of years later, though Plutarch relates the Alexander the Great story many years earlier than Laertius. Diogenes Laertius isn\u2019t particularly reliable - he ascribes a lot of later philosophy to Pythagoras, because Pythagoras\u2019 followers had a tendency to assume that all philosophy flowed from Pythagoras and gave him credit for plenty of stuff he never said, and Laertius wasn\u2019t enough of a critical thinker to question this. But Diogenes has access to plenty of sources we do not, and credulous as he was, he\u2019s likely reflecting ancient beliefs about the lives of eminent philosophers. The story about Diogenes meeting Alexander is likely apocryphal, meant to illustrate something about Diogenes\u2019 philosophy, but there may also just be elements of truth in Laertius\u2019 portrayal. Ultimately we have to trust Laertius on a lot - but that\u2019s the nature of doing history; we can\u2019t just say we know things because some ancient writer said it was that way. We have markedly imperfect sources of information, and we need to carefully interrogate a text...but as imperfect as Laertius is, the existence of his writing *is* something, and we can have guarded assumptions about where his account is closer to the truth and where it is telling a good story."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6kl6q0", "title": "I have heard many (some questionable) claims on the internet that during the islamic invasions of india an estimated 80 million hindus were killed by muslim invaders. Are these claims even remotely true and historical?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kl6q0/i_have_heard_many_some_questionable_claims_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djn4u72"], "score": [14], "text": ["Maybe a starting question.. for that to be true, how many people were there on the the Indian Penninsula? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6vyxzk", "title": "This came across my desk. Can anybody interpret this?", "selftext": "I work at a museum in northern Sweden and these five photographs came across my desk. The photos are from a log house in Randijaur (northern Sweden). The area has been habited since 1690, although the building is more recent (perhaps 1844 as one of the photos says). From what I can understand some of this is in Russian, which I do not speak. Can anybody help me interpret this?\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6vyxzk/this_came_across_my_desk_can_anybody_interpret/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm4dv9q"], "score": [14], "text": ["The Russian bit appears to use the letter R instead of \u0420, so I'm guessing it's not a native speaker. Seems to say *\u0406\u0412\u0415\u042c\u0420\u0422 \u041c\u041a\u0418\u042c\u041d\u0412\u041e\u042c*, using the old letter *\u0406* which was eliminated in 1917. It's probably a rendition of a Swedish name in Cyrillic:\n\n\"Ivert McInvo\", maybe. I know Ivert is a Swedish or Norwegian name but I'm not confident about that last name. As a Swede, maybe you can figure out what the last name is supposed to be."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://imgur.com/a/zZYFw"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1q0tai", "title": "What is the best guess for the actual death toll of the so-called \"Great Leap Forward\" and how much are Mao and communists responsible?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q0tai/what_is_the_best_guess_for_the_actual_death_toll/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd829d9"], "score": [53], "text": ["TL;DR Actual death toll used here: 46million. Blame - if you take one top party member's estimate using the 46 number = 32 million. My take= Upper 30s??\n\nIt's an often-argued statistic, and one that's really hard to calculate. The death toll mostly comes from the resulting famine, but estimates for violent deaths have exceeded two million. \n\nLet's start with the famine resulting from the \"Great Leap Forward.\" I'll mostly be drawing from Frank Dikotter (the Author of Mao's Great Famine) from the passages I read from the book but mostly through his 2010 op-ed in the NYT. He cites estimates that are drawn from census demographics that put the number between 20-30million. His research revolves more on recently opened archives from the period, including official correspondence to the upper echelons of the party from provinces throughout China. He concludes that at least 42 million people died in the famine. \n\nIt's impossible to say how many of these people died precisely due to Mao and the communist party's express will, but the evidence suggests you can lay the vast majority at their feet. Dittoker, going off his research, writes that \"food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party.\" \n \nAt the same time that this use of distribution was used as measure of reward/punishment, the famine was also definitely a result of the policies put in place by the ruling party. The vast population transfers didn't help the situation by moving experienced agricultural workers into industry, nor did the various large public works projects. Citing Dikotter's book, Wiki claims that the irrigation projects alone contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of workers. \n\nDikotter's final tally of the Great Leap Forward's casualty estimates put the number at 46 million at least. This includes the famine, violent deaths, related public works deaths, as well as his suicide estimates (though as I haven't read that part of his book, I'm not sure where those came from/could have come from) \n\nSo how much of this could be directly attributable to Mao and his policies? Probably a great deal. Wiki quotes the President of the PRC at the time, Liu Shaoqui, as saying \"The economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% human error.\" Aside from the change in demographic agricultural landscape, natural disasters such as droughts, flooding, typhoons and agricultural diseases have been given. (see Ashton) Another one is a cut-off of exports and deals with the Soviet Union, but that isn't as widely believed, at least according to Dittoker.  \n\nThe way Dittoker paints the picture of the Great Leap Forward puts the blame almost squarely on Mao's shoulders. I'd suggest that of his 46 million total, more than Shaoqui's 70% can be laid squarely at the hands of the government. \n\nSorry that's not really that exact of a number, but it's really, really hard to say. Based on what I've read my guess would be somewhere in the upper 30s, with the scale of the famine, not withstanding the inadequate response, spiraling well out of control. \n\nSources: \n_URL_1_\n\nDittoker, Frank. *Mao's Great Famine* - passages from memory\n\nAshton, Hill, Piazza, and Zeitz. *Famine in China* - verifying the Wiki quote\n\nWiki Article  _URL_0_ \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Famine_and_mortality_in_China", "http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16iht-eddikotter16.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2r0u6c", "title": "Is the papacy the oldest continuous position?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2r0u6c/is_the_papacy_the_oldest_continuous_position/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnbjrcw", "cnbsrnr", "cnbvmvl"], "score": [62, 25, 8], "text": ["One possible older position is that of [Samaritan High Priest](_URL_0_). Although a longer period is claimed, it seems that the office goes back to the Hellenistic period.\n\nI would also wonder about priesthoods in Ancient Egypt, but I'm afraid I have nothing to offer there.", "In tradition, The Emperor of Japan is claimed to be traced back 2,600 years. The position still exists today as a figurehead.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou could easily dispute much of the earlier history, though you could easily do the same for the history of the papacy.\n\nEmperor Sujin is the first emperor who is generally agreed to have existed, though some pin the dates as late as the third or fourth century. If you take the latest date, you would roughly coincide with Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, at which point the Christian church was taking on a more organized form.\n\nA lot of this question is going to come down how you consider early Christian history. Was the Apostle Peter the first Pope? He is in Catholic tradition, but other Christian denominations would disagree, saying the office didn't really exist until much later.", "Followup question, with the Pope being the bishop of Rome, might some of the other city bishops be older and continuous as well? Perhaps the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem or the Archbishop of Antioch?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_High_Priest"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_Japan#Origin"], []]}
{"q_id": "5sptsz", "title": "Why are * and # universally found on phone dial pads?", "selftext": "Followup: Were these characters added to computer keyboards *because* they were so common on dial pads, or vice versa?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5sptsz/why_are_and_universally_found_on_phone_dial_pads/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddh875y"], "score": [150], "text": ["These characters were not on the original 10-key touch-tone phones (1964).  They were added in 1968 with the introduction of the 12-key Western Electric model WE-2500.  These keys were added to give phone menu systems an out-of-bounds character so that it was possible to encode variable length messages.\n\nThe internal mechanics of the touch tone system made it simple to add the two extra keys.  [Touch-tone numbers are encoded as a pair of tones played simultaneously that indicate which column and which row](_URL_2_).  The top row of keys all play a 697 Hz tone and the left column plays a 1209 Hz tone, so if you hit the one key it will send both a 697Hz and 1209Hz down the line.  There was already an oscillator there for the fourth row, so adding those other two keys was very little additional hardware.\n\nSadly, they decided to arrange the keys with the one at the top.  Adding machines had always put the one at the bottom [because you use it more](_URL_1_), and computer keypads took the design from the adding machines.  This used to cause confusion when switching between computers and touchtone phones.\n\nComputer keyboards have '*' and '#' because in 1961 [Teletypes](_URL_0_) had them.... because in 1890s the Remington typewriter had them, because before that they were used in handwritten communication.\n\nInterestingly, the Remington typewriters did not have a 1/! key, even into the second half of the 20th century.  You got an exclamation point by typing \".\" then backspacing and typing an apostrophe.  To get the digit 1 you were expected to type a lower case L.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law", "http://www.globalspec.com/reference/24976/203279/chapter-17-dtmf-tone-decoding-and-telephone-interface"]]}
{"q_id": "25xrnd", "title": "How did Byzantine co-emperors interact with each other and with their court(s)? How did they share power and responsibility?", "selftext": "There were often times when the Byzantine Empire had two or more emperors.  During these times, how did the emperors interact with each other and how did others interact with them?  In addition, how was power divided in these scenarios?\n\nI'm interested in any and all answers anyone can provide, but this question originally comes after thinking about the story of Basil I and Michael III, so if anyone could provide information about them in particular I'd be very happy.\n\nI've asked this question a few times before and never received an answer, so here's hoping someone can answer this time!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25xrnd/how_did_byzantine_coemperors_interact_with_each/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chm1zcx"], "score": [22], "text": ["Upon reviewing Byzantine history, you find that most co-Imperial relationships were very lop-sided in that one Emperor held almost all of the power, while the other acted as a figurehead. This is likely because if two people held equal shares of power (especially in the Roman or Byzantine Empire), it would almost always erupt into civil war. Therefore, the political ambitions and intrigue of the Empire almost universally didn't allow for two people on equal grounds to peacefully coexist. What you are left with is a tenuous alliance between two powers vying for the throne (generally great families) - the co-Emperorship was a compromise to prevent instability and revolts. \n\nSome great examples are:\n\n- Romanos I Lekapenos and Constantine VII Porphyrogennitos: When Leo VI died in AD 912, he left his child son Constantine as the heir to the throne with his fourth wife Zoe Karbonopsina as regent. Romanos, a famed general at the time, saw the opportunity of a weakened government and seized control of the throne. Since Constantine was young, Romanos was able to exert a huge amount of influence over him, and acted as the grand puppetmaster at court and abroad. It was only 30 years later that Romanos was removed from power for good, allowing Constantine to reign on his own until his death in AD 959.\n\n- John I Tzimiskes and Basil II: Basil was still a young man when Tzimiskes murdered Nikephoros II to take control of the throne. Since the Macedonian line had ruled for nearly 200 years by this time, it would have been political suicide for Tzimiskes to simply cast the two heirs of Romanos II (son of Constantine VII) aside. Therefore, while Basil and Michael were the rightful heirs, Tzimiskes held almost universal control of the military, as well as the adoration of the people for his triumphs, and so his position could not be challenged, but again, he had to honor the long line of the Macedonians. \n\n- Romanos IV Diogenes and Andronikos Doukas: Romanos held all of the power, and kept Andronikos Doukas \"hostage\" by preventing him from gaining followers. Andronikos only existed as co-Emperor to appease the Doukas family, who held the Imperial throne before Romanos (Constantine X ruled until his death in 1067, when Romanos became the lover of the Empress, and was crowned himself). At the Battle of Manzikert, it is sometimes said that Andronikos purposely did everything he could to sabotage the battle plan, causing the situation which allowed for the Emperor Romanos to be surrounded and captured.\n\nDuring the Komnenian period, titles were created to appease disgruntled family members. Alexios I Komnenos needed to be able to prevent revolts in an Empire that had very nearly buckled because of its own internal struggles. Therefore, lofty titles such as *panhypersebastos* (meaning \"exalted beyond all others\") and *sebastokrator* (meaning \"exalted ruler\") were given to relatives so that they would support the centralized power of the Komnenos family without revolting. This was because a title was seen as an award that carried a certain amount of grandeur and weight. In reality though, these titles were simply meant to appease and flatter. The people who carried them held little real power. This is essentially an extension of how the co-Emperorship worked throughout Byzantine history.\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3vo2xj", "title": "Did Christopher Columbus really think he landed in India? Popular knowledge says so because he referred to the natives as \"Indians\". But the Spanish pronunciation of \"indigen\" sounds like \"indi-hen\", which is awfully damn close \"Indian\".", "selftext": "Basically what the title says. Has everyone just been pronouncing Spanish incorrectly? Is the term Injun then short for indigen, which means our ancestors were even more pc than we are? \n\nI mean, I'm from Indiana, nobody calls is Injiana. Something doesn't add up.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vo2xj/did_christopher_columbus_really_think_he_landed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxp6i2v", "cxpakst"], "score": [174, 44], "text": ["Columbus didn't think he was in India as we think of India today. Instead he thought he was in the Indies (what we'd call Indonesia today). Upon his return to Europe, he wrote a letter to be sent ahead to King Ferdinand, saying \"Since I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I write this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty-three days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies.\"\n\nWith later voyages by additional European explorers, it was eventually learned that the Caribbean Islands and Indonesia were not part of the same archapelago, resulting in a distinction being made between the East Indies (Indonesia) and the West Indies (the Caribbean). During Columbus' first voyage, however, this distinction wasn't made yet.", "A reply to /u/mosesecks\n\nPerhaps [a little context](_URL_0_) in support of /u/Reedstilt 's post.\n\nEven before Columbus had set off on his expedition, it was already generally accepted by scholars in Spain and Portugal that his estimate of the diameter of the earth was off, meaning that the earth was much larger than he claimed it to be. \n\nColumbus was not a scholar, and he selectively read books that were either wrong or misinterpreted. The most important one was the work of Pierre d'Ailly, a French scholar and cartographer, whom Columbus misunderstood to have given an estimate of circumference of the earth to be around 30,000 km whereas in reality it is around 40,000 km. Further, he believed the land mass of Eurasia to be shorter than one accepted by most scholar, namely the old estimate of Ptolemy. Combining the two, he though that China were much closer westward than it really was (and still is!). \n\nThis was one reason that John II of Portugal rejected Columbus' proposal in 1485. However, Columbus came to the court of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1489 at the best possible time: they were just finishing off the Reconquesta and they were feeling threatened by progress made by Portuguese navigators. It wasn't long ago that they were in conflict with the Portuguese over the Castilian succession crises. So they decided to retain Columbus on their payroll, even if it took until 1492 for the famous expedition to launch. \n\nWhen Columbus made landfall in Hispaniola, he claimed that it was not only on the way to China, but that it could be reached by ocean from there and that there was land mass nearby that was attached to China. If you look at [a map such as one made in 1492 by Martin Behaim](_URL_1_), you see that he expected to be able to sail westwards from Spain and reach China, and later on Columbus claimed that Hispaniola was merely a land mass \"slightly\" east of China. \n\nThis is why Columbus' further expeditions went farther southwards. The third voyage was to look for such an ocean route, instead they reached Trinidad, concluded that it was near a large land mass and then returned to Hispaniola. The fourth voyage searched for a passage through today's central America, similarly failed. \n\nSo while Columbus could continue in his navigational delusion until the last voyage, the Spaniards were more cognizant that they may in fact have discovered a new land mass not attached to China.  \n\nThe first passage to the Pacific Ocean, by land was by de Balboa in 1513. They crossed Panama successfully and reported their findings back in Spain. This was the point at which arguments that the Americas were attached to China became moot and lost all credibility. \n\nSource: *Columbus* by Fernandez-Armesto. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lmyys/at_what_point_did_the_spanish_colonizers_realize/cv93b9v", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/MartinBehaim1492.jpg/975px-MartinBehaim1492.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "5o8oji", "title": "Did pop culture exist in the past?", "selftext": "Were there fads that would die in and out quickly, say, before the 1900s? Did they separate culture by decades? Was 1480 drastically different from 1470, the way would would consider 1980 different from 1970? If not, what caused this to happen? Perhaps the radio?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5o8oji/did_pop_culture_exist_in_the_past/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dci2jba"], "score": [10], "text": ["So, the answer to your question is going to vary somewhat depending on precise time period and geographic location. That's true of any broad historical question. The answer to yours will also vary depending on the precise definition of \"pop culture\" one decides to use. Unfortunately, I can't offer you an AH-worthy answer on the fifteenth century. What I can offer you, however, is an answer that is based in the nineteenth and early twentieth century United States (and also mostly applicable in Europe), which is the time period in which we see the development of what I would call \"popular culture.\"\n\nSo first, some terms. One might generally consider popular culture to be the culture of the masses, the ordinary people. This is opposed to \"high\" or \"elite\" culture. To be simplistic, we might posit that in the late twentieth century United States, television was a ubiquitous form of popular culture, while theater was \"high culture\" (one might quibble and ask about musical theater - as we shall see, in practice the boundaries between the two are porous, and many people have devoted large amounts of their time to defining and otherwise considering those boundaries). Popular culture should not only be contrasted with high culture. It also, in a classic definition, should be contrasted with folk culture. What is the difference between popular and folk culture, you might ask? Well, the difference is industrial capitalism. Before capitalism, in this formulation, there were indeed bifurcations in culture. The elites had their culture, which in Europe was the culture of the Church, and the universities, and generally included literature, painting, sculpture, and others of the high arts as we still understand them today. And then you had folk culture, which was autochthonous (meaning originating from below, from the earth), and was indigenous to the largely illiterate common people. This might have included popular songs, tales, and other aspects of the oral tradition, as well as the sort of vernacular architecture of everyday life, popular religious cults, etc. And really, there was not too much that these spheres of culture had to do with one another. The elite, content with economic domination, left the ordinary people alone in their culture. And without literacy, the common people had no access to their culture. However, with the advent of industrial capitalism, greater and greater numbers of ordinary people began to achieve literacy, as well as other means of accessing elite culture. This caused elites, disgusted by the lack of exclusivity attendant to their culture, to consciously attempt to push it in new and innovative directions. This is what is known as \"avant-gardism,\" the conscious attempt to push culture in a new, forward-thinking direction. However, what quickly develops is an attendant process, which we might call \"kitschification,\" whereby the new advances in high culture are claimed by popular culture, which takes the forms of high culture and removes its political and social meaning, remaking it as a pure commodity for consumption. The driver of this process is capitalism, which seeks to quiet the masses through the ever-more-insistent creation of novelty. Thus there is a kind of constant race between avant-garde and kitsch, with every advance of the former being swallowed and evacuated of meaning by the latter. One example is the avant-garde painter [Piet Mondrian](_URL_1_), whose radical experiments in painting were taken up by fashion designer [Yves St. Laurent](_URL_0_), which inspired a host of imitations, at ever-decreasing price points and further and further evacuated of Mondrian's original political and social purpose.\n\nSo, before I move on, I should mention that the previous paragraph was based entirely on an essay by the influential critic Clement Greenberg called \"Avant-garde and kitsch.\" I had not really intended to spend that much time on him, but I found myself writing quite a bit. I'm teaching 20th century art this semester, so I suppose I have the issues surrounding avant-gardism close in my mind. Anyway, if you think Greenberg's ideas sound both kind of dreary and also super elitist, well, you're right. Greenberg was a Jewish Marxist who got started in the 1930s; it was a gloomy time. And for Greenberg, as for many avant-garde artists and their fellow travelers, avant-gardism was at its core a political movement, one that married formal changes in art to radical politics. So the appropriation of high art imagery by capitalism was for him at its core a tragedy, as it made that art no longer able to serve its political function. Greenberg did not despise folk culture, the old culture of the pre-industrial common people. He despised industrial pop culture for serving as a distraction to the masses, for making them dependent on its commodities for entertainment, rather than allowing them to rely on their inherent interests. Thus, while he was undoubtedly an elitist, he was an elitist for reasons that we might ultimately diagnose as hopeful or forward-thinking\n\nI can also provide you with an example of how this played out in practice, which is the nineteenth century U.S. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the US, there was little (or at least much less) distinction between high and low culture than there was at the end of the twentieth century. To take one example: the theater. While in recent times the theater has mostly been the province of elites (especially here, where the government largely does not subsidize the theater), in the early nineteenth century it was the most popular art form among people of all stripes. In fact, the most popular theatrical productions were undoubtedly Shakespeare (remember, even Huck Finn is familiar with Shakespeare), with huge crowds gathering to see famous stars like Edwin Forrest and Junius Brutus Booth (father of John Wilkes Booth, incidentally) perform their version of famous plays, in particular *Hamlet* and *MacBeth*. In fact, one of the largest riots before the Civil War Draft Riots in New York was as a result of an early attempt by New York's moneyed classes to keep the rabble out of the theater. The working class of the city were generally fans of Forrest, who was a forceful and boisterous American type, while the elites generally preferred the more genteel English actor William Charles Macready, the two of whom were engaged in a fierce rivalry. Forrest had taken to following Macready around and appearing in the same plays as him, in order to challenge him. Eventually, tensions around this broke out, with members of New York's elite building their own theater (with a strict dress code that included kid gloves) specifically to keep Forrest's largely Irish, immigrant fans out. These fans, egged on by their superiors in various Bowery gangs, rioted, breaking windows, throwing garbage, and generally disrupting the performance. This went on for several days, until the city called out the militia, who fired into the crowd, killing and wounding dozens. The elites praised the city for taking proper measures, and moved their new opera house even further uptown, to 15th street. Increasingly, even if they enjoyed the same plays, New York's elites and workingmen did so in separate spaces. Theater remained broadly popular for some time longer, but its bifurcation ensured that the two spheres would continue to grow apart, with the elites enjoying their Shakespeare and other European imports, while the masses tended to enjoy melodrama, vaudeville, and other forms we now recognize as \"lower.\"\n\nAnother way in which this played out was with visual art. In the 1840s and early 1850s there existed an organization in New York called the American Art-Union that sought to encourage American artists, basically by buying their works and then distributing them via lottery. Until the lottery, however, it displayed its works in its free gallery, which was located downtown and featured at least one night a week of evening open hours, so that the city's working men might also take advantage of it. The Art-Union was closed as an illegal private lottery, however, and by 1870 when a group of wealthy New Yorkers decided to open a permanent art museum in the city, they did so on the Upper East Side, far from the Five Points and other working-class neighborhoods. The intervening years had seen the Draft Riots and a great deal of other civil unrest, and the elite were increasingly walling themselves off into the upper parts of the city, protected by an increasingly professionalized police and national guard. This physical walling was accompanied by further and further splits in culture, until the cultures of the two groups were largely mutually unrecognizable. Thus enter Greenberg and kitsch, and the increasing domination of capitalism over the culture of the lower classes.\n\nSources:\n\nGreenberg, \"Avant-garde and kitsch.\"\n\nLawrence Levine, *Highbrow/Lowbrow*\n\nSven Beckert, *The Moneyed Metropolis*\n\nDavid Grimsted, *Melodrama Unveiled* and *American Mobbing*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mondrian_collection_of_Yves_Saint_Laurent", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Piet_Mondriaan%2C_1930_-_Mondrian_Composition_II_in_Red%2C_Blue%2C_and_Yellow.jpg/800px-Piet_Mondriaan%2C_1930_-_Mondrian_Composition_II_in_Red%2C_Blue%2C_and_Yellow.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "48sywy", "title": "How representative of the field is /r/askhistorians?", "selftext": "I'm not sure if this is against the rule but i'd love to learn about the demographics of /r/askhistorians. Do we attract certain type of historian more often? are certain viewpoints reflected more often here than amongst historians generally? How deep into their career is the median poster?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48sywy/how_representative_of_the_field_is_raskhistorians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0mhgee", "d0miyc6", "d0mqe4y"], "score": [18, 149, 4], "text": ["Hiya, \n\nSome of this can be answered via our last subreddit census. It's a year old now but shouldn't be drastically different than now: [325K Census Results and the State of the Subreddit](_URL_0_). I suspect you'd be most interested in the section *The Flairs*, which talks about the demographic of the flaired users (as opposed to subscribers/readers).\n\nAs for \"do we attract a certain type of historian\", I can't answer that personally, but you can see how the flaired users have been categorized, and which categories have more or less people in the [List of Flaired Users](_URL_1_)", "There are three major factors shaping the AskHistorians community of flairs/unflaired answerers ([to which I say!](_URL_1_)): academic history, popular history, and reddit. As a result, AH doesn't completely reflect any one of the three, but you can see the influence of all of them.\n\n* reddit is 15% female. [In 2006](_URL_3_), 34% of tenured history faculty in the USA and 43% of graduate students were women. (There are [significant institutional factors](_URL_0_) [PDF warning] in academia that make women less likely to earn tenure.) AskHistorians' userbase, according to [last year's census](_URL_2_), is 15% female.\n\n* In terms of [flair subject area](_URL_5_), AskHistorians has the most listed flairs in European history, followed by American and military. Latin America, Africa, Pacific, Middle East and Asia lag far behind. In addition, we have flairs in non-geographic fields: art history, archaeology, history of science, and history of thought. Several points to make here: \n\n1. The popularity of military history reflects our \"history buff\" or popular history roots rather than our academic ones. Straight-up military history is an existing but very small branch of formal academic study.\n\n2. The AH breakdown of fields does not quite mirror academia's. Academic history departments work *very* strongly by geography first of all, with some attention to era. While you can find history of science (etc) graduate programs, generally professors teach in the geographic subfield of the history department. Additionally, ancient and medieval European historians would typically be halfway-Europeanists, halfway-ancient & medieval.\n\n3. When you split out the ancient and medieval historians from the list and add in the historians from the non-geographic fields (leaving aside the people from related disciplines like archaeo and art history--we love you, though!): the result probably reflects, geography-wise, academic history. America first (in America, at least), with Europe a very close second. Latin America, Near East, Asia-Pacific, and Africa kind of duke it out for the remaining spots.\n\n4. Within medieval, the AH flairbase is *extremely* powerful in the early Middle Ages and Byzantium. At least in America, the field of academic medieval history is *much* more dominated by the post-1000 period in the west. This is actually very exciting: the last 10 years saw a sweep of new \"big narratives\" of the early Middle Ages. Clearly they are not only inspiring people to take up the 'Dark Ages' again, but students are finding more and more there! Growing attention to archaeology and material culture is also helping focus attention on this period that is 'darker' in terms of textual evidence but has far more to tell us hiding in the dirt. ~~No one but me cares about point 4~~ so I'll stop now. :)\n\n5. Despite being reddit, we have very few flairs in history of science. Even medical questions usually fall to other flairs with peripheral knowledge.\n\n* In terms of experience, there is no single answer. According to the census, the biggest group of flairs are in-progress history graduate students, but \"completed history degree,\" undergraduate major, and other-background but significant interest and reading experience are not that far behind.\n\n* In terms of questions, the questions fielded at AH involve military history, daily life, and \"what was it like to...\" must more frequently than academic historians. Scholarly history tends to focus on people or sources much more heavily: what does text P tell us about medieval popular religion. My favorite example of this is /u/Binjadu asking, [\"How did people in 12th century Scandinavia survive winter?\"](_URL_4_) The answer to that question came from articles on an archaeological excavation of a Viking overwinter camp, and a book chapter on the economic integration of Scandinavia, Russia, and the Holy Roman Empire in the later Middle Ages. That second one is not the way questions come up here. The same data serves what really are two different ways of thinking about the past and how we relate to it. (Never change, AH! This is exactly what I'm here!)\n\n* By way of \"viewpoint\" or methodology, AH does a pretty good job reflecting the current norms of academic history. If you follow the Monday Methods series, you will see that even flairs who don't appear to use a specific theoretical approach or work on a topic--f.e. me posting on disability studies--are aware of the ongoing conversations, and strive to pursue our own research and write our answers with that broader discussion in mind. This makes sense given our balance of current graduate students, current undergraduates far enough into their degrees to have an area of specialization in which to be flaired, and people who deal with historians somehow in their careers. All of these people need to know WHAT historians are talking about, and HOW they are talking about those topics.\n\nI hope this helps a little!", "Admittedly I've not been subscribed for very long, but I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of historians of history itself (historiographers) on the board... when I were a lad/lass it was all the rage!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rqvhw/325k_census_results_and_the_state_of_the_subreddit/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/flairedusers"], ["http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/08E023AB-E6D8-4DBD-99A0-24E5EB73A760/0/persistent_inequity.pdf", "https://redd.it/3zkc5p", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rqvhw/325k_census_results_and_the_state_of_the_subreddit/", "http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2010/nrc-report-provides-data-on-history-doctoral-programs", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/413h9n/how_did_the_people_in_scandinavia_live_during_the/?ref=search_posts", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/flairedusers"], []]}
{"q_id": "2g7u7s", "title": "How did Vietnamese people come to adopt Latin script?", "selftext": "I know the basics of the French colonial situation there, but I'd like to know the specifics behind the creation of their writing system. Since the Vietnamese script is unique to Vietnam I assume that there was some conscious design behind it. Thanks for any answers!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g7u7s/how_did_vietnamese_people_come_to_adopt_latin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckgo22g"], "score": [4], "text": ["The [relevant Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) is pretty good.\n\nThe modern Viet alphabet is very similar to the original Romanization of Alexandre de Rhodes's great dictionary back in the 17th century.  \n\nAlexis Michaud has done a translation of Haudricourt's 1949 paper on some of the peculiarities of the Viet alphabet, you can read it [here](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet#History", "http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/92/00/64/PDF/Haudricourt1949_Peculiarities_MonKhmerStudies2010.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4ae2kx", "title": "Are there any examples of \"bad art\" in antiquity?", "selftext": "Art that the Greeks and Romans would have found ugly/distasteful? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ae2kx/are_there_any_examples_of_bad_art_in_antiquity/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0zv30n", "d102d13"], "score": [45, 35], "text": ["I'm quite interested in hearing more comprehensive answers from a specialist, especially regarding how they viewed non-Mediterranean art, but a quickie answer:\n\nThey were unsurprisingly capable of recognizing unskilled art. There's a great story about the great painter Apelles delivering a burn to a lesser contemporary painter: \"You didn't have the skill to paint Helen of Troy beautiful, so you have instead painted her rich [by portraying her as wearing lots of gold jewelry].\"  Pliny was [quite opinionated](_URL_0_ XXXIV) on art quality. Older works were counted as \"rude\", and works that were overly fussy were described as \"assiduity has destroyed all charm.\"\n\nThe Greeks and Romans also had fashions, just as we do today. One example I can think of is vase painting. The Greeks used to do black-figure / red-background vase painting, but when someone figured out new firing technique, red-figure / black-background vase painting quickly took over and dominated within a century, if not within decades.  I would guess, though I don't have a source, that black-figure vases would be seen as outmoded: not *bad*, just not the thing you'd want in your house as a fashionable person.", "[This metope](_URL_0_) is somewhat well known for being, well, just not particularly good. The centaur's legs are wompy jogged and the problem with the height of the figure is solved with the rather inelegant method of transporting its head into the middle of its chest. Compare [this](_URL_1_) similar scene, handled much better.\n\nIt is actually a pretty good demonstration that the Parthenon was handled by multiple artisans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK"], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/South_metope_26_Parthenon_BM.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Ac_marbles.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1c7n6i", "title": "Who were the Cagots of the France and Spain? What do we know about them, historically (in terms of both begins and ends)? Were they really \"untouchables\"? (obviously inspired by the /r/truereddit article about the \"last Cagot\")", "selftext": "This is obviously inspired by [this article](_URL_1_) posted in /r/TrueReddit called \"The Last Untouchable in Europe\".   A similar questions was [asked here three weeks ago](_URL_3_) with no response.  There is an English Wikipedia article about [Cagots](_URL_2_), as well as more extensive ones in [French](_URL_5_) and [Italian](_URL_0_) and a slightly shorter one with a better a (French, Spanish, Italian) bibliography in [Spanish](_URL_4_) (of those languages, I only speak French, but I haven't bothered to work my way through the French one yet--I've only skimmed the English one).  They're associated with the Pyrenees in places, but apparently there was Cagot discrimination as far north as Brittany. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c7n6i/who_were_the_cagots_of_the_france_and_spain_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9e3ed7"], "score": [13], "text": ["The reason the question from three weeks ago (and yours) hasn't been answered is: nobody knows who the cagots were. Or rather: everybody in the villages and towns where they lived knew which families were cagots, but nobody these days and for a long while since has been able to explain why they were excluded from society in the way they were. The most popular hypothesis is that they were thought to descend from people who harboured a form of hereditary leprosy (not actually correct medical science but we are talking about a time when leprosy was not well understood).\n\nIt seems that the earliest mention of such a group of people dates from around 1000 CE. They were indeed excluded to a remarkable extent, but not shunned outright as lepers were. This exclusion manifested itself in various ways at various times: only certain professions were open to them; they were relegated to the edges of villages/towns; they had their own separate and inferior entrances to churches; they had to wear distinctive clothing; they were not allowed to intermarry with \"regular\" people, etc. \n\nThe French Wikipedia article is your best introduction and the sources listed are your best bet for further reading. Not a whole lot of in-depth studies have appeared in English."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots", "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-last-untouchable-in-europe-878705.html#", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ah1rm/has_there_ever_been_a_consensus_reached_as_to_who/", "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots", "http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagots"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "51s5yi", "title": "Was there such a thing as \"Aztec Death Whistles\"?", "selftext": "I saw [this](_URL_0_) post today. I had never heard of such instruments. Did ancient Aztecs or other Mesoamerican civilizations ever use anything like this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51s5yi/was_there_such_a_thing_as_aztec_death_whistles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7eukaz"], "score": [81], "text": ["Kind of, but not really.\n\nThe instrument featured in that video is what's known as a *chichtli*, a \"skull-whistle\" that uses an air-spring mechanism to create a rattling/whistling sound when blown. However, the particular version of the instrument shown in that video isn't exactly the same sound, and appears to be a modern instrument loosely based on the ancient one. The actual sound of the ancient instrument is described by ethnomusicologist Arnd Adje Both as \"a distorted sound reminding one of the atmospheric noise generated by the wind.\" [This video](_URL_0_) is probably closer to what the instrument actually sounded like.\n\nAlso, the idea that warriors would carry these into battle and use them to terrify enemies is pure speculation. Musical instruments used in warfare were more commonly drums and conch shell trumpets, and their purpose was more to provide signaling to their own army than to intimidate their enemies. The chichtli was more likely used in religious rituals associated with the underworld rather than warfare.\n\nEdit: I should also add that these instruments are relatively rare in archaeological contexts compared to more traditional flutes and ocarinas, which is further evidence against the idea that an entire army would be using these in battle.\n\n* Both, Arnd Adje. 2010. \"Aztec Music Culture.\" *The World of Music*, Vol. 52, No. 1/3, the world of music: Readings in\nEthnomusicology (2010), pp. 14-28"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/woahdude/comments/51quxs/woah_ancient_aztec_death_whistle_sounds_like/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4T9sYbRzcQ#t=30s"]]}
{"q_id": "4i9alj", "title": "In the Middle Ages, were mayors elected, appointed, or hereditary?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i9alj/in_the_middle_ages_were_mayors_elected_appointed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2whcom"], "score": [8], "text": ["There is no singular answer to this question because different cities were founded on very different legal systems. If a city was part of a lord's personal domain then he had a great deal of control over who was in charge and why. But most cities weren't part of a nobleman's domain. Many cities were much older than the middle ages and already had an established power base that later kings and emperors negotiated with to include. As a result, many of the old Roman Civitas were governed by their own charters, which controlled such things, and were bound to a king directly by such charters. \n\nEven today some uncommon things persist as a result. For example, while London is a bustling metropolis and capital of England, the [City of London](_URL_0_) is a very small bit of the larger metropolitan area that still has a separate government governed by a charter [significantly older than the Norman Conquest](_URL_1_). It seems that the first mayor didn't pop up until 1189, but no one knows if he was elected, appointed, or just declared himself to be of equal authority to the Sheriff who enforced the King's authority in the city. By 1215 the city had settled on a system that elects a mayor on a system where the guilds and major corporations get a say roughly equal to that of the residents.\n\nMany of these old towns had the civic powers that be fail to survive the transition from the Roman world to that of the Middle Ages. In these cases it wasn't uncommon for a Bishop to end up in charge of the day to day functioning of the city. In these cases they tended to wear multiple hats. The best example of this is the fact that the Pope is also King. Even today he is the King of that little theocratic state in Rome, which is technically a separate office from the Pope, but when he became one he became both so he governs as King just as the Prince-Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire were both rulers of city-states and Bishops of the church. Bishops were traditionally either appointed by the King or by the Pope depending upon the rules of the day. Which rules were in place at any given time and in any given place was a matter of much contention between the crowned heads of Europe and the clergy.\n\nI guess that the answer to your question is all of the above. The ruler of a city might be a hereditary lord if the city isn't \"free\", many chartered cities had rules for elections (but not for popular vote to determine who ruled), and if the city was \"free\" but didn't have a charter it was ruled by a sheriff appointed by the King or a bishop at least nominally appointed by the Pope."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mapping.cityoflondon.gov.uk/geocortex/mapping/?viewer=compass&runworkflowbyid=Switch_layer_themes&LayerTheme=Show%20the%20Explore%20The%20City%20layers", "http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/about-us/Pages/history-of-the-government-of-the-city-of-london.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "9jr5yq", "title": "Why does Wyoming exist?", "selftext": "Besides the Tetons, Wyoming doesn't have distinct natural borders nor does it have large amounts of water or arable land. When it became a territory in 1868, Wyoming Territory was sparsely populated and had only small amounts of known mineral reserves. Why was it thought necessary to make it an independent territory rather than keep it divided between the Idaho, Dakota and Nebraska territories?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9jr5yq/why_does_wyoming_exist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6ugjmv"], "score": [38], "text": ["The creation of the territory was almost entirely driven by the railroad - Cheyenne was that important. Coal and gold mining, assisted by the railroad, were also important in increasing the area\u2019s population.\n\nThe following paragraph describes some of the reasoning surrounding the law that created the territory:\n\n >  The first proposal to establish a temporary government for the territory of Wyoming was made on January 5, 1865, by James M. Ashley of Ohio, who for a short time served as Governor of the Territory of Montana, and later became the chairman of the House Committee on Territories. Politicians in Dakota Territory, to which Wyoming belonged, also favored a subdivision, since they realized that the large population following the new railway could swing an election, regardless of what the older citizens of Dakota wanted.\n\nSource: *Wyoming, a Guide to Its History, Highways, and People*, University of Nebraska Press\n\nIt should be noted that for many years, it was Nevada, not Wyoming, that people were wondering same thing about. It had very few inhabitants; why was it still a state? Then Vegas took off (lots of interesting history about that), so now Wyoming gets the short end of the stick."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7eyjg5", "title": "Was the Roman destruction of Carthage genocide? Was the destruction as comprehensive as is widely understood? Did the Romans present a united front or did any argue for leniency? Were there lasting ramifications on the Roman conscience, or how Roman foreign policy unfolded?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7eyjg5/was_the_roman_destruction_of_carthage_genocide/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq8npkb", "dq8zb4p"], "score": [133, 2], "text": ["In short, [no](_URL_0_). The destruction to the city of Carthage itself was immense and lasting and the pain inflicted upon the people of the city immeasurable, bit this was not generalized to a war against the Punic population as a whole. Many Punic cities had sided with Rome, and Punic culture continued strongly well into Late Antiquity.\n\nSort of a side question, was there an article or documentary about this recently? I feel like we have had a number of questions in the last couple months about genocide and the Third Punic War.", "Follow up questions: what changed between the end of the second Punic war and the third Punic war that caused so much more 'heavy handedness'? Was the Roman army at the end of the 2nd Punic war capable of carrying out this type of long lasting seig on Carthage?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7agx5z/carthago_delenda_est_as_a_layman_the_third_punic/"], []]}
{"q_id": "5q8zh2", "title": "Was \"Deus Vult\" used in the same way Islamic peoples use \"\"Allahu Akbar\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5q8zh2/was_deus_vult_used_in_the_same_way_islamic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcxdpei"], "score": [62], "text": ["I can comment on the use of Allahu Akbar more so than the use of Deus Vult, but I suspect that may go a long way towards answering your question.\n\n\"Allahu Akbar\" is often rendered in English as \"God is great\", but literally it's a comparative meaning \"God is greater\" (I've come across suggestions that it is superlative \"God is greatest\", but to my admittedly non-native grasp of Arabic grammar that would have to be \"Allah huwa al-akbar\".)\n\nAs a phrase, it has a fundamental usage and position in Islam. It features in the call to prayer, Islamic prayer itself, and [ in the Sunnah](_URL_1_) (NB: \"takbir\" meaning to recite \"Allahu akbar.\"\n\nSocially/culturally/linguistically its usage and meaning goes far beyond either its literal meaning or religious use. It can be used as a joyous expression equating to \"thank god!\" (alongside the existing Arabic phrase al-hamdulillah lit. thanks be to God) or in anguish, such as at a funeral or upon witnessing terrible (akin to the English usage of \"Oh my God...\" or \"Jesus Christ...\")\n\nIt has perhaps gained most notoriety in the west as a battle cry of Islamist militants, notably in their last moments before committing a suicide bombing or similar \"martyrdom operation.\" While the phrases use as a battle cry goes back to Muhammad, the particular association of the phrase with violent terrorism is something that would have been alien to Muslims historically.\n\nThe phrase also has wider political usages outside of militancy. The call and response of \"Takbir!\" \"Allahu Akbar!\" is common at Islamist rallies and gatherings of all sorts, not just extremist Islamist militants. It has adorned [the flag of Iraq](_URL_4_) since 1991, initially in Saddam's own handwriting. It appears in block kufic script in white leterring in two rows on [the flag of Iran](_URL_2_). And it has historically appeared on other flags of predominantly Islamic countries, such as [Afghanistan](_URL_0_). It was the title and formed a large chunk of the content of [the national anthem of Libya](_URL_3_) until the 2011 revolution.\n\nSo while I cannot say whether or not \"Deus Vult\" was used in some of these situations, I think I can say with some degree of knowledge that it was not used in the myriad ways that Islamic peoples use \"Allahu Akbar.\"\n\nedit: also as an addition that slipped my mind; the closest translation to \"deus vult\" itself in Arabic are the phrases \"Inshallah\" meaning \"if God wills\" (which is obviously more epistemelogically circumspect about knowing what \"God wills\" and \"mashallah\" meaning \"[this] is what God willed\". While the latter has the same literal meaning of \"deus vult\" it has *not* been used in the same context of what I, for one, most associate \"deus vult\" with, namely as a kind of justification for orthodoxy or for taking action against heresy/infidels. Rather, \"mashallah\" is used to express joy, again somewhat akin to \"Thank God!\". \n\nedit 2: what I had written about its use in the Quran I think was misleading/incorrect so I deleted it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Flag_of_Afghanistan_%281992%29.svg", "https://sunnah.com/search/?q=takbir", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Flag_of_Iran.svg/255px-Flag_of_Iran.svg.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allahu_Akbar_\\(anthem\\)", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Flag_of_Iraq.svg/255px-Flag_of_Iraq.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "772x4c", "title": "Is there any evidence that Medieval ordeals were generally rigged by the priests conducting them? Are there any specific instances where the ordeal was rigged.", "selftext": "I ask this in response to [this](_URL_0_) dubious and very unscholarly article posted in your lazy step-brother subreddit /r/history.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/772x4c/is_there_any_evidence_that_medieval_ordeals_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dojahy8"], "score": [2], "text": ["While not directly answering your question [this](_URL_0_) post by u/TheFairyGuineaPig which has sources which may answer your question if you choose to read them. I remember seeing a similar post a while back and wanted to link it, but it didn't answer the question. I could link it though if you want.\n\nEdit: Formatting, and giving due credit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-trial-by-ordeal-was-actually-an-effective-test-of-guilt"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vw0ql/how_common_were_fatal_trial_by_ordeals_in/"]]}
{"q_id": "zog9x", "title": "[META] 40K Subscribers -- State of the Subreddit", "selftext": "Actually, it's almost 41K now; people have been subscribing at an astonishing rate.\n\nThere've been a lot of mod posts lately about rules and such; we don't have much to add to them at this time, but we will post them here as a reminder:\n\n- [Welcome to visitors, and some reminders about posting](_URL_1_)\n- [Widescale revisions to the official rules](_URL_0_)\n- [A note on modern politics](_URL_3_)\n- [An unfortunate but necessary announcement](_URL_2_)\n\nThis post has three purposes behind it:\n\n1. To give you an account of where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.\n2. To thank our subscribers for their submissions and their support.\n3. To gauge reader opinion of the weekly project posts and inquire after new possibilities.\n\nIt's amazing to think of how far /r/askhistorians has come in the previous year.\n\nIn August of 2011, this subreddit received just over 10,000 page views, 2000 of them unique.\n\nIn August of 2012, /r/askhistorians blew past ***1,000,000*** page views without even trying, with 225,000 of them unique.\n\nIn September of 2012 -- so far -- we have had ~600,000 page views and 260,000 uniques.  ***So far***.  And that's only accounting for the data we currently have... it takes a day or two to update, sometimes.\n\nWhat makes something like this possible is the constant stream of contributions from you, our subscribers.  You ask questions, provide thoughtful answers, and engage in the kind and caliber of discussion that has provoked approving comment even from those inclined to be scathing.  We're proud that our contributors' work makes frequent appearances in /r/bestof and /r/depthhub, and while we're not as thrilled about occasional appearances in /r/subredditdrama or /r/circlebroke, even those tend to involve the problems at hand being received as the surprising anomalies they are rather than just what's to be expected.\n\nIt's been a year fraught with incident.  Things like the \"Bill Sloan\" debacle have taught us skepticism and caution (we hope), while countless instances of popular discussions attracting hundreds -- even thousands -- of new subscribers per day tell us that things are also ticking along as they ought to be.\n\nThe moderators have had a hand in all of that, for good or bad, but we rely on our subscribers to produce all of the content that appears, report bad comments, and generally strive to keep the level of discussion in /r/askhistorians as high as one might hope for it to be.  We thank you for all your work.\n\nBut our own isn't over, and won't be getting any easier as time goes on.  We are currently in the process of reviewing a number of possible new moderators, and hope to have an announcement to make about that in short order.  In the meantime, your current team is happy to keep on plugging away at it.\n\nAll of this is where we are -- but what of the future?\n\nThe general popularity of the daily project posts (Tuesday Trivia, Friday Free-for-All, etc.) has more or less spoken for itself, but we'd like your feedback on what you've thought of it all so far and what you might recommend to improve it.  We're already faced with the imminent prospect of having to move Monday's usual thing to Thursday instead, but the rest of the schedule is not likely to change.  All the same, what do you think?  How have you enjoyed it so far, and what other such initiatives might you like to see in the future?\n\nThat's all we've got to say just now.  We thank you again for the wild (but also very often restrained and respectful) ride that you've made /r/askhistorians over the last twelve months, and we only hope that the next twelve will see bigger and better things yet.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zog9x/meta_40k_subscribers_state_of_the_subreddit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c66cnha", "c66ddbs", "c66e5mm", "c66egqr", "c66eiyy", "c66f7h9", "c66fd48", "c66fvcp", "c66g54o", "c66g8ls", "c66h61q", "c66in00", "c66l4o8", "c66u57k"], "score": [79, 13, 26, 3, 7, 10, 18, 11, 4, 4, 10, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["This is basically the only subreddit I post in anymore, and certainly the only one I care about.  The mods and the work they do play a huge part in that, and I want to thank you guys for all that you've done and continue doing.\n\nBut yes, there needs to be more of you!", "Do you guys think you have enough mods for this growth?  When I subscribed here the sub had a measly 12,000 readers.  Because so many posts here get linked in best of reddit, I can't imagine the growth slows down any time soon.", "First off let me say that I very much enjoy this subreddit. I do have some concerns but I am not sure there is much we can do about them. Although unlike some of the other posts I feel that four mods works fine, I have gotten an almost immediate response to any question or reported post sent to them.\n\n1. Increase in questions with a decrease in flaired posts. I assume this is related to the start of the school year which probably leaves some of our contributors who hold teaching positions and or are working on academic degrees with less time. It also doesn't help that the Flairs tend to be focused in certain areas, so in early  American history  for instance, between myself Jonalesk, Smileyman, Fatherazan,Carol White and tribu173 I feel we can cover virtually any aspect of early American history ( yes I spelled all of your names wrong,and I probably forgot someone apologies all around). However when it comes to other Fields, Eastern European, Latin American, African (outside of one guy) we are sadly missing expertise. I don't think there's anything we can do about it, but I do wish it was something we could change.\n\n2. I'd really like to see some more sources from people who apply for flairs. Obviously if you can prove that you are a PHD or work in a educational environment an exception can be made. But specifically I have noticed that people who apply for Civil War and World War Two flairs really do not have a very comprehensive understanding of either event. \n\n3. More up-votes I don't get enough of them, and less partisan politics questions, which you have already made a post about \n\nedit because I forgot someone", "This has become my favorite subreddit.  I'd like to thank all of the historians who take time from their day to answer questions on this subreddit :).", "I love this subreddit. As an aspiring historian it's really great to see how popular /r/askhistorians has become whilst still remaining incredibly informative and pleasant. I must congratulate the mods and the community on their hard work. \n\nAs a student, I'd quite like to see more discussion of history as a subject (best degree options, application in other areas, questions about methodology etc.) rather than just knowledge of specific events/time periods/areas. However that's probably less likely now that the subreddit has become so encompassing. ", "Further proof that a strong hand in moderation is what keeps a good subreddit from going all pear-shaped.", "My only real issue right now is that in the last month or so the number of subscribers who are only interested in *American* modern history has increased at quite an eclipsing rate to subscribers interested in history/ancient history in general. If you look at the front page normally over 50% of the threads are related to American history, if you look at /new over 90% of threads are American related.\n\nNow this isn't a complaint, it's just an observation. It can feel at times though (I casually browse /new on and off for a few hours a day) that this subreddit is now becoming /AskModernHistorians or /AskHistoriansAmerica.\n\nI'm curious if anyone wants to address this?", "Besides the already-voiced concerns that flaired historians seem to be getting drowned by non-flaired posts, the only major concern I have about this subreddit is that we seem to be narrowing our specialization. Have a question about a bit of speculative history? Go to /r/historicalwhatif? A question about sources? /r/historyresources (or somesuch). While the subreddit has grown hugely, I wonder if we're turning people away towards smaller, less capable subreddits. I think there is something to be said for letting our Panel handle a wider range of questions while still referring visitors to smaller, more specific subs.", "What was the Bill Sloan incident, if I may ask?", "also, another good subreddit is r/askhistory.  significantly smaller, but has good questions nonetheless, and plus only the experts comment and the comments are not buried due to the fact that its a small subreddit", "Only major complaint is to do with poor questions. \n\n\"Whats your favourite....\"\n\n\"What's the greatest...\"\n\nBasically, anything that promotes a simple listing of events. I feel these posts rarely contribute anything to a discussion and it can feel like AskReddit sometimes. ", "This is by a whole hell of a lot my favorite sub-reddit. Hell, in a post I made today I got: \n\n* Educated responses, with links to great documents and books I want to read to help form my own opinion. \n* Well-formed opinions from people who (seem) to know what they're talking about and have been well-read on the topic. \n* Informed speculation that led to really lively banter. \n* And a joke or two. \n\nWhat more could I possibly ask for? The balance in this subreddit is fantastic. I really loved, also, the anecdotes from the fella whose grandfather was a part of history on the Prinz Eugen. It wasn't scholarly work, it was old war stories, and it was great. ", "This is the first subreddit that I subscribed where I read EVERY single post. I really learned a lot. And I just subscribed 3 days ago. Is fascinating, I really hope that this subreddit maintains its quality...", "I would love to see flaired users do a presentation and then ask questions about it. For example in my area I might talk about the various factions and splits of the parties involved in the American Revolution and then ask about comparisons to other revolutions. \n\nI'd love to see users be able to get flair via user nomination or by mod nomination. I do think that many users feel intimidated about their level of knowledge and could probably get flair if they just applied for it. \n\nI'd love to see posts where users within a particular color get together to create a posts asking for questions. I think an inter-disciplinary Q & A session might prove to be very interesting. Even users from different colored flairs could be interesting, for example someone with a European flair and a Pacific Islander flair and a North American flair talking about colonization and annexation in the Pacific Islands from the various perspectives of those involved. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/z9uyg/meta_widescale_revisions_to_the_official_rules/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yozop/meta_welcome_to_visitors_and_some_reminders_about/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zj29f/moderator_post_sight_an_unfortunate_but_necessary/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zcctn/meta_a_note_on_modern_politics/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "vksz0", "title": "I hate to do this, but who in the bible was likely real?", "selftext": "I'm getting tired of the \"was Jesus real\" posts, but this is a more broad question. Let's just exclude Jesus and the entire New Testament. So from Genesis through the Maccabean rebellion, who seems to be based in at least some form of truth?\n\nThere were tribes of Israel, so does this mean there were twelve brothers? How else could these tribes have formed? Was there an Aaron from which the priests were descended? Was there an Isaiah, an Esther, a Samuel? What proof is there?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vksz0/i_hate_to_do_this_but_who_in_the_bible_was_likely/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c55ea0q", "c55ejqb", "c55jbmr"], "score": [14, 30, 5], "text": ["Wow, sorry this was downvoted so thoroughly. It's a good question, and I came here hoping for some intelligent answers.\n\nI assume you are asking about the Old Testament, since the majority of people discussed in the New Testament are most likely historical figures.", "Umm, this is an extraordinarily broad question, which makes it incredibly difficult to answer.  No, there were no brothers, and arguably (likely?) no tribes.  Probably no Aaron.  We might as well call the author of the original text of Isaiah \"Isaiah\" unless you have a better name for him.  \"Guy who wrote proto-Isaiah\" seems a little long-winded.  Esther?  I doubt it.  Samuel?  I doubt that too, though he has his advocates.\n\nYou'll get a more useful response with a more specific question, such as what is the evidence for and against the patriarchs, or for or against David.  You're asking who is real from a book that contains literally hundreds of names.", "I'm pretty far from an expert on this, but I can at least point you towards some informative wikipedia links.\n\nThe short version is that there's not really any evidence for anyone that shows up earlier than kings.  After that, there's some scraps of archaeological evidence both from Jewish sources as well as others of the region. Basically, many of the post-Solomon kings probably were based on real rulers, but evidence is too sketchy to say much beyond that.\n\nThe [Mesha Stele](_URL_2_) may or may not refer to the house of David, and corresponds somewhat to biblical accounts of a war with Israel.\n\nThe [Taylor Prism](_URL_0_) is an Assyrian account of a war with Israel that is mentioned in the bible.\n\n[This page](_URL_1_) has a more comprehensive list."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Prism", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artifacts_significant_to_the_Bible", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesha_stele"]]}
{"q_id": "5v7rvq", "title": "A lot of people know about characters such as Captain America, which were used to promote american values in WW2; was there a german equivalent?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v7rvq/a_lot_of_people_know_about_characters_such_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de0cg77"], "score": [45], "text": ["Jay Baird's book *To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon* covers a lot of the Nazi's death-cult figures (such as Schlageter and Horst Wessel).\n\nThese mythologized, highly-propagandistic \"lives\" of Nazi \"martyrs\" served the function of providing idea Nazi role-models. \n\nSimilarly, Nazi films such as Hitlerjunge Quex set up ideal-types (in this case, of a Hitler Youth boy who takes on communist boys and is killed). \n\nThere was a lot of martyrdom and dying-for-the-cause, in short. \n\nI can't think of any cartoon and/or comic-type figures, though.  Such \"non-serious\" approach wouldn't really fit well with the supposed gravity and earnestness of Third Reich culture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "azlcve", "title": "Why were women commonly used as personifications of nations or ideals (liberty, justice etc..) around the enlightenment era if they were considered to be the lesser sex?", "selftext": "I live in France and the symbol of Marianne is everywhere. She\u2019s not the only women who represents an identity or an idea. Liberty and justice are depicted as women too. National personifications don\u2019t seem to escape the feminine touch either. Britannia is depicted as a woman and a lot of art from the enlightenment period seems to depict different ideals as women. This doesn\u2019t seem to make a lot of sense when you consider the fact that women were seen as less intelligent and weaker than men during these times and wouldn\u2019t even have the right to vote in the US, U.K. and France until the early 20th century. \n\nMy absolute favourite piece of art is \u201cliberty leading the people\u201d by Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix. It\u2019s a good example of the female personification that I\u2019m talking about. Liberty (or Marianne I guess) is depicted as a bare chested general, leading revolutionaries forward across a pile of corpses. Surely any woman who attempted to stage a scene like this would be highly frowned upon in that era? Women were also considered to be \u201cmore sensitive\u201d and \u201cweak\u201d so why is she depicted in such a warlike pose? The Statue of Liberty is another example. She stands tall and with a harsh expression. That goes against a lot of ideals about womanhood from the time. They aren\u2019t depicted as wives or mothers but as fierce warriors, judges, revolutionaries and leaders. Why? Is it a male fantasy? An idealistic portrayal of humanity? Just an aesthetic choice? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/azlcve/why_were_women_commonly_used_as_personifications/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eiapaa7"], "score": [11], "text": [" > This doesn\u2019t seem to make a lot of sense when you consider the fact that women were seen as less intelligent and weaker than men during these times and wouldn\u2019t even have the right to vote in the US, U.K. and France until the early 20th century.\n\nTo go broader than your immediate title question ... the issue is a lot more complicated than \"men were considered strong, capable, and smart and women were considered weak, incompetent, and stupid\". As I explained in my answer to [Were there women opposed to suffrage?](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Basically, by the 1840s, it was firmly established that men and women were complementary in all things, and that while men had to go out into the world to make money and participate in politics, each needed to be balanced with a sweet woman who took pride in domestic management and raising children, on the personal level as well as on a macro scale. (This ties in very strongly to Queen Victoria's self-presentation as the mother of a nation/empire.) Today we recognize that this is an unfair playing field, and that men and woman should be given the same opportunities and expectations, but the complementarian view was very widely held by both men and women and was generally put as a positive: women were morally pure, and by raising children and creating the ideal home for men, they were influencing the world on a much deeper scale than any MP or senator who made laws or a random male citizen who cast a vote. The nitty-gritty of politics was opposed to this moral purity, and, it was thought, could muddle it. Women who took on masculine qualities or tastes weren't bad, per se, but they were unnatural and a threat not just to their individual family, but also on that macro, societal level - including to other women, since their own high moral standing was derived from everyone believing that their domestic duties were as honorable and worthwhile as men's public work that earned money.  All of this is very middle-class, since it relies on a male-wage-earner/stay-at-home-mother pairing that didn't exist among the working classes (where women often had to work for a wage or at least concentrate mainly on the onerous and dirty work in the home, since they were unable to delegate it to a servant, and not spend hours reading to and instructing children gently) or the upper classes (where men often didn't earn a wage, but lived on inherited money, and wives had access to lots of servants to handle domestic management and childrearing) - but the limited applicability in some sense strengthened the power of the ideal. Working-class women saw it as a life to be aspired to, and used the stereotypes of female innocence as their one defense in court or in public life, for instance.\n\nHistorical fiction written in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries tends to take our modern consensus that this is unequal and unfair treatment and project it back, having only bad characters believe in it for the most part, and having any good male characters stop believing it promptly after seeing evidence of female competence. The bad characters do not *really* believe in the beneficial qualities of women, too - they use this philosophy as an excuse to marry women against their will, imprison them in asylums, steal their money and property, etc. And certainly many men historically did this as well, but it was by no means all a pretense. Women were seen as possessing good qualities of their own, and if they appeared to be doing something coded masculine well, it was always possible to show them as exceptional examples (\"Most women don't have much of a head for mathematics, but you wouldn't believe what Miss Lovelace is working on!\") or, in extreme cases, redefine the coding.\n\nThe concept of depicting a people (in the sense of an ethnic group) as a woman originated with the Romans, and was revived in the Renaissance/Early Modern Period for self-description by a number of countries - Britannia, Dame Scotia, Helvetia - and in Early Modern art there's also quite a lot of female personification of various virtues, sins, and abstract concepts. Portraying \"liberty\" as a woman, as revolutionaries in France were doing from the 1770s on, was simply traditional, and also allowed the supposed moral superiority of women to be brought into play; most likely the ideal of protecting a woman or womanhood with violence also comes into it psychologically, as artwork and rhetoric that made the country or the revolution or the quality feminine could be seen as exhorting specifically men to come to its aid through war. The famous painting by Delacroix certainly shows Marianne as more active on the battlefield than others might, but she's also *holding* the gun rather than firing or even brandishing it, her more engaged arm holding up the French flag that she also represented. The Statue of Liberty comes from the same tradition of anthropomorphizing liberty and doing so with a woman's form (it's a French artwork given to the US), and likewise she's not performing any kind of violence or direct action: she's holding a torch and welcoming the huddled masses - it's somewhat maternal.\n\nI hope this makes sense?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/abt9ek/were_there_women_opposed_to_suffrage/ed497dh/"]]}
{"q_id": "4xbv51", "title": "Is this claim that the Bahmani sultanate of India killed 100,000 Hindus yearly accurate?", "selftext": "[This website](_URL_0_)\nclaims that the Bahmani sultanate of central india would set a quota of 100,000 hindus to kill yearly. This seems an extraordinary claim and does not cite sources. Through googling I found [this website](_URL_1_) which attributes this claim to \"Ferishtha\", who I believe refers to a Persian scholar called Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah. Is there any truth to this claim and also how tolerant was the Bahmani sultanates of Hinduism in general if not?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xbv51/is_this_claim_that_the_bahmani_sultanate_of_india/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6f5bzm"], "score": [15], "text": ["This is somewhat outside of my time-frame, but I'd like to add some context to these claims, and hopefully others can add to it. First off, some reservations regarding *sources*. I'd be very careful with a website like the one you cite titled \"The Biggest Holocaust in World History\" that doesn't give a full author's name and ends with the nice sentence \"*Any one who speaks for Hindus is a Hitler or is in the process of becoming one and any group which speaks for Hindus are Nazis or are in the process of becoming Nazis*\". Some obvious reasons: Here we have a conflation of historical processes a few centuries apart, and the use of the modern concept \"holocaust\" in a completely different, pre-modern context. What is more, it shows the author's clear partiality (e.g. Muslim deaths are simply not mentioned) in the field of South Asian history where according to Richard M. Eaton \"*visions [of how history happened] were [...] used by nineteenth or twentieth century imperialists, nationalists, or religious revivalists for their own purposes*\", and still continue to be used by various groups.\n\nIn the article \"The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan\", Eaton raises some more interesting points on the relationship between the Bahmani sultanate and the neighbouring medieval Hindu realms including Vijayanagara, and on the source you mention (p. 137):\n\n >  North of the Krishna River, meanwhile, the medieval Persian chroniclers who wrote the histories of the Bahmani Kingdom and its successors - Sayid 'Ali Tabata, Rafi' al-Din Shirazi, or *Muhammad Qasim Firishta* - were all high-born Iranian immigrants who tended to adopt a colonialist view towards non-Muslim Indian society. Transplanted from their native homelands in Iran, such immigrant writers routinely stigmatized the people of Vijayanagara as 'infidels'. Since these men were hired to chronicle their patrons' grand deeds, many of which focused on struggles with Vijayanagara over control of the Raichur Doab, and these struggles became the principal context in which subsequent readers would see this period of history. Replete with mutually demonizing tropes, the rhetoric of warfare generated by literate ideologues on both sides of the Krishna ultimately took on a life of its own and hardened into the Maginot Line that today continues to divide Daccani historiography into a 'Hindu' south and a 'Muslim' north. \n\nHere we can see how foreign elites adopted a strong emphasis against their rulers' Hindu enemies, similiar to strategies used by Brahman chroniclers in the rival realm Vijayanagara. Adding to this perspective are further reservations regarding Firishta as a source here. It's interesting to note that the second website you linked to deviates from the quoted 100.000 executions per year by stating that \"*Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus*\". Furthermore as the Bahmani sultanate existed for around 180 years this yearly number would make one serious headcount, even taking into consideration the sultanate's decline following the beginning of power struggles in the late 15th century. \n\n >  how tolerant was the Bahmani sultanates of Hinduism in general if not?\n\nA last point that seems important to me here is *geopolitical*. Eaton in his article goes on to describe similiarities in the adoption of Islamic and Hindu customs in the rival realms: \"*Such rhetoric, however, has prevented more recent generations from appreciating the degree to which Vijayanagara and its northern neighbours were integrated into a multi-ethnic, transregional universe knit together by shared political norms, cultural values and aesthetic tastes - the Islamicate 'world-system'.*\"  (I've written about [Muslim influences in Vijayanagara](_URL_0_) earlier in case you're interested.) Apart from cultural exchange, it's important to keep in mind that the Bahmani sultanate bordered on Hindu realms like Vijayanagara but also the Gajpatis of Orissa -- which meant that despite huge military campaigns from both sides there were also attempts to hold up a kind of political equilibrium. Killings of Hindus by the Bahmani sultanate in the numbers quoted (if they were hypothetically possible) would have surely led to strong retribution campaigns by other realms.\n\n **So:** While it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to find clear demographical sources for the numbers mentioned, and while wars with huge casualties did take place at the time, the numbers still seem clearly exaggerated to me. This has to do on the one hand with the partiality of the given source, Firishta, a Persian chronicler highlighting his Bahmani rulers' strength and their Hindu rivals' weakness. On the other hand, the Bahmani sultanate was connected both culturally and geopolitically with the neighbouring Hindu realms, leading to attempts of upholding an equilibrium or even peace at certain times in its history.\n  \n  \n**Sources**: \n\n- Richard M. Eaton: \"The Articulation of Islamic Space in the Medieval Deccan\", in \"Cultural History of Medieval India\"\nby Meenakshi Khanna.\n\n- Hermann Kulke  &  Dietmar Rothermund: \"A History of India\" (ch. 4).\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.hinduwebsite.com/history/holocaust.asp", "http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/irin/genocide.html"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fbfd6/the_islamic_period_of_india_gets_portrayed_as_a/ctoc4w0"]]}
{"q_id": "50cjqr", "title": "Kaaba. In modern times, there are two attempts to seize/destroy it. One is by ISIS, which is a mere bluff. Another is in the successful 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. Prior to that, has any other groups attempt to occupy or destroy it?", "selftext": "It's the most sacred symbol to Muslims. I wonder if during the long Crusades anyone ever attempt to defile it? What was the meaning of Kaaba to outsiders?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/50cjqr/kaaba_in_modern_times_there_are_two_attempts_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d73fcsq", "d73yb7o"], "score": [13, 3], "text": ["My example will relate to Mecca in general rather than the Kaaba, since I am unaware of any other attempts in history at destroying the city.\n\nReynald de Chatillon was a notorious Crusader who was lord of Oultrejordain from 1175 until 1187. He was a French knight who was held in disdain by both Christians and Muslims, as he had terrorized friendly states such as Cyprus merely for plunder. He was in fact imprisoned by the emir of Damascus for some 15 years, and afterwards he attained his position as ruler of the territories beyond Jordan, giving him proximity to Arabia. Reynald had not given up his old ways, and in 1182 he commenced a series of raids against neutral Muslim vessels on the Red Sea, during which time he made his intentions of targeting Mecca clear. However, Saladin's brother Al-Adil managed to destroy the fleet and Reynald retreated, never again to venture south on campaign.\n\nPerhaps this is not the ideal example, but it is a case of a Crusader attempting to attack the city of Mecca, although his exact intentions with the city are unknown.", "The Portuguese made a couple attempts at capturing Mecca after they successfully circumnavigated Africa around the turn of the sixteenth century. \n\nFrancisco de Almeida attacked Jedda in 1505 and attempted to conquer Mecca the following year, but was repelled by Mir Husayn al-Kurdi. Affonso de Albuquerque also variously tried to blockade Jedda (a key supply route to Mecca) to starve out its inhabitants and to capture the holy city in 1513 to exchange it with the Mamluks for Jerusalem. \n\nIf you'd like to read more, check: Abbas Hamdani, \"Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India,\" in *Journal of the American Oriental Society* 101, no. 3 (1981): 326-327."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6dau7f", "title": "Western food culture during a certain period of time seemed obsessed with the idea of \"digestion\"...things that were hard to digest, things that made digestion easier, etc. Where did this come from, and why did it go away?", "selftext": "You can see it in the creation of the _digestif_, in advertisements like  [this one](_URL_0_), and in the notion that certain diseases were caused by abnormalities in digestion. Why the fixation on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dau7f/western_food_culture_during_a_certain_period_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["di1jxjp", "di1v1hg", "di280xn"], "score": [74, 2, 10], "text": ["As a quick disclaimer: I approach this primarily from the American home economics movement, which was heavily about nutrition, not as a food historian, so if we are lucky someone else can give you a more culinary perspective, but here is the sociological perspective. \n \n\u201cDigestibility\u201d at is right at the birth of nutrition as a science, and \u201cdigestibility\u201d is a polite advertising buzzword to intimate to you, dear homemaker, that the food will not give you a tummy aches, heartburn, or toots. And heck, we still get [food advertising to that effect.](_URL_3_) Humans in general before this time had a fair idea that food goes in, it churns around in your stomach, poop comes out, both of these happening regularly and in the least painful ways possible is preferred, but a lot of the details about how exactly that works get worked out (perhaps not to our understanding today, but still worked out to themselves) around the turn of the century. For example, most vitamins were discovered from 1910-1930s, and how exciting would those breakthroughs have been? [Consider this cutting-edge nutrition book from 1923](_URL_4_), which will help you get more of all FOUR vitamins in your diet. Nutritional science is hot though, and of great interest to many parties: poor parents, who have agonized watching their children suffer the effects of poor nutrition, especially during the Great Depression; rich parents, who also stress over their children and if they\u2019re healthy; governments, who have a pretty hefty interest in maintaining a healthy population for various purposes, especially after WWI; and Progressives, rich charity-minded folk who care about the poor and want to better their lives. Enter the food producer, who wants to market to all these people. This concern for nutritional science starts entering the consciousness of homemakers as they get exposure to home economics training through school, charity efforts, and government programs, from the turn of the century through the 50s. Any homemaker worth her (iodized, of course) salt is going to care that her family is fed nutritious food, that gets in and out of their bodies with the least drama. Advertisers cater to her scientific mind. \n \nSo what makes a food \u201ceasily digested?\u201d Low fiber, first, cause fiber gives you the toots and that was not seen as a part of healthy digestion then and nobody really likes it now even, but also low fat, low acid, well cooked (proteins and stuff broken down), and now spicy foods are banned in the bland diet too, but that wasn\u2019t much of a concern for a White American housewife at the turn of the century. So some advertising, [like this one for canned beans,](_URL_1_) makes sense. Cooking the tar out of your beans will indeed make them more \u201cdigestible,\u201d and maybe you won\u2019t fart as much, especially if Jane Homemaker doesn\u2019t know all the tricks to cooking beans to make them less noisy. Early breakfast cereal, also [makes a fair pitch to being digestible, because all the wheat is pre-cooked and broken down.](_URL_0_) However, that \u201cdigestible\u201d word is slapped on a lot of things that, uh, aren\u2019t really more easily digestible than anything else. Like your Worcestershire sauce there. I spent a while trying to find any \u201cscience\u201d the company had put behind that claim, but I\u2019ve come up a blank. You didn\u2019t need to prove a word like \u201cdigestible\u201d back then though. I think it was a general grasp for the \u201chealth halo\u201d effect, like when they market potato chips as \u201cnatural\u201d now. \n \nProbably the most famous marketer under the \u201cdigestible!\u201d banner is Crisco, who found a pretty good way to market a rejected soap-making fat in their own bestseller, *The Story of Crisco*, where they give us this [very [citation needed] claim](_URL_5_) \n \n > The first step in the digestion of fat is its melting. Crisco melts at a lower degree of heat than body temperature. Because of its low melting point, thus allowing the digestive juices to mix with it, and because of its vegetable origin and its purity, Crisco is the easiest of all cooking fats to digest.\n \n > When a fat smokes in frying, it \"breaks down,\" that is, its chemical composition is changed; part of its altered composition becomes a non-digestible and irritating substance. The best fat for digestion is one which does not decompose or break down at frying temperature. Crisco does not break down until a degree of heat is reached above the frying point. In other words, Crisco does not break down at all in normal frying, because it is not necessary to have it \"smoking hot\" for frying. No part of it, therefore, has been transformed in cooking into an irritant. That is one reason why the stomach welcomes Crisco and carries forward its digestion with ease.\n \nAlso choice quote: \n \n > Crisco is Kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco. It conforms to the strict Dietary Laws of the Jews. It is what is known in the Hebrew language as a \"parava,\" or neutral fat. Crisco can be used with both \"milchig\" and \"fleichig\" (milk and flesh) foods. Special Kosher packages, bearing the seals of Rabbi Margolies of New York, and Rabbi Lifsitz of Cincinnati, are sold the Jewish trade. But all Crisco is Kosher and all of the same purity.\n \n*4000 years.* \n \nLater Crisco got more explicit about what they mean with \u201cdigestibility:\u201d [it\u2019s all about preventing getting heartburn from all the fried trash you eat.](_URL_2_) \n \nThe aperitif/digestif thing in alcohol is a different beast though, and outside of nutritional science/home economics. Most home ec scientists were Prohibitionists and teetotalers! \n \nTl;dr: it\u2019s usually code for \u201cwon\u2019t give you heartburn,\u201d or farts, or general indigestion, a concern which isn\u2019t advertised to as much in food anymore, because another industry got in on that gig (see: Beano, Zantac, Pepto Bismol, etc etc) ", "You might also want to ask this over at [r/AskFoodHistorians/](_URL_0_).", "One thing I'd like to point out here that hasn't been mentioned (and isn't in /u/caffarelli's otherwise excellent answer) is that prior to the modern industrialized age being infected with Helicobacter Pylori was quite common, and nearly universal. It still is in the developing world. The changeover likely having a lot to do with improvements in sanitation (especially in drinking water, but also foods, especially preserved foods). In any event, H. Pylori infections are known to cause inflammation of the stomach lining, gastritis, ulcers, and stomach cancer. Probably about 10-20% of people with H. Pylori infections develop peptic ulcers. In the developing or pre-industrial world something like 80% of people will be infected by H. Pylori by their mid-20s. Which means that somewhere around 1 in 12 to 1 in 6 of *all people* in the pre-industrial world would end up with a peptic ulcer at one point in their lives.\n\nThat's a lot of people. On top of that you'd have random bouts of acute gastritis or less severe forms of just having a more \"sensitive stomach\" than usual. All of those symptoms would have lead to a desire to alleviate or ameliorate them. Experiencing a peptic ulcer even once is fairly likely going to lead to a lifetime of being careful with what one eats in an effort to avoid it, which will encourage others to follow the example out of an abundance of precaution. And even if the behavior has no effect often times the gastritis or ulcer will simply get better naturally, leading to the perception of a causal relationship."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Leaperrins.png/363px-Leaperrins.png"], "answers_urls": [["https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1021/8371/products/TIN2_024.jpg?v=1493253219", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Campbell_bean_advert_in_Saturday_Evening_Post_1921.png", "https://envisioningtheamericandream.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/food-crisco-36-swscan00021-copy.jpg", "http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2008/07/gut_instinct.html", "http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=hearth;cc=hearth;idno=4170476;q1=digestion;node=4170476%3A7;frm=frameset;view=image;seq=5;page=root;size=s", "https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13286/13286-h/13286-h.htm#The_Story_of_Crisco"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFoodHistorians/"], []]}
{"q_id": "1usyg2", "title": "[Not sure if right sub] My grandfather was a POW of the Japanese during WWII. I'm wondering if I can find where he was held", "selftext": "As the title says...my (British) grandfather was in the Merchant Marine during the Second World War, and spent 3 years in a Japanese POW camp after his ship was sunk by a U-Boat. \n\nHe currently lives in England, so I don't see him often, and he (unsurprisingly) doesn't like talking about it. I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find information on where he might have been held, and such. Not for any real reason, besides my own curiosity. \n\nThanks in advance for all your help. This sub is fucking awesome.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1usyg2/not_sure_if_right_sub_my_grandfather_was_a_pow_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["celj08t", "celpvpl"], "score": [11, 5], "text": ["This seems like a good start: [Search in: World War II Prisoners of War Data File, 12/7/1941 - 11/19/1946](_URL_0_) from the U.S. National Archives.", "I worked a few years in the Red Cross war archives in the Netherlands as a researcher. I looked into these questions a lot and worked with the original POW lists. \nIn addition to what is already mentioned, I like to add the following: The Japanese telegraphed their POW records from Tokyo to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland. They telegraphed the list of POW's to the British Red Cross for the purpose of informing Armed Forces and family. \nThe information you are looking for is probably in the already mentioned POW archive. Other options are the British Red Cross and the ICRC in Geneva. They all should have a copy of the list. You might try the Japanese Red Cross or other Japanese state archives, but I would not begin looking there. Usually the Allies took all the relevant sources with them to their countries. I never redirected a question like this towards the JRC. \n\nEdit: As a merchant marine sailor he was militarized the moment GB was at war with Japan. So he officially served in the Royal Navy and was treated as a military prisoner of war.       "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=644"], []]}
{"q_id": "2br6vw", "title": "Why are ship captains allowed to marry couples?", "selftext": "So, it's a well known that, traditionally, only priests, judges, and captains could join people in matrimony. It's obvious why priests and judges are allowed, but why ship captains? That seems kind of odd, especially since women were very rare on oceangoing ships anyway. When did this custom begin, and why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2br6vw/why_are_ship_captains_allowed_to_marry_couples/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj8iz2w", "cj8ps1u"], "score": [15, 2], "text": ["NYT wrote an article on this recently\n\n\n[\"Appealing though it may be, the myth of a ship\u2019s captain presiding over the nuptials of dewy-eyed couples has for most of the last century been pretty much just that. And yet the demand for weddings at sea has grown to the point that some cruise lines, operating under foreign flags and laws, have found ways to perform legal unions in international waters with the ship\u2019s captain as officiant.\"](_URL_0_)", "It may be well known that only priests, judges and captains can marry people, but it's not actually true, at least in the UK. I was (very) surprised to find that I'm allowed to do it myself. As my church is not Church of England or Quaker, the couple would have to obtain a marriage licence from the Register Office (basically notify them in enough time for a check that they can legally marry) and there's some differences in record keeping. However from then on it's governed by whether the church will recognise me for the purpose, which it does (I'm a lay preacher). The same seems to apply to many other religious organisation other than the two above, or the Register Office itself. It does not apply to at least some non-religious organisations, e.g. the [Humanist Association](_URL_0_) (other than in Scotland - remember that's a different country with a different legal system from England), so I'm not sure where that leaves ship's captains.\n\nBTW, no, I'm not going to do one!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/fashion/weddings/a-marriage-at-sea-get-me-rewrite.html"], ["https://humanism.org.uk/ceremonies/non-religious-weddings/"]]}
{"q_id": "31mdyb", "title": "Did any South American cultures use llamas for transportation?", "selftext": "My wife who used to work with llamas, among other animals, assures me they can be ridden by adults, easily carry packs, and are quite pleasant when properly raised. Yet, in everything I have read about their use they are never used for transportation either with teams pulling wagons or by being ridden. Am I just not aware of their use as a riding animal, or were they never used in that way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31mdyb/did_any_south_american_cultures_use_llamas_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq2w4f4"], "score": [30], "text": ["Your wife is correct that Llamas are docile animals that can easily carry packs, but they are to small to be ridden by adult humans. A typical adult llama may be 5 feet to 6 feet five inches tall at the head, but they have long necks and are only three to four feet tall at the shoulder. They can carry up to 25 percent of their body weight as a pack animal, but few llamas exceed 400 pounds. Most can carry 80 pounds over distances of 5 to 13 miles per day.  Llamas do have one advantage over horses, they can climb and decend stairways that would spook most horses. Llamas are well adapted to the Andean high lands, but their thick wool makes them less suited to the hot deserts of the west coast of South America.   They were the primary transport animal of the Inca and earlier highland Andean cultures.  \nSource: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.llamasofatlanta.com/llama_facts.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "956yc2", "title": "What made Norse Longships different from other common galley type ships of the early medieval era, and why were they considered so much more advanced?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/956yc2/what_made_norse_longships_different_from_other/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3rv127"], "score": [11], "text": ["So, we actually don't know a lot about the \"Viking\" or Norse type of longship that would have been used in northern waters. I wrote about this before in a [previous comment](_URL_0_), which I can expand on: \n\n >  [t]he \"longship\" has been romanticized in the stereotypical Viking community all out of proportion to its actual use, and also that our archaeological evidence of actual longships is highly fragmentary. (The Gokstad and Oseberg ships which exist in the popular imagination as the \"longship\" are of the same type and buried within a few years and a few miles of each other, and may not be typical of anything other than their own mid-9th century style). \n\n > All that said, what we think of as the modal Viking warship of the 8th-11th centuries was the longship, which that appears to be a (very small) replica of. The longship was classified by its number of \"rooms\" (defined as an area between thwarts, or cross-members) with an undecked longship presumably having as many thwarts/rooms as pairs of oars, which we also assume corresponds to pairs of warriors. These are large assumptions, but the records we have from ship-musters in Alfred's England (for example) talk about ships in terms of rooms, without a lot of evidence for manning. \n\n >  In any case, a ship of less than 20 rooms wasn't considered much of a warship at all, with ships of 20-25 rooms seeming to be average. King Harald Hardrada had a 35-room ship built in 1061-62, which was extremely large. (The ships of 20-25 rooms were called *esnecca*, \"snakes,\" while ships larger than say 30 rooms were called *drekkar* or \"dragons,\" and seem to have been celebrated in sagas as very unusual.)\n\n > In general, though, ships used for exploring voyages were not of the longship type. Longships were distinct from trading vessels by being, well, long in proportion to their width. We have some evidence that the Norse used fatter (for lack of a better term) ships that were mostly propelled by sails and had oars only at the bow and stern; the Bayeux Tapestry depicts English forces using some of these types of ships, with shields hung over the gunwale and oars at the ends of the ship. These trading ships are more likely to be ones that made longer voyages, with longships and other ship types following once the navigation was well understood. The trading ships the Norse used (*knarrar*) would have been partially decked over, as would larger longships have been, and would have offered some shelter from the elements. \n\nThe defining feature of the longship seems to have been that it was, well, *long* -- \"longship\" is the word for it in English and the Scandinavian languages, and \"snake\" as I mentioned above is also a term for that type of warship. \n\nThe thing is, though, that we don't know how exactly they looked, and there were at least three different shipbuilding traditions at work in the North Sea. We know this because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that \"King Alfred had long ships built to oppose the [Danish] warships [*lang scipu ongen \u00f0a aescas*]. They were almost twice as long as the others. Some had 60 oars, some more. They were both swifter and steadier and also higher than the others. They were built neither on the Frisian nor the Danish pattern, but as it seemed to him himself that they could be useful.\" (Quoted in Rodger, *Safeguard of the Seas* pp. 15). \n\n(As a sidenote: It's quite possible that \"him himself\" literally means that Alfred designed these himself; he was both a carpenter or at least familiar with carpentry and a seafarer.) \n\nSo the author(s) of the ASC were aware of at least three different shipbuilding traditions going on around England (the ships Alfred had built, the Frisian and the Danish ships). The Danish ships were probably warships, the Frisian ships were probably traders, and the English ships were built to counter the Danish ships. If they were in fact 30-room ships (with 60 oars) they would have been quite large for the time, with probably 2-3 times the crew of a 20-room ship. \n\nIn terms of being \"advanced,\" that's a tricky question to get to. The Norse longships that we have (and again, remember that we have about a quarter of the Skuldelev 2 wreck, the Gosktad and Oseberg ships and that's pretty much it) were long, narrow, had good carrying capacity, and drew fairly little water, so they were ideal ships for the Norse type of raiding warfare that we know existed at the time. But they were not good for carrying large amounts of cargo (people built merchant ships for that) or apparently for defensive warfare (like Alfred's design was for). All ship design is a compromise, and \"advanced\" isn't really a useful comparison. \n\nDoes that answer your question? \n\nThe main source I'm drawing on for this other than Rodger, quoted above, is John Haywood's *Dark Age Naval Power*. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28hjbr/how_in_the_world_did_vikings_sail_from/cibmcq8/"]]}
{"q_id": "6jm4dx", "title": "TIL about the Great Mosque of Xian that looks more like a Chinese temple than a mosque. Why does it seem only in China that mosques adopted native architecture rather than following the usual design?", "selftext": "More about the Great Mosque of Xian - _URL_2_ - as you can see no one will think that it is a Muslim mosque - it looks more like a Shinto, Buddhist or Confucian temple.\n\nMore Chinese mosques examples - \n\n* _URL_4_\n\n* _URL_3_\n\n* _URL_0_\n\n* _URL_1_\n\nThis caught my curiosity that China seems to be the only place I read of in the world where mosques and Muslims, instead of using the usual Islamic architecture like domes, crescent moons, arabesque styles adopted instead the style of Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian temples or the existing native architecture.\n\nWhy did the Chinese Muslims in the particular time periods chose to build their mosques like this - something not replicated in other parts of the world? What exactly is different with Chinese Islam or Chinese Islamic architecture.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jm4dx/til_about_the_great_mosque_of_xian_that_looks/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djfmwgn", "djfv1dp", "djfylku"], "score": [38, 8, 18], "text": ["I\u2019m not knowledgeable enough about East Asian architecture to tell you much about Chinese mosques. However I can tell you that the premise of your question isn\u2019t really true. Throughout the ages Muslims have adapted older building traditions for their own needs in many regions outside China.\n\nThis already starts with the oldest extant examples of Muslim religious architecture, the 7th and 8th century monuments of the Umayyad Caliphate in Greater Syria. As Muslim architecture was only just coming into its own their architects and craftsmen necessarily had to draw on the older traditions of the Late Antique Near East. For example it is no accident that the famous [Dome of](_URL_10_) [the Rock](_URL_3_) on Jerusalem\u2019s Temple Mount is very similar in design to some Early Byzantine churches in the region like the [Sergios Bacchos](_URL_0_) [and Leontios Church](_URL_4_) in Bosra. The details of its decoration like the mosaics or the architectural sculpture also clearly follow Roman templates. Similarly the [Umayyad Mosque](_URL_8_) in Damascus and other early mosques adapted the design of Roman basilicas, be they civic or christian.\n\nWhen the center of the Caliphate shifted towards Iraq after the Abbasid revolution Sasanian building traditions came into the forefront as this region had been the seat of Persian rule before the Islamic conquest. This meant that [mud brick constructions](_URL_5_) and [stucco d\u00e9cor](_URL_1_) became the norm for the great imperial projects.\n\nThere are plenty other examples from other epochs and geographic regions throughout the history of Islamic architecture. The [Seljuq mosques](_URL_2_) in Anatolia share obvious similarities in construction technique with the [churches of the christian Caucasus principalities](_URL_9_). The [great Ottoman Mosques of Istanbul](_URL_7_) were often heavily inspired by the architecture of [Hagia Sophia](_URL_6_) which had been build roughly one thousand years earlier in the same city.\n\nSo all in all I\u2019d say the examples from China that you mention aren\u2019t as extraordinary as you think.", "I agree with /u/guchfuckhs, and I'd add examples like the [great mosque of Mopti](_URL_1_), the [djinguereber mosque](_URL_2_) of timbuktu, or Kano's old [grand mosque](_URL_0_) (since rebuilt in a more standard design) all show West African architectural styles very different from what you might see in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.", "If you look at Ottoman Mosque architecture, you will see that the vast majority of the important ones follow a particularly pattern set out by Mimar Sinan, the most important Ottoman architect.  However, this pattern is largely based on emulation not of traditional Arabic architecture, but of the Byzantine Church architecture, in particular the great cathedral of Haggia Sofia which the Ottomans turned into a mosque shortly after the conquest of Istanbul.  \n\nIn a very real sense, a lot of the basics of Ottoman mosque architecture (the low domes, the use of half domes, poriticos, the square or rectangular plans) look like Byzantine churches with minarets, though there were also some obvious differences (different proportions, more open space inside the main dome, almost no colonnades, an emphasis on inner courtyards where Muslim absolution is preformed).\n\nLater mosques in the Ottoman Empire didn't necessarily follow this pattern, however.  One of my favorite Mosques in Turkey is the Ortakoy Mosque, which is very obviously in the same Baroque style as continental European churches of the period.  The original was built in 1721, the one that currently stands was build between 1854-1856.  One interesting thing about this mosque is that it was designed by two famous ethnic Armenians, farther and son Garabet and Nigogayos Baylan, who also built Dolmabahce Palace and a nearby Armenian church in similar neo-Baroque styles.  This was one example of many and European-influenced Baroque architecture in many ways displaced Byzantine-influenced Classical Ottoman architecture as the dominant style of the period.\n\nTo echo /u/Guckfuchs and /u/Commustar, I am not sure I really understand what you mean by your question.  Mosques seem to be *generally* built under the influence of local styles (or a fusion of a local style with a non-local style).  Perhaps simply local styles of China are more different to your eye than local styles of the Near East or South Asia.  My Turkish friends who've gone to, say, India have been shocked at how different the mosques look, and my South Asian friends who've visited Istanbul tend to see the mosques as architecturally very different from the mosques \"back home\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinan_Great_Southern_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongxin_Great_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Xi%27an", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaisheng_Mosque", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niujie_Mosque"], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/JO5x03W.jpg", "http://www.museumsjournal.de/pix/upload/20131101_1.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/22RMizt.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/Fbc0khu.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/1Bkmi6C.jpg", "https://www.beautifulmosque.com/PostImages/great-mosque-of-samarra-in-samarra-iraq-04.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/aAqKa9Z.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/xbOP2dw.jpg", "https://archnet.org/system/publications/covers/1271/original/FLS1319.jpg?1421341272", "http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DR8E71/georgian-orthodox-basilica-bolnisi-sioni-cathedral-oldest-extant-church-DR8E71.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/t7LaqxC.jpg"], ["http://www.bendav.nl/gif/ebay13/0899.jpg", "http://www.learn.columbia.edu/mopti/", "http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/3939806-3x2-940x627.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "1xcjsr", "title": "Why did Germany stop using the Gothic script halfway through WWII?", "selftext": "According to [the wiki](_URL_0_) it is because Bormann thought that it was discovered the script was designed by Jews. I can't help but think that there are other reasons though.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xcjsr/why_did_germany_stop_using_the_gothic_script/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfa9ook", "cfaa6xc", "cfaafco", "cfagd6t", "cfaiks2"], "score": [43, 58, 35, 5, 2], "text": ["Hey guys, just a general, thread-level reminder here :) \n\n* **While sources are not required in a top-level comment, they are heavily encouraged.** \n\n* **While brevity is the soul of wit, a choppy answer helps no one.** If you're posting no more than one or two sentences to the OP's question, please don't answer. [We have standards that we do not hesitate to enforce](_URL_0_) here - so please, be considerate to other posters :)\n\n* **Remember the original question.** \n\n* **Please don't speculate**. If you don't know the answer, or otherwise aren't willing to follow the standards that I linked above, then again...please, just upvote the question and keep an eye on it. Someone will come :)\n\n* **If all you can offer is a link to Wikipedia, please do not post.**\n\n* **Racism is unacceptable here. Similarly, civility is mandatory.**\n\n* **If you do not know the answer, then please do not post.**\n\nThanks again!", "Scripts are a little detached from my niche, but to offer a response:\n\nThe German script debate is mirrored by the [War of the Romantics](_URL_0_), the moniker given to the debate among the German intellectuals regarding Germany's cultural/ideological identity. There were two camps which were broadly labelled conservative and progressive.\n\nThere was a lot of this going on in German culture affecting everything from the Brothers Grimm to Wagner. One side advocated enshrining the mysticism associated with German history while the other wanted to modernise. This reflects the [Antiqua-Fraktur dispute](_URL_1_). The \"ideological connotations\" Wikipedia mentions are the aforementioned ones.\n\nFraktur, on the Gothic side, represented the mystic German history I glossed over, while Antiqua (despite its name) was considered the more modern alphabet. [Bormann and others in power were modernists](_URL_2_) and saw Antiqua as the way forward in German supremacy. It wouldn't surprise me if Blackletter typefaces were called Jewish to speed this along.\n\n\nNow, while this may be the \"theory\" behind the shift, in practice it's probable that Blackletter wouldn't have held up happily to the pressures of European support of Antiqua/Latin typefaces anyway, considering Germany's place in Europe.", "Ach.  I am on the road now so I don't have my references with me.\n\nBut as I recall it was due to eligibility issues.  The old gothic and [fraktur](_URL_0_) fonts which were being used were difficult to read for those that had not grown up with them (ie .. the people in the occupied territories.)\n\nEspecially .. s, f, z, l, t, j .. are tricky and can easily be mistaken for one another.  And you also have to add confusion from slavic names like \"Sojczynski\" and you can imagine how a lot of confusion would come up as things go back and forth between the occupiers and the occupied.\n\nWhen it concerns military orders, or police lists of people to be arrested, etc .. you don't want to have people bickering over misread names, addresses, and other details.\n\nSo the story was concocted that the old fonts had Jewish \"taint\", and a more eligible font was introduced.  Because of course, the Gothic/Fraktur fonts, being traditionally German and therefore superior, couldn't just be called \"hard to read and problematic\".", "From a quick survey of the online sources from the [German Wikipedia article](_URL_3_), hence all links are in German except if noted otherwise.  \n\nThe Antiqua-Fraktur dispute dates back to the beginning of the 19th century and it appears that usually the nationalists preferred Fraktur. But the front lines in the dispute were not settled enough to prevent the use by left wing groups during the Weimar republic. ( [Social democratic propaganda poster](_URL_4_) )  On the right Hitler apparently disliked Fraktur. In 1934 he said in a address to the Reichstag (translation [English Wikipedia](_URL_1_))\n\n >  Your alleged Gothic internalisation does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete, of womanly beauty and manly strength, of head raised high and intention defiant ... In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations of the east, the north and the west will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced by the script we have called Latin so far ...\n\nBut this did not lead to a coherent policy, [in 1939 high-schools were still ordered to teach both](_URL_0_) \"German and Latin script,\" that is Fraktur and Antiqua.  Additionally, on 7/30/1937 the Propaganda ministry forbade Jewish publishers to use Fraktur. Which was a demand of the *Deutsche Studentenschaft* ( German student union) from 1933. \n\nAn interesting detail is, that the NSDAP party newspaper *V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter* was [set in Bernhard-Fraktur](_URL_2_), a font by the Jewish designer Lucian Bernhard, until after the banning of Fraktur. The publisher of the *V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter* was at the meeting referenced in the Normalschrifterlass. And it is a temptation to speculate, if these two are related. \n\nFriedrich Beck notes in his 2006 essay on the topic ([German, pdf](_URL_5_)), that the banning of Fraktur was puzzling especially for Germans abroad, and he sees it as a expression of dictatorial power. That is, it is simply a matter of Hitlers personal preference, rather than some deep reason.  ", "Fun fact: the memo that [Bormann released](_URL_0_) to mandate the changeover to modern script was printed with the Nazi party logo in Fraktur (Gothic) script."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabacher"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jsabs/what_it_means_to_post_a_good_answer_in"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Romantics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute", "http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modernism-modernity/v003/3.1fritzsche.html"], ["http://www.google.de/imgres?sa=X&espvd=210&es_sm=122&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=IuWTcUi0n5RntM%3A&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2FEBchecked%2Fmedia%2F129064%2FSeven-black-letter-fonts-by-Rudolf-Koch&docid=ZzZch8cTYfecVM&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-1.web.britannica.com%2Feb-media%2F75%2F132375-004-156D683B.jpg&w=450&h=450&ei=22v2UoarLqqa4wT2oIDYAQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=1605&page=1&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=0CI8BEK0DMBE"], ["http://vau-ef-be.beepworld.de/frakturverbot.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute", "http://home.arcor.de/lutz.schweizer/schrifterlass.html", "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur-Streit", "http://imgur.com/6dl5J0Q", "http://opus.kobv.de/fhpotsdam/volltexte/2007/28/pdf/Beck.pdf"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schrifterlass_Antiqua1941.gif"]]}
{"q_id": "8jf0lg", "title": "When did the \"Cleopatra haircut\" appear? Did Cleopatra ever hairdress like that?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8jf0lg/when_did_the_cleopatra_haircut_appear_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e56ulrb"], "score": [2], "text": ["Not to discourage any further answers but you'll probably enjoy this older post:\n\n[On Cleopatra\u2019s hairstyles and the origins of the \"Cleopatra cut\"](_URL_0_) \n\n[Insider look at Cleopatra\u2019s fashion routine](_URL_1_)\n\nby /u/cleopatra_philopater"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7gwxeb/did_cleopatra_vii_always_cut_her_hair_short_at/dqmu1zw/?utm_content=permalink&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=frontpage", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/88kk50/cleopatra_gives_rare_insider_look_at_her_fashion/dwlga9q/?utm_content=permalink&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=frontpage"]]}
{"q_id": "3a6wqu", "title": "Is there any connection between the term \"White Russian\" for anti communists and the translation of Belarus \"White Russia?\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a6wqu/is_there_any_connection_between_the_term_white/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csa1p8c"], "score": [30], "text": ["No.\n\nThe Belarusian term stems from the 16th century, and the idea from Alexander Guagnini, a Polish writer, who claimed that that Russia was split up into three parts: White Russia (Muscovy reigon), Black Russia (Poland) and Red Russia - the rest of Russia. The Grand Duke of Moscow was known as \"The White Tsar\", which furthers this claim. Later in the 16th century, the term White Russia became specific to Belarus, although it is overall unknown what the true belief is. One belief is that White was to seperate from the Tartars, but ultimately it is speculated that it was to seperate from the Byzantines and the Romans by wearing white robes to be seen as a third rome. While it is not exactly known why Belarus is called that, the Russian Whites were named after the Imperial White uniforms of the Russian army. So, afraid not, but interesting speculation.\n\nSources:\n\n- Christopher Lazarski, \"White Propaganda Efforts in the South during the Russian Civil War, 1918\u201319 (The Alekseev-Denikin Period),\" The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp. 688\u2013707.\n\n- Alexandrowicz S. Rozw\u00f3j kartografii Wielkiego Ksi\u0119stwa Litewskiego od XV do po\u0142owy XVIII w. Pozna\u0144, 1989\n\n- Cosmographey oder beschreibung aller Laender, Herrschaften, f\u00fcrnemsten Stetten... Beschriben durch Sebastianum M\u00fcnsterum... Basel, 1550; Ulrichs von Richental Chronik des Constanzer Concils 1414 bis 1418. Herausgegeben von M. R. Buck. T\u00fcbingen, 1882"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "31oicr", "title": "Why was the \"Phantom time hypothesis\" developed, and what possible reasons are there for subscribing to it?", "selftext": "/r/askreddit lead me to the [phantom time hypothesis](_URL_0_), and I was hoping /r/AskHistorians could explain the history of the hypothesis to me.\n\nI'm not really interested in a debunking of the theory, that seems simple enough. I'm more curious about the history of the theory. Who is Heribert Illig and why did he he want to believe it? Why would somebody subscribe to the hypothesis (both valid reasons for belief and reasons why that person would really want it to be true)? Is there anybody (or any group) who would benefit from people believing this hypothesis?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31oicr/why_was_the_phantom_time_hypothesis_developed_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq3hnd7", "cq40ip5"], "score": [11, 10], "text": ["I have a followup question: if 613-911 never occurred, how does the Arab conquest and the expansion of Islam fit into these theorists historical timeline? ", "I'm no expert on this, but I dug into this area once when reading about Gary Kasparov's alleged support for the \"Fomenko New Cronology\", which is a somewhat similar theory originating in Russia in 1980.\n\nIllig's theories need to be viewed in the context of a (strange!) set of theories originating from a man named Immanuel Velikovsky who published a book called \"Worlds in Collision\". This book is mostly about a set of (strange!) theories that are best understood as astrology. \n\nMy understanding is that the timeline for his astrology didn't quite work, so he concluded that the \"traditional\" timeline of history must be wrong. \n\nVelikovsky's translator founded the \"Society for the Reconstruction of Human and natural history\", which Illig was later a member of. \n \nThere's also a set of work originating from the work of Jean Hardouin in the 1600s, where he claimed most Greek and Roman history was faked in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. \n\nI'm not sure how much influence Hardouin had on Velikovsky (and Illig), though he did influence Fomenko."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "47w4mc", "title": "Were there any ancient/medieval cities whose economy was entirely tourism-based? (Like, a Las Vegas of the ancient world)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/47w4mc/were_there_any_ancientmedieval_cities_whose/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0g5t62"], "score": [64], "text": ["There were sites of pilgrimage, and in some of them the pilgrims provided the main source of income for the area as a whole. Mecca and Medina are famous examples to the present day. [St Iago de Compostela](_URL_0_), in modern Spain, which houses the relics of St James (\"Sant Iago\"), is probably the most famous example in Europe. It's worth noting that pilgrimage to Campostela was so popular that a whole network of pilgrimage sites grew up along the various roads from Europe to Compostela and became known as [Camino de Santiago](_URL_2_) or in English the Way of St. James. There are Asian sites of pilgrimage as well, though I can less easily name them. [Bodh Gaya](_URL_1_) is an obvious one, but there are many places of pilgrimage that formed the backbone of the local economy scattered throughout South and East Asia (and possibly Southeast Asia, though I know less about it). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodh_Gaya", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago"]]}
{"q_id": "2e9vag", "title": "Did the Third Reich person on the street use the \"Heil Hitler\" greeting in their regular life?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e9vag/did_the_third_reich_person_on_the_street_use_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjxshlx"], "score": [44], "text": ["Yes. It was in fact the mandatory greeting from 1933 until the end of the war and, especially in the later years of the war, not responding to a Hitler salute in kind was considered a criminal offense that could land you in a bureau of the Gestapo for a couple of hours. \n\nI once read an excerpt of a diary by Victor Klemperer who noted in September '41:\n >  \u201eMan z\u00e4hlt, wie viele Leute in den Gesch\u00e4ften \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019, wie viele \u2018Guten Tag\u2019 sagen. Das \u2018Guten Tag\u2019 soll zunehmen.\u201c\n\n >  (my translation:) \"One counts, how many people in the stores say \"Heil Hitler\" and how many \"Good day\". \"Good day\" is apparently on the rise.\"\n\n\n(Quoted after: Klemperer, Victor: \"Tageb\u00fccher 1940-41\", Berlin 1999, p. 157)\n\nThe usage of the Nazi salute seems to have been used frequently while the common people supported the government but declined when the war kept on going and made a turn for the worse. This would explain the harsher punishments for not using the Nazi salute in later stages of the war when war exhaustion was growing rampant and the Nazi leaders couldn't be sure of popular support anymore.\n\nThe Wehrmacht meanwhile didn't use the Hitler salute but rather their old military salute - until the assassination attempt of 1944, after which the Hitler salute was made mandatory for soldiers as well, apparently to ensure their loyalty to the F\u00fchrer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4lkpzg", "title": "Was it a risky choice to have Captain America punch Hitler on the cover of a comic book in 1941?", "selftext": "In [a recent article](_URL_1_), it was claimed that:\n\n > In early 1941, a significant percentage of the American population was still staunchly isolationist. Yet more Americans were pro-Axis. The Nazi Party was not the unquestionably evil cartoon villains we\u2019re familiar with today; coming out in strong opposition to them was not a given. It was a risky choice.\n\n[A question from a couple of days ago](_URL_0_) got an answer adding nuance to Americans' positions on the Axis and the war itself, but I was wondering about the other part. I'd be most interested in reactions of the time to the cover of Captain America #1 (showing Cap punching Hitler), but in general - was it seen as really edgy to use the actual Nazis as villains in American fiction before America's entry into the war, or disrespectful to depict Hitler? Did any works of American fiction outside the superhero comics genre at this time do something similar?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lkpzg/was_it_a_risky_choice_to_have_captain_america/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3o42en", "d3o51fc", "d3oz9br", "d3p8cjf"], "score": [74, 100, 14, 2], "text": ["With regard to other anti-Nazi works of fiction, The Three Stooges made a short film in 1940 called You Nazty Spy! which satirized Nazi Germany. It takes place in a fictional country called Moronika. A scene in the film shows a [flag with a swastika made of snakes over the slogan \"Moronika for Morons\"](_URL_1_).\n\nMoe played a character based on Hitler, Curly played the Goerring character, and Larry played the Goebbels character. The film ends with them being overthrown and eaten by lions. \n\n[The entire 18-minute film is on YouTube](_URL_0_).", "The 1940 movie The Great Dictator is another famous anti-Nazi piece of American entertainment.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe movie brutally mocks its faux-Hitler character, especially having him appear terrified of being overshadowed by faux-Mussolini as they try to one-up each other.\n\nThe movie also features mistreatment of Jews and culminates with a Jewish barber (also played by Chaplin) who looks like the dictator taking the dictator's place and gives a stirring speech in opposition to everything Naziism stands for.\n_URL_1_\n\nI highly recommend clicking on that link and remembering that this movie was made a year before the US went to war with Germany.", "Regarding the reception to Captain America #1 there's a [Comic Book Legends Revealed](_URL_0_) that quotes from Joe Simon's memoir, *The Comic Book Maker*:\n\n > There was a substantial population of anti-war activists in the country. \u201cAmerican Firsters\u201d and other non-interventionist groups were well-organized. Then there was the German American Bund. They were all over the place, heavily financed and effective in spewing their propaganda of hate; a fifth column of Americans following the Third Reich party line. They organized pseudo-military training camps such as \u2018Camp Siegried\u2019 in Yaphank, Long Island and held huge rallies in such places as Madison Square Garden in New York. Our irreverent treatment of their Feuhrer infuriated them. We were inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious, obscene telephone calls. The theme was \u201cdeath to the Jews.\u201d At first we were inclined to laugh off their threats, but then, people in the office reported seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building on Forty Second Street and some of the employees were fearful of leaving the office for lunch. Finally, we reported the threats to the police department. The result was a police guard on regular shifts patrolling the halls and office.\n\n > No sooner than the men in blue arrived than the woman at the telephone switchboard signaled me excitedly. \u2018There\u2019s a man on the phone says he\u2019s Mayor LaGuardia,\u2019 she stammered, \u2018He wants to speak to the editor of Captain America Comics.\u2019\n\n > I was incredulous as I picked up the phone, but there was no mistaking the shrill voice. \u2018You boys over there are doing a good job, \u2018 the voice squeaked, \u2018The City of New York will see that no harm will come to you.\u2019\n\nThere's also a story about some American Nazis rocking up to their studio and Jack Kirby personally rolling up his sleeves and heading downstairs to sort them out mentioned in Grant Morrison's *Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero* and I suspect either Simon's other memoir *My Life in Comics* or the rather splendid *Kirby: King of Comics* but I'm in the process of moving house and they're all boxed up so I can't confirm which!\n\n", "There are a couple things at play here. While Americans were certainly isolationist, there was a large anti-Nazi feeling in the country. That anti-Nazi feeling was enough to create a market for Captain America and other heroes who fought against Nazis (or bad guys who looked a whole lot like Nazis). That same feeling was enough to empower FDR to do everything to oppose the Axis, but take the country to war (i.e. Lend/Lease, Convoying, ect). In the sense that a market definitely existed for this material (and indeed Cap was not the first superhero to fight Nazis), the choice was not risky. \n\nIt's also worth noting that while Captain America's debut seems impressive in retrospect (particularly after three recent great movies), at the time of his creation he was just one of literally hundreds of characters being churned out in the Golden Age of comics rush to attempt to echo the success of Superman. If the Cap magazine had failed, the writers and artists could've just come out with a different character and today we might go and see movies about [Stardust the Super-Wizard](_URL_0_).\n\nThere might have been a way in which it was rather risky though. The writers of Captain America (like the writers of virtually every comic book in the Golden and Silver Ages of comics) were Jewish. In so blatantly attacking Nazism, there might have been the fear of blow back on them or on other Jews. Either in the form of business damage of physical threats. Aside from these comics being banned in Germany, I don't know that there was any other blowback.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l5i7l/what_were_attitudes_in_the_us_towards_wwii_and/", "http://panels.net/2016/05/26/on-steve-rogers-1-antisemitism-and-publicity-stunts/"], "answers_urls": [["https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAIR0i4X1g", "http://asokan63.blogspot.com/2012/12/morons-in-moronika.html?m=1"], ["http://i.imgur.com/yVYnbqx.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKm_wA-WdI4"], ["http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/03/08/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-93/"], ["http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Stardust"]]}
{"q_id": "fwhegl", "title": "Have any British Prime Ministers ever died while in office? And what were the ramifications?", "selftext": "With current PM Boris Johnson being admitted into intensive care this question has to have crossed people\u2019s minds. Has any Prime Minister ever died? What was the fallout?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fwhegl/have_any_british_prime_ministers_ever_died_while/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fmoqxd4", "fmp7807"], "score": [115, 3], "text": ["(1/4)\n\nThe answer to this question - *especially* if you want to look for lessons about what this might mean in 2020 if, God forbid, the worst happens to Mr Johnson - is somewhat complicated by the fact it depends on what you mean by the term 'Prime Minister'. This might sound nitpicky, but it really is quite important for understanding why what has the UK on edge today is not necessarily comparable to the past.\n\nFirst and foremost it's important to understand how a Prime Minister comes to take office. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is not and has never been elected and can serve an unlimited number of terms with no set length. The power to appoint a Prime Minister lies exclusively with the King or Queen of the day and upon appointment, they are said to serve at *His or Her Majesty's pleasure*, meaning they can continue in office indefinitely. The Monarch in theory is entitled to appoint literally anyone as Prime Minister at any time, or to dismiss a current Prime Minister at any time. In practice however, the growth of the power of Parliament - with the House of Commons made up of several hundred directly elected Members of Parliament representing different parts of the British nation - means that any appointment the Monarch makes must be able to *command the confidence of the House of Commons*. This means that the Prime Minister must be someone the Monarch is confident could win the support of an overall majority (50% + 1) of MPs if the Commons was asked to vote on whether or not they have confidence in the Government they lead. There is no *requirement* for a vote to be held to confirm a Prime Minister, although in practice until very recently, UK Governments and Prime Ministers submitted themselves twice yearly to votes to determine if they had Parliament's support (the Queen's speech - a statement of the government's plan for the upcoming year year - and the annual Budget; until a legal change in the last decade, a defeat on either was taken to be a rejection of the Government).\n\nSince 1716, elections to the House of Commons have had to be held on a regular basis rather than when the Monarch or the Government of the day deemed them necessary; this was initially every 7 years until 1911, when the limit was shortened to every 5 years. Until 2011 the Prime Minister had the power to call an early general election at will and the frequent use of this power, combined with some periods of political instability, has meant that the UK historically votes every 4 years for Members of Parliament. Because the selection of the Prime Minister depends on who has the support of a majority of MPs political parties in the UK choose leaders who sit in the House of Commons years in advance of the election, and these leaders are almost always (with only some very rare exceptions in the last century) the party's informal candidate for Prime Minister. After a general election's result is known, the Prime Minister visits the Monarch and advises the Monarch as to whether or not they believe they can still form a government. If the Prime Minister says that they can, then they carry on as if nothing had changed unless they are challenged by the House of Commons; if they say that they cannot, then they are expected to nominate a candidate to succeed them as Prime Minister who can. The UK's electoral system, which rewards large parties and severely limits the prospects of smaller ones, means elections where one political party does not have an overall majority in the House of Commons are rare. Of the 32 general elections held since 1900 only 8 have failed to produce an overall majority in Parliament for one party (Jan  &  Dec 1910; 1923; 1929; 1951; Feb 1974; 2010 and 2017 - in 1951 the Conservatives failed to win a majority but did win a majority with their pre-election coalition partner the Liberal National Party).\n\nAs such, the normal transfer of power between Prime Ministers occurs either because a Prime Minister has resigned voluntarily (in which case he or she simply tells the Monarch who their party's next choice for PM is, as David Cameron and Theresa May both did after resigning in the last few years) or because a general election has occurred and their party has lost. The latter last happened neatly in 1997, when the outgoing Conservative PM John Major went to the Queen and asked her to invite the Labour leader Tony Blair to form a government after Labour won a landslide at the previous day's general election. In the event that the balance of power in the House of Commons is unclear prior to a change in the law in 2011 the Prime Minister of the day was *always* in modern history, by virtue of being the first to see the Monarch, the first person given a chance to form a government. Thus the Commons rejecting a Prime Minister through a vote of no confidence does not automatically lead to the PM's dismissal if no other person in Parliament is capable of putting together a government to replace them and prior to that law change in 2011, if a Prime Minister lost the confidence of the House, they had the right to seek an early election instead of resigning. This last happened in 1979 when Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan lost a confidence ballot by a single vote after the Scottish National Party put forward a vote of no confidence; although minor parties have no such right in the House of Commons, this inspired Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher to bring an official motion of no confidence forward. Had Callaghan opted to resign instead Thatcher would have been invited to form a government and called the early election anyway, which she went on to win comfortably. The situation is more complicated if a Prime Minister is forced out by their own political supporters - no one can force them to resign and when she was challenged for the Tory leadership in 1990, Thatcher briefly toyed with the idea of remaining on as Prime Minister until the 1992 general election, using the threat of an early election to discourage her MPs from formally voting no confidence in her. Had she done so, this would have sparked a constitutional crisis of immense proportions as the Queen would have had to choose between doing as her Prime Minister instructed - the proper constitutional thing to do - and obeying the higher constitutional principle that, with the support of a majority of MPs, the new Tory leader should be appointed PM instead and Thatcher dismissed.\n\nThe sudden and unexpected death of a Prime Minister, then, creates a constitutional anomaly. How can the outgoing Prime Minister appoint the incoming Prime Minister if the outgoing Prime Minister has passed away suddenly and unexpectedly? There is no automatic system of succession in the United Kingdom now or ever for the Prime Minister in the same way that there is for the Monarch (contrary to popular belief the heir to the throne assumes the throne immediately upon the death of the previous Monarch in the UK; the formal accession and coronation ceremonies are just that - ceremonies). Although Prime Ministers can and have appointed deputies since the 1940s the job exists only at the gift of the Prime Minister and has no unique constitutional role; it has been vacant for years and years at a time. And I'm afraid looking to history for an answer doesn't necessarily offer us too much in the way of insight here - but it's certainly a better starting point than the blind speculation of political Twitter.\n\nThe role of Prime Minister as we understand it today is a relatively novel invention in the British constitution; there was no single point in history at which the majority of political leadership responsibility passed to the role that we now call Prime Minister, and its powers and responsibilities accrued gradually over the course of time. Until the 20th century the term 'Prime Minister' was a kind of political slang that was sometimes even used mockingly and disparagingly, rather than as an official job title. Even today the role of Prime Minister is not alone in and of itself enough to ensure the authority to lead a government - the men and women appointed Prime Minister are also simultaneously appointed to other positions. Within the UK's constitutional framework the Prime Minister is said to be *primes inter pares* in the Cabinet, meaning *first among equals*. In other words on paper, the job of the Prime Minister is to chair meetings of the most senior members of the government but in theory to have no more or less say in its final decisions than any other member of the Cabinet. In practice modern Prime Ministers derive their unique status as leaders from two facts: they are the duly elected leader of their political party (which in most years will have an absolute majority of MPs in Parliament), and they have the unique power of being able to appoint or dismiss other members of the Cabinet.", "Follow up question: I've done plenty of recreational research into American continuity of government operations, and its evolution, esp. with the development of nuclear weapons and their c2 functions. That structure parlayed itself well when Reagan was incapacitated, Bush jr was away from a secure command and control point et cetera. Does the UK have that same kind of institutional knowledge and framework to fall back on?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7wq141", "title": "Why was the US west coast so culturally diverse (pre-1492)?", "selftext": "I came across this image mapping Indigenous American languages:\n_URL_0_\nand the west coast just seems kind of crazy. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wq141/why_was_the_us_west_coast_so_culturally_diverse/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du2l8pf", "du44f1p"], "score": [15, 3], "text": ["This is a very interesting question. Being from California, I was always curious about the linguistic diversity of the indigenous population in California prior to colonization. However, I think you\u2019ll get a more thorough and accurate answer from r/AskAnthropology or r/Linguistics. ", "How accurate is the map in the first place? Where did the author of the map get the info from? Were Spanish explorers documenting languages the same way as French or English explorers? Ie, is the baseline the same? How homogenous are the largest groups and how similar were the smaller groups?\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Langs_N.Amer.png"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1m84k4", "title": "Is it true that fan violence is more common in European sports than in American sports because traditionally in Europe, fanbases were based around deep political, religious and ethnic divisions? (xpost from /r/asksocialscience)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m84k4/is_it_true_that_fan_violence_is_more_common_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc6rjq1", "cc6u0u4", "cc6ucgg"], "score": [9, 5, 6], "text": ["I don't have any insight into the truth of your statement. But I can compare american to german sports.\n\nAmerican clubs are more or less companies, that play a sport as their business. They are owned by private equity, usually not the public (except for the packers).\n\nI will elaborate on the difference to german clubs, because I am from there, but this applies to most european clubs. Unlike in America clubs are public entities. If a group of people wants to form a club they have to apply to a register and tell which public benefit they will bring to the community (for example exercise for the people in a certain area, or a choir for a church, works for every kind of club). Every german proffesional sports club has started out that way. They are always democratically ruled by their members and pursue their goals. Of course this has changed a lot. German football clubs nowadays often separate their proffesional sector from the public one in a company. (but that company is still owned by the club it originated from, the company provides flexibility). Often the soccer branch of a club gets separated and all the other sports (table tennis, volleyball etc.) remain in the public branch of the club.\n\nSo the origin of any german club is a group of members with a common goal. Of course these groups are more likely to form rivalries to other groups. Additionally: since the involvement with the club is bigger (as a member you have a vote) the empathy is likely to be bigger than to a club owned by some millionaire(billionaire) that happens to play in your city. (keep in mind: not every fan is also a member, but many are. Bayern Munich as the biggest german club has 125000 members, but millions of fans)\n\nAs an example of two such clubs with a big rivalry: Schalke and Dortmund, two german soccer clubs, cities 25 miles apart: They originated from coal miners sports clubs. Being so close their mines were always in competition to each other. Since these provided more or less the only jobs for the community the match on the field was a subsidiary economical fight. Nowadays the mines are closed, but the rivalry was inherited.\n\nTo get back to your question. If the violence is actually more common these points might give you a hint why.\n\nP.S: Another possible reason: The licensing system of your proffessional leagues: Your clubs need licences to play in the big leagues, this results that you usually don't have a \"Derby\", because clubs are distributed all over the country. Two clubs in close proximity playing against each other (only New York has two NFL teams) doesn't happen very often. European leagues have that regularly. The english premier league has had up to 7 clubs from London. This results in a derby of the posh club from one part of town against the working class club of another giving the match a social component.\n\nEdit: clarification, editing mistake.", "I think I can bring my personal experience on the subject.\n\nThe football (soccer) in Europe is not only a sport but a cultural thing. It used to be the sport of the people, with dirt cheap tickets (no longer true) and fans that supported their local team for life.\n\nNow there was originally two big football cultures : the British one and the Italian one.\n\nThe British one knew violence very soon (think nineteenth century soon), especially in teams very close from each other geographically, it then faded and things went smoother until the 60's and the rising influence of youth movements such as the skinheads (not necessarily nazis, the first skinheads were generally friends with the immigrated populations they shared their popular districts with and listened to reggae/ska) or the teddy boys. Violence in football was strictly a mirror of violence everywhere else, these youths were poor, idle and had no hope of a better future. It was encouraged by the fact police forces were not really trained to face such big fights sometimes involving 200 people and more. Rivalries came back between teams that were close from each other, often along with stereotypes linked to a team or another (Tottenham = jews, Chelsea = rich boys, Leeds = Pakistanese etc.). Violence was a show of strengh, the group was the members' families and support. Some hools sometimes did not even bother showing to the game, the only game that counted for them was before or after the game and happened in the streets.\n\nThe Italian culture was about strictly organized \"Ultras\" groups. They considered themselves the \"elite\" fans of their team. They have well defined leaders, and are financially autonomous gaining money from membership cards and by selling merchandising with the colours and logos of the group (some ultras groups sell more of their own merchandising than the team they represent). This money was mainly used to organize huge shows at the beginning of the game called \"tifos\". These tifos are designed, created, handcrafted and organized by the ultra group. \n\n[Dortmund, Germany](_URL_8_)\n\n[Paris, France](_URL_5_)\n\n[St Etienne, France](_URL_4_)\n\n[Fenerbahce, Turkey](_URL_0_)\n\n[Varsaw, Poland](_URL_6_) (a good example of how provocative tifos can be, this tifo has been made specifically to provoke the Hapoel Tel Aviv -an Israeli team- ultras)\n\n[Unknown](_URL_11_)\n\n[Unknown, Turkey](_URL_10_) (a tifo taunting the ban on pyrotechnics in stadiums)\n\n[Nicosia, Greece] (_URL_1_)(good example of politics getting involved in some groups)\n\nBordeaux, France [wip 1](_URL_9_) [wip 2](_URL_7_) [wip 3](_URL_2_) [Final product](_URL_3_) creation time : 3 weeks, total cost : about 20 000 \u20ac\n\nThe quality and the size of the tifo demonstrate the power of the group and assure them the respect of other groups. As you can guess when it comes to displays of power and gaining respect, violence is never far either. Very soon violence became a great way to gain respect as well by basically showing the other group you had more balls. Some groups were therefore rivals, some groups were friends, some groups were neutral to each other. \n\nThe biggest rivalries as usual was among teams close from each other and sometimes with politics added to it. AC Roma (left wing antifascist liberals) vs Lazio Roma (right wing fascists), Milano AC vs Inter Milano etc...\n\nThe two cultures travelled a bit, both can be found everywhere in Europe, you have hooligans in France (Paris have the meanest reputation, Lyon are quite respected as well) as well as Ultra groups (Magic Fans of St Etienne, Bad Gones of Lyon etc...). The same goes in Germany, Poland, Greece, Russia etc... It sometimes even exported outside of Europe, I know Turkey have two well respected Ultras groups, as well as in Argentina. \n\nIn most European countries, hooligan groups are strictly prohibited and actively hunted by the police meaning they are becoming rare and or better at hiding themselves. Ultras groups are tolerated as long as they behave which they partly do (they generally try to keep the violence far from the police eyes).  \n\nConcerning the comparison with North American sports, I am far from a specialist of US sports but coming from this football culture, they seem to have no soul and just be about money and show business, with strippers on the pitch doing what should be the fans' job of warming up the stadium and putting up a huge show and people just sitting and enjoying the show like they are at the theater. Even without violence everytime I went to the stadium, the next day I had no voice. I was spending every 90 minutes of the game singing and cheering and clapping, I had litterally no time for pop corn and no one was sitting on his seat or complaining. I think the difference on violence mainly comes from that, money show business has taken the place of true popular fervor. It is something that is currently happening in Europe as well. \n\nWhen you go to a game expecting to be spectator of a show, chances are you are not going to fight over it, just like you rarely see pro-rebel and pro-empire Star Wars fans fighting it out in the middle of the movie theatre because Vader hacked at Skywalker while he was on the ground which is a fucking coward move. European fans consider themselves as actors of the game and personnally spend a lot of time, energy and money pushing their team. They are therefore much much more emotionnally involved I think.\n\nA good book I could advise is G\u00e9n\u00e9ration Supporters by Philippe Broussard which is often considered as a very good reference in the French ultra movement, unfortunatly it only exists in French as far as I know. \n\nFootball Factory (the book, the movie is good but the book is better) is pretty good on the Hooligan movement.\n\nEdit : added a few exemples of tifo pictures\n", "A reminder to those coming to this thread: We are interested in in-depth, factual and historical answers to the question, not personal theories, speculation, guesses, anecdotes, or a list you found on Wikipedia that's semi-related. Thank you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://dc.img.v4.skyrock.net/0140/77010140/pics/3053965949_1_9_QSud2YNC.jpg", "http://analoguefootball.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/tumblr_m1jqkswsez1rs4qqbo1_1280.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Tifo7.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2-ultramarines-25ans-640x349.jpg", "https://sphotos-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/p480x480/551296_445287722213100_254491470_n.jpg", "http://www.psgclan.com/site/images/tifos/02-03_PSG-om_coupe%28kob%29.jpg", "http://legionisci.com/zdjecia/12hapoel1_dzihadH_d.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/702553_10151262842242074_352767753_n.jpg", "http://www.iamsport.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Tifo-Dortmund.jpg", "http://bastidebrazzablog.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Tifo3.jpg", "http://www.tuxboard.com/photos/2012/03/Troll-Face-Probleme-Tifo-640x360.jpg", "http://www.topito.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tifo_etonnant_007.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "a1tcjs", "title": "[META] Loaded questions, leading questions, and false premises.", "selftext": "So many questions asked everyday include unnecessary preamble statements or premises, many of which are non-expert opinion (or outright false) but presented as historical fact (and therefore read by vast numbers of people as historical fact). In the vast majority of cases these questions do not actually rely on the premise as written, and could be trivially rephrased to be questions alone rather than statements with an arising question.\n\nThe issue I have with these types of questions is:\n\n* The premise is very often wrong, malformed, or prejudiced. Often if a user could authoritatively establish the premise to a certainty, they could answer the question themselves.\n\n* The premise *may* be rebutted, but only if the question receives an answer.\n\n* False information in the question (ie. the title) will be read by far more users than the answer itself.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a1tcjs/meta_loaded_questions_leading_questions_and_false/", "answers": {"a_id": ["easis4e", "easyjae", "eatag11", "eatf5zd"], "score": [58, 11, 5, 2], "text": ["One of the basic principles we have here is that we don't expect people asking a question to know the answer to the question; that seems pretty basic to a question-and-answer subreddit. [There are no stupid questions.](_URL_2_)\n\nThat also implies that people may have the wrong idea about historical things when they ask a question. It comes with the territory.\n\nOne thing that a lot of our readers and subscribers don't seem to realize is that a human moderator reads *every question asked here* and decides whether to approve or remove them. \n\nWe already have a rule against [loaded questions and soapboxing](_URL_1_.), and while approving questions can often be a judgment call, it's pretty trivial to call on some other mods to check on things. We *already* remove questions that are soapboxing, in poor taste, etc., but it's not practicable to remove every question that might contain a wrong premise, and comprehensive answers that we allow to stand will correct any false premises. \n\nIf you see a question that you think should be removed, [hit the report button](_URL_0_) and it will tell us to take another look at it. ", "Overall I don't think there is a reasonable way to improve the current policy by establishing stricter requirements for the \"quality\" of a question. OPs can in all fairness be just wrong on something - and especially on somewhat delicate topics, this can very well derive from their specific education.\n\nI am certain that I have misconceptions on American history that may rise more than a few eyebrows - and having thought a few classes around here, I have seen kids holding thoughts that border on downright offensive. And I assure you most questions centered around Italian history do contain a few flawed assumptions. But as pointed out by /u/jschooltiger, that's the nature of questions. Most people ask questions about things they don't understand; and that may include also those who have a generally poor understanding of history and historiography (and who have the same right to ask a question regardless, and possibly to receive a good one). \n\nI fear that forcing requirements on the questions - beyond those basic ones that already exist - would either discourage those naive but genuine questions. Or end up producing more elaborate and well argumented questions, that might still be substantially wrong while appearing at first glance better quality (which may make the problem worse rather than improve the situation).\n\n\nOutside of that, I don't think OP's concern to be entirely misplaced. There is an intrinsic problem with (a certain type of) questions: that the question itself implies an alternative, the existence of a debate. Is this position right, or is the other one? What is the consensus on the issue? But while at times there is in fact a true and substantial disagreement, or a pattern of different interpretations; there are also those when no genuine alternative exist.\n\nExcept that, once the question is asked, answering the question becomes then also a matter of explaining and clarifying that there is in fact no question, that one alternative is so \"out there\" that it does not really require a historian's answer. If you don't, who is to say that one reader may not take your answer as implicit confirmation that the debate exists and that there are indeed two legitimate points of view on the matter, even if this answer claims one to be wrong...\n\n\nA couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a question that I had to re-read a dozen times to understand it. It seemed incredible to me - but I have no evidence that everyone who read it felt the same. And in answering I would have felt compelled to explain as thoroughly as possible why that one wasn't a \"true question\". To clarify that point, I'll paraphrase it into something ahistorical that hopefully should create the same reaction:\n\n >  Why do people say that Michael Jordan never played for the Utah Jazz, if he was Scottie Pippen's team mate?\n\n\nHow many of these questions are needed before someone begins questioning if perhaps Pippen played for the Utah Jazz? Or at least to believe this is not after all such a clear cut issue. Maybe you don't know what I am talking about, and feel a need to google Pippen's career or to look for sources explaining why Pippen didn't play for the Jazz. I mean, if the question is fair...", "I don't know what prompted this discussion but the \"Why is Freud so popular today?\" question I saw this morning made me reflect on the policy of this sub.\n\nWho says Freud is popular? What is the basis of this affirmation? The premise of the question implies that Freud is popular, instead of letting historians debate if Freud is or not popular. To me, this question is in the same category then the \"Nixon was the worst President of all time. Why isn't Obama considered the worst?\" given as an exemple of a loaded question. I don't think it should have gone through in this form.\n\nIMHO, it should have been refused with the proposition of reposting it in the \"Is Freud still a relevant source in the field of psychology?\" or \"Do the theories put foward by Freud still stand the scientific review today?\" or, at least, \"Is Freud a popular figure in today's world and does his theories stand the test of time and science?\"\n\nI just wanted to share my observation, cause it seemed necessary to find what prompted this discussion to discuss it. I thought that sharing my experience that fited with the discussion could help. Remove if not pertinent.", "I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with false premises. The point of this sub is that the person asking the question wants to be educated about a topic. Frankly, it's kind of insulting to the intelligence of readers to assume they aren't clever enough to think that maybe the question itself could contain misinformation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/442wbx/rules_roundtable_4_raskhistorians_wants_you_to/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22soapboxing.22_or_loaded_questions", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8r50yv/meta_the_answers_on_ask_historians_are_often/e0oiyw8/"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bx7bg8", "title": "Why is the Bible Belt like this?", "selftext": "I am not American and i recently grew interested in the Bible Belt.\n\nso i read this, \"Many commentators have pointed out that while religious observance in the Bible Belt is high, it is a region of a variety of social issues. Educational attainment and college graduation rates in the Bible Belt are among the lowest in the United States. Cardiovascular and heart disease, obesity, homicide, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections are among the highest rates in the nation.\u00a0\"\n\n([_URL_0_](_URL_0_))\n\n & #x200B;\n\nCan anyone explain this to me? Please excuse my ignorance lol.\n\nThank you.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: I first posted it here but later realized that the post would be better posted on r/AskAnAmerican. So i reposted it, please refer to:\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_1_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bx7bg8/why_is_the_bible_belt_like_this/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqcbizp"], "score": [3], "text": ["You might be interested in a now-anonymous answer to [this question in the FAQ.](_URL_0_)  /u/jschooltiger adds some nuance further down in the thread."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.thoughtco.com/the-bible-belt-1434529", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/bxj1b9/why_is_the_bible_belt_like_this_low_education/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/bxj1b9/why\\_is\\_the\\_bible\\_belt\\_like\\_this\\_low\\_education/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dx803/how_did_the_bible_belt_become_the_bible_belt/cju66gy/"]]}
{"q_id": "5a8wv1", "title": "Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina paints rural Russian estates as lands of gaiety and lightheartedness in comparison to a drab urban lifestyle, and extends this dichotomy to both the peasants and the aristocracy. How accurate of a view is this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5a8wv1/leo_tolstoys_novel_anna_karenina_paints_rural/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9f1868", "d9fmaz4"], "score": [41, 6], "text": ["But does it really? I've just started the second volume of the book and the rural peoples are frequently described as ignorant, resistant to change, and generally not equipped to handle even the most basic of tasks that will better their futures. In that sense, ignorance is bliss as the peasant class is both unwilling and incapable of understanding urban ideologies exemplified through Levin's painstakingly slow reforms. \n\nVladimir Lenin seems to agree with this, at least in part. The Lenin Anthology edited by Robert Tucker includes Lenin's 'The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats.' Lenin encourages the educated urban proletariat to educate the rural peasants as they were poorly educated and thus easily exploited by the land owners. \n\nI agree that Tolstoy tells of rural lands of gaiety, but only in the sense of extreme ignorance on the part of the peasants. The passage where Levin goes to work the fields with the peasants comes to mind as the most obvious example (the happiness from hard labor, the songs among the farmers, etc)\n\nI can't give any sources on the noble class besides the general assumption from the above that rural life was a place of refuge for the elites as it was away from the intrigue of St Petersburg and Moscow and sustained on the backs of cheap and ignorant labor.", "Not a history guy, but a literature one. One thing that should be kept in mind with Anna Karenina is that the social dichotomy you speak of was put there as a commentary on the social upheaval of the time, so it is likely exaggerated, but not wholly unrealistic. He is partially showing this conflict between the old Russian paternal patriarchy and the liberal, \"libre panseur,\" ideas coming in from the West so he can in the end say that western ideas won't really work in Russia.\n\nHe is generally regarded as a realist in terms of setting so he uses real historical issues of the time as backdrop, like the Emancipation Reform of 1861 and the development of the Zemstvo. Lenin may have been able to grab on to many themes inside the novel as even though Levin tries to help the lower class, he begins to realize it cannot be achieved using western ideology--thus the need for new, non-western ideas. \n\nSo basically, from a literary stand point Tolstoy IS reflecting the times he writes about, but from a historical one it must be remembered that this is largely commentary."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1tl45s", "title": "In Napoleon's armies, how was it determined whether a soldier would serve in artillery, cavalry, line infantry, skirmishers, or etc.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tl45s/in_napoleons_armies_how_was_it_determined_whether/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce92hmw", "ce94fa3", "ce96ri8"], "score": [145, 13, 11], "text": ["I couldn't find out how the different arms received men (although officers would have graduated into those arms) but I can talk about grenadiers, regular line infantry, and skirmishers.\n\nWithin a Napoleonic Line battalion, there are three parts, a company of grenadiers, four to six companies of standard line, and one company of voltigeurs.\n\nA grenadier is a large and imposing man with a bear skin cap that added to his height. These were the elite of the infantry battalion, known for their skill with a bayonet on top of their height. So to gain entry to this, first you needed to be tall enough, being at least five foot six inches in contemporary Imperial measurement. These are the tallest men, so while five six seems small to us, it was tall due to the dietary limitations.\n\nFrom this, there was standard line, which would fill the gap of the height measurement. Here, a soldier needed to be between five foot six and five foot two inches. They were the standard infantryman that would be of no uniqueness.\n\nNext came the voltigeurs, or skirmishers. Generally, light infantry and skirmishers would be assigned the smallest men since they needed to be the most agile and quick thinking. The reason for this was that they would often fight in open order, requiring a bit more thought than the standard line soldier. So, soldiers that were assigned here would normally be between four foot ten inches to five foot two inches.\n\nThere's height limitations to the cavalry as well but I don't have a good source for that at the moment.", "I'll add a little more just in case you wanted to know more in depth on how a French grenadier was selected.\n\nEvery year each line company captains would select a few men they deemed worth of being a grenadier.  These men would be needed to fit the height requirements and have at least 4 years service with 2 campaigns.  They would be reviewed by the grenadier company's officers and NCOs.  The grenadier captain would select the men he thought suitable and would give their names to the commander of their demi-brigade/regiment who would ultimately decide.  New regiments/battalions did not have grenadier companies since none of their men have the required service records.", "Cavalry and Infantry were assigned as needed. Elzear Blaze, for example, was initially selected to serve in the cavalry as a cadet but was then admitted to the Fontainebleau as an officer-cadet of the infantry. Jean Roche Coignet was a horse trainer of vast exerpience but served in Napoleon's Imperial Guard as a grenadier. \n\nArtillery and Engineers were chosen having undergone some sort of examination. The journals of Louis-Fran\u00e7ois Lejeune had him start out as a student in an Art school in Paris, enrol himself as an infantrymen then getting accepted into the Engineers as a staff officer attached to Berthier's command. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3p85vy", "title": "We often hear about CIA programs that have failed or suffered from unintended consequences. What are some examples of the CIA achieving extraordinary success, whether planned or not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3p85vy/we_often_hear_about_cia_programs_that_have_failed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw4340i", "cw43bty", "cw43ei7"], "score": [6, 6, 3], "text": ["While this is a very important question a lot of the problem is if a CIA operation is truly successful the public never knows the events that occurred were because of a CIA operation. The CIA are essentially spies, if their work is public they are doing their jobs wrong. ", "Many programs are considered still classified. However one that is published by the CIA is Operation Gold (=Stopwatch in the UK) , which was a \"co-production\" so to speak with the British SIS, the CIA and the NSA involved. The British and Americans had intercept stations in Berlin such as [Teufelsberg](_URL_0_), but as the DDR repaired its infrastructure, military communications moved from radio to landlines. \n\nThe British had already dug a tunnel in Vienna to tap the Soviets and the US wanted them to do the same in Berlin. The project ran from 1955 through to 1956 collecting an immense amount of data until it was finally compromised by the Soviet mole in SIS, George Blake.\n\nYou can get some basics [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_2_). There are extensive links to more documents that have been declassified. The project is unusual because the Soviets discovered it after a while so a lot of the story became public knowledge very quickly. The details took rather longer though.\n\nOne of the interesting points is that a while previously, it had been discovered that encrypted teletype transmissions would often have a little noise from the plain text. However, you needed to be close to the source as the signal is weak.", "A lot of their \"successes\" are also some of America's darkest chapters --- See: Iran, Central America, etc.\n-Afghanistan in the 1980s - kept America out of a protracted land battle in Central Asia (because you know that's an awful idea)\n-Expressionism as an art movement in the 1950s-60s \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://dasalte.ccc.de/teufelsberg/", "https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/the-berlin-tunnel-exposed.html", "https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/on-the-front-lines-of-the-cold-war-documents-on-the-intelligence-war-in-berlin-1946-to-1961/art-7.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "7qjcpa", "title": "Was the Han Dynasty of China truly more technologically advanced than Rome at the same time (2nd century AD/CE)", "selftext": "I am by no means an expert when it comes to Chinese and Roman history, but I've always been told that Han-era China was more advanced scientifically than Imperial Rome and it honestly seems to be the opposite. Rome could produce very high-quality glass, had cranes, concrete, generally slightly more advanced hydraulic engineering, much higher-quality steel, Polyboloi (repeating Scorpions) and even knowledge of the steam engine (though they did nothing with it). When people discuss China under the Han Dynasty's rule the main technological feats they mention are silk (which the Romans simply couldn't produce due the lack of silk worms where they lived), windmills and gunpowder (2 things which were only discovered much later, with Rome actually having watermills (though not windmills) before the Chinese), the first seismograph, farming technology, kites and the Chu-Ko-Nu (repeating crossbow). There are of course many other technologies which the Hans had but the Romans didn't but those are the main ones mentioned. But whilst inventing things such as the first seismograph and repeating crossbows is very advanced, it really seems to me that the Romans were more advanced in a purely technological sense, and that many people appear to misinterpret these questions and describe the Han Dynasty as being more advanced because they invented more during their rule whereas the Romans invented very little themselves but adopted technologies from other ancient civilisations around them.\n\nSo, in absolute, which civilisation was more advanced purely technologically and scientifically (or were they roughly equal but developed in different ways)?    \n\nEDIT: neither the Romans nor the Han Chinese had windmills.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7qjcpa/was_the_han_dynasty_of_china_truly_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dspwiaa", "dsqdxon", "dsrw6s6"], "score": [136, 50, 5], "text": [" > much higher-quality steel\n\nQuite the opposite, actually--it is pretty unlikely that the Romans had any real consistent production of artificial steel, while the Han Dynasty not only did but also had cast iron, which would not become available in the west until the early modern period. But generally trying to put two sets of tally marks for \"technology\" against each other will not yield a particularly informative comparison.\n\nThere is a generally plausible argument that the Roman empire was significantly wealthier than the Han empire and had a more complex economy, but I generally feel that until much more archaeological work is done in China that judgement will be a touch dubious. A lot of the transformation of understanding of the Roman economy very the past fifty odd years has been driven by extensive archaeological work, while the archaeology of China is still relatively undeveloped and heavily focused on tombs.\n\nEdit: forgot the source, but Schiedel et al *Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires* is an excellent work that deals with this topic.", "First off, I'll dog pile on here a bit and challenge the idea that you can directly compare the level of \"scientific advancement\" in two complex, wealthy societies before the advent of anything approaching actual science.  Historians really don't like the idea of \"technology\" as a list of inventions that a civilization or proto-state slowly advances along.  It really doesn't work that way.  Much of what you might consider \"technology\" either isn't practically useful in any way to the general society (kites, roman steam engines), or is more an expression of available manpower and resources than anything scientific.\n\nSecond, I would like to push back strongly on the idea that Romans had more advanced hydraulic engineering than the Chinese.  I'm not as familiar with most of your other examples, but China unquestionably had the most sophisticated understanding and practical implementation of large scale hydraulic engineering of any pre-modern area other than possibly parts of the Netherlands.\n\nChina's systems of irrigation, canals, flooding controls, sea walls/reclaimed land, locks, levees, water pumps, polders, were more sophisticated and organized than any Roman systems.  This led to a density of agricultural production and a level of direct state control that was not possible in Rome.  \n\nLook at things like the 246 BCE Zheng Guo canal.  A massive feat of organized civil engineering, it allowed deliberate controlled flooding of farmland with silt-rich, fertilizing water.  It also facilitated grain transport and checked soil salinity.  This was not just a big ditch - the canal was the product of a very sophisticated understanding of hydrology and relied on a number of technologies.  From the rock baskets used to divert water, to roofed areas that protected the canal from gully runoff, to the surveying techniques used, to grilles used to block debris but not water from entering, to the understanding of large scale hydrology and so on. \n\nThe Romans had nothing of this scale and sophistication - their largest canals were usually just a few miles long and were usually just used to drain an estuary or marsh or for transport.  It's not even the largest ancient Chinese canal - it's dwarfed by the monumental Grand Canal and its precursors.\n\nStuff like that is harder to see as \"technology\" than a useless toy like a proto-steam engine, or in the case of hydraulic engineering something like a complicated decorative fountain.  But I don't think that's a particularly useful way of looking at the subject.  \n\nIt's also very important to point out that none of what I said really points to Roman technology being more or less advanced than Chinese, even in the area of hydraulic engineering.  Roman technology met Roman needs quite well.  Chinese technology met Chinese needs.  Because the goals and challenges were not the same, it's very difficult to look at them from the perspective of one \"winning\" a tech race.  Rome did not have the need to connect a series of east to west rivers in a north to south empire the way the Chinese did, nor did their tributary/vassalage/trade system of imperial control immediately reward the intensification of agriculture in the way the more centrally controlled tax based Chinese system did. \n\nMost of this is drawn from *Retreat of the Elephants: an Environmental History of China* by Mark Elvin.  Some comparisons are drawns from *Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires* By Walter Scheidel.", " > When people discuss China under the Han Dynasty's rule the main technological feats they mention are [...] windmills and gunpowder (2 things which were only discovered much later, with Rome actually having very primitive windmills before the Chinese)\n\nAlthough I'm not a historian, I do work as a miller on a historic windmill and have delved quite deep into the history of (wind)mills. What you're writing here is a bit misleading and perhaps only half-true at best.\n\nAlthough China is sometimes credited with the invention of the windmill, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support this claim.\nThe earliest mention of a windmill that we know of dates back to the 7th century in Persia, although the authenticity is being questioned because no documents from that age survive. The first certain mention dates to the 10th century in Persia, only about 100 years before the first certain mills in western Europe. [These mills had a vertical wind shaft and worked by sheltering one half of the rotor from the wind.](_URL_7_)\n\nFrom there the vertical windmill likely spread to India and China, where it is mentioned in the 13th century AD. These Chinese windmills were an evolution of the Persian design and didn't require a windshield. [These so-called panemone windmills were used to irrigate ricefields.](_URL_2_)\n[Picture of a reconstruction](_URL_3_)\n\nEurope however is a different matter. Water power has been used since antiquity to drive [small mills with a horizontal water wheel.](_URL_1_)\n\nIn the first century BC the [vertical watermill](_URL_5_) appeared. This type was described in detail by Roman engineer Vitruvius in 20 BC, who noted its angular transmission to drive the stones: revolutionary at the time and vital to the later windmill. Where the horizontal mill was limited to fast currents, this mill could work in slow rivers and had the potential to provide more power.\n\nBut after Vitruvius, despite its clear superiority to the horizontal mill, the vertical watermill seems to be forgotten. A reason for this could be the ample availability of slave labor for manual mills. The mill was again mentioned in the 5th century when slavery was abolished, after that there was a long silence in the dark ages. The watermills that were described during the dark ages were of such low yield they could only be of the horizontal type. \n\nThe vertical watermill reappeared in the 9th century in Flanders and from there spread rapidly over western Europe. Around the 11th century nearly all available power from streams and rivers was used for watermills in flat area's so other sources of power were sought.\n\nThis logically resulted in the first windmills, which are somewhat of a mystery. Depending on what historian you believe it is apparently invented somewhere in Flanders, Coastal France or England. The first hard textual evidence we have of windmills date from 1180 in Normandy, 1181 in England and 1191 in Flanders. All these texts mention already existing windmills.\n\nWhat these windmills looked like is a matter of debate. The majority of historians agree they must be primitive versions of the [post mill](_URL_8_) that still exists as a type today. The main problem with the wind in Western Europe is that it blows from different directions. The medieval solution to this was to place the mill on a central post on which it could be turned into the wind. There are few historians and millers who believe the early postmill was essentially a vertical watermill placed on a pole with the wheel swapped for sails. Although it would be a logical progression, there is no evidence for it save a [17th century sketch.](_URL_4_)\n\nOriginally these mills were quite small, and the post and crossplates were buried in the ground to prevent them from being blown over. The remains of buried crossplates have been found all over England and Flanders This subtype has the name ['sunk postmill'](_URL_6_). Over the course of centuries this mill evolved -including a few critical changes improving its stability- into the [full scale postmill](_URL_0_) in the mid-15th century that is completely above the ground. As a miller I'm still impressed with the amount of craftsmanship people had to build such a structure. Despite its rickety appearance, this final form of postmill is actually very stable. Many of them have survived for over 400 years.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/9lbuS4h.png", "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2c/e8/ba/2ce8ba5b898a3f7ccb7f4241393f3250.jpg", "http://kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Pic-3-Chinese-Windmill-1030x764.jpg", "http://amc.stust.edu.tw/Sysid/amc_en/01.png", "http://i.imgur.com/bhqy6E1.jpg", "https://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.2/361/247.A.1.B.5.1%2810%29.jpg?sequence=1", "http://i.imgur.com/G5niX9u.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WCO1l7ZJyY", "http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/1310843.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "9meps8", "title": "What is the historical event behind the Pied Piper legend?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9meps8/what_is_the_historical_event_behind_the_pied/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7eyx70"], "score": [7], "text": ["Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but FYI /u/itsallfolklore has tackled this question a couple of times\n\n* [Is there any truth behind the Pied Piper fairytale?] (_URL_0_)\n\n* [What are the origins of the Pied Piper legend?](_URL_1_) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nsto6/is_there_any_truth_behind_the_pied_piper_fairytale", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kbutq/what_are_the_origins_of_the_pied_piper_legend"]]}
{"q_id": "9m8umf", "title": "When Hippocrates said, \"Let Food Be Thy Medicine,\" there wasn't much in the way of processed foods to make unhealthy choices with, so what foods were people making themselves sick with, and what were viewed at the medicinal foods?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9m8umf/when_hippocrates_said_let_food_be_thy_medicine/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7dbi3i"], "score": [126], "text": ["Ah, I think I can help with contextualizing this some. I have to get two things out of the way that rustle my jimmies first.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFirst is the phrase \"Hippocrates said\". While there almost certainly was an historical Hippocrates, he almost certainly did not write most of -- or even all -- of the works of the Hippocratic Corpus. Modern historiography suggests that they were rather written by a group of doctors, for a variety of different audiences, over a considerable amount of times. Of course, it's impossible to write about the history of medicine without talking about the Hippocratic Corpus, so I try to use phraseology like \"the Hippocratics,\" though even this probably suggests a more coherent group than they actually were.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy second jimmy-rustler if you quote, which is apocryphal ([_URL_0_](_URL_1_)) though widespread. That being said, the sentiment is SIMILAR to what the Hippocratics meant, though they would disagree with the way the quote is used.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTo understand this quote, you need to understand the ancient conception of disease. Traditional Western medicine is similar to modern medicine in that it accepts that disease is caused by natural, and not supernatural causes (the classic example is \"On the Sacred Disease\", about epilepsy), but their understanding of its etiologies and noslogy is super bizarre to moderns. Human health was thought to be caused by the four humors -- blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances of these humors. Breakdown of the humors could be healthy (ie, concotion, or pepsis) -- such as what happens when urine is made. Or breakdown could be unhealthy (sepsis), such as digestion in the gut, though sepsis was also associated with the formation of new life. The life of a human was intimately linked with nature, so the environment dramatically affected the make up of the humors -- living on the second floor was associated with cooler air, and phlegmatics; swampy areas associated with black bile and melancholics. Temperature, of course, was essential; different humors were hot and cold. And I'm sure you can see where this is going -- different foods affected different humors. I'm certainly no specialist on this, but there's a ton in the Hippocratic Corpus if you want to do some googling, and Galen, Avicenna, and plenty of other authors have their opinions about the humoral influences of different foods.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut here is why I find the apocryphal quote disingenuous (or at least how it is used) -- the Hippocratics, Galen, and traditional Western medicine would have felt that the importance of diet was mostly to MAINTAIN a healthy balance of humors, not to treat disease. This makes sense practically too -- there are few effective treatments in this era, and prevention makes the most sense. When a human is diseased, and the humors are unbalanced, then it is the time to use medical treatments such as blood letting, or medicines (the materia media, largely herbal medications, some of which are either used today, or their derivatives are). The Hippocratics would not have felt that \"food is thy medicine\"; rather, they would have felt that food, along with the climate, elevation, and temperature, are essential to countering natural imbalances in the humors and maintaining good health. When that health broke down, however, medicine was still essential.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI recommend taking a look at Epidemics I and III -- my favorite books in the Hippocratic Corpus. They are very short, and basically the medical journal of a traveling Greek doctor. You can see many of the treatments that were offered to these patients.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo tying back to my second peeve about this quote -- it is pulled out by supporters of \"fad diets\" to suggest that radical diets are somehow an ancient idea to treat disease (which is a silly point in and of itself; there are plenty of ancient ideas for treating disease that we've rightly given up on). It annoys me as someone who loves medical history because the idea is an anachronism that ignores the humoral context, and it annoys me even more as a doctor because it dramatically overplays our understanding of nutrition, and downplays the effectiveness of medications.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI hope that adds some context!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258099432\\_Let\\_not\\_thy\\_food\\_be\\_confused\\_with\\_thy\\_medicine\\_The\\_Hippocratic\\_misquotation", "https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258099432_Let_not_thy_food_be_confused_with_thy_medicine_The_Hippocratic_misquotation"]]}
{"q_id": "1jteui", "title": "Why did St. Augustine so strongly condemn theater?", "selftext": "In his *Confessions*, Augustine repeatedly laments the time he spent going to shows as a young man, going so far as to call theaters \"filthy.\" Were plays much different in his time than they are now? \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jteui/why_did_st_augustine_so_strongly_condemn_theater/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbi7cgw", "cbi7mnl", "cbiaboy"], "score": [2, 26, 20], "text": ["I'm not sure I'm the one to give a full answer to this, but it does remind me of a later statement by 7th century Monastic leader St. John Climacus, from *The Ladder of Divine Ascent:*\n\n >  \u201cA man who has heard himself sentenced to death will not worry about the way theatres are run.\u201d\n\nIn that there is a similar negative attitude toward the theatre (the implication that a monk won't have time for such trivial matters) but the statement also hints that it's not worth \"worrying about,\" implying that others in the Christian discourse of his time *were* worrying about it. The statement could almost be read as a dig against Augustine, but Climacus was writing in Greek, and if I remember right Augustine wasn't translated into Greek til around the 14th Century.\n\nI can't speak as to what the actual theatres were like, but this does seem to me to show that there was a substantial segment of Christianity for whom the theare was to be avoided.", "Augustine saw in the audience's reception of a specific performance the proclivity for finding enjoyment or relief from apparent grief, sorrow, or anger. He viewed the audience as a somewhat passive vessel that would drink in a given performance and create a false emotion in themselves. This emotion could either be joy from sorrow, which is a perversion, or it could be a deepening of the sorrow already in the audience member.\nAugustine wrote from his personal perspective about the way in which theater affected him and, therefore, most of his viewpoints are tied into his own reactions to performance. In his Commentaries 3.2.4 he notes, \"In my wretchedness at that time I loved to feel sorrow, and I sought out opportunities for sorrow. In the false misery of another man as it was mimicked on the stage, that actor's playing pleased me most and had the strongest attraction for me which struck tears from my eyes.\"\n\nBy drinking in the false emotion of the actor, Augustine feels he is reinforcing an unhealthy desire in himself to further his own grief. \n\nThis concept of a false emotion also brings to mind the age-old dislike of the theater as an arena of counterfeit sincerity created by the mimicking of emotions. The very basic act of theatricality itself is a constant ability to lie well, to simulate. That basic falseness is what has caused theater to be considered a low art akin to prostitution at various points in history.", "/u/jud34 is right on point about what Augustine thought the effects of theatre attendance were, but there are some other reasons for him to come down fairly hard on attending the theatres which have to do with the politics of space in Roman Africa.\n\nTheatres were public works with distinctly pagan backgrounds that, alongside dramatic performances, would often be the locus of festivals to whatever local god the town owed devotion to. Granted, Augustine was not opposed to taking over pagan symbolism and pagan space, the Basilica churches were often just repurposed market spaces, but Augustine was only interested in claiming spaces that he felt could be repurposed. (He lays this out in De Doctrina Christiana book 1.) But there were certain things he saw as not worth it. Drama was one of those things. Non-Christian Rhetorical performances were another, and those happened just as, if not more often than dramatic performances. (This might be the reason why he doesn't see Aristotle's categories as useful. If he read Aristotle at all, scholars have differing opinions as to whether or not he did. Personally, I think it's doubtful.) If he his thinking of rhetorical performance then he'd much rather folks in Hippo come to *his* sermons as opposed to the rhetor down the street. There was more than a little competition there.\n\nI'd also encourage you to not look at the Confessions in the same way we might read an autobiography today. As beautiful as Augustine makes it he was not trying to simply put his experience to paper. He was trying to frame his life (parts of which were of questionable character) within his current role as Bishop of Hippo. He wrote it to be read, and so those jabs at things like womanizing, the Manicheans and the theatre all had more than a few rhetorical barbs. We are supposed to be convinced of his convictions, based on his recounting of his experience. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1glo92", "title": "What was the average citizen's stance on personal privacy during Cold War era America?", "selftext": "Were Americans concerned about wiretapping/illegal surveillance? \n\nWhat if something on the magnitude of the Snowden leak had happened during McCarthy's time, would there likely be a public outcry? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1glo92/what_was_the_average_citizens_stance_on_personal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cally1r", "calobu4"], "score": [12, 5], "text": ["The first question is rather difficult to answer simply because defining the \"average citizen\" is always a problem. If we define that using the stereotypical 1950's [sub]urban white man, then it would go something like this:\n\nAnti-communist propaganda was widespread during the early Cold War / era of McCarthyism. As such, many/most Americans thought the communist threat (subversion, espionage, etc.) was very real and that the government had to protect the American way of life using whatever means were available. The average American did not always know *exactly* what this entailed, but people knew that things like wiretapping existed and were being used. However, there was also a prevailing sense that \"yeah, government surveillance exists, but they're not surveilling *me*. And even if they are, I've got nothing to hide. I'm no *communist*!\" On the flip side, something curious happened: following the lead of some poets/literary figures of the day, there emerged a concept of \"voluntary confession\" and transparency regarding one's personal life. But this wasn't always what it seemed. Though people gave the impression that they were open books, they used this image of transparency to actually hide their personal business, if that makes sense. In other words, from the outside, they looked like good Americans with nothing to hide, but this image formed a shield behind which they were indeed hiding things. In the case of the average American, this often concerned what went on in the bedroom. Bedroom secrets were especially worth hiding due to all the \"morality\" laws on the books in those days, and the fact that being homosexual or even just having a fetish could quickly get you lumped-in with communists and other \"subversive\" groups. I recommend reading Deborah Nelson's [*Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America*](_URL_1_) to learn more about what I'm talking about here. It's a historical book with a literary focus (she's an English prof), but it's very relevant to this topic.\n\nIn those days, the major surveillance entity was the FBI, and we now know that their surveillance operation was enormous and widespread. Most people know about how J. Edgar Hoover surveilled politicians and public figures, but the fact is that the FBI surveilled millions of Americans, including average nobodys, at one time or another. To varying degrees, many average people knew that this was going on, but open dissent was not common. To speak out against these programs meant that you would at best find yourself under surveillance, and at worst find yourself in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee labelled a \"subversive member of society\" or outright communist. Deborah Nelson discusses what she calls a panic over \"the death of privacy\" that resulted from general post-war societal changes, surveillance programs, etc. I agree with her that there was certainly a general unease at the invasions of privacy. People liked their privacy, but at the same time, average Americans weren't willing to risk the consequences of speaking out against invasions of their privacy. Also, people were even less willing to speak out against things that were happening to other people. As long as they weren't on the receiving end, average Americans sometimes simply didn't care what was going on.\n\nEdit: Looking back on my comments above, it kind of sounds like I'm saying everyone and their mother knew what the FBI was doing, and that is not what I intended. True, many people knew what was going on, but a great many--probably the majority--did not. It's hard to quantify Americans' knowledge of surveillance in this time because average folks did not exactly leave us detailed accounts on the matter. People tended to mind their own business and keep their opinions on touchy subjects to themselves, at least as far as writing is concerned. Much of what is known comes from the FBI itself, especially former agents and informants. Also, by surveillance, I don't always mean wiretapping. While wiretapping was relatively widespread, much of the FBI's surveillance came in the form of old-school methods, especially a large informant network. Finally, surveillance was heavily skewed towards urban environments. The FBI did not pay much attention to Small Town America, but instead focused their efforts on large cities where actual subversive activity was likely to occur, or so the thinking went.\n\nI recommend reading Ivan Greenberg's [*Surveillance in America: Critical Analysis of the FBI, 1920 to the Present*](_URL_2_). Greenburg certainly is not a fan of the FBI or surveillance, but his bias doesn't detract from his message. Also, this book is very well-sourced and I consider it a reliable look into FBI surveillance.\n\nFor a more general look at Cold War society, I recommend reading [*American Cold War Culture*](_URL_0_), which is sort of a collection of essays. Surveillance comes up quite a bit in the book, and the chapter on mobile trailers is interesting regarding surveillance. The author argues that the proliferation of trailers in the 1950s was in part born out of a desire to escape surveillance.\n\nAs for the last question, we can only speculate, which is of course frowned upon in this subreddit. However, I think many here will agree that it is easy to surmise a likely scenario. *What follows should not be taken as fact, and it's only purpose is to humor the OP and give readers an idea of how serious the sociopolitical climate was in the McCarthy era.* In my opinion, the whistleblower would've been quickly and unmercifully discredited in every possible way. He/she would've been labelled a communist and possibly even a Russian spy, and the government would've treated him or her as a traitor who was trying to undermine not only the U.S. government, but also the American way of life. Since average Americans had no desire to share in this whistleblower's misfortune, he/she would likely not have enjoyed the support of public opinion. He/she would've rotted in jail at least until the late 60's/early 70's when public opinion turned against the government. Maybe then the whistlebower may have received clemency. Again, all that was conjecture, and you should not consider it historical fact in any way, shape, or form. Mods, please tell me if I should edit to remove this part.", "As someone who lived through the Cold War era and considered myself an average citizen, we believed that personal privacy was our right.  It's what made us different from the Russians.\n\nMost of us were completely unaware of much of what Vox_Scholasticus wrote about.  We didn't believe the FBI really bugged regular citizens.  We thought they would only do it if they had very good reasons to do it.  And if a \"regular\" citizen thought they were being watched, we assumed they were paranoid.  \n\nWe believed that some court had to give permission for wiretaps and that permission would be based on proof that there was a reason to be suspicious of the person.  When I think back now, we knew nothing about who would give that permission.\n\nWe had a naive trust in the authorities.  We also were not connected in the same way people are today.  We were very sure no one we knew was being watched because we were very certain that the government hardly knew we existed.\n\nI agree completely with Vox_Scholasticus that people would be afraid to speak out if they knew what was happening.  That would just cause them to be watched as a communist sympathizers.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=DztQtydwimMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=EcDYphlCRHwC&dq=Pursuing+Privacy+in+Cold+War+America&source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://books.google.com/books?id=TrRvqYQL_soC&dq=Surveillance+in+America&source=gbs_navlinks_s"], []]}
{"q_id": "5w40sm", "title": "Why has the Stalin regime been so obsessed with receiving testimonies (if need be, by torture) before proceeding against all the perceived spies and terrorists?", "selftext": "Why not enjail or kill them arbitrarily like it was done in the contemporary right-wing dictatorships and in the colonies? \n\nThey did certainly not have to keep up appearances for the press or the judiciary branch since both were under tight control of the selfsame security apparatus that did all of the torturing-some-folks.\n\nSo why did they go through the hassle of getting, [sometimes literally blood-stained](_URL_0_), confessions? Why not forego all these formalities or write a confession for the prisoner on your own? It should have been painfully obvious it is a witch hunt to everyone involved in this procedure and yet they did everything by the letter of the law, which happened to allow for some extended interrogation techniques due to the state of \"capitalist encirclement\".\n\nAre there any books which attempt to explain this peculiar Kafkian side of Stalin's dictatorship? Are there any philosophers attempting to draw lessons from it for the other countries with a formal rule-of-law?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5w40sm/why_has_the_stalin_regime_been_so_obsessed_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de8cnzq"], "score": [17], "text": ["This question is irritating me as I have definitely read a detailed examination of this and I can't remember where. It may have been Halfin's *Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University*. \n\nFor the Stalinist purges and, indeed arguably the revolution itself, a great deal of stock was placed in being \"right\". Seen through the mechanism of dialectic materialism, the socialist revolution is an expression of \"History with a capital aitch\". So too is the dictatorship of the proletariat and the idea of revolutionary violence. \n\nThe Soviet organs of repression needed the people to believe that they were always right. They needed to convince themselves of that. The only way to justify the trials and the purges was to convince everyone that they always had the guilty party, even if that was forced by confession. This also had the effect of encouraging the population to remain obedient and calm - as they would trust that only the guilty could be sanctioned.\n\nIt is notable from a lot of the literature, especially Orlando Figes' work, that it was common for victims of the purges to say things like \"Obviously I was innocent, but all the others were guilty\". \n\nThe contrast with, for example Nazi Germany lies at the heart of what these regimes were trying to achieve. The victims of the Holocaust were condemned for their natural traits - Jewishness, Homosexuality etc. That did not need to be proved to a court as it was so evident, though do remember the regime developed various bureaucracy for identifying victims (different grades of Jewishness, measuring physical features). The Soviet system was different as it was repressing citizens, and that needed to be justified. \n\nThere was also a form of redemptive belief in the process. By providing a confession, the prisoner was accepting that the state was right. They were even proving their loyalty by confessing to the \"alternative facts\" of revolutionary justice - see further *1984* - all part of the grand narrative and self-justification of the Stalinist state. \n\nI hope this answers your question. A lot of this is half-remembered from something I read a while ago. I'd be happy to try to clarify if you have follow up questions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/May_25_1937_Tukhachevsky_recognition.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2yibep", "title": "How accurate/biased is the intro to Argo that gives a brief history of the shah, and the revolution?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nTo me it comes off as biased in favor of the revolution.\n\nThere are tiny hints.  Occasionally you'll see a single woman in that total black covering that stands out a little from the crowd, and carries a gun or something who are fairly obviously supposed to be in some kind of security role, maybe monitoring the crowds, or driving the crowds.\n\nI'm certainly not saying that the shah was everyone's friend.  And the intro does admit that \"it descended into score settling, death squads, and chaos\"...  but, for instance, I think one of the crucial problems, is that they seem to frame the revolution itself, and it's demands as coming from \"the people\"...\n\nI'm sure there was some popular support for the overthrow of the shah.  And certainly, with supporters of the revolution, the US was not popular, but how accurate is it?  What do they get right?  What do they get wrong?\n\n*edit* It looks like the closest the concorde got to iran was bahrain.  I suppose they could relay it passing it from plane to plane, but that seems even more ridiculous.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yibep/how_accuratebiased_is_the_intro_to_argo_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp9ywh8", "cpa2wv4"], "score": [61, 24], "text": ["The revolution in Iran was genuinely popular.  It covered a cross section of the population with liberals, secularists, women, orthodox muslims and others all uniting in opposition of the shah.  In this sense we should not be mislead by the ideological narrowness of the theocracy that resulted from the revolution; while it was and is decidedly exclusive, the movement behind the revolution itself was remarkably inclusive.\n\nThis clip is a generally accurate if simple record of Iranian history.  For example, many histories (including this one) paint the shah as universally reviled, but some of his policies were well-liked.  For example, the lower class (peasants) liked his land reforms when they were unveiled.  Dislike of the shah built and built over time rather than existing at a constant high.  This clip also leaves out important antecedents to the revolution, like the Tobacco Protest, the Shah refusing to hold elections, inflation, and corruption, among other things.\n\nRegarding the US and the West, Nikki R. Keddie says \"western values did not trickle down to the popular classes any more than did significant benefits from the modernization program.  Ultimately the vast majority of Iranians became more anti-Western, more anti-Shah, and more open to oppositionists who stood against the shah, the West, and Western ideas\" (135).\n\nNikki R. Keddie, 2006, *Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution*.  New Haven: Yale University Press.", "Oh boy, overall the intro is sort of accurate in the grander scheme of things, however it has many, many points wrong, some of which I'll list below:\n\n* Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi wasn't put into power in 1953, he was king since 1941 after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran.  Iran was a Constitutional Monarchy at the time, the Shah ruled while the Prime Minister had control over Parliament and such.  The 1953 coupe resulted in the over through of Mossadegh, the Prime Minister at the time, which allowed the Shah to gain more power over time until 1979.  Big difference.\n\n* The Shahbanu, aka the Queen of Iran (wife of the Shah), is rumoured to bathe in milk.  This may *sound* like opulence to non-Iranians but in reality bathing in milk was thought to help with aging and skin care.  Women in villages in particular did this practice.  What it tries to show via [the picture](_URL_0_) in the intro is the contrast between the veiled servants compared to the naked princess bathing in milk, which is more out of the movie 300 than reality. \n\n* There is no record of the Shah ever owning a Concorde plane (which was put into commission in 1976, three years before the Revolution), much less using one to fly his lunches into Iran every day.  While Iran Air, the national airline of Iran, ordered a set of Concorde jets in 1972 they were scrapped after the Revolution.  On a side note the Shah was known to have many dietary restrictions, including an allergy to caviar.\n\n* Also it was unlikely the \"people starved\" in Iran, far from it.  At the time Iran was one of the fastest growing economies in the world and due to the White Revolution beforehand land reform allowed property and land to be distributed to the lower class.  On another note the White Revolution reformed the education system in Iran, especially in regards to universities.\n\n* The movie implies that the Shah was given asylum to the US and stayed there, however he was allowed to enter for medial treatment in New York (he had lymphoma).  However Carter kicked him out of the US less than two months after his arrival, due to US hostage crisis.  \n\n* The movie also implies that the Revolution was based around Khomeini and his ideals with no other opposition or organisations.  Prior to Khomeini's return in 1979 protests were organised by many groups of people.  Some groups wanted less reform and to slow things down, others wanted more reform and to make it more liberal and secular.  There wasn't just one central theme behind it, however when Khomeini returned to Iran he was able to successfully organize and crush almost the entire opposition to the idea of the \"Islamic Republic\".   \n\nI'll post more in the morning but in short Argo is a typical Hollywood movie, with inaccuracies and all."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0SARWYiJc"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/milkbath.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2wku3h", "title": "Is there a historical basis for claims that kosher laws (e.g., no eating pork) originated as a means to prevent disease, because there was a lack of understanding how to properly raise/prepare those foods?", "selftext": "For example, some claim that pork is not allowed to be eaten because the Jews at the time (or perhaps they were just Israelites then, my religious history is poor) didn't prepare pork properly, resulting in trichinosis. \n\nI've heard alternative explanations, such as kosher laws being enacted to ensure that the Hebrews did not assimilate into local (Egyptian perhaps) society and remained a distinct people. Or that, specific to pork, pigs were just not a good animal for that area (high water requirements in a low water region). One place I read said that it might have to do with the time period when the Jews entered Palestine after the exodus, because there were celebrations for the god Ishtar than involved consuming pork, and treligious leaders weren't keen on intermixed rituals.\n\nIs there any historical evidence for claims like these?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wku3h/is_there_a_historical_basis_for_claims_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["corut2l", "cosd8i8"], "score": [21, 2], "text": ["The origins of the pork prohibition are a little mysterious.  Richard A. Lobban wrote an article in 1994 that explains the origin of the pig prohibition as coming out of Egypt's upper classes in the Bronze Age.\n\nHis argument is that the pig became associated with the Egyptian god Seth, the \"bad\" god, the one who killed his brother Osiris, and were associated with defeated nomarchs of the Egyptian marshlands. Pigs thus gained a negative stigma, associated with defeat and bad things, especially among the ruling class (who were the victors).  Pigs continued to be consumed by the common people.  Pigs thus began to represent evil itself.  He continues by noting that Moses was raised by the upper classes in Egypt, and this may have influenced the prohibition of pig consumption.\n\nYou can read the article here:\n\n[Lobban, Richard A. \"Pigs and their prohibition.\" International Journal of Middle East Studies 26.01 (1994): 57-75.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe prohibition probably continued as a way of differentiating certain groups, and creating identities of \"self\" and \"other\".  The Muslims embraced the pork prohibition as it differentiated them from the Christians around them who were permitted to eat pork (allowed in Acts).  The ancient Jewish people embraced the pork prohibition as it differentiated them from the people around them, at least on an ideological level.  Archaeological evidence shows that they did actually consume pork, though not to any great degree.", "hi! you'll find more responses in the FAQ\n\n* [Why do Judaism and Islam prohibit pork?](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://digitalcommons.ric.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=facultypublications&sei-redir=1&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dorigin%2Bof%2Bpork%2Bprohibition%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt%3D1%252C22%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22origin%20pork%20prohibition%22"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion#wiki_why_do_judaism_and_islam_prohibit_pork.3F"]]}
{"q_id": "btcxpc", "title": "Was Aladdin originally set in... China? What was the point of this if the story was culturally Arabic in every single way?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/btcxpc/was_aladdin_originally_set_in_china_what_was_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eow585u"], "score": [165], "text": ["The history of the story of Aladdin is complex because it is one of the \"orphan\" stories that appear in the supplemental nights and was not, consequently, part of the original stories woven together by the Scheherazade frame. That said, it should come as no surprise to find a folktale from anywhere set in what is locally seen as exotic: in this case, \"China\" is a way of saying \"in a far away land.\" At the same time, it is not unusual for a folktale to fail to depict details of an exotic setting in an accurate way. Typically, the exotic place has specific details that are more reminiscent of the place where the story is told than of the place where the story is supposed to unfold. \n\nTo simplify matters when depicting the story in film, the very Arabic features of the story - as you mention, sultans, viziers, bazaars, etc. - are best not confused by a Chinese setting. While western China has an Islamic population, it made more sense to move the setting to Arabia for the various film depictions of the story.\n\nThe Aladdin story is Tale Type ATU 561 (with affinity for ATU 560). It has a wide distribution in Europe and the Middle East. In the various tellings, setting is the first to be affected by local perspective and preference. One should not take the Chinese setting of the version appearing in the \"Supplemental Nights\" too seriously; other variants have other settings.\n\nedit: a fair response, which has since disappeared, asked about the classification system ATU: The point here is not the classification in itself, but rather the fact that the folktale can be classified. It is ubiquitous and has caught the attention of folklorists for a long time. The ATU classification system was originated by the Finnish scholar, Antti Aarne. It was amended by the American Stith Thompson and then most recently by the German folklorist, Hans-J\u00f6rg Uther (hence the ATU)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "490r3x", "title": "Why was Denazification (and the equivalent in Japan) so successful?", "selftext": "The ideological transformation of Germany and Japan seems to have been so quick, painless, and complete -- but seventy years later, the idea that you could impose liberal democratic institutions via military occupation seems absurdly naive.\n\nWhy was there no meaningful fascist (or at least nationalist, or anti-occupation) insurgency in either country? How did the Allies convince the German and Japanese people to repudiate the ideology that had inspired such fanatical zeal during the war?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/490r3x/why_was_denazification_and_the_equivalent_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0o64ma", "d0og50k"], "score": [59, 15], "text": ["I think you have to seriously consider the effect of the World Wars on the national psyche of the defeated powers, especially Germany. Ive studied German rearmament in the Cold War, and a major theme which came up over and over was this idea of \"Not again.\" And think about it, in the 31 years between 1914 and 1945, Germany went to war twice. Millions of young men died, Europe was torn apart, and Germany was politically, economically, and spiritually broken. A person who was 18 in 1914 and served in the \"Great War\" would have only been 49 by the end of the next war. \n\nSo Fascism, Nazism, Monarchism, and Prussian Militarism in general all became linked with these great defeats. In 1950, Germany was split, disarmed, and controlled by the Allied Powers. Germans didnt need much convincing to see how their actions had brought them to that position.\n\nAnd then you have to work in the horrors of the Holocaust, and how the Jewish extermination affected the German people. Many had supported, either directly or indirectly, the Nazi state. Over 30% of Germans had voted for them in 1933, and millions had served in their army and government apparatus. Thousands more had informed on their neighbors, business partners, and friends to the Gestapo. And as a result of this Fascist feaver, millions of Jews and others were killed in the camps. Even more were imprisoned and forced into slavery in the worst conditions imaginable. After the extent of the Holocaust became known, it didnt take much to convince the German people that Nazism and Fascism were wrong. \n\nIf youre interested in reading more on this topic, I think Konrad Adenauer's memoirs are actually pretty interesting. He was the first Chancellor after the fall of Nazi Germany, and he faced the challenge of putting Germany back together again. He had to rebuild a Germany when people still feared what Germany had been, and had to do it within this new framework of the Cold War. Its all very interesting and deals, in part, with this whole subject. I have a lot of respect for Adenauer. \n\nAs for Japan, Im less clear on. But I would also point out that things are not so cut and dry. They did not (and have not) abandoned their wartime heroes the way Germany did, and it's still a huge problem even today. ", "I'm not an expert on the time period (as I merely studied history teaching, not actual academic history), but I want to interject that the question whether Denazification was in fact successful, and how successful it really was, is still very much up for debate among German (and Austrian!) historians. \n\nGiven the amount of people employed in the direct or indirect support of the Nazi state during the war (be it as active Nazis, bureaucrats, snitches, party functionaries, or just loyal supporters), the Allied Denazification campaigns only reached a small part of the population involved in the Nazis' crimes, and many former party members, particularly academics and military men, were quickly re-integrated and re-established in their former professions.\n\nThis was even more pronounced in Austria, which quickly re-integrated even war criminals like [Heinrich Gross](_URL_0_) into academia and state apparatus.\n\nOne should also be careful of mixing up the attitude of trained historians with those of the general population, which had a much less harsh view on certain parts of the Nazi apparatus than is commonly held among academicians. Particularly the Wehrmacht was long thought of as a relatively \"clean\" and \"umblemished\" part of the Nazi apparatus, and [an exhibition in Germany that aimed to revise that popular image](_URL_1_) was controversial among the general population at the time (though not unwelcome among historians)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Gross", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung"]]}
{"q_id": "bylyoe", "title": "Why did Calvinist communities, like John Calvin's Geneva, hold to such strict behavioral standards if your actions don't affect salvation in Calvinist theology?", "selftext": "I was reading about the incredibly strict policing of behavior in Calvin's geneva (ditto US puritan communities), and was sort of confused by this.  If Calvinist philosophy says that not only do one's actions not affect salvation, but one's salvation is already determined in advance, why was there this rigorous policing of behavior which, from a theological perspective, doesn't seem to matter? \n\n Were there any Calvanist theologians who said \"Since we're already saved/damned and can't affect that, who cares what you do?\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bylyoe/why_did_calvinist_communities_like_john_calvins/", "answers": {"a_id": ["er4qq34"], "score": [10], "text": ["Ah, something I can answer! \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe question of a faith-based versus an action-based soteriology (ie. salvation theory) is a difficult one, and is not only limited to the Calvinists. It was a huge and complicated theological debate, especially during the Reformations, and one of the central gripes of many of the Reformists (Martin Luther included) was, specifically, the idea that your actions did not decide whether you would be saved or not. Lending to this specific question is also the history of the debate about predetermination, the question of the church's role in the material world and the historical context of anti-Catholic polemics. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhile I am no expert on Calvinism specifically, I think I can answer your question by explaining the general outline of the above complexities.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFirst of all, on the question of predetermination. While predetermination, and the discussion of its intricacies, had existed within the church since St. Augustine, it was brought up again in full power by the Reformists. Each one had their own specific theology, but most (including Melanchton, Luther and Calvin) were staunchly predeterminist. Calvin, especially, had predetermination as the very core of his theology, and he brought it up in almost all of his sermons. \n\nNow, the thing to remember about predetermination is that there really is no way of knowing whether or not someone is predetermined to be saved. Calvin tentatively believed that one could make an educated guess based on how often a person went to church and did good deeds (we'll get back to this), but generally, the idea of predetermined  salvation was a hypothetical one; it was great for complicated theological debates between scholars, but not much use when it came to determining how to practice Christianity in real life. One must also remember that predetermination, at least according to Calvin and the other reformists, was never supposed to be random; it was not so much that you were predetermined to be saved, as it was that your were predetermined to be a faithful and good Christian so that you would in the end be saved. That is to say, it \\*did\\* matter what you did and believed in your life, since this would be the deciding factor in whether your soul was among those predetermined for salvation. This leads us to the question of actions versus faith.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe soteriology of both Luther and Calvin was based on the dogma of *sola fide -* 'faith alone'. What this meant, in theory, was that the *sole* thing determining whether a person is saved or not is whether or not they have faith in God, and not whether they do good deeds in their life. In practice, though, the Reformists believed that someone who had faith would naturally do good deeds, and so the end result was.. pretty much the same. So why the distinction? Theologically, it was based on a certain reading of the Pauline Epistles. But functionally, it was a way for the reformists to condemn the Catholic Church's selling of indulgences as a way to gain salvation. If your salvation is based on faith alone, then there is no way to buy yourself to heaven - neither by buying indulgences, going on pilgrimages or fighting crusades. So *sola fide* makes it impossible to gain vast riches and power by dangling salvation over the heads of believers, and takes away the Catholic Church's main income.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLastly, there is the question of the two regiments. How, according to the Reformists, should the world be ruled? Martin Luther had his idea of the two regiments, the worldly and the spiritual. According to him, the two should have nothing to do with each other. The state is in charge of keeping an orderly and peaceful society while protecting the church, and the church is to own no land or armies, but only focus on spiritual teaching. In Luthers worldview, the ideal world would have good Christians as judges, lords and kings, but the church should have no worldly power while the state should have no spiritual power.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis is not true for Calvin since, as in all things, he goes a bit further than Luther. He demanded that all people should live *imitatio christi -* that is, imitating Christ in their way of living, and that this should be instituted on a structural level. This included the establishment of a State of God. Basically, he saw the Bible as a book of law, and believed that society should be structured entirely based upon it. This meant that there was to be no separation between church and state, and a perfect Evangelical society should be built for the good of the good Christians.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo in conclusion, Calvins Evangelical society was built to provide a perfect example. While not everyone was predetermined for salvation, he still believed that society should be held to a rigorous moral standard (and perhaps this would lead to more good Christians predetermined for salvation being born in that society?). While this can still seem confusing, it's because.. well, predetermination and its practical effects is confusing.  It was confusing to the Reformists as well, who spend their careers either trying to avoid talking too much about it (like Luther and Melanchton) or trying at length to explain it (like Calvin). There's a reason it's been an active theological debate for almost 2.000 years.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTo answer your final question, I can say that it was definitely something brought up by numerous Catholic polemicists as a critique of Calvinism and Lutheranism. But, qua all of the above, I know of no Calvinist theologians who saw it as a valid point. If anyone else knows more, I'd love to hear about it.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI hope this answers your question halfway-comprehensively. I realise it's a mess, but when it comes to theological dogma and Church history, things simply become very complicated very fast, so I've done my best to try and boil it down."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "a9rpd1", "title": "In Goldeneye (1995), Russian General Ourumov blames Siberian separatists for an attack on a military base he ordered. How much of a threat was Siberian separatism perceived to be in 90s post-Soviet Russia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a9rpd1/in_goldeneye_1995_russian_general_ourumov_blames/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ecm6t7b", "ecmvlj0"], "score": [21, 42], "text": ["About a year ago, [I asked this same question, and I received some responses](_URL_0_).", "This is actually a rather fascinating subject and an excellent question, as it is not commonly assessed or written about from a western perspective. However I will attempt, with due diligence to preserve impartiality as to remove any perspective skew. The threat lies in a plethora of overlapping and coinciding issues, which each serve to contribute towards one another in a compounding domino effect of consequences, either potential or formulating in actual conflict and a threat towards Russian national integrity.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe baseline factor of the importance, and from this, the threat of loss through separatism within the region lies within the bountiful mineral wealth of the Siberian regions.^(1) The land mass is abundant in highly sought after oil, gas, ore and timber^(2), as well as serving as a surprising fertile agriculture zone in the Far Eastern Siberian regions.^(3) This particular baseline contributes towards post-Soviet sentiment of the gravity of the loss through separatist movements. An assessment of the post-Soviet mindset will not be complete without the preceding mindset of the USSR of course. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe following factors encompass a period that threads the line between 20th century and modern to contemporary history, so may be in breach of the subreddit rules, but alas I shall ensure that it is capped to a minimum mention at the end of my answer. The threat level was indeed present and very tentative, with tensions flaring and sparking in the mid 20th century, with the 1969 border conflict with China, after the Sino-Soviet split.^(4) This situation was resolved in 1991^(5), ratified in 2005^(6), and again in 2008^(7), with the two sides agreeing on border lines. However this agreement only amounted to a compounding of Chinese economic mobilization and thus political disaffection occurring on both sides in different forms. It is in both countries interest to stir up separatist sentiment in border regions as to ensure an ease of beneficial economic expansion and access into those resources and areas by applying countermeasure pressure which lead to eventual economic concessions and a furtherance of delimitation, with Xinjiang Uyghurs in China^(8.) and disenfranchised citizens of Siberian regions.^(9) More so for China, as their economic output is rapidly expanding, and so is their need for resources. There have been multiple agreements signed which allow the Chinese to work within Russian Siberian regions, in the areas of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry, expanding into mining. ^(10) This suits Russia well due to the logistical problems of extracting primary resources from their remote Siberian territories, with China investing a sustained subsidy of 100 billion yuan towards infrastructure in the region and a further 10 billion USD investment being announced at this years belt and road conference.^(11) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe threat comes primarily from dissent towards Moscow from the population of the Siberian citizens, which contain 16 million people, this dissent is derived from economic factors of the Soviet and post Soviet era, with resources being extracted yet infrastructure and subsidies for local amenities of the population severely lacking, added towards the fact that living wage is low, along with quality of life, for such a wealthy mineral rich region, this creates political dissatisfaction.^(12) This sentiment is indeed a threat toward a post Soviet integral nation, as dissatisfaction leads towards a possible move to greater autonomy for these regions. This greater autonomy will allow the populace to reap further benefits from economic co-operation from China in the far eastern regions, as they can raise the paltry amount of land rental rates that government sanctioned management companies have leased at exorbitantly low rates.^(13) Post Soviet Russia now balances the plates of political reactionary elections within their Siberian regions, with a communist governor being elected in Khakassia and a far right LDPR official being elected within the region of Khabarovsk.^(14) Each of these elements play a role in adding towards the possible threat of separatism, economically or politically. As on one hand the dissatisfaction towards the current United Russia party of Moscow may lead toward a regional led insular pivot of operations in  Khakassia and Khabarovsk, which would not be conducive towards the ideology of leading Moscow government^(15) and would threaten the economic unity of the Siberian regions doing business with China, which they see as a threat towards the economic benefits of their populace due to the Chinese tendency of rapid and intense resource extraction.^(16) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo to sum up without stepping over the sub rules for proximity to current affairs, the region is indeed highly valuable towards the economic trajectory of the Russian state, and thus any infringement towards the post Soviet ideal of Russian unity is perceived as a threat, economic, political or otherwise. Is it as much as a threat as say Chechnya ? , most definitely not, as the threat lies in an economic baseline,as opposed to one mired in centuries of ethno-religious strife.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n1.  Shabad, Theodore and  Mote, Victor L. *Gateway to Siberian Resources* , p.27\n\n2.  Velikanov, Nikolai, *Soviet Military Review 1986,* p.8\n\n3.  Kotkin, Stephen, Wolff, David, *Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East: Siberia and the Russian Far East,* p.35\n\n4. Yang, Kuisong, \"The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement\" in *Cold War History* , p.21-52\n\n5.  Akihiro, Iwashita, \"An Inquiry for New Thinking on the Border Dispute: Backgrounds of \"Historic Success\" for the Sino-Russian Negotiations\" in *Slavic Eurasian Studies 6*. p. 95\u2013114 \n\n6.   [\"China, Russia solve all border disputes\"](_URL_1_). *Xinhua*. 2 June 2005 \n\n7.  [\"China, Russia complete border survey, determination\"](_URL_2_). *Xinhua*. 21 July 2008\n\n8.  Gladney, Dru C. , ''Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism?'', in *The China Quarterly No. 174,* p.457\n\n9. Lomanov, Alexander, *China Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism,* p.86\n\n10. Stroski, Paul, ''Cooperation and Competition: Russia and China in Central Asia, the Russian Far East, and the Arctic'', in *Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Feb 2018,* p. 2\n\n11.  ''Chinese in the Russian Far East: A Geopolitical Time Bomb?''.  [South China Morning Post](_URL_0_),  7 July 2017\n\n12.  ''[Irkutsk in the spotlight: the leak in Putin's watertight system?](_URL_4_)'' The Guardian, 16 March 2018\n\n13. [11\\^](_URL_0_)\n\n14. [Red governor: Communist to lead Russia\u2019s region in Siberia after being only runner on ballots](_URL_3_), Russia Today, 11 November 2018\n\n15. Hale, Henry E., \"The Origins of United Russia and the Putin Presidency: The Role of Contingency in Party-System Development\", in *Demokratizatsiya. 12*,  p. 169\u2013194.\n\n16.  Cons, Jason, Eilenberg, Michael, *Frontier Assemblages: The Emergent Politics of Resource Frontiers in Asia,* p.163\n\n### \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n# \n\n# \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67g8ni/in_the_james_bond_film_goldeneye_russian_general/"], ["https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2100228/chinese-russian-far-east-geopolitical-time-bomb", "https://web.archive.org/web/20090112225410/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-06/02/content_3037975.htm", "https://web.archive.org/web/20080726183004/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/21/content_8739941.htm", "https://www.rt.com/russia/443696-khakassia-election-russia-communist/", "https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/16/irkutsk-in-the-spotlight-overlooked-leak-putin-united-russia-system"]]}
{"q_id": "9soxhu", "title": "Until recently in Colorado, it was illegal to collect rainwater. How did that come about? Was anyone collecting rainwater in significant enough quantities to affect groundwater supplies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9soxhu/until_recently_in_colorado_it_was_illegal_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8rn1ta"], "score": [36], "text": ["This is actually rooted in two competing legal doctrines that were codified in the US, England, and Europe starting in the early 1800s. While I'll be focusing on the history of these doctrines, there's no avoiding getting into their definitions to give the necessary context for later developments.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Overview**\n\nExisting US water rights doctrine during Colorado's incorporation and admittance generally followed the *riparian doctrine* inherited from Roman civil law and expanded in French law. Riparian doctrine holds that water rights come with owning land next to water, which the landowner can make reasonable use of.\n\nColorado (and other western states) found riparian doctrine inadequate to govern water rights in an arid climate and developed a new doctrine based on *prior appropriation*. Prior appropriation in a nutshell (more detail below), is a doctrine that prioritizes water rights based on whoever first diverts some of their water for *beneficial use*.\n\nThere is not, in fact, any evidence that rain barrels significantly impact the amount of water that flows downstream, and they were never explicitly banned. The use of rain barrels was mostly a contentious legal issue that was never definitively ruled on because of the nature of prior appropriations and the complex system that enforces water rights.\n\nThe legalization of rain barrels occurred in 2016, so I'll not be discussing that due to the 20-year rule (and because it was/is a contentious use, and I don't want to get in a fight with anyone over my home state's water laws)\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Riparian Doctrine**\n\n*Definition*\n\nRiparian rights *do not* confer ownership of flowing water. Flowing water in a natural source is always a public good, like air. What riparian rights *do* confer is a right to allow water to naturally flow through a property and divert it for something called *ordinary/primary uses* and something else called *extraordinary uses*. These have different definitions, but riparian owners are generally entitled to use a reasonable amount of water flowing by their property, so long as it doesn't affect downstream neighbors (e.g. substantially reducing the amount, reducing the flow, or polluting the water).\n\n & nbsp;\n\n*History of Riparian Doctrine in the US*\n\nThe sixth-century *Institutes of Justinian* was one of the earliest legal codes to touch on the riparian/prior possession/prior appropriation question. It codifies running water as *res communes*, the \"negative community\" or \"things the property of which belongs to no person.\" Specifically, Title 1 Section 1 includes it in the \"following things [that] are by natural law common to all\u2014the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the seashore\" (Title 1 Sec 1), while still recognizing that *access* to water is a right. Landowners were allowed to use and divert water, so long as they did not infringe on others' access, including rainwater - building a structure that obstructed a neighbor's rainfall, for example, was illegal. \n\nHowever, the *Institutes* were ambiguous on who owns the right to use flowing water; this ambiguity continued throughout most of Europe, with water rights being governed largely by local laws, prescriptions, and historic customs.\n\nThe Napoleonic Code's establishment in 1804 was the watershed year (sorry) for water doctrine. It clearly laid out the foundation of modern riparian doctrine in Article 644:\n\n >  644. He who property borders on a running water... may employ it in its passage for the watering of his property.\n >  He whose estate is intersected by such water, is at liberty to make use of it within the space through which it runs, but on the condition of restoring it, at the boundaries of his field, to its ordinary course\n\nUS and English courts, lawyers, and legal treatises started referencing the concept of riparian rights in the early 1800s, citing rulings and writings both within and between the two countries, as well as Articles 644 and 645 of the Napoleonic Code. The word \"riparian\" as a legal term with a precise technical definition first appeared in English-language legal literature in 1833, with credit to others using it in non-published contexts (i.e. correspondence, notes, or spoken in conversation) a few years prior.\n\nEnglish courts went back and forth for a while on prior appropriation and riparian law until it was settled in *Mason v. Hill* (1833). US courts, however, adopted it very quickly \u2013 in part due to an intentional effort to consider more civil law, fueled by a post-Revolutionary closeness with France and reexamination of common law roots after the conflict with England.\n\nWhich brings us around to Colorado. The Territory of Colorado was incorporated in 1861, when riparian doctrine had been the established standard in the United States for thirty to fifty years."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "19rnxd", "title": "Are there any common compliments or insults from your era of expertise that would sound completely ridiculous today?", "selftext": "Or alternatively, are there any that you think deserve a come-back?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19rnxd/are_there_any_common_compliments_or_insults_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8qp5zo", "c8qr9kh", "c8qrckd", "c8qst01", "c8qtlls", "c8qtqb9", "c8qufw5", "c8qx785", "c8qz3lu", "c8r2amo"], "score": [54, 27, 62, 114, 13, 4, 12, 4, 4, 7], "text": ["Athens, circa 400BC: \"Go to the crows!\"\n\nRoughly equivalent to our \"go to hell\". ", "In the U.S. and probably elsewhere in the late 18th century: calling somebody a 'scoundrel' was grounds for a duel.", "From a court martial of an 18th century British officer on the grounds of \"Conduct Unbecoming an Officer \"You shitten dog!\"\n\nWhat's great about that one is that they weren't even prosecuting the guy who cursed. They were prosecuting the man who was cursed for *not responding* to his aggressor! \n\nAs to compliments, an actual 18th century compliment would be: \"Pleasant show of calf.\" It was perfectly manly to tell another guy that his calves looked good in those stockings.\n\n19th century: Nob gobbler.", "Shakespeare recorded a bunch.  Here's a famous one from Romeo and Juliet:\n\n > Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n\n > Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.\n\n > Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n\n > Sampson (to Gregory): Is the law of our side if I say ay?\n\n > Gregory: No.\n\n > Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.\n\n\"Bite your thumb\" sounds ridiculous to us, but it was the equivalent of giving \"the finger\" in modern America.  So today it would be:\n\n > Abraham: Are you giving us the finger?\n\n > Sampson: Yeah, I'm raising my middle finger.\n\n > Abraham: Are you raising your middle finger *at us*, asshole?\n\n > Sampson (to Gregory): If I say yes and start some shit, will the cops back us?\n\n > Gregory: No.\n\n > Sampson: Nah bro, I'm not flipping you off, but I do have my middle finger up.", "Not an expert, but I like the Swedish derogatory term for Norwegians _Norrbagge_. The exact meaning of it has been lost to time, although \"Norr-\" is for Norwegian and \"bagge\" would normally mean a ram or male goat. \n\nIt's still used now, but it's got a jocular tone rather than being a serious insult and it seems to have been that way since around the late 17th century or so. But it was a lot more insulting back in the Middle Ages (and quite possibly earlier); in [H\u00e1konar saga](_URL_0_), it tells that when King Haakon IV of Norway visited Swedish ruler Birger Jarl in 1255, the latter prohibited his men from calling his visitors '_bagge_ or other insults' under penalty of death. I think this is the earliest written reference to it. \n\nThe thing that's a bit funny about it is that the exact meaning of the insult is lost; _bagge_ here is almost-certainly etymologically related to the word for the animal, but the exact intent here is unknown, because it's believed to have sprung from some now-lost dialectal meaning (according to the Swedish Academy's dictionary). In part because the word 'bagge' for the animal _wasn't_ really offensive, it existed for instance as a medieval noble family name (_Bagge af Berga_). \n\n", "Not 100% sure if this counts, but in a lot of Renaissance-era English literature, a common insult was \"a pox on you!\" It always sounded a bit funny to me, and it's essentially wishing a deadly disease upon your target. \n\nI believe it had fairly common usage, but if someone requests a source I can probably find one", "This is tangentially related, but a euphemism in Rabbinic texts is often to say the opposite of what you mean.  This is related because in the Talmud, phrases like \"bless Israel\" sometimes actually mean \"curse Israel\".  Similarly, the prayer the \"blessing for the heretics\" both is a blessing in terms of structure and liturgical placement, but actually is a curse for heretics.", "Was \"You sack of wine!\" an actual insult or something the writers of Troy just threw in because \"yeah, that sounds like a historical phrase\" ", "\"Blaggard\" or \"black guard\"  makes very little sense today. So much of 18th-century slang is weird and wonderful. \n\nI wish we could still close letters with the 18th century \"Your humble servant  & etc.\"", "Some of the racial epithets used in parts of the US sound quite strange today. They're absolutely horrible, but kind of hilarious at the same time.\n\nMy particular favourite is from early 19th Century New York (and doubtless other places). There was a large wave of Irish immigration, which led to a fair bit of backlash over their Catholicism, street gangs and generalised working class cringe. The Irish were also seen as being biologically more similar to Africans than other Europeans. \n\nSo, 'smoked Irish' for blacks, and 'niggers turned inside out' for Irish. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1konar_saga_H%C3%A1konarsonar"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3ip5mx", "title": "Week 2 fundraising update: AskHistorians hits TILT", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://i.imgur.com/QSilqA6.gif", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuieap7"], "score": [39], "text": ["**You've done it.**\n\nTwo weeks ago, [we announced that AskHistorians has been invited to present a panel at the American Historical Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia in January](_URL_0_).\n\nUnfortunately, plane tickets and hotel rooms aren't free. We put together a budget and estimated that it will cost $7,500 or so to send all our panelists to Atlanta.\n\nFortunately, you all have been incredibly generous. /u/kn0thing and the Reddit staff donated half the needed total. In the two weeks since we made the announcement, you all showed your good faith and came up with the other half. Through the crowdfunding site TILT, we've been able to raise enough money to attend and spread the word about AskHistorians. With any luck, we'll be able to share the importance of public history and interacting with folks like you. (Even if it means collecting the world's largest database of \"what Hitler thought about X.\")\n\nWe've all be struck by your kindness and graciousness both in this fundraising campaign and in the everyday operation of this subreddit. We understand that AskHistorians operates differently from the rest of Reddit, and you all have shown that it works.\n\nThough we've formally met our stated goal, TILT has informed us that about $50 in donations could not be processed by card, so we're still technically a little short. If you're able to help us make up the gap, we'd appreciate it.\n\nIf you've been thinking about pledging but haven't signed up yet, we'd appreciate it if you clicked the link to show your support. Even if you can only contribute a dollar, it'll be a help. Thank you.\n\n###[**DONATE HERE**](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/", "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description"]]}
{"q_id": "42bg5u", "title": "When did weather forecasting get to a point where, say, people in New York City could be reasonably sure a major snow storm was going to hit at least one day out?", "selftext": "Also, how quickly did people embrace forecasts? Were they placed in newspapers right after their development? Were they trusted? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42bg5u/when_did_weather_forecasting_get_to_a_point_where/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz9vxs9"], "score": [7], "text": ["[As it happens, NASA has an 8 part article about this very subject](_URL_3_).\n\nBasically weather forecasting was made possible on a local level with the advent of the *thermometer*, the *barometer* and the *hygrometer*; all of which had been invented by about the mid 17th century.  With these tools local observers could study weather in their area.  However it took the advent of the telegraph to allow communication between meteorologists over a great enough distance to make large scale weather maps.  These early attempts were rudimentary and often subject to technical failure.\n\nIn the 1920's a device known as the [*radiosonde*](_URL_0_), launched via weather balloons, transmitted weather data to stations which could be used to predict weather patterns over a large area.  The problem is that this data took vast amounts of time and people to calculate a forecast. [Lewis Fry Richardson](_URL_1_) was a pioneer of the mathematical weather forecast, but it would take computer technology to calculate the data fast enough to make a useful forecast.  This was accomplished by the mid 1950's.\n\nOn April 1st, 1960 the satellite [TIROS 1](_URL_2_) gave us the first pictures of weather systems from orbit, and with that data accurate weather observation and prediction was finally possible."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ua.nws.noaa.gov/factsheet.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson", "http://www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/tiros.html#history", "http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WxForecasting/wx.php"]]}
{"q_id": "diexic", "title": "Before the discovery of the Americas the Catholic Church justified slavery on Theocratic basis, after the colonization of the new world however they started to despise it and even armed Native americans to fight slavery in Spanish colonies, what caused this radical shift in policy towards slavery?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/diexic/before_the_discovery_of_the_americas_the_catholic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3wnpk3", "f3xar46"], "score": [3, 11], "text": ["Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment. Please understand that people come here because they want an informed response from someone capable of engaging with the sources, and providing follow-up information. Wikipedia can be a useful tool, but merely repeating information found there doesn't provide the type of answers we seek to encourage here. [As such, we don't allow answers which simply link to, quote from, or are otherwise heavily dependent on Wikipedia](_URL_1_). We presume that someone posting a question here either doesn't want to get the 'Wikipedia answer', or has already checked there and found it lacking. You can find further discussion of this policy [here](_URL_2_). In the future, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with [the rules](_URL_0_) before contributing again.", "Armed Native Americans to fight slavery in Spanish Colonies?? \n\nMay I inquire where you got this information from, because I have never encountered this when studying the history of the Latin American Colonies. \n\nI am aware of the opposite *sort of* happening: that is the Spanish empire giving up trying to recapture runaway slaves in certain regions (be it due to the difficult geography or due to heavy losses in combat) and reaching an agreement for those runaway communities to serve as a barrier against hostile Indigenous tribes... but I have never heard Native American communities being systematically armed to fight slavery, specially not by the Catholic church."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yjz53/rules_roundtable_2_explaining_the_rules_regarding/"], []]}
{"q_id": "cvem0i", "title": "Who was the real Bruce Lee, and was he a \"good\" fighter compared to his contemporaries?", "selftext": "The last Tarantino movie makes Bruce look both arrogant, and a weak fighter. This unsurprisingly caused some controversy. Tarantino also said this is how Lee acted in real life.\n\nWhat was his personality really like?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cvem0i/who_was_the_real_bruce_lee_and_was_he_a_good/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ey5t855"], "score": [23], "text": ["I will steer clear of commenting on Bruce's personality and focus on his fighting ability and legacy.\n\nBruce Lee is a very complicated figure in the martial arts community. As one of the highest profile martial artists of all time, he did more than anyone to spread the good word of eastern martial arts in the west. His movies, his philosophy, his brand aided in the explosion of eastern martial arts in the United States and abroad.\n\nIn many ways, Bruce Lee was a man ahead of his time. His denunciation of dogma, his appetite for techniques from different martial arts, his approach to training, his integration of strength, conditioning, and nutrition into his overall philosophy, all of these things are reflected in the Modern Martial Arts landscape. \n\nUnfortunately, his status as a pioneer in the mixing of martial arts is what makes him so difficult to evaluate as a fighter. The same year Bruce Lee arrived in America in 1959, a brazilian family called the Gracies began producing a Rio-based TV show called \"Her\u00f3is do Ringue\". While mixed rules, catch as catch can fights had long been carnival mainstays, it would be decades before the establishment of promotional pioneers such as Shooto, Rings, and Pancrase. The first regulated Mixed Martial Arts bout in California wouldn't occur until 2006, many years after Lee's death.\n\nSimilarly, American Karate competition was in its infancy when Lee arrived. Following the end of the second world war, Karate began to appear in the continental US, brought back from the Pacific and Hawaii by servicemen such as Robert A. Trias. Trias is credited for organizing the first Karate competition in the US, the 1955 Arizona Karate Championships. The first national competition in 1963 at University of Chicago's Fieldhouse and the subsequent U.S. National Karate Championships in Washington, D.C were disorganized and limited in scope. American kickboxing also had yet to find its feet. The PKA and WKA would be formed in the mid 70's, coming too late for Bruce, who passed in 1973.\n\nThere are many anecdotes on Bruce's personality, his fighting ability, and his philosophy. Perhaps his most legendary meeting was with Chinese-American martial artist Wong Jack Man in 1964.  It is very much a story of two sides, with neither side presenting much in the way of evidence. Bruce's wife Linda said \n > The fight ensued, it was a no-holds-barred fight, it took three minutes. Bruce got this guy down to the ground and said 'Do you give up?' and the man said he gave up\n\nOthers, including Wong Jack Man, allege that the fight ended after 20-25 furious minutes due to Lee's \"unusually winded\" condition, as opposed to a decisive blow by either fighter.\nWhat is not up for dispute is that Bruce Lee changed his fighting philosophy following that day, formed Jeet Kune Do, and in the process changed the story of American Martial Arts.\n\nBruce Lee was not a professional fighter. Unlike his student Joe Lewis, we do not have an extensive list of bouts won and lost. He was never a champion, he never defended a belt, and he never retired from professional sport. He was an actor, he was a teacher, and he was a life-long martial artist. Without  competition record, there is very little we can definitively say about how good a fighter Bruce Lee was. At 5'8'', 141lbs, Bruce was no heavyweight. Common sense indicates that two equally skilled fighers, all other aspects being equal, the larger man will win most bouts. \n\n**Conclusion**\n\nI think it reasonable to conclude that Bruce Lee could defeat well-trained period martial artists near his weight, and larger, untrained opponents. However, it is equally reasonable to conclude that he would struggle to defeat larger, well trained period opponents such as his student Joe Lewis (heavyweight kickboxer with training in wrestling, karate, and boxing).\n\nAs an aside, I believe Bruce would struggle to compete with modern top MMA of any size. The number of participants, the level of training available, and the evolution of technique over time has changed the sport into a form that would be unrecognizable to earlier audiences. If a young Bruce Lee walked into a gym in San Jose or Huntington Beach tomorrow, now that is a completely different story."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6g0ght", "title": "I've been reading Anna Karanina, which takes place in the 1880s, not long after the end of serfdom. How accurate was Tolstoy's portrayal of the peasantry? Was it as idyllic as he makes it sound?", "selftext": "He goes into detail about the difficulties that post-serfdom land owners had in getting the peasants to produce enough, and there's also lots of handwringing about agricultural modernization vis-a-vis Europe.  \n\nThat aside, he makes the peasants sound like a jolly, carefree lot, whose existences aren't much more than wholesome outdoor work, homemade vodka, and joyous outbursts whenever their landlord comes ambling by.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6g0ght/ive_been_reading_anna_karanina_which_takes_place/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dimra24"], "score": [67], "text": ["Nope. The way that Tolstoy portrays the peasants is in no way accurate. While there was a lot of change, modernisation and so on, in general the average life of the Russian peasant in this period was unpleasant, brutish and short. The following quotes are taken from a book called \"village life in late Tsarist Russia\" by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia an ethnographer writing in the early 1900s. To a certain extent she was writing to rebuff the very idyllic images which many Russian intellectuals, including Tolstoy, had of the peasants. She embedded herself with them and observed them a year in assembling the notes which eventually went into this work. It seems that the also realised that actually finding out what the peasants thought was very difficult since they tended to lie to her. She was a good water colourist and took to painting in public spaces as a way of evesdropping on peasants so she could observe them without changing their social interactions by her presence. That said, while Tolstoy's portrayal of peasants in his work is clearly idealised, the one which I quote below is possibly biased in the other direction. The author had a very negative conception of peasants and peasant culture. While nothing here is fabricated it is certainly presented in as negative a light as possible.\n\n > \u201cyoung mothers very often smother their children accidentally in their sleep. The mother sometimes places her infant between herself and her husband\u2026 she goes to sleep, rolls over onto the baby and smothers it...a good half of women have overlain their child in this way\u201d \n\nShe later comments about how she does not really believe the peasant claims to the accidental deaths of children. \u201cThere have been two notorious cases of infanticide in the village\u2026in practice the number of these killings is higher\u2026 I have always been suspicious of cases of reported accidental smothering of babies since it is very easy to roll over on a baby and intentionally smother it\u201d  The outright murder of illegitimate offspring was also not uncommon\n\n >  \u201ccases of infanticide of illegitimate babies are not at all rare. A married or unmarried woman gives birth alone somewhere in a shed, smothers the baby and dumps it into the river with a rock secured to its neck...in fact in the large village of muraevnia, one or two children are found dead almost every year\u2026 recently pigs out by the graveyard the body of a newborn that had turned blue, making it obvious that the baby had been buried only a short time before. No action was taken. Peasants do not like criminal investigations\u201d \n\nWomen tended to return to work very quickly after giving birth, normally the week after. \n\n >  \u201cAnd the child is consequently neglected; it is left alone in a dirty cradle wearing a soaking wet diaper, criying its heart out in hunger pains and its navel swells and hurts.\u201d\n\nWomen had very little medical care after birth and were subjected to some odd medical treatments. \n\n > \u201cmore often than not, the hard work that follows childbirth results in some degree of prolapse of the uterus\u2026 the midwife soaps her hands, forces the uterus into place, then pushes a peeled potato into the vagina and binds the lower abdomen tightly with a handkerchief\u201d \n\nWife beating and abuse was endemic and impossible to control.\n\n > \u201cin the village of muraevnia there was a case of a drunken husband who killed his wife for infidelity. He rolled her braids around his hand and beat her head\u2026. Until she lapsed into a coma and died three days later\u201d \n\nThe author was also fascinated and appalled by the way that the peasants treated the animals which lived with them.\n\n >  \"in their treatment of cats, dogs and other animals, ivan and his family can be quite cruel\u2026 peasants will torture them just for fun\u2026 when I ask \u2018don\u2019t you feel sorry for them?\u2019 the children respond \u2018why feel sorry? They're not people, just dogs\u2019\"\n\nMany peasants also lived in the most awful conditions. For example most peasant houses did not have chimneys (called a black stove) and \n\n > \u201cwhen a black stove is being lighted\u2026. [the smoke] forms a blue and white blanket\u2026 a good sized man finds it difficult to stand up when the stove is being fired because his eyes will be in the caustic cloud\u201d \n\nwhich would then cause a whole host of health problems including cataracts and respiratory issues. There is an awful lot more that I could insert, about alcoholism, poverty and so on. However it makes me unhappy so I am not going to include it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2v791s", "title": "What was the importance of the title \"King of Italy\" throughout the Middle-Ages?", "selftext": "Hello! This is the first time I ask a question, so sorry if the title isn't very precise.\n\nI used to believe that there was no title of King of Italy, and that the north of the peninsula was ruled over by city states. However, reading about the early middle-ages I saw that there used to be a kingdom of Italy, and that the title was very well alive until 1530.\n\nWhat was the importance of this title? Did it have any legal power?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2v791s/what_was_the_importance_of_the_title_king_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cof7ljh"], "score": [77], "text": ["I'm about to summarize nearly one thousand years of history. Fasten your seat belt. \n\n**Part I: The First Kingdom of Italy**\n\nLet's begin at the beginning. The year is 476. The Western Roman Empire has lost Gaul (to the Franks) Iberia (to the Visigoths) and Africa (to the Vandals). Only Italy and Dalmatia continues to be ruled by Rome. Years of civil wars an infighting has decimated the army, and a long succession of army-backed strongmen have taken turns ruling the empire, many of whom have mixed heritage; Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, was himself was a puppet of his father Orestes, who was the *Magister Militum* (head of the army) and although he had married into a Roman family, he himself was not an ethnic Roman (to be pedantic, the Eastern Emperor never even recognized Augustulus, which allowed Julius Nepos, the pervious emperor, to rule in semi-autonomy in Dalmatia claiming all the while to be Emperor of the West). \n\nFlavius Odoacer, the *de facto* leader of the *Foederati* or ethnic \"Barbarians\" fighting for Rome (who made up most of the army), deposed Romulus Augustulus when he lost the army's favor. Odoacer then openly admitted that although he might rule Italy, he was powerless beyond the alps, and didn't call himself Emperor, rather, he sent the imperial paraphernalia to Constantinople and asked to be recognized as \"Consul\", keeping all of the functions of the Roman Administration in Italy intact (understandable, Flavius Odoacer as was so romanized historians aren't sure which \"Barbarian\" ethnic group he belonged to). He initially played lip service to the pervious emperor Julius Nepos, minting coinage in his name, but may have been involved in the plot whereby he was murdered. Regardless, after the murder of Julius Nepos, Odoacer asked to be given the title of Patrician by the Eastern Emperor, and be recognized as the ruler of Italy under the wing of a single Roman Emperor in Costantinople.\n\nThe Eastern Emperor Zeno, however, had his own issues to deal with involving \"Barbarian Generals\", namely involving two Ostrogoths, both confusingly named Theodoric (this in addition to social, religious, and political unrest in his own half of the empire). \n\nAlthough the Ostrogoths had been given lands in Pannonia in exchange for the defense of the upper Danube, Zeno came to the conclusion that the Ostrogoths were more trouble than they were worth (fighting with him, fighting with each other, and in a general sense just being another annoying thing to have to deal with) so he convinced them to go conquer Italy. This way, they would stop annoying him, and he could also get rid of Odoacer, at this point another potential opponent. \n\nTheodoric the Amal, King of the Ostrogoths, had been raised in Constantinople. His people were largely Romanized, having lived within the Eastern Empire's borders for centuries. When he defeated Odoacer and set up the first Kingdom of Italy, he did his utmost to further maintain the Roman institutions, law, and judicial system. However, he did not rule from Rome, rather, he ruled from Ravenna, seaside city conveniently defended by swampy surroundings, and easily supplied by ship. \n\nAlthough Theodoric was *de jure* a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor, *de facto* the Kingdom of Italy operated entirely independently. (I suggest this book every time Theodoric comes up, he was awesome: Theoderic in Italy by J. Moorhead (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1lcu0q", "title": "Before drunk texts, was there any history of drunk letters?", "selftext": "Just something I was thinking of the other night.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lcu0q/before_drunk_texts_was_there_any_history_of_drunk/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cby0jx4"], "score": [51], "text": ["Impassioned letters which the sender immediately regretted sending? Of course! The difference between a letter and a text though is that there is only one copy of the letter, and it can be taken back! Though at the moment I have only a literary example; in *The Brothers Karamazov*, published 1880, Lise writes to her childhood friend Alyosha (I've shortened it a lot),\n\n > \"Dear Alyosha, I love you. I've loved you from my childhood, since our Moscow days, when you were very different from what you are now, and I shall love you all my life... Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps forever, is in your hands. I shall certainly cry today. Good-by till our meeting, our *awful* meeting. \u2014Lise\n\n >  P.S.\u2014Alyosha! You must, must, must come! \u2014Lise\"\n\nBut then when he does show up the next day she asks for the letter back, saying to him,\n\n >  \"I've been regretting my joke all night. Give me back the letter at once. Give it to me... But you can't consider me as a child, a little girl, after that silly joke! I am sorry for that silliness, but you must bring the letter, if you really haven't got it\u2014bring it today, you must, you must... But you are mad to take a joke so seriously!\"\n\n\nHeheheh. So, this isn't explicitly an example of drunkenness, but it's the one I had on hand. I'm sure drunk variations existed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2i3v9p", "title": "How did Roman merchants protect themselves when traveling, especially beyond the borders of the empire?", "selftext": "I'm most interested in how they traveled during the height of the empire's power (the reigns of the \"five good emperors\"), but I'm curious about other eras as well.\n\nAdditionally, does anyone have any good books to recommend on ancient trade and commerce, and in particular Roman activities outside the empire?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2i3v9p/how_did_roman_merchants_protect_themselves_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckz1j3c", "ckzfvow"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["As a follow up, did Roman citizenship carry and weight outside the borders of the empire? If a Roman was in, say, Persia or India would local authorities be reluctant to treat the merchant poorly/demand bribes or something, out of fear that the Romans might do something?", "I can't comment on Roman merchants specifically, however, I remember reading about how Muslim merchants protected themselves. First, Muslim (or in some cases, Jewish) merchants would acquire letters of safe conduct from local rulers which would guarantee (at least in theory) their safe passage through territories. Second, Muslim merchants would arrange to be accompanied by a partner, usually another trader, called a *rafiq*, and each partner would rely on the other for some degree of protection.\n\nI know this doesn't answer your question, but hopefully it can point you in the right direction, or at least, give you an idea on how merchants during the ancient world handled their personal security while abroad.\n\nBernstein, WJ, *A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World*, 2008, p. 6.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "25uz1o", "title": "Do members of British Royalty eventually loses the title of being part of the royal family?", "selftext": "Let's say the youngest son of the youngest son of the youngest son... since the earliest line of British Royalty. What happens to them? Do they still have titles today or do they eventually just get forgotten? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25uz1o/do_members_of_british_royalty_eventually_loses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chl039n", "chl19rx"], "score": [131, 17], "text": ["The British nobility (still, in fact) uses a system of male primogeniture; most of the holdings of the father, including the family estate and the titles, pass on to the eldest son, while younger children receive a smaller share. Titles do not pass on to daughters, except in the absence of sons; daughters, however, can of course marry into titled nobility and thus gain one by right of her husband.\n\nWhat customarily happens in the English royal family is that titles are created for all sons. The Prince of Wales is traditionally the heir apparent, while the younger sons hold duchies: the second son of King Henry IV was thus Thomas, 1st Duke of Clarence, third son John, Duke of Bedford, and fourth son Humprey, Duke of Gloucester. These are some of the traditional titles given to close relatives of the reigning monarch; they would ordinarily pass down in the male line until it becomes extinct, after which the title could then be again bestowed on a new line.\n\nFor the other sons of the royal dukes, titles may be created by the king at some point, much like for other younger sons of the high nobility: this could happen, for example, as a result of political or military service. This may be more likely than for an average member of the nobility; royal blood was obviously valued. This blood, and thus the status from being related to royalty, would dilute through the generations, so yes - eventually any advantage would be lost.\n\nSo to give an example; if a fictional king has two sons, one will be the heir apparent, Prince of Wales, and the other will be created Duke of Clarence. The Duke of Clarence has two sons: the elder will be the 2nd Duke of Clarence, the younger will have no title but one may be created for him, say Earl of Buckingham. He, again, has two sons. The elder son will be the 2nd Earl of Buckingham, the younger will have no title. \n\nAt this point it is less likely that the younger son will gain a title: he will be three generations removed from royal blood and will probably have less to do with the court and politics within it. If one continues this for several generations the younger sons of younger sons will be of increasingly low rank, though this may be corrected by a fresh marriage into the high nobility or extraordinary personal ability, leading to contributions in military or political affairs and thus fresh titles. \n\nIt is also notable that especially in pre-modern history these situations may not happen as frequently as one might expect. Infant mortality was high, and not all royal brothers had children; out of the duchies Henry IV created for his sons, none passed on, as none of the three dukes had legitimate issue (though they did have bastard sons). The younger sons joining the ecclesiastical orders was also a way in which splitting the inheritance could be avoided.\n\nSo - yes, after some generations the younger sons will lose the advantages of royal status. This is also illustrated by contemporary etiquette: a sovereign's great-grandchildren are addressed as Lords or Ladies, but thereafter there is no set form of address or title.\n", "The current system of royal titles dates from 1917, when in the midst of World War One, King George V issued letters patent declaring exactly who would be eligible for the title Prince or Princess and the corresponding HRH. This stated that the only people automatically granted royal status are the sovereign, his or her children, his or her grandchildren (in the male line. This means that while Prince Andrew's children were automatically Princesses, Princess Anne's were granted no royal title) and the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. \nBefore this, all great-grandchildren (once again in the male line) were automatically given the title Prince or Princess, with the slightly lesser designation HH (Highness vs Royal Highness). This meant that George VI, born as great-grandson of the Queen, was originally styled His Highness Prince Albert of York before being elevated to the Royal Highness level. \nThese letters have been modified a few times. Most recently, when Prince William and Kate were expecting, the Queen issued Letters Patent to say that their child would be styled a Royal Highness, whether or not it was a boy or a girl. \nSorry for any formatting issues, I'm on my phone\n[Further explanation here](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/daughter-of-william-and-kate-will-be-a-princess-8444692.html"]]}
{"q_id": "6zn6no", "title": "How did \"My Country 'Tis of Thee\", \"God Save Our Queen\", and \"Kaiserhymne\" all end up with the exact same melody?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zn6no/how_did_my_country_tis_of_thee_god_save_our_queen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmwz4ff", "dmxkh7m"], "score": [24, 5], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion, but [I wrote a post on basically this subject](_URL_0_) about a year ago.", "Not to mention the Liechtenstein national anthem. One time they were playing a football match with Scotland, and the Scottish fans booed their national anthem (because they hate England). The Scottish FA later apologized for that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/58q492/why_do_god_save_the_queen_and_my_country_tis_of/"], []]}
{"q_id": "1q47md", "title": "How accurate are the scenes in WWII movies (and other war movies) when soldiers approach a tank and drop grenades down the hatch? Did this happen as frequently as seen in the movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q47md/how_accurate_are_the_scenes_in_wwii_movies_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd8zoy5", "cd91jui", "cd92cew", "cd93bmq", "cd983qx", "cd9sl75"], "score": [50, 64, 20, 38, 192, 2], "text": ["I'm in interested in an answer, and because no one else has commented yet, I'd like to throw in a ride-along question:\n\nWere the 'sticky bombs' from Saving Private Ryan ever used against enemy armor?", "World War II was an enormous war, involving tens of millions of men and hundreds of thousands of armored vehicles\u2014if you can think of a way to kill tanks with common 1940s-era military technology, there's a good chance it happened.\n\nThat said, most hatches could be bolted by the tank crew, and likely would if enemy infantry was known to be present. More common means for infantry without dedicated anti-tank weaponry to disable a tank  would include using large charges (like sticky bombs/satchel charges, or just tying [seven grenades together](_URL_0_)), and placing them under the tank. If you HAD to use a single grenade, the best means would likely be to shove one into a viewport. Even if you couldn't get it all the way in, the explosive force would make its way into the cabin, with lethal results. \n\nShould note that these attacks were almost always borne of desperation, and were much more likely to end in infantry deaths than the destruction of tank. Tanks, it should be remembered, are faster than humans (on nearly any terrain both can traverse), are almost always used in groups, and are equipped with weaponry which can easily dispatch infantry in large numbers.", "Im assuming your talking about the scene in Saving Private Ryan? First of all the hatches on tanks could be locked from inside, and in urban combat like in the movie they certainly would have been locked. If I remember right the scene also shows an American soldier shooting into the tanks viewport, but during WW2 German tanks (not sure about other countries) used bulletproof glass in them...", "Similar to previous comments, no, nothing like the movies.  The use of armor in SPR is pretty silly.  Look to BOB and Longest Day for better depictions, as they're based on historical incidents/anecdotes.\nAlso, Normandy is a very odd battle tactically so is not a good indicator of general AT tactics.\nLets look at the Russian front and how both sides dealt with armor: AT guns and mines and lots of them.  Yes, pzfausts were plentiful in the later stages and useful up close but that requires lots of guts/drugs to be effective.\nFor the Russians the best weapons they had to kill tanks was cold, mud, and distance.  You don't have to blow up a tank if it won't run or the crew is disabled.\nSame applies in the West.  The Germans had a powerful fear of \"Jabos\" the allied fighter-bombers that patrolled the skies.  But after action reports show that many times more panzers were scuttled by crews when out of gas, bogged down, or broken than were even hit by aerial rocket attack.  Most of those were as a result of heavy artillery, saturation bombing, and supply chain interdiction.\nIt doesn't make for a good movie but if you want to win a war focus on logistics.  ", "Instances where soldiers approach an enemy tank and drop grenades down the hatch are almost unheard of as far as I'm aware. Anti-tank grenades like the RPG40 and RPG43 (which could be tied together in a bundle) and Molotov cocktails were the most common way for your typical ordinary infantryman to deal with a tank at extreme close range. In battle the tank hatches would normally be closed from the inside, but tank crews occasionally did open them to throw a grenade from the tank into a nearby trench. However, soldiers did commonly use to throw grenades into their own tanks if they had to abandon the machine, recorded examples of this occurred in the initial stages of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, like seen [here](_URL_0_) (from the recollections of a Soviet tankist, in Russian).  \n  \n  \nWith that in mind I would like to mention the rather unique example of Lt Petrishhev from the Soviet 53rd army. He and 15 other men in his platoon managed to capture a small hill from the Nazis after a bait and switch manoeuvre. After fighting off three waves of attacks and destroying three tanks including a flame tank with anti-tank grenades, their numbers were dwindled, but they had to fight off yet another German attack. Because they were low on ammo at this point, Petrishhev decided for this attack to let the tanks pass over the trench they were located in and then focus their fire on the infantry behind the tanks. This was working until one of the tanks that passed them opened its hatch and the Soviet soldiers were treated to German grenades. Petrishhev was concussed by a blast, but managed to throw an anti-tank grenade towards the tank, which landed into the hatch and blew the tank up! The hill was held after Petrushhev ordered artillery fire on his position, but only four of the platoon survived to the end, and all were awarded Hero of the Soviet Union stars. [Here](_URL_1_) is the full story, from his recollections (in Russian).  \n  \nEdit: thank you for the very unexpected gold, kind anon!", "There is a petition to have Lt-Col (Ret) Megellas' actions upgraded from a silver star to a Medal of Honour, for his action in killing a Panzer V with 2 hand grenades, one of them down the hatch.\n  \n_URL_2_\n > Nearing the outskirts of town, his men were then attacked and pinned down by a German Mark V Panther tank.  \nThe tank destroyers were not in position to engage the tank.  \nImmediately and at profound risk to his own life, Megellas charged the tank.  \nExposed to deadly small arms and machine gun fire, he reached the tank armed only with his Thompson Submachine Gun and two hand grenades.  \nHe disabled the tank\u2019s advance with a gammon grenade.  \n**He then climbed onto the tank, dropping a fragmentation grenade into the turret hatch, destroying the tank, killing its crew** and saving the lives of many of his men.\n\n_URL_1_\n > However, as they prepared to assault the town, a German Mark V tank took aim at them. Megellas ran towards it, and disabled it with a single grenade.  \nClimbing on top of it, he then dropped another grenade into the tank, eliminating the threat to his men.  \nHe then led his men as they cleared and seized the town, and not one of his men was killed or injured.  \nHe was nominated for the Medal of Honor shortly afterward, but the account of his actions was not included in the original battle reports, and he was instead awarded the Silver Star.\n\nAn American tanker received the Medal of Honour for his action on the receiving end of a grenade through the hatch:  \n_URL_0_  \n > A few days later \u2014 on July 8, \u2014 Sgt Timmerman's tank, of which he was tank commander, was advancing a few yards ahead of the infantry when the attack was held up by a series of Japanese pillboxes and trenches.  \nThe sergeant had been firing the tank's antiaircraft gun during the vigorous attack but when progress was halted, he prepared to fire the 75 mm gun.  \nExposing himself to the enemy, he stood up in the open turret of his tank to warn the infantry to hit the deck because of the muzzle blast of the 75 mm.  \nA Japanese grenade came hurtling through the air aimed in the direction of the open turret.  \nSgt Timmerman fearlessly covered the opening with his own body to prevent the grenade from killing his crew and the grenade exploded on his chest, killing him instantly.  \nAlthough two members of the crew received slight wounds from the grenade, none were killed, all the larger fragments being taken by Sgt Timmerman.  \nFor that his country bestowed its highest honor upon him - the Medal of Honor."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_24_grenade"], [], [], ["http://army.lv/ru/kv-1/996/4452", "http://www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=1737"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_F._Timmerman#Medal_of_Honor_citation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Megellas#World_War_II", "http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/petition-for-medal-of-honor-james-maggie-megellas.html"]]}
{"q_id": "8pa2ty", "title": "Floating Feature: Awesome LGBT+ People of History", "selftext": "*Every now and then we like to run Floating Features--periodic threads intended to allow for more open discussion that allows a multitude of possible answers from people of all sorts of backgrounds and levels of expertise. We expect that anyone who wishes to contribute will do so politely and in good faith, but there is far more scope for speculation and general chat than there would be in a usual thread.*\n\n**Happy Pride Month, /r/AskHistorians!**\n\nOne of the most strongly-entrenched historiographical ideas has become the idea that \"homosexuality\" as an identity did not exist before the late 19th/early 20th century. Not, obviously, that men never had sex with men and women never had sex with women, but that, for example, (in early modern terminology) \"sodomy\" was something men did, or (in medieval clerics' minds) \"the sin against nature\" was something women had absolutely no idea about unless men told them so shhhh.\n\nSo historians often adopt a more restricted, LGBT-focused version of literary studies' queer theory to peer into the past. We look for non-normative patterns of gender partnerships or signs of attraction, and non-Western-normative expressions of gender.\n\nSo today, tell us about some of your favorite LGBT+ people or moments of homoeroticism, genderbending, and love between people of the same gender in history, before and after the 1900 divide!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8pa2ty/floating_feature_awesome_lgbt_people_of_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e09p8on", "e09w6vh", "e0a9cv0", "e0aallt", "e0awzn8", "e0bef46", "e0bjrii"], "score": [43, 17, 5, 10, 9, 6, 4], "text": ["Well, we should obviously mention **Sappho**, who even gave us the English terms 'sapphic' and 'lesbian' (Sappho came from the Greek island of Lesbos)! \n\nProblem with Sappho is that so little about her survives that it's difficult to sketch any biographical details; the only facts that seem fairly certain is that she was a 7th century BC lyric poet from the island of Lesbos, who would have written and performed verses to be accompanied with a lyre. Apart from that, we only know Sappho's titillating afterlife, as she was hailed as one of the greatest lyric poets of antiquity, who wrote verses so beautiful that they were almost sublime or divine in quality. Even Plato, who wasn't much of a fan of poetry, called her the Tenth Muse, and many male ancient authors showered her with passionate praise (e.g. Plutarch: \"Sappho speaks words mingled truly with fire; through her song she communicates the heat of her heart.\"). Most of her poems survive in fragments quoted by other ancient authors, which is a testimony to just how popular and loved her poetry was in antiquity. This is all really remarkable, since hardly any women in antiquity were respected or celebrated for their literary achievements, and all the more significant that Sappho had a persisting reputation of having female-lovers, and some people even thought she was a prostitute. \n\nAlthough Greek and Roman societies did not have a concept of homosexuality per se - it was pretty much granted that all men could desire both women and men - female x female action was always thought as unnatural and monstrous, since women were supposed to by nature assume the passive role in intercourse. The 11th century dictionary Suda states that Sappho had three female companions\u2014Atthis, Telesippa, and Megara\u2014with whom she had \u201cdisgraceful friendships\"; and many ancient authors, especially comic ones, discuss Sappho's female relations and use allusions to Sappho and the island of Lesbos as euphemisms for lesbian sex.  However, it's difficult to say whether Sappho's reputation as a lesbian is simply due to the impassionate and unusually outspoken way she talks about erotic desire towards both men and women - of course, poet could simply assume a female-loving persona for the sake of male audience - the fact that her work as a poet and performer transgressed the boundaries of normally acceptable female behaviour, or whether there is any historical truth to her actually having female lovers. There are also traditions of male lovers and that Sappho was married. Some ancient admirers seem to have an ethos to try to 'normalise' and explain away Sappho's homosexuality as only disgraceful rumours. Roman poet Ovid's (43 BC - AD 17/18) [piece about Sappho](_URL_0_) is especially interesting; Ovid there acknowledges Sappho's lesbian tendencies as sort of youthful folly and 'guilty love', but makes her fall desperately in love with Phaon, an old and ugly boatman in Lespos whom Aphrodite made dashingly handsome and youthful. Sappho even ends up committing suicide because she cannot stand her unrequited love for Phaon, who is after the more beautiful maidens of Sicily. So, Roman version of the 'you're not a lesbian, you just haven't come across the right man'?\n\nSo, even though it's open whether Sappho ever was even gay, she deserves her place in the history of LGTB people as a lesbian icon and as an amazing artist, whose work was loved so much that she transcended even the prejudices of the severely misogynistic and anti-lesbian Greco-Roman society. \n\nHere's one of my favourite 'gay' Sapphic fragments (fr. 16), translated by the amazing Anne Carson:  \n\n >  Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing\non the black earth. But I say it is    \nwhat you love.  \n\n >  Easy to make this understood by all.  \nFor she who overcame everyone  \nin beauty (Helen)  \nleft her fine husband  \nbehind and went sailing to Troy.  \n\n >  Not for her children nor her dear parents  \nhad she a thought, no\u2014  \n]led her astray  \n\n\n >  ]for  \n]lightly  \n]reminded me now of Anaktoria who is gone. \n\n >  I would rather see her lovely step   \nand the motion of light on her face   \nthan chariots of Lydians or ranks  \nof footsoldiers in arms.    \n[...]\n\n \n\nIf anyone wants to read more about Sappho, [the New Yorker](_URL_1_) has a pretty good and entertaining article about her directed to the general reader. ", "Happy Pride! There's a lot I could try and touch on here -- Edward II, Richard II, James VI and I, Eleanor Rykener, Shakespeare, Marlowe -- but I'm feeling like going way outside my historical comfort zone for one view of gay identity before the coinage of homosexuality as a term: the 19th century German essayist and poet Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. \n\nBefore the 20th century, many historical individuals we might now categorize as LGBT+ entered into historical documentation against their will -- people who were involuntarily outed, or whose identity came to light in the course of criminal prosecution. For me Ulrichs is an interesting case because he's frank about the apprehension he experienced around coming forward as an activist -- moments that have been characterized as *voluntary* coming out before formally coming out in a professional or domestic context was a common part of gay life. Ulrichs came out to his extended family via letter and documented his theory of sexual difference in his writings -- if the terminology of Urnings and Dionings ring any bells for you, he's the reason why, though he's not single-handedly responsible for the propagation of \"Uranian\" as an adjective for same-gender desire. (Blame Plato for that one.) Writing as Numa Numantius in his essay *Gladius Furens*, Ulrichs described his decision to publicly protest the suppression of a proposal for reform of the laws governing punishment for same-sex sexuality before the Association of German Jurists in Munich: \n\n\n > *Until my dying day I will look back with pride when on August 29, 1867, I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the specter of an age-old, wrathful hydra which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was poisoned. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.*\n\n > *What gave me strength in the last moments finally to mount the speaker's box at the  Association of German Jurists was the awareness that at that very moment the distant gaze of comrades of my nature was fixed on me. Should I return their trust with cowardice? Also giving me strength were the thoughts of a recent suicide caused by the governing system and whose effects are still smoldering since it occurred in Bremen in 1866. And also a letter I received as I was on the way to our session informing me that a colleague was said to have remarked about me, \"Numa is afraid to take action.\"*\n\n > *And in spite of all this, weak moments continued to creep up on me, and an evil voice whispered into my ear: \"There's still time for silence, Numa. You need only to forgo the words you have prepared. Then your heart palpitations shall cease!\"*\n\n > *But it was almost as if another voice began to whisper. It was the warning not to be silent, the one that warned my predecessor Heinrich H\u00f6\u00dfli in Glarus and which at that moment loudly resounded in my mind forcefully:*\n\n >  > 'Two paths lay before me [H\u00f6\u00dfli]: to write this book [*Eros Die M\u00e4nnerliebe der Griechen*, a survey of homosexual love in Classical Greek literature] and submit myself to persecution, or: not to write and be riddled with guilt when I enter my grave. For, surely I have already been confronted with the temptation to give up writing. But then the images of Plato and the Greek poets and heroes would appear to me, those who belonged to the nature of Eros and who became all that which should become of humanity. And beside these images I saw before me what we have caused such men to become. Before my eyes appeared the images of the persecuted and of those already damned who are yet unborn, and I behold the unhappy mothers beside their cradles rocking cursed, innocent children! Then I saw our judges and their blindfolded eyes. Finally I envisioned the gravedigger slide the cover of my coffin over my cold face. Then the overwhelming urge to rise and stand up for the oppressed truth powerfully seized me victoriously. And so I continued to write with my eyes decidedly turned from those who labor for my annihilation. I do not have a choice between keeping silence and speaking. I say to myself: \"Speak, or be judged!\"' \n\n > *I should like to be worthy of H\u00f6\u00dfli. I, too, did not desire to come under the hand of the gravedigger without having willingly attested to my oppressed inalienable rights and without having broken through one alley of freedom, even if for me there is less fame and a greater name to be made.* \n\n > *With these thoughts and with my heart pounding in my breast, I mounted the speaker's box on August 29, 1867, in the grand hall of the Odeon Theater in front of more than 500 jurists of Germany, among whom were members of the German parliament and a Bavarian prince. I mounted with God!*\n\n > [(trans. Michael Lombardi-Nash)](_URL_0_) \n\n\nAfter his public act of protest in Munich, Ulrichs went on to tangle with the law, breed butterflies, publish Latin-language prose and verse, correspond with other Latin language enthusiasts, and write more essays on the riddle of man-manly love. His works would come to the attention of sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld toward the end of the 19th century and his coinages describing gender and sexuality remained in circulation through the early 20th century. H\u00f6\u00dfli's statements about the \"curse\" laid on innocent children in a prejudiced society resonate with me much as they did for Ulrichs -- I get especially worked up about that kind of thing around Pride, surrounded by younger people whose experience of the cultural response to LGBTQ identity is very different from mine. Good luck, you gay babies. ", "So a lot of the talk here seems to equate LGBT with sexuality, but what about people who are gender variant?Does anybody know of trans people prior to the turn of the previous century?  \n\nThe one I\u2019m familiar with was Albert Cashier, a trans man who signed up to fight for the union in the civil war, then continued living as a man until he died in the late 1910s. \n", "I've felt a deep affection for Sappho thanks to JD Salinger since I was 13 or so, but she's been honored already \\-\\- so, to another tough woman:\n\nGertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein was born in America but relocated to France in 1902 at the age of 28, eventually settling in Paris, where she'd remain. Stein's name might not mean much to most, but she started her own salon and entertained the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, etc. She also had an incredibly close bond to a young Pablo Picasso. Her patronage and support of his art is really why you know him today (Picasso was hardly the only artist with whom Stein had a close relationship, but all of my books about her are in America and I am not at the moment).\n\nShe was also a lesbian. She began exploring her sexuality as a student at Johns Hopkins, but in Paris is where she really embraced it, finding a partner in Alice B. Toklas with whom she would remain until she died.\n\nAmong Stein's many contributions to the world of 20th century art and literature, she also coined the term, *The Lost Generation*, which happens to encapsulate most of the artists and writers that she was connected to.\n\nIf you want to read more about her, she wrote several books, the most well\\-known of which is *The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.*\n\nAnother LGBTQ hero of mine I'd like to give some much deserved, albeit ineloquent praise to is Marcel Proust. Proust is the writer of the immensely intimidating seven volume novel, *\u00c0 la Recherche du Temps Perdu*, translated as  *In Search of Lost Time*.\n\nProust was a sickly child of a well\\-to\\-do French family, although he did serve some time in the French Army. He spent his life alternately wasting away and taking part in the artistic high\\-society of France. The last three years of his life, illness got the best of him and he was essentially, although not physically tied to his bed. It was from this life \\-\\- as a child with a strong attachment to his mother, a soldier, a loafer, etc. that he drew inspiration to write *In Search of Lost Time*. It took, I believe nine years to write, and he died before he was able to complete it. It's a terrific novel, hellishly depressing in places, deeply reflective and a great source for understanding Parisian society at the turn of the century.\n\nHe never was open about his sexuality, but there is an undercurrent of homosexuality in ISOLT, and his compatriots almost universally agreed that he was a gay man.\n\nThere's lots of writers out there that you're better off not learning much about their personal lives \\-\\- but Proust is one of the exceptions. He's always struck me as a truly good, decent human being.", "Rock history is littered with promotional pushes for genuinely interesting, talented pop acts who commercially sink like a stone. Judee Sill, for example, was pushed pretty strongly by David Geffen and Reprise around 1970-1972 (listen to her great ['Jesus Was A Crossmaker'](_URL_2_)). Her music is moving and very well-constructed, baroque/Bach-influenced singer-songwriter music which nowadays has a cult following. She also, for better or worse, simply failed to capture the market despite the promotional push, the excellent reviews at the time and her current popularity.\n\nSill, despite her quite pristine, thoughtful music with its classical influences, was also a former junkie and sex worker, who as a teenager had a Bonnie  &  Clyde act with an older armed robber - she learned how to play Bach in reform school. Her story is *rather* a contrast to her music. And she was apparently bisexual: a [Barney Hoskyns piece on her in *The Guardian*](_URL_3_) suggests that one time when her lawyer came to visit her, she was *'surrounded by her adoring female fans. I remember going round there one morning and there were maybe four or five other women, all sunbathing in the nude.'* (Hoskyns also claims that Sill went through a series of female lovers whom she treated with mild contempt).\n\nPerhaps it was Sill's openness about her decidedly un-Christian life choices that made the singer-songwriter audience wary of her often religiously-themed music. In contrast, modern audiences, with a bit more distance (and much more of a taste for darkness, in the age of Nirvana and Eminem), find the distinction between the music and the person fascinating; a 2009 tribute album to her featured tracks by Bill Callahan, Beth Orton, and a member of Grizzly Bear.\n\nBut I was originally only going to discuss Sill as an example; instead I was going to talk here Bruce Wayne Campbell, better known as Jobriath, who was basically the first out gay man to get a real promotional push as a rock star, in 1973-1974. Jobriath had previously been in a folk rock band called Pidgeon and musically was somewhere between Elton John and David Bowie. And Jerry Brandt, the manager of Carly Simon, discovered a demo of Jobriath and was besotted, and he went and tracked down Jobriath, who was an alcoholic working as a prostitute in California at this point, and sobered him up and got him signed to Elektra Records. By this point, it was the height of glam and androgynous male singers who liked to suggest at least bisexuality, and Brandt and Jac Holzman of Elektra thought there might be a place in the market for Jobriath.\n\nSo they recorded an album, with Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones involved, and had a *proper* music industry promotional push. Put it this way: over Christmas 1973, a massive 41 by 47 foot poster of Jobriath adorned New York's Time Square, and there were full-page ads everywhere from Vogue to Esquire to the music press. And they were not shy about Jobriath's sexuality: he proclaimed \"I'm a true fairy!\" in one interview. Brandt's influence got Jobriath a slot on the premiere music performance television show of the time, The Midnight Special ([which you can see here](_URL_0_)). It was going to be huge.\n\nClearly, as you have probably never heard of Jobriath before, it was not huge. Despite the promotional blitz, the public was largely either nonplussed or actively hostile. Bruce Wayne Campbell had not actually performed in public at this point as Jobriath during Brandt's promotional blitz - it was all image rather than music, as far as Brandt was concerned. In a [1998 *Mojo* piece](_URL_1_), Jobriath's keyboard player, Hayden Wayne, complained of Brandt that \"your manager has to have you interests at heart, not the creation of a platform to gesticulate his own ego and power of influence.\"\n\nOnce they were finally booked to play shows in America, they played a show at the Nassau Coliseum in New York, and discovered the crowd booing them as 'faggots', In England, where glam rock was much more massive than it was in the UK, the album was *slammed* by the press: the NME sneered that it was the 'fag-end of glam rock'. In the rock world, the androgyny and bisexuality of glam rock was largely seen as play-acting; people at the time famously thought that Freddie Mercury's camp mannerisms were just affectations. Someone openly saying they were a 'true fairy', in 1974, was pretty far out for mainstream America/the UK; the Stonewall riots had only been five years previous, and gay rights advocacy was in its infancy.\n\nJac Holzman of Elektra said in an interview for a 1998 piece about Jobriath in *Mojo*  that *'It was an awful album. The music seemed secondary to everything else. It was all too much too soon and didn't suit the label. Not because of the gay angle, it was just lacking in any sense of reality. It's an embarrassment, something that's come back to haunt me.'* \n\nJobriath released a second album, six months later, before the record company and Brandt lost interest; he auditioned for an important role in the Al Pacino film *Dog Day Afternoon* before retiring from show business to live on the top floor of the (in)famous Chelsea Hotel. He passed away in 1983, an early victim of AIDS only months after the disease became frontpage news.\n\nNonetheless, Jobriath ended up with quite a range of followers, suggesting that not everyone agreed with Holzman that it was an awful album; Gladiola-brandisher and Smiths lead singer Morrissey was the impetus being a 2004 release of a compilation of his music. Def Leppard covered Jobriath's 'Rock Of Ages', while Okkervil River's album *The Stand Ins* has a song titled 'Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel, 1979'.\n", "(1/2)\n\nContrary to some modern sensationalist claims that sailors of old were at least tolerant of same-sex relations as a substitute for women in an all-male environment, there is mountains of evidence to indicate this was far from the case. The crime of sodomy was legally punishable by death in most European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, and sailors accused of sodomy at sea could either be executed (sometimes by being tied together and thrown overboard) or marooned. Other times they could face lesser punishments like flogging. \n\nThe topic of this post is an employee of the Dutch East India Company or VOC who was convicted of sodomy and marooned on the remote and uninhabited Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in 1725, where he eventually died from thirst. To give a little more historical context, just five years after this in the Netherlands there was an intense outbreak of persecution of homosexuals in 1730-32 called the Utrecht sodomy trials which resulted in at least 75 men and boys being executed for sodomy. That should give some idea of just how deadly and vicious things really were when it came to this. \n\nLeendert Hasenbosch was probably born in The Hague in the Dutch Republic in about the year 1695. He was the fifth of six children, all girls except for him. His father appears to have at some point worked as a grocer, but in around 1708-09 he made the decision to travel to the Dutch East India colony of Batavia with three of his daughters. This would have been a very drastic and risky undertaking likely brought on by some financial catastrophe. Leendert for whatever reason was left behind in the Netherlands and likely appointed some type of male guardian and given some education. In 1713, Leendert joined the VOC himself as a soldier at about the age of 18. His ship departed for the East Indies in 1714 and he arrived at Batavia that same year. He served as a soldier in the Dutch East Indies for the next eight or nine years, eventually being promoted to a corporal and then a military clerk or minor bookkeeper. \n\nHe never married. There was also a strange thing that occurred in August 1722, when Leendert transferred his complete outstanding salary (totaling over 287 Dutch guilders or something like $5,000 today by my calculations) to a man named Jan Backer living all the way back in the Dutch Republic. Why Leendert did this is unknown but the salary logs record negotiations between notaries and representatives of Leendert, and that Leendert had been summoned to pay several times in the preceding years. Had Leendert incurred some huge debt all those years ago before he left the Netherlands or committed some terrible crime that he was being demanded to pay restitution for? Was he being blackmailed in some way? Again, we don't know but aside from a desire to rejoin his father it could explain why Leendert might have joined the VOC as a soldier at the age of 18, a notoriously dangerous and grueling employment that only desperate people would usually undertake. But if he was hoping to escape something or somebody in the Netherlands it clearly didn't work because eventually they found him. \n\nIn 1723, Leendert's father died in Batavia. In 1724, Leendert for whatever reason decided to finally return to the Netherlands. In October he signed on for a voyage functioning as a bookkeeper (still in the employ of the VOC) and in December the ship set sail for the Netherlands as part of a fleet of sixteen ships. On March 19, 1725, the fleet stopped in Cape Town, South Africa, to restock provisions for the next leg of the voyage and they departed again on April 11. Cape Town had been a Dutch outpost for over a century by this point and letters and mail were deposited here for the next ship to collect and take to their destination. It's possible that some sort of incriminating information against Leendert emerged as a result of this because less than a week later he was convicted aboard the ship he sailed on and sentenced to be marooned on an island. A note on Leendert's salary log later read:\n\n >  On 17 April 1725, on the *Prattenburg,* he was sentenced to be set ashore, being a villain, on the island of Ascension or elsewhere, with confiscation of his outstanding salary. `\n\nPossibly one reason he was spared execution is that as the ship's bookkeeper he was classed as an officer (which included even having his own cabin). On April 27, the ship passed by the island of Saint Helena (of course where Napoleon was imprisoned a century later) but Leendert was not left there, presumably because the island was inhabited and owned by the British East India Company. On May 3, the ship reached Ascension Island almost 500 miles further to the northwest and Leendert was put ashore on May 5 with little more than a large cask of water, a musket with some powder and shot, a tent, a hatchet, some buckets, a frying pan, some rice and vegetable bulbs. Ascension is a decently sized island measuring roughly five miles in diameter. It is also hilly and does have several sources of fresh water that had been made use of over two decades previously when the English captain William Dampier was temporarily shipwrecked on the island with his crew in 1701. \n\nSo given these circumstances, although being marooned on an uninhabited island with limited tools and resources certainly isn't easy, why was Leendert not able to pull off an impressive feat of survival and learn to live off the land eventually with relative ease like Robinson Crusoe or the real-life Alexander Selkirk or other famous castaways? Why did he instead end up dying of thirst on an island that had already several decades earlier been attested as having fresh water sources? To answer these questions, our only option is to examine a short published account called *Sodomy Punished* first appearing in 1726 that purported to be the journal of Leendert Hasenbosch that he kept on the island and another very similar account published in 1728 purporting to be of an \"anonymous Dutchman\" called an *An Authentick Relation.* These accounts are very similar and describe Leendert's activities in the form of log entires written each day or so, and altogether give a quite gritty and believable view of his struggles to survive and find water on the island and his eventual failures to do so and deteriorating physical and mental state leading up to his death over five months later around October 14 when the journal finally stops. \n\nMore problematic are the moral and religious sermons very obviously injected into the text by publishers as a pronouncement against sodomy and which attempt to paint Leendert as extremely remorseful for his sins and his death as divine punishment. It even includes him being tormented by ghosts and spirits. This is why it's hard to say how much of any of it is reliable and based on a real journal found with Leendert's belongings when they were reportedly discovered by English sailors in January 1726. However, the best evidence that there is indeed a basis of truth to the account is that modern researchers have independently tracked down the Dutch VOC records of Leendert Hasenbosch and the ship's logs which record the ship he sailed on as stopping at Ascension Island on the exact date he was marooned -- things the 18th century Englishmen who found his belongings wouldn't have had access to. \n\nAssuming the finer details of his struggles on the island are mostly true, after being left alone on May 5, Leendert mostly spent his first month hunting and eating turtles and birds along with boiled rice. He raised a white flag atop a hill to signal to passing ships that someone was there but didn't do much else. He tried to plant some of the vegetable bulbs and pease that had been given him but found it was impossible without enough moisture. He also managed to accidentally light part of his tent on fire through forgetfulness, although nothing much was destroyed. Supposedly he spent a lot of his time reading the Bible and also briefly kept a wounded bird as a pet which died a week later. He also seems very depressed and frequently mentions not caring if he lives or dies. \n\nOn June 8, Leendert began to worry about how low his supply of water was getting and went searching for water across the island which he eventually found a small trickle of and this was enough to sustain him. He continues to seem very depressed and a typical day concludes something like this\n\n >  [June 13] In the evening went and looked out for ships, but returned very melancholy, seeing none. \n\nThis is also the point where *Sodomy Punished* and *An Authentick Relation* inject various passages about him seeing the ghosts and spirits of hellish creatures, and even being haunted by his former male lover. This part is probably made up but does contain a few interesting lines and the only references to who his lover might have been:\n\n >  ...we were formerly soldiers together, and I know that he was a very debauched person, and a Menist [Mennonite] as to his belief, and not baptized; yet tho' he was no stranger to the words and works of our almighty God, I have heard him use the most blasphemous expressions that can be. (*Sodomy Punished*) \n\nThere is also this single seemingly heartfelt reminisce that seeps through:\n\n >  ...when he was in this world we were as great as two own brothers. He was a soldier at Batavia. (*An Authentick Relation*) \n", "Elagabalus is endlessly interesting, but given the politicised nature of contemporary writing, with sexual deviancy used alongside and as invective, in conjunction with Dio's references to Elagabalus' 'barbaric' Syrian dress, his placing a foreign God before even Jupiter, and referring to him as 'Sardanapalus', I would love to know where best to read further as  I am not conversant with the discussion as to the veracity of the below.\n\n[Dio](_URL_0_) reports thusly\n\n >   Sardanapalus, on seeing him, sprang up with rhythmic movements, and then, when Aurelius addressed him with the usual salutation, \"My Lord Emperor, Hail!\" he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him with a melting gaze, answered without any hesitation: \"Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.\"\n\nFurther going on to state\n\n > He carried his lewdness to such a point that he asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in his body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.\n\nHe also reports Elagabalus comported himself as a woman,  'standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do', and wooing men paid for their part. Elagabalus' most stable and longest relationship is also reported to have been with the chariot driver Hierocles, whom Elagabalus referred to as his husband, seeing himself as his 'queen'.\n\nIt certainly seems as though Elagabalus may be perceived as transgender, and it is a very different relationship from the more normative paedarasty, but is there anything further corroborating Dio and Herodian? I feel as though the very fact that such terminology and characterisation was used suggests that there is at least some precedent for such a presentation of gender and sexuality (whether from Elagabalus or other sources). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0085%3Apoem%3D15", "https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted"], ["http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/uraniamanuscripts/UrningPride.pdf"], [], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXks3Xjydh0", "http://web.archive.org/web/20060427003407/http://www.crapfromthepast.com/jobriath/mojo.htm", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8tDmPmC_Bk", "https://www.theguardian.com/observer/omm/story/0,13887,1369079,00.html"], [], ["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/80*.html#79-16"]]}
{"q_id": "6jemcp", "title": "When and why did Mendelssohn's \"A Midsummer Night's Dream\" become the most popular musical accompaniment for wedding ceremonies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jemcp/when_and_why_did_mendelssohns_a_midsummer_nights/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djdzowe", "dje1of8"], "score": [27, 67], "text": ["Not to answer the question, but for anyone else puzzled by the question, this is the tune the OP is talking about.  You will recognize it when you hear it.  I never knew the name.\n_URL_0_\n", "Firstly, I wouldn't say that the *Wedding March* (*Hochzeitsmarsch*) from the incidental music that Mendelssohn wrote for *A Midsummer Night's Dream* is the *most* popular music at weddings. In fact, the Wedding March *shares* its popularity at weddings with the *Bridal Chorus* (popularly known as *Here Comes the Bride*) from Wagner's *Lohengrin*. The two pieces are complimentary. *Here Comes the Bride* is stately, solemn, almost ethereal and is used for the moment when the bride floats, swanlike, down the aisle on her father's arm towards the man with whom she will share her destiny while her mother wipes away a tear, etc, etc; the *Wedding March* is 'an ideal mixture of bombast, sentimentality and gravity' for the recessional as the laughing couple, with the crowd of guests behind them, walk out to get rice thrown into their hair. That's part of the 'why\u2019 the March has remained popular for so long - it's great music and fits the mood at the end of the wedding very well. \n\nThe incidental music to *A Midsummer Night's Dream* was written in 1843 and premiered in October 1843 at Potsdam (the famous Overture had been written in 1826, while Mendelssohn was still a teenager). The British premiere, with the composer conducting, was in May 1844 - (Mendelssohn was a frequent visitor to Britain, where he was very popular and was befriended and greatly admired by Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort and the other royals). A vocal score was published in 1844, and a full score in 1848. \n\nIn March 1899, after the Wedding March had been popular for a considerable time, Samuel Reay, a British organist, wrote to the *Musical Times*, noting that he had transcribed the piece for organ and performed it for the first time at the grand society wedding of Mr. Tom Daniel and Miss Dorothy Carew, at St. Peter's Church, Tiverton, June 2, 1847. Whether or not Reay was the first to have played it at a wedding, no one seems to have stepped forward with a claim of a prior performance. _URL_0_ Punch mentions that it was played at a fashionable wedding in Knightsbridge in 1857. _URL_2_\n\nIt is often said to have been the wedding of Victoria, the Princess Royal and daughter of Queen Victoria, to Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia in the Chapel Royal in St James\u2019s Palace on 25 January 1858 that made the *Wedding March* fashionable. It is possible that this was a request made by the bride or her mother to honor their dead friend, but this is unknown. At any rate, from here on the piece was often played at weddings, and by 1870 one writer notes that \u201cin these times, all the young ladies 'in the fashion\u2019 expect to have Mendelssohn\u2019s Wedding March played over them\u201d.  _URL_1_\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIM5cWB2wmM"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=npAPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA194", "https://books.google.com/books?id=YLMPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP8", "https://books.google.com/books?id=PmlPAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA50"]]}
{"q_id": "bkbj4i", "title": "Men who wore suits in the 20s and 30s. How often did they wash them?", "selftext": "I was looking at some old time baseball stadium pictures and everyone was wearing super formal attire. It seems that men and women dressed formal all day every day even in the hot summer months. So I'm wondering how was the hygiene back then? Did they wear the same suit daily for a few days? Did most people have many suits so they could wear something clean 7 days a week? I'm sure most people were poor and could not afford many nice clothes. Can someone tell me how they kept clean while being poor but still dressing formal? Or were they sweaty smelly nice looking people?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bkbj4i/men_who_wore_suits_in_the_20s_and_30s_how_often/", "answers": {"a_id": ["emgvorh"], "score": [7], "text": ["Added question: ...and... do suits then vs  now have the same typical wear length before cleaning?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "541gxr", "title": "[meta] I've noticed the \"Interesting Inquirer\" flair, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the rules. Whats the requirement for this flair?", "selftext": "I've noticed questions with this flair seem to make the front page quite often, wondered how one can be granted such a distinction.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/541gxr/meta_ive_noticed_the_interesting_inquirer_flair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7y5yjh"], "score": [70], "text": ["You're right, Interesting Inquirer flair isn't in the rules anywhere. Oops. ;)\n\nSubject flair in AskHistorians, including Quality Contributor flair, is awarded based on two criteria: (1) quality answers and (2) commitment to AskHistorians. \n\nOur application threads are littered with requests from people for flair based on their claimed credentials alone, or listing in-depth, comprehensive, well-sourced posts in other subreddits as evidence of their historical knowledge. These applications get denied. Herodotus himself could apply for AskHistorians flair, and we would say, \"Sorry, first we need to see 3-5 posts in AskHistorians itself.\"\n\nBut the AskHistorians community is more than the people who answer questions. The *coolest* thing about AH--our defining feature--is that we exist on user-driven content: we are **Ask**Historians, not HistoriansAssume.\n\nJust as some people devote enough time and energy to AskHistorians writing quality answers to earn subject master flair, some people who don't feel confident writing answers of their own nevertheless work to make the AskHistorians community a better place.\n\nFor the most part, that tends to mean reliably asking thought-provoking questions that can on occasion lead to some really great historical inquiry in the answers. Just like subject flairs occasionally write a less than award-winning answer, not ever question has to get 5000 upvotes and an answers that requires 3 posts to fit it all in. But *in general*, questions from an Interesting Inquirer flair should be just that: interesting!\n\nAsking questions is the bulk of II flair, hence the name. But just like we have higher standards for answers submitted as part of a subject flair application, Interesting Inquirers make the AskHistorians community a better place in other ways. They read other people's question-threads and post cogent follow-up questions. They join in weekly threads like Tuesday Trivia or Saturday Reading  &  Research, show up in Floating Features, post links to their favorite answers in the Sunday Digest, maybe post their favorite answer each month to DepthHub.\n\nAs with Quality Contributor flair, which is awarded for people who write amazing answers across multiple fields, Interesting Inquirer is a recognition and an award. It's not something that can be applied for. Flairs and moderators have a pretty good finger on what goes on in this subreddit. Prospective QC and II flairs are nominated by another user and vetted much like we vet subject flair applicants. (Of course, sometimes we move like a rusty Rube Goldberg machine and it takes much longer to process these and other flair apps than we'd like).\n\nThe vast, vast majority of the AskHistorians community does not have and will never earn flair. That's the nature of this subreddit. We are always looking for ways to allow as many people as possible to participate, and we want to reward awesome participation when it happens.\n\nIn short, AskHistorians exists at the pleasure of the people doing the asking. Doesn't it make sense to recognize some of those askers?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1cbn4b", "title": "Why do Gurkhas have such a fearsome reputation?", "selftext": "It seems that they've been highly respected by outsiders for a long time, but what makes them seen as the most fearless and feared combatant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cbn4b/why_do_gurkhas_have_such_a_fearsome_reputation/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9eyzxs", "c9ez47z", "c9ezlt4", "c9f582i", "c9ffhsy"], "score": [75, 24, 29, 3, 6], "text": ["because they earned it.\n\nWhen they fought the British in 1814, they fought to a draw, this is against the British Empire, which at the time, was still very much at its prime. The Gurkhas were outnumbered and facing superior weapons. \n\n_URL_1_\n\nThey fought in every major conflict around the world since that time, and have more decorations as an ethic group per person than anyone else\n\nThey have along history of warriors long before the English \"discovered\" them.\n_URL_0_", "One of their most significant achievements was the Anglo-Nepalese war. They fought the British army(during their rule in India) who had a lot more soldiers and better weapons. Although, Nepal did lose some parts of the border lands to British india due to political treaties, the amount of casualties was very high for the British.\n\nThe Gurkhas also have a reputation for hand to hand combat, especially with the 'khukuri', a Nepalese knife. ", "They've continually proved themselves in every engagement. Large number of VC recipients. The citations  are jaw-dropping.\n\nFor instance the actions of Tulbahadur Pun:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWikipedia (sorry) also has links to most of the citations published in the London Gazette _URL_0_\n\nAnd their descendants continue to live up that legacy -\n\n\"Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun used up all of his ammunition and resorted to using his machine gun tripod to repel the attack in Afghanistan in September.\"\n_URL_2_\n\n", "Like everyone else here, I have to say that they have earned it. And they keep earning it over and over. If you want some amusingly narrated examples (and don't mind profanity) check out some examples of Gurkha badassery at Badass of the Week. [These three stories](_URL_0_) are pretty good.", "Although I am not a historian by any means, I am Nepali and I would like to add a few things to this thread. \n\nLike many have said before, the Gurkhas impressed the British East India company at the Battle of Nalapani (and later battles) during the Anglo-Nepali war, where around 200 Nepalis held off around 2,000 British soldiers with much better equipment. After the Sepoy mutiny, the British came to rely more on the Gurkhas, who proved their skill in battle many times over. \n\nThe Gurkhas are not one ethnic group per se. At the time when the British attacked Nepal, it was a kingdom ruled by the Gorkha dynasty, a lineage of kings who originally hailed from the district of Gorkha in central Nepal. Back then, the Gurkha soldiers consisted mostly of the ethnic groups Rai, Magar, Limbu, etc, most of whom live in the upper hills/mountains of Nepal and were Tibetan in ethnicity. Now, the pool has been expanded to include Indo-Aryans too like the Newars and the Bahuns and Chettris. \n\nThe British are not the only ones to still have Gurkha soldiers. The Indian Army has regiments of Gurkha soldiers and the Singapore Police regularly recruit Nepalis. \n\nOne last thing, I feel like many of you are romanticising the idea of a Gurkha soldier. Sure, they have a reputation for bravery but they are not superhuman fighting machines. Compared to what one could make in Nepal, the British Army pays better. So there is cutthroat competition to get into the British Army. I personally know around 5-10 friends who tried out for the British Army 2 years in a row and didn't make it. For many, it is a source of pride as their fathers and grandfathers have been in the Army but for others, it is one of the few ways to escape harsh poverty and make a decent living upon retiring. \n\nThe British, though, have been less than kind. The Gurkhas had long been demanding pay equal to what British soldiers made as they were getting paid far less than Britishers. After years of fighting legal battles, the British Army finally raised the Gurkhas pay but it is still not on equal footing with that of the British themselves. The Gurkhas have also demanded that they be allowed residential rights in England and the British have acquiesced to this too, but with a certain cut-off date. \n\nOne last last thing, the Gurkhas are a source of shame for many Nepalis, especially our Communists. Nepal is a sovereign nation and yet, its citizens continue to fight for another flag as basically mercenaries. When the Maoists came to came to power in 2007, they issued statements and made a big stink over the Gurkhas but were unable to put a stop to it as there are still many others who wholeheartedly support it. The reasons being tradition, honour, and most importantly, pay. \n\nIf anyone is interested, there is a great documentary out right now called [Who Wants to Be a Gurkha](_URL_0_), directed by Kesang Tseten. I don't know if its available worldwide though."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ayo-gorkhali.org/", "http://www.tangting.org/latest-news/ttta-blog/30-the-history-of-the-gurkhas"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brigade_of_Gurkhas_recipients_of_the_Victoria_Cross", "http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/36785/supplements/5129", "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12854492"], ["http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?search=1&tag=Gurkha"], ["https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kesang-Tseten-Shunyata-Film-Production/206521757052"]]}
{"q_id": "75ppo0", "title": "IAMA Lecturer in Modern History researching the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs in the UK", "selftext": "My [present research](_URL_3_) examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. I'm currently working with Parliament on the [Vote100 Project](_URL_5_), BBC Radio 4 and the Smithsonian, and in 2019 I'll manage the [Astor100 project](_URL_0_) celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.\n\nI am no longer online because at 8pm BST (3pm EDT, 12pm PDT) I'll be giving a public lecture, titled Suffrage and Citizenship, at the University of Reading where I work. You can watch live online through the [University's Facebook page](_URL_1_), and [get in touch with me on Twitter](_URL_2_). I will also look again over the next few days.  Many thanks for your questions.\n\nAMA about the campaign for equal citizenship, the parliamentary politics, the campaigns for and against, the issues of class, marriage, and militancy around the suffrage movement. \n\n[More about my research](_URL_3_), [my blog](_URL_4_), and [me on Twitter](_URL_2_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/75ppo0/iama_lecturer_in_modern_history_researching_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do7z2li", "do7z8e7", "do7zemq", "do7zx8x", "do800mn", "do80ngc", "do80sgn", "do88r9g", "do8rj13"], "score": [11, 7, 16, 7, 7, 5, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Hello Dr Turner and thanks for doing an AMA.\n\nHow did the English liberals and those influenced by ideas of people like Adam Smith, David Ricardo react to the demands of woman suffrage? Or did the support come only from Socialist movement like that of Chartists?\n\n", "How much of the material you're working with, particularly in the 19th century, was originally public, and how much is from letters, diaries, etc?\n\nI ask because my own work in food history in that era relies almost completely on women's private notebooks, commonplace books, and the like, rather than materials intended for public consumption, and the difference in tone and intent from public conduct can be striking.", "Hi Dr Turner, thanks for doing an AMA!\n\nAs far as I know, the common argument against women's suffrage tended to be that the man voted for the whole household. Was there ever any notion that widows or (perhaps less likely) adult but unmarried women were unfairly excluded? What was the role of single women in the movement? ", "Hello!\n\nDid these new female MPs face a lot of sexism when they first started?", "One more! Was there concern that by being politically involved these women were endangering their marriage? ", "Hey there! Can you introduce and detail some of the struggles early female MPs went through for someone like myself who isn't too knowledgeable about womens suffrage?", "Thanks for doing this and crossposting to /r/UKPolitics,\nTwo questions:\n\nHow much did the allegations of the use of the term D-Day Dodgers hurt Lady Astor's political career and reputation?\n\nNot sure if it's your area, but how much were women involved within British fascist movements like the BUF?", "Hi Dr. Turner. \n\nHow would you describe the class background of early female MPs? How did that stack up against the general class background of the male MPs?\n\nToday when we form Select Committees, they are typically elected by the Committee of Selection, which can add expertise to a Select Committe or just as likely keep them off of one, if the party whips wish it. The shape of Parliament may have morphed and changed a lot since women first entered Parliament and the Select Committee is a more recent addition to the structure of Parliament, however, some form of committee must have existed when women first took to the floor, and with that some form of membership selection. There had to be some variety of precursor. How was the access of women to any precursor committees dealt with, where there any particular areas they were intentionally given access to, and areas they were deprived of access? If possible, what were the given reasons for this? I mainly ask because the appointment of select committee membership has a powerful effect which the public often does not see on the direction that investigations against the government take and the way policy is developed, it sets the agenda. The place for the man behind the curtain to stand, as he whispers to you gently \"please, do not heavily investigate this issue\". I want to know how women were incorporated into this process.\n\nFinally, after centuries of dealing with only male MPs, how did party whips adjust to suddenly having to find ways to leverage women in Commons to vote with the party line? What was the relationship between early women MPs and their respective party whips? The whip is something of a dirty job in politics, and can be the source of either much strife or much success, so there must be some stories there. Incidentally, any stories which you think are worth sharing regarding the first female party whips? How did they carrying out of the role differ from their male counterparts? Was there any refusal to co-operate on the discriminatory grounds of men not wanting to take orders from a woman?\n\nThat ended up being a fair few questions, however, I hope you can educate me here. I am woefully uninformed about early women MPs.", "Great AMA so far! My question is, did female voters tend to vote more heavily in favour of female candidates for parliament? What about men?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.parliament.uk/nancyastor", "https://www.facebook.com/theuniversityofreading", "https://twitter.com/jacqui1918", "https://www.reading.ac.uk/history/about/staff/e-j-turner.aspx", "https://jacquiturner.me/", "https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/vote-100/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aqay7b", "title": "Is there an explanation as to why there were Empires such as the Inca's and Aztec's in the Southern Hemisphere, and yet no such Empires in the North?", "selftext": "In particular I've noticed this deep rich history and civilization that Inca's and Aztec's had in the Pre-Colombian era, yet I'm hard pressed to find anything similar in regards to America or Canada for that matter. It seems they were more nomadic and divided(in the sense of the multitude of tribes) the more North you went. Is there a reason for this? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aqay7b/is_there_an_explanation_as_to_why_there_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egf8q5b", "egg4ovt"], "score": [4, 48], "text": ["Sorry for my mistake with the hemisphere's, my apologies. Also does anyone know why it says there are comments yet I cannot see any?", "First time posting here, but I think I can give it a go! Hope this helps. If you don't want to read it all, there's a very short summary at the bottom. Edited for links\n\nOn a technical note -- the Aztec empire was solidly within the Northern Hemisphere (as was part of the Inca Empire), and the Aztec, Toltec and other Mesoamerican states were also on the North American continent. But it seems like your question meant more to address the difference in empires between what is now Latin America and the US/Canada/Northern Mexico, so I'll talk more about that, and refer to that area as North America for the sake of convenience.\n\nPart of the answer to your question is that our records of North American peoples and civilization are much spottier, for a variety of reasons. First, Andean and Mesoamerican states were encountered by Europeans earlier than North American ones were. The Inca and Aztec were already conquered by the time major expeditions into the modern-day U.S. began, and Canada was even after that. Coupled with the fact that there isn't any writing from indigenous North American peoples, we simply don't have as many records about that region. So there might have been more empire-style states in North America than we realize.\n\nEuropeans arriving in the Gulf of Mexico first also meant that the infectious diseases which decimated the Americas' indigenous populations spread outwards from that place. Importantly, those diseases spread *faster than European exploration*. By the time Europeans arrived in many locations -- before they could write records or witness native states -- disease had already ravaged the region. One of the more dramatic examples of this is in fact the Inca empire. When Pizarro arrived, hundreds of thousands (at the very least) of Inca subjects had died before any European had been to the empire. Perhaps most importantly, one of the Inca smallpox victims was the emperor Wayna Capac, whose death led the the Inca Civil War between his sons Waskar and Atawallpa, which [tore the empire apart and facilitated the Spanish Conquest](_URL_0_). The regular lives and societies of the indigenous Americas were largely disrupted before Europeans arrived to record information that we might see now\n\nSecond, we have to recognize the malleability of the word \"empire.\" Do we mean a centralized government that actively restructured and consolidated conquered areas in its own image, applying government power across the state? If so, the Aztec \"Empire\" doesn't really count -- their state was much more one of forced tributary relations, and didn't necessarily restructure conquered polities. The Inca Empire might be the most comparable to what an Old World tradition might call an \"Empire,\" but we have to be careful about how we use the word. Cultures develop different tactics of domination, and \"empire\" might not be the right one for the societies that developed in much of North America.\n\nHaving said that, there is increasing evidence that there were much more complex states in North America than archaeologists and historians have historically realized. Perhaps most famously, discoveries in [Cahokia](_URL_1_) and other urban sites from the Mississippi area are rewriting the archaeological record. Here you had complex urban societies which waged war and had centralized governments and religions -- maybe, if we had more information, we could call some of these states empires. It seems that there were at the very least governments and individuals in \"paramount chiefdoms\" who commanded power and significance over [hundreds of miles](_URL_3_). Missisippian societies built massive earthworks, including pyramids. Along with archaeological findings, the accounts of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto provide insight into that area. His expeditions explored it before those states were completely wiped out by disease, and are simultaneously educational and thrilling, with stories of the Spanish force moving through alternatingly hostile and friendly towns and cities that they can't comprehend, and fighting against thousands of Amerindian soldiers. There were also complex and concentrated polities in the American Southwest. Ruins such as the 500+ miles of Hohokam irrigation canals, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and Mesa Verde all point to this.\n\nBut I'm getting long-winded, and I'll try to directly answer your second-to-last sentence. It does seem to be generally true that, the farther north you go, the fewer complex states and certainly fewer empires there are in North America. A large part of this is simply environmental. It is extremely hard to grow crops in much of Canada and the northern U.S., making it difficult for a possible empire to grow. Population densities are lower and people are generally more dependent upon hunting and gathering, because it's difficult to do anything else. Exceptions to this rule include the Pacific Northwest, where powerful chiefdoms developed, but this area is warmer than other North America locations at the same latitude and also supports an unusually high amount of food from sea and land resources that were exploited. This is also the same reason that extreme southern South American peoples were also generally hunter-gatherers. A more historical reason for the phenomenon you're wondering about is the location of the New World's \"cradles of civilization.\" Urban societies were original inventions in the New World along the Peruvian Coast, southern Mexico, and possibly the Amazon Rainforest (according to extremely new theories). Cities, and states that could become we might call \"empires,\" spread outwards from those locations. So cities and urban states were still spreading northwards from Mexico when Europeans arrived. We see proof of this slow spread, and how much it could change societies, in things like the presence of maize among the Iroquois: traveling north from Mexico, maize reached the Iroquois in the 12th century, precipitating an agricultural shift and huge societal change that allowed for the creation of the Haudenosaunee, or  [Iroquois Confederation](_URL_2_). So the factors that allow for urban civilization, and by extension empires, were less complete and newer the farther north you go.\n\nTo wrap it all up: Our records are weaker the farther north you go, because those areas were encountered by Europeans later (and were generally encountered after disease devastated them), so there might have been complex states we don't know about. Additionally, it's a myth that there weren't complex states north of the southern U.S. border, as evidenced by the Mississippian states and Southwestern U.S. But, holding in mind that the term \"empire\" the way we think of it simply may not be the way North American states ended up operating it, it is true that imperial-style states are less common the farther north you go. This was largely due to the lack of resources, and even more importantly the fact that the social inventions and factors leading to possible imperial states spread outwards from Mesoamerica, creating a kind of south to north gradation of potential-empire societies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.jstor.org/stable/27977824?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=huayna&searchText=capac&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhuayna%2Bcapac&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3Adb2f7fbd215ff1ddde0858e839a0dde9&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/41053152?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=cahokia&searchText=empire&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dcahokia%2Bempire&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3A631175fe3c50f35558ce5852fb6ed18c&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents", "https://uclajournals.org/doi/abs/10.17953/aicr.21.2.k36m1485r3062510?journalCode=aicr", "https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183p8pq.13?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=hernando&searchText=de&searchText=soto&searchText=mississippi&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhernando%2Bde%2Bsoto%2Bmississippi&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3Acd1d3daedea37d2b64c05b2d99cfb104&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents"]]}
{"q_id": "1qiz57", "title": "Today, a lot of people seem to resent US power and its interventionist foreign policy, and Americans are often stereotyped as arrogant and ignorant. Did this happen to the British Empire at its height? Did ordinary European citizens (so, not really their governments) resent British power?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qiz57/today_a_lot_of_people_seem_to_resent_us_power_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdd98mc", "cddarft", "cddba5t"], "score": [13, 59, 15], "text": ["Do remember that Britain was an Empire and at the height of its power at the same time that Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and a few other European nations were Empires as well. ", "Yes and no. \n\nAmerica is unique in that it is essentially an example of a hyperpower. That is, it is the only global power of its calibre on the planet at this moment. This is sort of undisputed hegemony is comparable to the Roman Empire's position in the Mediterranean before the East-West split, or to the power of the Mongols at the height of Genghis' reign. \n\nThe latter half of the 20th and the 21st centuries are also unique in that these are the only centuries (Well... Century and a half) wherein mass media has been existent. Mass media (that is, the diversified and accessible media technologies that make accessing information so easy today) plays a phenomenally important part in how people today form opinions. Mass media means that a supermajority of people can not only access information with incredible ease, but create information as well. \n\nAnd thirdly, these last two centuries have been unique in that a great liberalisation of political and social attitudes have occurred. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, as mass media facilitated this liberalisation considerably. \n\nEssentially, the lack of the aforementioned for 19th century Europe resulted in a distinct lack in diversified opinion and information, which limited the ability for most people to create informed opinions. The little media that was accessible was controlled by the government and/or the upper classes, and so were basically mouthpieces of imperialism and conservatism. This means that yes, people didn't like Britain. *But* not for the same reasons people nowadays dislike America. \n\nThe average European disliked the Brits... Not because they were seen as an oppressive giant thundering about the globe, waving a big stick. Not because their imperialist agenda was jingoistic, ignominious and just plain rude. Not because their government was seen as corrupt, or because their arrogance was unique in both its audacity and prevalence, or because their armies were intrusive and... Well... Everywhere.\n\nGood Lord! Every European country that could afford a steam engine and a rifle thought of itself the same way! Imperialism was the new black, and the Brits were disliked simply because they were competition to the Germans/French/Belgians/Russians/Turks/Swiss/Liechtensteiners in the big colonial race, and because they were *filthy foreigners*.\n\nThe reference points we have in modern mass media to draw conclusions about the *wrongness* of it all that make us all (supposedly) hate America simply wasn't there. In addition, the liberalisation of society that have allowed dissent opinions about that glorious Place in the Sun, hadn't taken place, so things like r/politics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/socialism etc. wouldn't have been there to proliferate their dangerous anti-European-conservatism opinions, and most people lived their lives with a gleefully positive view of imperialism, interventionism, jingoism, racial discrimination etc., but with an antagonistic view of that-guy-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence. ", "This is a tough question to answer, because a concept like \"ordinary European citizens\" is somewhat of an anachronism. I am no specialist on Imperial British history, but let's say that the British Empire began to move away from the pack (i.e. other European states) somewhere after 1850, reaching the zenit of its power in the years just before 1900.\n\nThis same period is the age of nationalism and nation building in Europe. This period saw the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany, the introduction of a truly constitutional monarchy in the Netherlands and generally a lot social upheaval. \n\nThe appearance of the nation-state also meant that governments started to actively try to culturally unify their countries. For example, it was only during 1870 and 1914 that, in the famous words of historian Eugen Weber, \"peasants were turned into Frenchmen\". Education became institutionalized, rationalized and put under state control. Identity (whether it is national or individual) always operates through a In-Group/Out-Group logic. \"We\" are the in-group, and we are good. \"They\" are the out-group, and they are mostly that which we are not.\n\nNow we reach a subject I have a greater familiarity with: history education was considered the prime school subject for instilling national pride and identity in students. Considering that GB/England had either been THE historical enemy and was the contemporary rival (France, the Netherlands and Germany), the UK/British Empire was hardly portrayed in a positive light. \n\nThe question is: was the influence of history textbooks and other forms of nationalizing literature strong enough to affect ordinary public opinion? The League of Nations certainly thought so, launching bi- or multi-national textbook revision projects to weed out nationalist/xenophobic bias in history textbooks. UNESCO is financing similar projects to this day. Flemish historian Antoon de Baets (based at the University of Groningen) made an attempt at gauging the effect of history textbooks in shaping/influencing individual perceptions of the Other in his Ph.D. thesis. He did his work in the eighties, and concluded that textbooks have some influence, but that it cannot be over- nor understated. Basically: Hell if we know.\n\nSo, to return to the question: Did ordinary citizens resent British power? To a certain extent, surely, but I'd argue that ordinary people were more concerned with social reform and/or getting by, than consciously contemplating British political hegemony.\n\nSources/interesting reads regarding textbook research:\nFalk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (2nd revised edition: Paris and Braunschweig 2010). Available here: _URL_0_\n\nAntoon de Baets, Images of Non-Western Cultures: The Influence of History Textbooks on Public Opinion in Dutch-Speaking Belgium, 1945\u20131984 (Univ. of Ghent, Ph.D., 1988) [in Dutch].\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001171/117188e.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "5cmra5", "title": "Is there any sort of modern historical consensus on the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste?", "selftext": "For those who don't know, the Mary Celeste was a ship found adrift in the atlantic ocean, totally deserted, but in totally seaworthy conditions and with the crew's belongings perfectly intact. The crew was never seen or heard from again.\n\nAs a kid, I read that the case was a total mystery, but I'm having a hard time believing that in retrospect. What are some modern theories as to what could have happened? Also, how common were \"ghost\" ships like the mary celeste? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5cmra5/is_there_any_sort_of_modern_historical_consensus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9yeqvp"], "score": [47], "text": ["*Mary Celeste* ([pictured here](_URL_1_)) was an American brig with a crew of eight and two passengers \u2013 the master's wife and infant daughter \u2013 which embarked on her fatal voyage, from New York to Genoa, in the autumn of 1872.\n\nHer story, as it's usually told, emphasises several aspects that add to the air of mystery that still surrounds the disappearance of the ship's entire complement. The master, Benjamin Briggs, was highly experienced and highly respected, a man of good character and strong religious beliefs. The ship herself was in good condition and had been manned by a sober, reliable crew, made up of a mix of New England seamen and Germans. And, when she was found by the men of another sailing vessel, the *Dei Gratia*, she was alone on the sea, and, as you mention, still perfectly seaworthy and sailing on in calm conditions.\n\nA lot of the mystery that surrounds the *Mary Celeste* originates from what secondary sources report that the men of the *Dei Gratia* found when they rowed over to the *Mary Celeste* and went on board. As generally told, these details include:\n\n > The brig was well-built and reliable and was found with her sails properly set, a hot, half-eaten meal still sitting in the cabin, a watch, not yet wound down, still ticking in the master's berth, and a full bottle of cough medicine, with the cork out, sitting unspilled on a table.\n\n > There were no signs of any sort of hasty departure and the ship's boat was still hanging in its davits.\n\nPlainly, had all these details been accurate, the mystery of the *Mary Celeste* would indeed have been very difficult to solve. But the popular story of the ship is not correct at a number of key points. \n\nOne thing to bear in mind is that a significant number of the weirder aspects of the mystery turn out to have their origins in the high-handed investigations of Frederick Solly Flood, the lawyer in charge of the ship's salvage claim, or in fictionalised versions of the story, not least Arthur Conan Doyle's short story [\"J. Habakkuk Jephson's Statement\" (1884)](_URL_0_). It's thanks to Conan Doyle that the ship's name is almost invariably incorrectly given, as *Marie Celeste*, and the date of her voyage as 1873, not 1872.\n\nOther aspects of the story, which are important to the various attempts that have been made to provide a rational explanation for the crew's disappearance, would include:\n\n > The ship and her cargo were quite heavily insured, for a total of almost $55,000\n\n > She carried a cargo of 1700 barrels of raw alcohol\n\n > The captains of the *Mary Celeste* and the *Dei Gratia* were known to one another.\n\nAs to the state of the *Mary Celeste* when she was found, the truth is that she was sailing under very short canvas (jib and foresail) \u2013 that is, almost all of her sails were furled \u2013 that the running rigging was badly battered, that barrels of fresh water on deck had shifted, and that the cabin interiors were soaking wet, all indicating that she had encountered a heavy storm. In addition, two of the ship's hatches were off, the ship's clock had stopped, there was no food on the table and indeed the plates in the kitchen had been secured as if for rough weather, and the last entry in the log was dated to the morning of 25 November, nine days earlier; it gave a position about 600 miles from where the ship was found.\n\nMost importantly, the *Mary Celeste'*s papers, navigation instruments and ship's boat were missing. Hence it was clear that the crew had deliberately abandoned ship \u2013 apparently very hastily indeed, because most of Briggs's charts, together with the men's oilskins and pipes, had been left behind. The true mystery of the *Mary Celeste* thus lies not in explaining how 10 people could literally vanish, apparently only moments before their ship was boarded by would-be rescuers, but in reconstructing a sequence of events that could plausibly have caused Briggs to have risked putting his wife and child, as well as his men, in a tiny boat in rough weather in the middle of the Atlantic, when his ship was in no obvious danger of sinking. There's very little mystery as to what happened to the people on board \u2013 their lifeboat was almost certainly swamped in heavy seas.\n\nIt's certainly true that no really clear reason for the ship's abandonment was found by the men of the *Dei Gratia*. The cargo was well stowed. There was no evidence of fire or of any sort of violence. There *was* a makeshift sounding line lying next to a hatch down to the hold, together with about three and a half feet of water down below \u2013 quite a lot, but not so much that the crew could not have drained it by steady use of the *Mary Celeste*'s hand pumps \u2013 which were perfectly functional. The ship had not sprung a serious leak and was not in danger of foundering. Half a dozen barrels of alcohol \u2013 made of a different sort of wood to the rest of the cargo \u2013\u00a0were found to be empty.\n\nA crew made up of men from the *Dei Gratia* took the *Mary Celeste* to Gibraltar and there lodged a claim for salvaging her. Their theory was that the original crew had miscalculated the amount of water in the hold and panicked. Other theories that were put about after the ship made port included Flood's claim that there had been mutiny and murder on board \u2013 he found an old sword in the master's cabin, and believed it had been carefully cleaned (presumably of bloodstains) with lemon juice, and located mark on the topgallant rail he believed had been made with an axe, plus what he took to be bloodstains on the deck nearby \u2013 and the idea that the master of the *Mary Celeste* had conspired with the men of the *Dei Gratia* to be taken safely off their ship and then to lodge a fraudulent salvage claim. Another popular suggestion was that the ship had been struck by a waterspout.\n\nIn secondary sources, many of them confused thanks to inaccurate reporting or the incorporation of purely fictional elements, we can find many wilder claims: \n\n\u2022 that the people on the *Mary Celeste* had been snatched by a sea monster such as a giant squid\n\n\u2022 that they had been enveloped in a gas cloud released by a submarine explosion, which drove them all mad and made them leap into the sea\n\n\u2022 that one of the crew had descended into a religious mania and murdered everyone else before casting himself into the sea\n\n\u2022 that the ship (which was actually found well to the east of the Azores, not too far off the coast of Spain) was a victim of the Bermuda Triangle\n\n\u2022 that everyone on board had died as the result of a bizarre agreement to run a swimming race around the ship, which the remainder of the crew had chosen to watch from a jury-rigged platform at the bow (where identical indentations were found cut into both sides of the ship's rail). The platform was supposed to have collapsed, depositing the passengers and crew into the water with the swimmers, leaving the ship to sail on without them\n\nAs for Conan Doyle's story, it revolved around a statement by an alleged (but non-existent) survivor of the ship, who recounted how the rest of the crew had been murdered in a racially motivated attack carried out by an equally non-existent black sailor.\n\nOnce we separate Flood's real evidence from his errors and speculation, there is no real evidence to support the mutiny theory. Probably the most ingenious and likely solution to the mystery was first suggested by one of the *Mary Celeste*'s owners, James H. Winchester, who hypothesised that leaks from the cargo of alcohol had generated gas that exploded when a man went down to inspect the hold carrying a lantern \u2013 thoroughly alarming the crew, who abandoned ship fearing that the entire cargo was about to blow up. In one interesting version of this theory, it was suggested that Briggs decided to vent the hold (accounting for the open hatches) while he and his men stood off the ship at a safe distance in the boat, which they tethered to the *Mary Celeste* with a rope; they were then cast adrift when the rope parted in a squall. In my own opinion, the idea that the crew mistakenly believed that their ship had sprung a leak and was rapidly filling with water (perhaps, as suggested above, as a result of a hasty and botched sounding of the hold) is also fairly credible, though it's hard to imagine how any sounding could have been so much in error that the crew imagined they had only a couple of minutes to escape before the ship foundered.\n\nBy far the best source for the case is Charles Edey Fay's *The Story of the Mary Celeste*, first published in the 1940s, which prints almost all the surviving primary sources and very ably discusses them.\n\nComparable \"ghost ship\" stories, involving ships found still afloat but minus their crews, are not hugely common, and several of the ones that do exist are very poorly reported or heavily fictionalised, but you might well enjoy looking up the details of two that remain mysterious: the disappearances of the crews of the *Carroll A. Deering* off the Carolinas in 1921 (which [I wrote about here](_URL_2_)) and the *Joyita* in the South Pacific in 1955. The former is the subject of the semi-fictional *Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals* by Bland Simpson, and the latter is convincingly dealt with in David G. Wright's *Joyita: Solving the Mystery*.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/images/4/43/Cornhill-magazine-1884-january-habakuk.pdf", "http://imgur.com/a/6d77d", "https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/04/08/the-ghost-ship-and-the-president/"]]}
{"q_id": "3ejecu", "title": "How loud were late Roman Republic/Early Empire battles? It's hard to imagine taking commands and orders over the shouts of thousands of people.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ejecu/how_loud_were_late_roman_republicearly_empire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctfn7vy", "ctfu5c0", "ctg3vs8"], "score": [123, 6, 3], "text": ["Each Centuria (which is a group of 10x8 men) had a cornicen. A horn player who could signal out various orders and formations. \nThese centuria were each lead by a centurian. Who took his orders from his leader a primus pilus. A group of 6 centurias made up one cohort. So the centurians just had to listen for commands (horn signals) from their primus pilus. And then signal their own centuria. \nA legio is made up of 10 cohorts. So the 10 primus pilus had to hear the commands from the legate (overall) commander. \n\nIt wouldn't be a mess of random shouts. But rather controlled horn signals throughout the legio. \n\nLegate gave a command to his senior staff, primus pilus, who then signaled their own centurias. \n\nAnd below you have a group of 8 men, contubernium. \n\n", "There's some detail in Caesar's *Gallic Wars* about the noises of battle. He mentions the horns frequently (/u/Astrogator has done a brilliant summary), and during the battle of Gergovia, says that he ordered the recall to be sounded by trumpeters, which wasn't heard by the whole army due to the rolling ridgeline; the assumption is that normally it would be heard. He also mentions (Gallic Wars, 2.25) that during the fighting near the River Sambre, he was able to get into the front line, call out to the Centurions and men, and order the line to advance - so there must have been methods for the people in the thick of the fighting to pass orders along.\n\nThere's also comments on the general noise of battle - the arrival of the second Gallic army outside Alesia (Book 7) was only known to Vercingetorix, who was inside the city, when they engaged the Roman besiegers. Considering this was about 2k from the city (ish, distances are a little uncertain) there must have been a fair bit of noise.\n\nHowever, as a general rule I suspect that the Gallic battles were potentially noisier than 'ordinary' ones given the presence of women and children cheering their menfolk (or alternately begging for mercy, depending on what stage the battle was at), and the amount of cities that were besieged. Every nation would also have its own battle culture, and it must have been fairly confusing during the Civil War for one \"Roman\" army to face another \"Roman\" army...\n\nNB. I don't have specific references for passages to hand, but can find them if anyone wants them.", "Doesn't answer the question, but I'd recommend watching a short video called \"[RAM Roman Army Structure](_URL_0_)\" for some basic knowledge about the roman armies."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://vimeo.com/31781946"]]}
{"q_id": "5mywo6", "title": "Nazi \"Ecology\": How important was it in the ideology of National Socialism? What, if any, environmental policies did the Nazi state enact.", "selftext": "Every now and then it's pointed that there was a \"green\" tendenancy in Nazi ideology. Often I hear this in partisan contexts as attempts to discredit or smear advocates of contemporary environmental protection policies. More recently, I encountered Timothy Snyder's book *Black Earth*, which argues that Hitler's obsession with carving out territory in Eastern Europe, *lebensraum*, was underpinned by anxieties in Germany regarding diminishing natural resources and agricultural productivity. Snyder's argument would suggest that an ecological panic was a major contributing factor to the Second World War and the Holocaust. I'm curious to know what r/askhistorians makes of this specific claim. \n\nI'm also curious, however, about the extent and importance of \"green\" or \"environmentalist\" strains in Nazi thought and policies, though I appreciate that applying these exact terms here is an anachronism. Was an appreciation for nature more of an ancilary concern for the Nazis, something coincident with the much broader lineage of nature worship in German Romanticism? Or was it intrinsic to the rest of the Nazi worldview?\n\nAnd finally, one last question, to what extant were any environmental policies actually enacted by the regime? I know there were plans to \"Teutonize\" landscapes in territory incorporated by the Reich by introducing select species of plants and animals native to Germany (though this is actually the opposite of what ecological wisdom would encourage). Were these ever implemented? Likewise, were there any efforts to establish any agencies or programs akin to the American E.P.A., i.e., programs charged with things like pollution restrictions, land use regulations, et cetera?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mywo6/nazi_ecology_how_important_was_it_in_the_ideology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc7m0w0", "dc7nesq"], "score": [8, 27], "text": ["backdrop:  I find Snyder's work often monocausal and even simplistic.  (Haven't read *Black Earth* yet, but I definitely thought *Bloodlands* was a lot of old stuff--included discredited theories of Totalitarianism--repackaged with a simple-sounding sound-bite...)  \n\nThis is itself a simplistic (and time-constrained) first stab at your complicated question, but here goes: \n\n\nLandscape preservationism and environmentalism both have very long historical lineages in Germany (both having been more or less 'invented' there), and they thus both played into Nazism in a similar way to other ideologies (Lutheranism, Socialism, colonialism, etc.) that fed into, factored into, and were used by Nazism:  namely, in complicated ways. \n\nFirst, the majority of Nazi leaders (and likely, of Nazi members) were far more worked up about a few key issues (namely, anti-Versailles Treaty, anti-semitism, anti-socialism, and eventually, war) and \"green\" thinking was nowhere near a primary concern of theirs.  It barely factored into the thinking of any of the top Nazis (with the possible exception of Goering--the self-styled \"Reich Master of the Hunt\" and \"Master of the German Forests\"... though he seems to me to have been more of an outdoor enthusiast and quasi-conservationalist than any sort of true environmentalist.)  \n\nAs to your question about being an ancillary concern (German Romanticism, aesthetic appreciation of/by \"the German peoples\", Blood  &  Soil, etc.), \"ancillary\" is a good way to phrase it.   \"Nazi thought\" was a chaotic miasma--almost an open field for anyone to leap in and promote their own agenda.  \n\nThere were many adherents of National Socialism before and after 1933 who were also advocates of or influenced by landscape preservationism and even environmentalism, and so 'brought' these ideas into the party  (and were sort of \"green evangelists\" within the NSDAP).   After 1933, they could \"use\" Nazi rhetoric and Nazi politics to advance their ideas (when given an appropriately-Aryan gloss.)  The language of \"Heimat\"  (homeland) was very useful in this context, as it was easy to use Romantic notions of \"Heimat\" to rhetorically and ideologically bolster landscape preservationism with the racial thinking that saturated Nazism.  \n\nSo preservationists saw opportunity in Nazism... in part, because of top Nazi's claims that they would rein in capitalism in favor of something more \"German.\"  (They did not.)  \n\nAnd of course, there were the military-economic concerns of autarky, which could also carry a conservationist gloss...\n\nThat's all I have time to type, now, but here are some sources: \n\nThere is a strong essay collection *How Green Were the Nazis?* that came out a decade ago.  (can't remember the editors, though)\n\nThree other great books on this topic (all academic histories, though all are quite readable):  \n\nThomas Lekan *Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945*  \n\nFrank Uek\u00f6tter, *The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany* \n\nDavid Blackbourn, *The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany*\n\nEDIT:   to come back to your point about contemporary partisan uses of this to smear environmental protection policies, you are certainly correct.  The same is done with \"Socialism\"--even though Nazis were hardly socialists.  An on-point retort might be:  the Nazis were \"environmentalists\" in the same way that they were \"Christians\"...that is, opportunistically, tactically and brutally, and in a way that exaclty inverted the true meaning of these ideas they were both borrowing and abusing.  \n", "Modified from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_) and since the OP started first with the anachronism of environmentalist/environmentalism, for clarity's sake, so will I. \n\nThere's a lot to unpack in these questions and the charge that the Nazis were green is one that has been and still is instrumentalized by opponents of the environmental movement. Snyder's argument about anxieties is part of a larger thesis in *Black Earth*, and I'll leave it to /u/commiespaceinvader 's [answer](_URL_1_) on Snyder. I will say that Snyder often falls into a myopic love with his grand sweeping paradigms that explain complicated historical events and processes. The problem is that even though his historical models are often quite elegant, they do not explain as much as he purports they do and they are nowhere near as novel as he claims. Both *Black Earth* and *Bloodlands* often bang on open doors and even when historians agree with Snyder, this quality is often quite grating. \n\nEnvironmentalism within the Third Reich had a very strained and complicated relationship with the state and its dominant ideology of National Socialism. German environmental thinkers often had to adjust and shift their thinking to fit this new climate. For many, this was an easy task since the German environmentalism of the 1920s and 30s shared a number of congruencies with *v\u00f6lkisch* nationalism that stressed that Germans were deeply connected to certain types of landscapes and climates such as the forest or bucolic countryside. But the transition was seldom easy and in many cases this was environmentalism in a National Socialist key. Moreover, the Third Reich found some environmental thinkers of greater utility than others. Agronomists that could make the land bloom or zoologists seeking to find the genetic key to breed cows into their original auroch form found state patronage much easier than other Germans whose research and interests did not so closely align with the principles of National Socialism. This dynamic of selectively engaging environmentalist thought and self-coordination of many Germans environmentalists would become the dominant *leitmotifs* of environmentalism within the Third Reich. \n\nOne of the clearer examples of this process was the *Reichsnaturschutzgesetz* (Reich Nature Protection Law, or RNG). The RNG was arguably the most comprehensive law for the protection of the environment in the world when it was enacted in 1935. Yet the same state that enacted the RNG, which stipulated that any public works project needed to consult local conservationists, it also advanced a ruthless exploitation of natural resources in the name of economic autarky. In numerous cases, the needs of the war economy triumphed over the legal principles behind the RNG. Many German environmentalists played a much less prominent role in the direction of state policy as it evolved in the late 1930s. They could gain traction when the needs of remilitarization were not apparent, but getting the state to apply the RNG was  much less likely to if environmental protection came at the expense of industry. For example, Frank Uek\u00f6tter\u2019s monograph on Nazi-era conservation, *The Green and the Brown*, notes that environmental protectionists in Baden were able to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric plant in the Wutach Gorge during wartime through their exploitation of local patronage networks to ensure that the state enforced the RNG. By contrast, the earlier efforts of the *Heimat* activist Ludwig Finckh to close the neighboring basalt quarry at Hohenstoffeln Mountain hinged on the quarry no longer being economically feasible. \n\nSimilar contradictions were present in the Third Reich's management of peasant agriculture and seed distribution. One of the foremost proponents of the NSDAP's program of \"Blood and Soil\" was Richard Walther Darr\u00e9 who became Agriculture Minister in 1933 and promoted a centralized bureaucracy *Reichsn\u00e4hrstand* (RNS) to promote a peasant agriculture. Darr\u00e9's various writing stressed that the German peasant ideally lived in a symbiotic harmony with the land, and the role of National Socialism was to encourage this symmetry. The RNS promoted certain seed strains and coordinated with various agronomist research in various institutes, whom the RNS often reminded that they had to benefit small-holder farms. The RNS's policies created an initial period of prosperity for Germany's peasants, largely because of protectionism and subsidies, but the good years did not last beyond 1936. The pressures of autarky pushed the RNS to advocate greater yields and seed strains for peasant farmers. This centralization implicit in the RNS meant that peasantry found themselves locked out from a system that was ostensibly for their own benefit. The turn to more commercial and high-yield farming also made a mockery of Darr\u00e9's claim to promote a *v\u00f6lkisch* agriculture that eschewed modernity and returned the peasantry to its primeval roots. \n\nEnvironmentalist ideas often became associated with *Volkisch* sentiments at points within the Third Reich that the latter often outstripped the former. German writers on the environment conceptualized the environment in racialized terms during the Third Reich. A healthy forest or land was a sign of an Aryan land. Hans Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG, Klose, who wrote a majority of the RNG\u2019s text, in a December 1939 speech claimed that although Germans have always possessed a strong affinity to nature, it was only after 1933 that the Germans possessed a government that sided with nature.  Klose encouraged his audience to fully comply and educate the public on rationale behind the RNG and conservation in general.  Similarly, a 1942 editorial from *Gartenbau im Reich* that reflected a radicalization of environment was Max K. Schwarz\u2019s 1942 \u201cZeitgem\u00e4\u00dfe Gedanken \u00fcber Garten- und Landschaftsgestaltung.\u201d Schwarz\u2019s perspective was that landscaping, whether individualized gardens or the planning of cities, had to reflect a racialized nature. \u201cThe landscape,\u201d he asserted, \u201cis not determined by the determination of a single thought, but rather by the entire Volk. Only the Volk itself can comprehensively design the countryside.\u201d  According to Schwarz, the dynamic character of National Socialism had made it possible for human beings to more completely understand themselves and their role in nature. He then developed a theory of total nature which is not to be enjoyed just for its aesthetic value but for the insights they can give into the *Volksgemeinshaft*.  For example, he instructed his readers that \u201cplants are should not only be appreciated go for passive viewing, but appreciated more so for their organic and influential connection with the body and their own environment.\u201d  This vision of nature was only to be cherished and enjoyed through the unique character of the German race. This implicit embrace of a racialized conversation efforts was even more noticeable in Walter Schoenichen\u2019s editorial \u201cNaturschutzgebiete der neuen Reichsgaue.\u201d Appearing in the December 1941 issue popular middle-class magazine *Westermann\u2019s Monatshefte*, Schoenichen described, in vivid language, the unspoiled paradise in the newly-absorbed territories in Poland and the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. According to Schoenichen, the experience of a raw unblemished nature needed to be protected by a large national park system found in other nations. Such a park system would be \u201can uplifting thought that [a national park] would be dedicated to the highest and proudest summits of the Greater German Reich which is devoted to the spiritual edification of the German Volk and its reverence for nature.\u201d  \n\nOf course, when dealing with the issue of pollution and environmental degradation, German writers would invoke the familiar spectres of Poles and Jews. SS-affiliate authors for *General Plan Ost* would claim that soil erosion and depletion of the environment were typical behaviors of inferior races and the SS-led new order would erase this damage through the *Gr\u00fcnaufbau* (greening) of Polish and Soviet lands. \u201cHag und Heimat\u201d by Heinrich Friederich Wiepking-J\u00fcrgensmann, Heinrich Himmler\u2019s special representative for the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKfDV) and a prominent prewar landscape architect, drew a very tight connection between this new *Heimat* and the *Gr\u00fcnaufbau*. Wiepking-J\u00fcrgensmann explained to the public in the article \u201cHag und Heimat\u201d the spirit of the special relationship between the Heimat and nature developed under SS patronage. \u201cHag und Heimat,\u201d written in a clear and colloquial style, contended that this symbiosis was fully congruent with the racial principles that the SS also protects in the Greater German Reich. For example, he wrote that \u201cthe landscape is an unmistakable mirror of the Volk and their entire being; in the neglected landscape the greatest robber is only the most efficient inmate of the land.\u201d  The double-meaning of this passage indicated that not only has the SS liberated the *Volkdeutsche* in the Eastern territories, but its previous non-German governments mismanaged the land so much as to corrupt its inhabitants. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/317bt7/hitler_wasnt_such_a_bad_guy_because_his_social/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/46ua9d/in_black_earth_snyder_argues_that_the_holocaust/"]]}
{"q_id": "ake76r", "title": "How did so many people survive the Hindenburg disaster?", "selftext": "When you see the famous footage of the Hindenburg going up in flames, it seems impossible to imagine that *anyone* got out alive. But most of its passengers did make it out. Why was the death toll so (relatively) low?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ake76r/how_did_so_many_people_survive_the_hindenburg/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ef4p7en", "ef4q7cr"], "score": [58, 18], "text": ["The generally accepted reasons for the relatively low death toll is three-fold.\n\nFirst, the Hindenburg was relatively close to the ground when it ignited, as it was coming in for landing.  Additionally, it fell relatively gently, as you can see from the movie footage of the disaster.  Not all of the hydrogen ignited at once, maintaining some buoyancy for critical seconds, lowering the craft a bit more slowly than freefall.  This allowed many of the passengers and crew to jump to the ground.  Though many of them were injured severely by the fall, they were able to escape the fire.  If you look at the [diagram](_URL_1_) of crew locations, you'll see that most of the survivors were located near the bottom of the craft as well as being near windows they could egress from.  Most of the crew located in the inner portions of the craft died as they were too high up to survive the fall at the point when ignition occurred or unable to get out quickly enough.\n\nThe second reason is that the majority of the fire was caused by burning hydrogen.  Hydrogen is extremely low density, especially as it heated up from combustion.  As you can see [here](_URL_2_), the hydrogen is rising relatively harmlessly as it burns.  Obviously, this didn't do the crewmembers in the forward parts of the vehicle any additional favors (The vehicle buckled and so the nose of the Hindenburg ended up going into the column of burning hydrogen), but it did avoid most of the passengers or crew who were concentrated along the bottom.      Burn injuries were extremely common, but most of this is attributed to burning debris and diesel fuel raining down on everyone.  \n\nThird, the disaster occurred at the landing site.  There were numerous Navy ground crew in place to secure the Hindenburg who were able to rush in and help survivors clear the area before burning wreckage crushed them as well as providing emergency medical aid at the scene.  Also, there was a road, casualties could quickly be evacuated to nearby hospitals.  Large sections of New Jersey are filled with dense, marshy forest, which would have greatly complicated access to the crash, had it happened away from the landing zone.\n\nAll in all, it's very lucky that this occurred when the Hindenburg was so close to the ground and landing.  Other incidents such as the Akron had few survivors.  If the Hindenburg had ignited even a few minutes earlier, it's quite likely there would have been few to no survivors.\n\nThis is an excellent source:  _URL_0_  It has copies of both the US department of Commerce as well as the German disaster reports.", "The footage is somewhat deceptive due to exposure and our unfamiliarity with airship operations, and the whole story is known as a famous disaster in no small part because it was a famous flight caught on film in an era when smartphones and video cameras were not ubiquitous.  It's possible that this was the [first example of a live disaster recording](_URL_2_) played on-air for a national radio audience in the United States, and in any event it was easily the most well known example in at time when this wasn't common.  Both of these factors set an expectation of the disaster death toll that isn't entirely in-line with reality.\n\n >  Today, coverage of such a cataclysmic event would almost instantly be broadcast out over the\nairwaves. But, in 1937, satellite relay and other such options did not exist. Furthermore,\nat that time, NBC maintained a policy against the airing of recordings on their network. It was a\npolicy they relaxed the day after the Hindenburg tragedy in order to air some of Morrison\u2019s\nremarkable, eye-witness account.\n\n >  The effect of the Hindenburg recordings on audiences was startling. Never before had such a\nlarge audience heard such a blow-by-blow description of such a horrific occurrence. For\nlisteners, the news of the day suddenly became active, proximate, real.\n\n >  News gathering and reporting was altered too. Though reporters had been witnessing\ndevastating events for decades, previously, they had the benefit of time and distance\u2014both\nemotional and geographical--between the things they observed and what they eventually wrote\nfor publication or broadcast. \n\n[This Pathe film](_URL_1_) shows quite a bit more context than the usual short clip, particularly as the Hindenburg circles to release ballast.  You get a much better sense, with the proper exposure and framing, of the altitudes scales involved.\n\nIt's important to remember that the Hindenburg was at low altitude (no more than 90 metres altitude at any stage) and in the process of mooring when it caught fire and, in spite of the fact that the fire consumed much of the hydrogen, it didn't ignite instantaneously.  Thus the Hindenburg settled onto the ground rather than dropping without any lift at all (the official German report estimates 30 seconds from the initial fire to the first contact with the ground).  For the most part the passengers and crew suffered horrific burns, even those who survived, but they didn't tend to suffer the kinds of impact injuries that we would normally associate with an air crash.\n\nIf you read the [German report on the disaster](_URL_0_), it goes into further detail as to the locations and actions of the crew and you can see that the entire crew was at mooring stations at the time and this doubtless reduced the death toll as well, simply because everybody was awake alert during a potentially dangerous evolution.\n\nIn essence it was a low speed crash followed by a short but intense fire fuelled by a lighter than air gas that quickly dissipated when the gas bladders were ruptured by the impact and fire as opposed to the sorts of air crashes we're more familiar with today.  So combining this with a bit of \"luck\" and you can start to see how it was a crash that resulted in serious injuries for nearly everybody but killed a smaller number than it would seem."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/", "https://3iz4pu1r2cxqxc3i63gnhpmh-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/crew-locations21.jpg", "https://3iz4pu1r2cxqxc3i63gnhpmh-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/hindenburg-disaster-hull-buckle.jpg"], ["https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/german-investigation/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgWHbpMVQ1U", "https://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Hindenburg.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "2lpihe", "title": "What became of pigs following the Islamization of regions conquered by the caliphate?", "selftext": "Following the conquest of a region/state/etc, what became of the pigs following the subsequent conversion of Islam in the preceding years? Were they slaughtered en masse? Slowly bred out due to lack of demand? Did these newly converted Muslims continue to consume pork? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lpihe/what_became_of_pigs_following_the_islamization_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clx3wy5"], "score": [47], "text": ["Interesting enough I just did some reading on pigs and the Roman diet. They're a luxury food that really only predominated in the area around Rome, a demonstration of wealth and power. \n\n\nIn the east, the consumption of meat was primarily sheep and goats with cattle a distant third and pigs a small minority (6.7% of recovered bones). So there probably wasn't a big issue there.\n\n\nNorth Africa is fairly different with low pig consumption during the empire (18% of meat diet), then increasing in Late Antiquity (32% of meat diet), and then not surprisingly plummeting in the Islamic phase (5% of meat diet). The data for the Imperial and Islamic period is a bit thinner so grain of salt and all that. \n\n\nThe one thing that's evident from the study is that rural regions tended to preserve their eating habits while military or urban sites changed to adopt a more (in this case) 'Roman' diet. So I'd hypothesize that it followed a similar pattern, it probably phased out over time - either willingly or at the point of a spear. \n\n\nI'd note also that in the study the author notes that some pig bones do turn up in Iron Age Jerusalem, \"[i]t may therefore be the case that the strict application of a ban on pork consumption was at its strongest later, i.e. in the late first millennium B.C. and early Imperial periods.\" If it took the Jews a few centuries to enforce a ban, I can't see Muslims not having the same issues. \n\n\nSource: Anthony King, Diet in the Roman world: a regional inter-site comparison of the mammal bones."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ctojv", "title": "What kind of Islam was Malcolm X apart of? Can you explain how it differs from popular Islam in the middle east if it differs at all?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ctojv/what_kind_of_islam_was_malcolm_x_apart_of_can_you/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1ljki0"], "score": [48], "text": ["Much of this can be found in The Autobiography Of Malcom X, as told to Alex Haley.  However there have been allegations that this book has fabrications and is not historically accurate, or even exactly an \"auto\"-biography.\n\nIn the main part of his career, Malcolm X was a member of the Nation of Islam, and a follower of Elijah Muhammad.  Elijah Muhammad was also the mentor of Muhammad Ali and Louis Farrakhan.  The Nation of Islam was originally founded by Wallace Fard in the 1930's.  Although the group grew quickly, there were early controversies, including apparently acts of human sacrifice committed by members.  Human sacrifice, of course, is not condoned by Islam.  Fard disappeared in 1934 without a trace (some speculate he was assassinated), and Elijah Muhammad (formerly Elijah Poole) assumed the leadership.   \n\nThe group had many earmarks of what today would be known as a 'cult'.  That is, a fanatical group who is controlled by a leader who claims to have supernatural powers.  Elijah Muhammad claimed that Wallace Fard was Allah Himself.  This of course would be considered blasphemy by mainstream Islamic groups.  Elijah Muhammad taught that the White 'race' are devils, and that persons of African descent should separate from whites.  The Nation of Islam was an explicitly racist group and the separation of races was a main aspect of their teachings.  This is not a mainstream tenant of Islam - a fact that Malcolm X said that he discovered during his Haj to Mecca where he saw persons of all races worshiping together.  Malcolm X also stated that he observed that Elijah Muhammad was having extramarital affairs with young women in the group (and having children out of wedlock by them) - which violated Elijah Muhammad's own teachings and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.  \n\nMalcolm X publicly left the Nation of Islam in 1964.  He worked with Halley on the 'autobiography' as a way to explain his own beliefs and why he left the Nation of Islam.  He was publicly assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam within a year of his leaving that group."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1h7t0d", "title": "How accurate did the movie \"O Brother, Where Art Thou?\" depict the American south during the depression?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h7t0d/how_accurate_did_the_movie_o_brother_where_art/", "answers": {"a_id": ["carsb75", "carsmgb", "cas1kp2", "cas1mk6"], "score": [25, 241, 3, 11], "text": ["About as accurate as Fargo's portrayal of the eponymous town in North Dakota. Joel and Ethan Coen are well-known for doing parodies on regional stereotypes, especially of dialect. In their depictions of places and people and eras, they're usually pretty tongue in cheek.\n\nAlso, it's a movie that's intended to map onto Homer's Odyssey, which is foremost a mythological narrative. Brilliant film, but I wouldn't look to it for historical realism.", "The consensus seems to be that the Coen brothers successfully created a sort of mythological universe that contains genuine elements of the Depression-era South inextricably mixed with trenchant representations of the South's nostalgic conception of itself. It's accurate in the sense that it consciously constructs a mythological memory of the South that someone who had lived through the time might recognize, but it's certainly no historical document. So yes, there were con men, convicts, corrupt politicians, bluegrass musicians, gangsters, and *plenty* of racism, but the movie doesn't attempt to present a particularly realistic portrait of each group; instead, it merges them together and views them through the hazy filters of *The Odyssey* and Southern Gothic literature.\n\n[Here](_URL_1_)'s a good article by Hugh Ruppersburg (of the University of Georgia) called \"'Oh, so many startlements...': History, Race, and Myth in *O Brother, Where Art Thou?*\", which partly deals with your question. A couple excerpts:  \n\n > [F]or me at least, and I suspect for many people of my post-World War II generation in the American South, O Brother, Where Art Thou? speaks in a particular way, as if some of its scenes linger on the verge of memory, as if it is family history, or might have been, as if Ulysses Everett McGill is the paterfamilias of us all. [...]  \n\n > Setting the film in the 1930s Depression South; faintly tingeing it with the ambience of Faulkner and Welty; setting it to blues, bluegrass, and gospel music; vaguely associating it with historical events and figures... **the Coens created a compelling, not entirely credible patchwork portrait of America (and not just the South) in the decade preceding the Second World War.**  \n\n > In a sense the film portrays a parallel universe, a fabulistic world both like and unlike our own. It plays fast and loose with facts. It's highly selective. It creates characters who are like real people but who never existed, and others who never existed and who are not like real people at all.... It uses a number of historically real characters\u2014George \"Baby Face\" Nelson, Robert and Tommy Johnson, and Pappy O'Daniel\u2014but radically changes the facts of their lives. [...]  \n\n > ***O Brother, Where Art Thou?* is intentionally reckless in its treatment of southern and American popular culture, its use of fact, its invention and reinvention of myth, its fabrication of falsehoods, all of which are woven together into the fabric the film presents as reality**. In essence, the film creates its own myth of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, a myth that is as much a tall tale as are the exploits of Everett, Pete, and Delmar. The point of the myth is to celebrate that which is worth celebrating\u2014the folk culture, the music, the history, the life of a time different from our own, a time just before the modern world when rural electrification dawned. But is the myth so selective that it lacks relevance?\n\nI'll let you read the rest to find out (spoiler: no, it's not). [Here's another good article (PDF warning)](_URL_0_) by Sean Chadwell called \"Inventing That 'Old-Timey' Style: Southern Authenticity in *O Brother, Where Art Thou?*\" A relevant quote: \"What the Coens point to throughout the movie is not that hicks, rednecks, or white trash populate the South and make its music but that these stereotypes are themselves part of the mythology the South has created about itself.\" (edit: formatting)", "One part that stood out was authentic-ish accents of the non-starrring roles.   It's rare to hear \"authentic\"-sounding regional accents in films.   \n\nGranted, these accents aren't as thick as they actually would have been in the 1920s-- if it were, you might well have to add subtitles.  ", "All these replies are great. As a small fun fact, when the Soggy Bottom Boys go in to record their song \"I am a man of constant sorrow\" Ulysses asks \"who's the head honcho around here?\". Honcho (one of the few loanwords from Japanese) is not to be seen in American English until after WWII."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3200/JPFT.32.1.3-9", "http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/southern_cultures/v009/9.4ruppersburg.html"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "ayrisj", "title": "International Women's Day AMA - the Astor100 project, celebrating the life and legacy of Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in British parliament", "selftext": "Welcome back for another AMA with me, Dr Jacqui Turner from the Department of History at the University of Reading in the UK, and my PhD student working on the Astor100 project, Melanie Khuddro (/u/MelanieKhuddro)\n\nMy [present research](_URL_6_) examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. I'm currently managing the [Astor100 project](_URL_3_) celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.\n\nAmerican-born Nancy Astor (1879\u20131964), n\u00e9e Langhorne, succeeded her second husband Waldorf Astor as Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton in 1919, becoming the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. She continued to represent the Plymouth Sutton constituency until her retirement in 1945.\n\nAsk Us Anything about the history of women in politics in the UK, the struggle for suffrage, the life, thoughts, and beliefs of Nancy Astor, her relationships with her female contemporaries and male parliamentary colleagues, her parliamentary campaign, the current push for formal recognition of her achievements, and more. \n\n[More about Jacqui's research](_URL_6_), [Jacqui's blog](_URL_1_), [Jacqui on Twitter](_URL_2_), [Melanie on Twitter](_URL_0_), and the Astor 100 project on [Twitter](_URL_5_) and [Instagram](_URL_4_). \n\nMANY THANKS FOR YOUR QUESTIONS, MELANIE AND I ARE SIGNING OFF. \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ayrisj/international_womens_day_ama_the_astor100_project/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ei2rg3x", "ei2s3tj", "ei2sdvr", "ei2sle6", "ei2t3y2", "ei2t5xd", "ei2t6ig", "ei2xdxt", "ei300mb"], "score": [8, 9, 9, 7, 6, 3, 6, 9, 5], "text": ["Hi Dr Turner  &  Melanie! Thank you so much for joining us for this AMA today, I'm really delighted to have you here with us. \n\nMany people will have heard Nancy Astor's name in snippet quotes from her fiery exchanges with Winston Churchill. And they _were_ fiery! As the first women sitting in Commons, what kind of image did Astor cultivate for herself? Was she a firebrand and wit, like one might assume from those examples of banter, or were these remarkable exchanges a rarity for her career?", "Hi Dr. Turner, and Happy International Women's Day! \n\nI often hear that the women's suffrage movement in the UK forced men into war in WW1 en masse. Was there mass support for the White Feather Movement (both among the suffragettes and among the general public), or was it more fringe? How many women dissented or protested against WW1, and whether there was also a widespread anti war sentiment among certain groups of suffrage activists.\n\nAdditionally, in the US at least, there was tension between suffragettes of color and their white colleagues, in particular about slavery and later about civil rights. I know that slavery was outlawed in Britain by this point, but were there similar tensions between white suffragettes and those of color in regards to civil rights or colonialism or the Empire? ", "The timing couldn't be more perfect. I'm in the middle of Andrea Mansker's *Sex, Honor and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France* (very good, highly recommend, but that is neither here nor there) and something mentioned in passing is how many French feminists contrasted their own movement in the early 20th century with that across the Channel, the British women's suffrage movement being seen as apparently violent and undignified in comparison (the focus of the chapter however is on women challenging men to duel, so obviously not all felt this way!). But at least so far this hasn't been explored too much, so I was hoping you might have a little more insight into the levels of *international* cooperation by the British suffragettes in that period, and how their fight was viewed by similar movements elsewhere, not just France but also somewhere like the US.\n\nThank you!", "Did the english people had any issues with the first woman to sit in the House of Commons being an American?", "Thanks for offering your time for this!\n\nA couple of questions:\n\nWhy were the Conservatives the first to have a woman representing them in Parliament? As I understand it, it wasn't a fluke, with quite a few of the first women MPs being conservatives.\n\nThe first woman to be elected as an MP - Constance Markievicz, I believe - tends to get a bit overshadowed by Astor and other early women MPs who actually took their seats. All I know about her is her party affiliation, can you tell us a bit more about her?", "Thank you for doing such a fascinating AMA! Its pretty impressive that Nancy Astor sat in the House of Commons for so long, from 1919-945. Through the war years and everything. Did she face controversy or push back the longer she had her seat, or did things eventually settle for her?", "Hello Dr Turner and Melanie, thank you so much for this AMA!\n\nI would be interested in how (if at all) the British suffragette movement was drawing inspiration from/coordinating with corresponding movements in other countries. Without knowing too much about it, I would imagine that the ties to the US were especially strong in that regard. But what about former British colonies like New Zealand and Australia, where women had the right to vote since 1893 and 1902, respectively? And to go beyond the Anglosphere - how closely did British women\u2019s rights activists monitor the developments in European countries, especially in Germany where (if I am understanding the writings of Hedwig Richter correctly in this regard) a strong women\u2019s rights movement took a different, more \"legalistic\" approach towards achieving their goals?\n\nThank you again for your AMA, I am looking forward to your sharing your knowledge with us!", "Did she actually call soldiers of the Italian campaign D-Day Dodgers? And if she didn't, do we know how it came to be attributed to her ?", "Could you talk a little bit about the Astor100 Project? Without getting *too* 'modern politics' given the rules here, what do you see as the lessons for today that we can learn from her legacy?\n\nAdditionally, just poking around the Astor100 site, what can you tell us about the women mentioned from the 1918 general election? Especially Markievicz who sounds quite interesting, but the rest too. Was this part of a coordinated campaign to stand for election, mostly independent actors...?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://twitter.com/melaniekhuddro", "https://jacquiturner.me/", "https://twitter.com/jacqui1918", "https://research.reading.ac.uk/astor100/", "https://www.instagram.com/ladyastor100/", "https://twitter.com/LadyAstor100", "https://www.reading.ac.uk/history/about/staff/e-j-turner.aspx"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5lwzii", "title": "Bismarck specifically excluded and alienated Austria from German confederation and unification. The victorious allied powers of WWI forbade unification of Germany and Austria in the post-war treaties. Why the effort from various parties to prevent Austria joining any sort of greater Germany?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lwzii/bismarck_specifically_excluded_and_alienated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbzkhf5"], "score": [27], "text": ["First, during German Unification, for Austria to join would mean either the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had to cede sovereignty to the new German Emperor (i.e. Prussia), or vice versa. It also would increased religious tension (Austria was majority Catholic, Prussia majority Protestant) and cultural tension (the Germany already had a lot of Polish land, now add in Hungary and a large chunk of the Balkans). For more info, see /u/vonadler's [answer here](_URL_0_) on a similar question. \n\nAn alternate option would be the Hapsburgs ceding their ancestral lands (and power base) in Austria to the new Germany and keeping the rest of the Empire, which would have collapsed the empire given that they had just had to make major concessions to keep the whole thing going anyway.  \n\nAs for the Treaty of Versailles, with the collapse of Russia and Austria-Hungary, Germany's eastern border was far safer than ever. Their only true threat was France in the west - and France had a smaller population than Germany. Preventing unification between Austria and Germany was a matter of preventing a nation that was fundamentally the strongest nation on the continent (despite political instability and a near-miss Socialist/Communist revolution) from immediately becoming more powerful - in fact, it would arguably be more powerful at the end of the process than it started. The Allies also knew that there was no certainty about future alliances with Russia (already embroiled in a civil war with Allied intervention) or future help from the US (historically isolationist). \n\nLate Edit: Imagine the worst case scenario for some: unification of Germany and Austria, and both Russia and Greater Germany end up Communist (not out of the question during mid-1919 when negotiations were wrapped up), with France already having a strong Socialist bent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fy0pq/why_didnt_bismarck_try_to_include_austria_in_his/ctthlqb/"]]}
{"q_id": "25a93l", "title": "The Byzantine Empire had access to all the ancient Greek writings, and yet contributed very little to science. What are the proposed reasons for this?", "selftext": "I find it really mind-boggling. At the end of the Hellenistic era, ~50-100 A.D. there were people like Hero of Alexandria who invented the steam engine. The scholars there were really close to an industrial revolution, so to speak. The decline of the Roman Empire brought this to a halt, but the Eastern Roman Empire, aka Byzantine Empire never lost access to the writings of all the wise ancient Greeks. They had the books stored in monasteries (and studied, translated, and diligently copied by hand generation after generation) all along, for 1000 years, and yet it seems that they didn't do much else with it.\n\n\n\n\nWhen the Arabs discovered the ancient Greek texts, they had their Golden Age, which brought important contributions to Algebra, Astronomy, Alchemy, just to name a few. When Western Europeans got access to those texts, they had the Renaissance. I am kinda generalizing here, and I would be surprised myself if the Greek texts were the only reason for those two movements. But my question stands regardless: I don't think there is another example in world history, of a 1000 year old culture, prosperous more or less, with access to education and resources like that, that didn't do more science.\n\n\nI'm wondering why that is.\n\n\n\n\nPS\nThis is my first reddit post. I did read the faq and the r/askhistorians rules, and everything should be OK. Sorry if I missed something :)\n\nEdit: I changed some phrasing and added couple of elements from a reply of mine to a comment, to improve clarity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25a93l/the_byzantine_empire_had_access_to_all_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chfd2my", "chfe5qu", "chfkcek"], "score": [81, 65, 50], "text": ["But the Byzantines did contribute a lot to science. Here is a link to a thread with more details: _URL_0_ ", "I'm afraid your question is based on a number of misconceptions. Firstly, the Greeks were certainly nowhere near an industrial revolution. They never invented the steam engine either. Hero's aeoliphile was a toy that had as much in common with a 17th century steam turbine as a child's spinning top has with a gyroscope. \n\nSecondly, the decline of the Roman Empire didn't result in the loss of the knowledge of the Romans in the West, the writings of the Classical writers were well known in the west all the way through the medieval period, and were discussed and built on by the scientific minds of the time. There was considerable progress made after the Roman period, in both east and west. The medieval period advanced the knowledge of the Romans. The medievals invented cannons, handheld gunpowder weapons and advanced shipbuilding as well, all things the Greeks and Romans had no idea about. \n\nSo the answer to your question is that both East and West had access to all the ancient Greek writings and both made considerable contributions to science. See [this article](_URL_0_) for a brief overview.", "**Part I:**\n\n >  that didn't do more science\n\n\"Science\". What is science? \n\nAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary:\n\n*The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment*\n\nThe key questions for us are \"did the Byzantines actually study the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world?\" and furthermore, \"did they do it through *BOTH* observation and experiment?\". In all cases, the answer is overwhelmingly YES, and I will try to expound upon these as best as I can here. Note: this is a huge subject, and I can't reproduce everything that I have found out in this essay, but I will be gladly willing to answer any specific questions you may have.\n\nAnyways, one must consider Byzantium's unique situation before delving into the question of their apparent \"lack of scientific product\". For much of the thousand-year history of the Empire, there was a crisis, and one which at some times appeared more dire than at others. That crisis was that the Byzantines, being the last vestige of old Imperial Rome, were constantly at odds with a world which sought to move on. To make matters worse, the Empire, specifically Constantinople, was the prize that everyone wanted to take, because of its high-culture, its smug attitude, and its mountains of stockpiled gold. For much of its history, Byzantium was under attack, and at various times, the light of the Empire was very nearly extinguished. First and foremost, owing to their martial heritage passed down from the old Romans, the Empire first and foremost sought to survive, and the Byzantines achieved this through advancement of their military. The Byzantine army and navy were the life force of the Empire, and were those two to fail, the whole of the Empire would fall into ruin. You will find that many of the innovations of the Byzantines were in the realm of military science and technology: Greek Fire, flamethrowers, trebuchets, terror grenades, standardized military manuals, and *klivania* to name a few. These are what they are generally remembered for. The Imperial war machine was one based on majesty, adaptability, discipline, and most importantly, intimidation.\n\nWhen the Empire was in turmoil, whether due to civil war, or external wars, science and literature on the whole seem to diminish drastically, and so we find that in times such as these very little information survives, especially from the dark days of the 7th-9th Centuries, when the Empire was wracked by numerous dire internal and external troubles, and though the Empire would recover afterwards, there were still eras of decline left in store. A notable exception to this decline in learning is the Palaiologan period, but it is the exception because knowledge and education on the whole had increased in Europe and the Near East by the 13th Century. Anyways, knowing this, we can effectively say that even though the Empire lasted for over a millennium, there were periods where scholarship was severely reduced in favor of the very survival of the Byzantine state.\n\nIn contrast, we find that the high points of Byzantine history, where the Empire, due to competent leadership and great military success,  allowed for amazing and extensive scholarship, and this was furthered by the favored interests of a number of well-read and learn\u00e8d philosopher-Emperors such as Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. Under leaders that understood the benefits brought about by widespread education, the number of scholars within Byzantium exploded, leading to a \"golden age\" of learning starting in the late 9th Century and lasting until the sack of Constantinople in 1204. This isn't to say that there wasn't any learning before, but during this span of time, learning on the whole was extensively and drastically returned to levels that rivalled that of old Rome. \n\nBut you may ask, \"what exactly did the Byzantines do to further their interest in education, and, was it science?\". You find, upon reading many primary sources, that education during the high point of the Medieval Byzantine Empire was actually quite impressive. According to Lars Brownworth, as well as the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, literacy (defined as being able to read and write) within the Byzantine Empire around the time of the Macedonian Renaissance might have been as high as 30-40%. There are numerous mentions within both Imperial works, as well as personal letters of contemporary people, of many children attending primary, secondary, and even at times tertiary education. Michael Psellos himself (an upper-middle class scholar) wrote that his daughter Styliane, even at the age of 6 years was \"the best and brightest in her class\" and he marvelled at the development of her educational ability throughout her teen years, which implies that many other children attended school as well. The Skylitzes manuscript helps to support this by [illustrating Byzantine children and their teacher attending school](_URL_0_). Additionally, the fact that Byzantine military manuals were intended to be read by both generals and their officers tells us that a good portion of soldiers were also expected to be able to read, and since they were often drawn from all lots of life, this means that a good percentage of regular people must have also been able to read and write. Of course, there is much other evidence to support this, but I shall not dwell on it. \n\nAs for science. Well, there IS a lot of scientific thought that was developed in Byzantium. A lot of the work that I am aware of begins with the great Michael Psellos, who I mentioned before. A proverbial \"Renaissance Man\" who wrote 500 years before the start of the Renaissance, I have had the fortune of reading some of his scientific works, and by God, are they fascinating. Psellos might be thought of as one of the progenitors of the scientific method. One thing that pervades Psellos' works is a keen desire to support rational thinking and support scientific inquiry with evidence, which contrasted heavily with the religious doctrine of the time. Thankfully, it seems that the Orthodox Church became more lenient during this period when it came to this scientific inquiry, and so Psellos was able to make many of his comments without too much trouble. He does, however, seem to thinly veil his true purpose within his works, which is to support education and reason, rather than dogma. To give you an idea of what I am talking about here is an excerpt from the *Chronographia*: \n\n*\"At that time I was in my twenty-fifth year and engaged in serious studies. My efforts were concentrated on two objects: to train my tongue by rhetoric, so as to become a fine speaker, and to refine my mind by a course of philosophy. I soon mastered the rhetoric enough to be able to distinguish the central theme of an argument and logically connect it with my main and secondary points. I also learnt not to stand in complete awe of the art, nor to follow its precepts in everything like a child, and I even made certain contributions of a minor character myself. Then I applied myself to the study of philosophy, and having acquainted myself sufficiently with the art of reasoning, both deductive, from cause to immediate effect, and inductive, tracing causes from all manner of effects, I turned to natural science and aspired to a knowledge of the fundamental principles of philosophy through mathematics.\"*\n\n*\"If the reader does not find me boring in this and will allow me to go on, I will add to what I have already said concerning my own activities the fact to which I am about to refer will undoubtedly win for me high approval among men of learning, quite apart from all other considerations. And you, who read my history today, will bear witness to the truth of my words. Philosophy, when I first studied it, was moribund as far as its professors were concerned, and I alone revived it, untutored by any masters worthy of mention, and despite my thorough research, finding no germ of philosophy either in Greece or in the barbarian world. I had heard that Greece had a great reputation for philosophy, expressed in simple words and simple propositions, and their work in this field set a standard and criterion for the future. There were some who belittled the simplicity of the Greeks, but I sought to learn more, and as I met some of the experts in the art, I was instructed by them how to pursue my studies in a methodical way. One passed me on to another for tuition, the lesser light to the greater, and he again recommended me to a third, and he to Aristotle and Plato. Doubtless my former teachers were well-satisfied to take second place to these two.\"* \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k1jso/the_byzantine_empire_often_gets_remarkably_little/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology"], ["http://hodegon.nvg.org.au/skylitz/school.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2bx3ko", "title": "My World History textbook contains like 60% of its material focused on European society. Why?", "selftext": "Firstly, excuse my English grammar etc.\n\nI don't exactly know should I ask this here but let me do out of my curiosity. I'm from Japan, and Japanese history class for high school curriculum is divided into national history which exclusive for Japanese history and world events involved our heavy presence from our perspective, and world history which is supposedly covering the history furthering down to each regions and also deal with worldwide intrications. My question is related to world history part, which most of the textbook has its emphasis over European history (from ancient Rome and Greek, throughout medieval ages, dismantle of ancient regime and bourgeois revolution and progress of industrial revolution, world wars and modern ages), while history of other regions including India, Arab, Central Asia, Africa, South-East Asia, Australia (and Aborignie), and Native Americans having less particulars or being supplementary of whole development of European centric history. Even inside Europe itself the \"quota\" can be dig down into like 45% Western Europe(Britain, French, German, Netherlands etc), 35% Southern Europe (mostly Rome, Greek, Byzantines, Italy, Spanish), and the rest for Eastern Europe/Balcan/Russia/Scandinavia etc. While my conjecture of the reasoning is the amount of historical bibliography and scientific research of European history exceeds that of the rest (which also could explain the reason why Chinese history is being significant part of history class exceptionally; there are tons of Chinese bibliographies we can find), I'd like to hear your answer from historian point of view. This question raises when I had my Indonesian friend showed me his world history textbook and it was almost the same thing with European history being the \"protagonist\" and the rest of the world are at the supporting role. But, there could be different textbook with different perspective, highly, so please correct me if Im wrong and Im eager to hear that.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bx3ko/my_world_history_textbook_contains_like_60_of_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj9tvsy", "cj9u6ce", "cj9u73u", "cj9xtip", "cja2i7d", "cjcbjll"], "score": [20, 5, 114, 2, 2, 2], "text": [" > which also could explain the reason why Chinese history is being significant part of history class exceptionally; there are tons of Chinese bibliographies we can find\n\nThis isn't an answer to your main question, but I just want to address this point above, and it may be related to the question about Europe as well.\n\nThere is actually a huge amount of Japanese scholarship on Chinese topics. My own examples are coming from linguistics, but if you really want to get into things like Manchu scholarship or even more general historical linguistics, Japanese sources are quite significant. So in addition to there being a lot written about Chinese history (and I mean that in the broadest sense), there's a lot written about it *in Japanese* by Japanese historians. It's also a huge area with historical and archaeological records going way back, and in an area very much related to Japanese history and culture. So that being prominent in the text books in Japan doesn't surprise me at all. The history of the region is very accessible, so it's easy to distill into a textbook.\n\n~~What level are the books for that you're asking about? Something like high school?~~\n\nedit: yep there it is, clear as day. oops.", "I may be wrong but since most of the first world countries are in the westen world, its more likely that thats where the focus is, as many things comes from the ancient european civilizations. Atleast this makes sense for us from europe, as we read a lot more about general  european history then about our own history (swedish), or about easten history. For us, we had more then 60% of our textbook focus on the rest of the world, with almost only 20% was about sweden, but then again, this might be casue we are in europe, and there isnt much to be said about swedish history. ", "This really comes down to some of history's core identity issues as an academic discipline. What constitutes 'important history' and how that history is presented is a central point of contention. On the one hand, one historian would say that a Eurocentric view of world history stands at the forefront of world history because European affairs have had the greatest impact on the world for many centuries. This is also linked to colonization and European politico-economic domination of the developing world,  Eurocentric history is dominant because it is the 'history of the political majority'. Thus European history is more important because it is more influential and central to understanding the world as we know it today. On the other hand, another historian would challenge this idea by asking 'what makes European history more important than say Japanese history'. They would argue that all history, no matter what perspective it is told from is equally valid. This is where social history originates, the idea that history has been told from one perspective for far too long and that the experiences of minorities needs to be heard. \n\nYour world history text book isn't unlike many others out there. Regardless of what you perceive to be the 'proper' or 'better' way of presenting history is, I think it is important that you know and understand the Eurocentric version of world history because it is the most dominant. If you wish to challenge it, you will first need to understand it. I also think that this isn't so bad for secondary level history, which is primarily focused on building your knowledge base and giving you an opportunity to exercise some critical thinking, which I can see you are doing :)     \n\n\nI recommend you read: Richard J. Evans: In Defence of History  ", "Since you are asking about Japan specifically, can I ask a follow-up question?\n\nWhen did that happen? Was it during the Meiji restoration? Or perhaps after WW2? I assume before that Chinese History would have been heavily studied, as Japan was part of the Sinosphere. And was it a gradual, or an abrupt change?\n\nIs it possible to find contemporary sources explaining why they felt the need to change the textbooks so? That way we would get the reasons \"straight from the horse's mouth\", so to speak.", "High school history also informs future education which is history based.  In that sense it is utilitarian.  \n\nIf you want to study the political sciences, economics, or many of the sciences the history of Europe and the western world is particularly germane to your subject area.  \n\nThat is not to say that the history of Japan or India or any number of other places is not important, but the foundations of the world economic order and the international system, to say nothing of the rise of the scientific method are all tied to western european history.  \n\nIf HS history is preparatory for later study that focus makes sense, pedagogically speaking.", "It also has a lot to do with the fact that you read a book written in a European language (I presume), probably written by someone of euro descent (or assimilated to that culture) and thus marketed towards your culture as a whole. \n\n\nIf you go to west Africa or China, they are certainly not going to be as interested in Romans and knights and will tell you about their own history. Granted, many around the world are partially \"westernized\". Westerners most frequently speak to foreigners who are fully or partially westernized (in real life, or through media) creating a selective bias that tends to make Western 1st worlders believe their culture is more widespread and global than it actually is.\n\nAnd many times, that information about history from elsewhere is either written in another language, or isn't written at all. Lots of history isn't easily accessible in English, as with any other language too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "cgkl65", "title": "Why didn't the Apollo program \"reuse\" astronauts?", "selftext": "[Of the nine Apollo missions that went to the moon, 24 astronauts either orbited or landed on the moon](_URL_0_). Only three of those astronauts went on 2 separate missions - the other 21 only went once.\n\nWhy was this the case? Once an astronaut was trained and proved himself in an Apollo mission, wouldn't it have made more sense to use the same astronaut in future missions, rather than taking a gamble at somebody who hasn't quite proved himself?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cgkl65/why_didnt_the_apollo_program_reuse_astronauts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["euioj1w"], "score": [188], "text": ["First of all there were 49 astronauts in the corps. The needed to do training for their missions months/years in advance for prime and backup crews. In the end though, it really depends on the astronaut who flew the early Apollo missions. \n\n* Wally Schirra (Apollo 7) was one of the Mercury 7 astronauts, he flew on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. He was planning to retire after the flight anyway, but he caught a cold and his illness soured the three man crew's mood and they nearly mutinied during the flight, especially over a TV broadcast. The late Chris Kraft (who was flight director) swore the three would never fly again. \n\n\n* Don Eisele (Apollo 7) was having an affair before his flight and the program didn't want the embarrassment of a divorce (also, see Schirra above)\n\n\n* Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7) got kicked upstairs to head the Skylab program (again, see Schirra)\n\n\n* Frank Borman (Apollo 8) had no interest in being the first man on the moon and he felt that once Apollo 11 was successful the rest was icing on the cake. \n\n* Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9) got sick on his flight (Borman did too on 8) and NASA hadn't pinned it down on Space Adaptive Syndrome, yet or understanding it. Not necessarily wanting someone who would get sick on the way to the moon, he became a guinea pig for motion sickness tests. He did fly in Skylab though. \n\n\n* Tom Stafford (Apollo 10) got promoted to take Alan Shepard's job as Chief of the Astronaut Office. Shepard had gotten experimental surgery on his ear, and was returned to flight status. Stafford also flew with Deke Slayton as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. \n\n\n* Michael Collins (Apollo 11) was offered back up commander on 14, and then commander of 17, but Collins turned him down as training and spaceflight put undue stress on his family. \n\n\nAfter 11, crews (and back up crews) had already been assigned to future missions, three of which would be unfortunately cancelled by Congress before they could fly (which would have had 3 Apollo program veterans).  In fact, Curt Michel got bumped from Apollo 17 for Harrison Schmidt who was a geologist, and the only geologist to walk on the moon.\n\n\nThe only one I'm not sure of is Bill Anders from Apollo 8. \n\nMain Sources : Chaikin, Andrew (1994). \"A Man on the Moon.\" Slayton, Donald; Cassutt, Michael (June 15, 1995). \"Deke! U.S. Manned Space From Mercury To the Shuttle\n\nThis is my first answer on AH, I hope this meets the standards of the sub. If not, I understand."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4lp8ey", "title": "Why did White Russians and Soviet troops fight together in the Xianjiang invasion?", "selftext": "[The Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) about the Soviet invasion of Xianjiang in 1934 (to prop up a pro-Soviet warlord) mentions that Soviet and White Russian troops fought together, and even jointly occupied cities.\n\nWhat motivation did these two bitter enemies have for joining forces? How did Soviet propaganda explain this to their troops? What was the eventual fate of these White Russians - did they join forces with the Nazis/Japanese after Barbarossa? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lp8ey/why_did_white_russians_and_soviet_troops_fight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3p9kfx", "d3pbjk4"], "score": [38, 8], "text": ["Ok, Soviet inter-war stuff is not my forte and especially the far East stuff is rather complicated but as far as I know this unlikely alliance resulted from Sheng Shicai, the local pro-Soviet warlord employing formerly White Russian soldiers who had initially fled to Xinjiang as a result of the Russian Civil War.\n\nWhen the Chinese Republic was founded in 1912, the former deputy governor of the province Yang Zengxin originally accepted the Republic as their new state. In subsequent years however, nationalist tension arose among the Muslim Uyghur population of the region, partly under the influence of Pan-Turkish movements, partly under Communist influence following the establishment of the Soviet Union. When Zengxin was assassinated in 1928, his successor, Jin Shuren, further stoked the flames of Uyghur rebellion by instituting a policy of Sinicization, closing down Uyghur schools, levying new taxes and so on.\n\nIn 1930/31 this resulted in a rebellion of the Uyghur population, which marks the starting point of the incredibly complicated Xinjiang wars. During this initial phase Jin Shuren had already employed formerly White Russian soldiers in his army that fought to suppress the Uyghur population. When most of us today hear \"White Russian forces\" we tend to think of people from the Ukraine, Russia, the Baltics and Belorussia that fought the Soviet Union in the European theater. But it is important to emphasize here that the Russian Civil War, being a Civil War involved more than just the population of the European part of Russia. Parts of the White movement came from the Central Asian and Far Eastern parts of Russia and that is also where fighting lasted the longest. A lot of them together with a lot of former White inhabitants of European Russia crossed the border into Xinjiang after the Civil War had ended because they sought refuge in a place near the Soviet Union, possibly with the aim of further destabilizing the Soviet Union.\n\nThe most prominent of these figures in Xinjiang was Pavel Papengut, a former member of the Turkestan Military organization that sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918. He had entered the service of Jin Shuren in Xinjiang in 1931 after years of having fought a guerilla war against the Soviets in Central Asia and having been forced to go into exile because it was a way for him to put his expertise in warfare to use and earn money. In 1933 he came to play a pivotal role in the further developments in Xinjiang. Shuren was in a dangerous situation in 1933. Not only was he besieged by Uyghur, the Kuomintang had decided to intervene in Xinjinag, seeing as it still was their province, and had sent another warlord there to depose him. His position under assault from all sites, his deputy, Sheng Shicai, convinced the White Troops under Papengut's command to attempt a coup d'etat against Shuren who was forced to flee to the Soviet Union.\n\nWith Shicai being the new man in power in Xinjiang, the Soviets quickly realized that in order to retain their influence there, they had to support him or else risk losing Xinjiang to either the Muslim rebels or the KMT. And that is how this unlikely alliance came to be. After Shicai had secured Soviet support, Pappengut -- as a known enemy of the Soviets -- was removed from command and shot after having been accused of planning another coup d'etat. He was replaced by the elusive figure of a General Bektieieff about whom nobody seems to have any information aside the former WWI correspondent Sven Hedin.\n\nWith Papengut out of the way, nothing stood in the way of Soviet aid, aside the issue of militarily intervening in what was nominally still another country, China, being a cause for war. Wanting to avoid war, Stalin devised the plan that two divisions of GPU (formerly the Checka, later known as the NKVD, and still alter known as the KGB) were to intervene secretly in Xinjiang. This is the reason why they mingled with the Russian troops, wearing Royal Russian uniforms and no further marks of identification. The formerly White troops didn't just provide support, they also were the perfect cover for Soviet intervention.\n\nThe intervention was successful and Sheng remained in power with Soviet support and the formerly White Troops under his command until 1942, when he miscalculated about the eventual victory of the Germans and turned anti-Soviet and towards the KMT. He however underestimated Stalin who basically pressured the KMT into removing Sheng from power and in 1944, his reign ended.\n\nWhen it emerged after WWII that Xinjiang would not remain the de-facto state it had been in the inter-war and war years and that Communist revolution was likely in China and Stalin decided to better not alienate Mao, the USSR decreed that all former citizens of the Russian Empire, even if they had fought in the White forces during the Civil war could return to the Soviet Union. This offer was made in 1946 and apparently, many of the former White soldiers living in Xinjiang took it. Apparently, two thirds of them accepted their Soviet papers and returned, albeit also keeping their Chinese papers. While fear of reprisal might have played a role here, their history after their return is sort of lost and nothing I came across today further expanded on their fate.\n\nIn short, this temporary alliance of unlikely partners in form of formerly White Russian troops and the Red Army resulted from an alignment of interest between the White Russians paymaster and Stalin's realpolitik in the Far East. As far as explaining this to the Red troops involved goes, since they were Secret Service troops, an explanation beyond that it was necessary for Soviet and socialist interests would most likely not have been necessary. And since the whole thing was a secret undertaking, there also wasn't the need to address it with the Soviet public. As for the White troops, aside Papengut, there doesn't seem to have been that much of an opposition to this undertaking, mainly related to them wanting to get paid, fed, and not killed by Nationalists or Muslims.\n\nSources (I was lucky to be in the library today for these):\n\n* Linda Benson: The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang 1944-1949, 1990.\n\n* David Brophy: Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier, 2016.\n\n*  S. Frederick Starr: Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland, 2004.\n\n* Andrew D. W. Forbes: Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang 1911-1949, 1986.", "The \"White Russians\" in what is today part of northern Xinjiang frequently \"changed sides\" in order to preserve their short term interests. You can read more about this in the following paper:\n\n[To Die On the Steppe: Sino-Soviet-American Relations and the Cold War in Chinese Central Asia](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso note that the phrase \"White Russian\" in Xinjiang is often a generalization--many of the ethnic Russian peoples who lived in Xinjiang were not refugees/defectors from the Russian Revolution. While some certainly were, many other ethnic Russians had lived in the region for quite some time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Xinjiang"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.academia.edu/5634236/To_Die_On_the_Steppe_Sino-Soviet-American_Relations_and_the_Cold_War_in_Chinese_Central_Asia_1944-1952"]]}
{"q_id": "2wnwbz", "title": "If the Battle of Manzikert was not a bloodbath, as previously believed, why was it still a disaster for the Byzantines?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wnwbz/if_the_battle_of_manzikert_was_not_a_bloodbath_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cosm847"], "score": [76], "text": ["The disaster of Manzikert lied not with the battle in of itself but in the events that followed. The direct consequence of the battle was that for the first time since Valerian that a Roman/Byzantine emperor had been captured by an enemy power. \n\nNow, it had not been Alp Alsan's intention to become involved in an extended war with Byzantium given that the Seljuk Turks' principal enemy were the Shia Fatimids of Egypt (The Turks had in the recent past become Sunnii and fundamentally opposed to the Shia). Thus, Alp released Romanos IV on the conditions that he would pay the Seljuks 1.5 million nomistia (gold coins) and another 360,000 nomistia annually.\n\nThe real issue that made Manzikert such a pivotal point in Byzantine and Turkish history was that Romanos' hold on the throne was had shaky from the start given that he had come to power essentially by marrying the widow of the previous emperor Constantine X Doukas. This act do not endear Romanos to the Doukas family, who used the fact that Romanos had been humiliated by the Seljuk Sultan to dispose of him and install Michael VII Doukas as emperor instead. \n\nHowever, Constantine was a weak emperor who set off a chain reaction where in the imperial throne was viewed as being up for graps and generals abandoned the outer defenses of the empire to stake their claim on the throne. All the while, the main reason Romanos had instigated the Manzikert campaign in the beginning was to put an end to Turkoman raids coming from the east. While the Seljuks had little interest in the Byzantines, this did not stop still nomadic bands of Turks called Turkomen from invading Armenia and Cappadocia.  Given that these areas were under the control of Byzantium and that the emperor had a responsibility to protect his empire and that defeating the Turks would help to stabilize his hold on power, There is little wonder that Romanos decided to undertake his campaign.\n\n However, with the emperor defeated and the command structure fighting amongst itself, this provided the Turkomen a golden opportunity to enter the empire nearly unopposed and settle in a land similar to their Central Asian homeland. In a move reminiscent to how the Western Roman Empire had used Germanic tribes in its wars, many Byzantine generals started using the Turks, a provilent case being one Suleyman ibn Kutalamis who had aligned himself with the Governor of the Anatolic Theme (Providence) against Michael VII. The Governor was ultimately defeated but Suleyman took over the city of Nicea, which would be the first capital of what would be the Sultanate of Rum (Rum means Rome in Turkish and refers to the fact that the Byzantines still referred to themselves as Romans and their Empire as the Roman Empire).\n\nIt also be mentioned that the Turks were not the only people the Byzantines had to concern themselves with. In addition to conquering England , the Normans also conquered Sicily and Southern Italy from both the Arabs and the Byzantines, ending with the fall of Byzantine Bari in 1071. The Normans also served as mercenaries to the Byzantine generals and one Norman, Roussel de Balliou attempted to establish for himself an independent state in Anatolia before being defeated by the Byzantines.\n\nThe crisis brought on by Manzikert only started to come to end in end with the proclamation of Alexis Comnenos in 1081. He quickly married Irene Douka and appointed Constantine Douka, the son of Michael VII as co-emperor, putting an end to the civil war. However, Alexis's primary concern at the beginning of his reign wasn't the Turks but the Normans under Robert Guiscard, who saw that Alexis was a usurper and desired the throne for himself.  Likely for Alexis, Guiscard's plans fell apart as a storm in 1081 and a epidemic in 1082 decimated Guiscard's forces. Regardless, Guiscard did make Alexis neglect Anatolia, as Alexis essentially kept Suleyman in power until he was killed in 1086 near Antioch. However, what Suleyman had started to form in Anatolia passed on to Kilij Arslan, who set his base in Nicaea after moving away from the collapsing Great Seljuk Empire  that had defeated Romanos IV. It was that this point that Alexis sent a fateful letter to Pope Urban II for military aid that would set off the Crusades and ultimately seal the fate of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire.\n\nTL;DR: Romanos IV's capture and release set off a civil war in which the Turks both participated in and took advantage of which occurred alongside Norman aggression, which was considered a greater threat to the empire.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "duvkxp", "title": "Middle Age sources are chock full of people having long, clear visions sent from God, Mary, the Saints, etc. How do historians understand these?", "selftext": "It seems unlikely that all of them are charlatans (obviously some were). But, while possible, it also seems unlikely they all had schizophrenia (and even schizophrenia doesn't normally, in our current culture at least, manifest as such clear hallucinations). So I wonder how historians understand this. What is the explanation?\n\nOr is it just viewed the same way early medieval Saint's hagiographies are viewed; we look at what it tells us about the society at the time, and basically don't bother too much about what \"really\" happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/duvkxp/middle_age_sources_are_chock_full_of_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f79plsw"], "score": [43], "text": ["/u/sunagainstgold has talked about [what pre-Dante Hell looked like](_URL_7_) and [different interpretations of what angels look like](_URL_3_) and about [Satan ruling over the underworld](_URL_6_).  See also [this thread about Joan of Arc](_URL_1_) where someone in the comments asked about medievalists being religious. [Another thread](_URL_5_) about the maid of Orleans. Also [whether to take Dante seriously](_URL_0_) (whatever that means).  Sunagainstgold has probably written even more elsewhere that I can't find right now.\n\nHave you heard about Jesus' Chinese brother? /u/EnclavedMicrostate will tell you all about him! This is 19th century stuff but super interesting.\n\n[What's the origin of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?](_URL_2_)\n\n[Was Hong Xiuquan serious about being Jesus' brother?](_URL_4_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8m5ddi/should_dantes_divine_comedy_be_read_as_a_story/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bxi6a9/how_did_joan_of_arc_an_illiterate_16_year_old/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/85j9wa/as_the_american_civil_war_was_winding_down_the/dvyh1mj/?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a1ic5y/why_are_angels_depicted_as_humans_with_large/ear7ga4/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bhzdia/saturday_showcase_april_27_2019/elxk8hd/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t351i/joan_of_arc_and_her_story_seem_too_fantastic_to/ddkanpf/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ae97dc/where_did_christians_get_the_idea_that_satan/edozpyf/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z13di/since_most_of_our_physical_and_visual_perceptions/deurwwj/"]]}
{"q_id": "177gbp", "title": "[META] From today, the downvote button will be disabled for questions", "selftext": "The mods, and the subreddit as a whole, have been concerned about questions being downvoted [for a while](_URL_0_). We all have subjects we're more or less interested in, and some questions are better than others. That's why the upvote button is there; good questions that a lot of people are interested in are made more visible and are more likely to get answered because of it. But downvoting a question is *actively reducing* the chance that it will get answered. We feel that there's no good reason to go that far. If a question isn't related a history, or it breaks one of our few other rules for questions (no \"what ifs\", no \"polls\"), then the policy has always been that it should be reported and deleted.\n\nSo we've decided to trial disallowing downvotes for questions. For the next couple of weeks, the downvote button will be removed in the default subreddit style (this is easy to circumvent, but we hope the majority will respect the new rule regardless). We hope to see fewer good questions languishing unanswered in the new queue. If so, we'll consider making it a permanent change. It will also inform an ongoing behind-the-scenes discussion on further changes to the subreddit style, aimed at promoting high quality comments and upvoting/downvoting for the right reasons (any ideas on this are welcome).\n\nWe also want to hear from the wider community on this one: is this a good idea? Are there other ways that we can promote original questions on lesser-known subjects?\n\nEither way, downvoting *comments* that don't meet our standards is still strongly encouraged.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/177gbp/meta_from_today_the_downvote_button_will_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c82x48h", "c82xlbr", "c82xmqu", "c831yw0", "c832e45", "c834k0w", "c837vsh"], "score": [130, 41, 13, 9, 6, 16, 4], "text": ["As someone voting on questions of the AskHistorians /new/ queue multiple times a day, I disagree with the decision. It undermines the voting system and therefore *the* fundamental principle of reddit. It will result in even more bad questions one has to wade trough in order to find the few interesting ones. Many users have already complained about this in recent [meta] threads (one example: \"[META A number of things that I believe are watering down this subreddit](_URL_0_) ).\n\nI think that downvoting repetitive questions, homework questions, simple questions that are very easily answered by google, and other useless questions should be allowed, even encouraged. Everyone who enjoys these should set the visibility of links in his personal reddit preferences to -5 or -10.", "I think it's an interesting experiment.  I know I've been frustrated with downvotes on questions I've asked and ones I've answered.  Not everybody asks great questions, but sometimes good questions seem to get downvoted for no good reason.  I don't really see the point in downvoting any question, even if it's a commonly answered/homework/easily answered one.  Just ignore it and move on to a different one - that's my opinion anyway.  I say give it a while and see how it goes.\n\nSomeone mentioned in a previous meta thread about inserting something similar to the /r/askscience \"solid science\" \"not science\" buttons within the comments.  I also wanted to add that maybe there could be a pop-up when you hover on the downvote button like in /r/twoxchromosomes that asks people to reserve downvotes for comments that don't contribute to the discussion.\n\nAny of the notices though are useless on mobile devices.  They don't show up.", "It's an interesting idea but I think this will ultimately follow the same path as /r/games experiment with removing the downvote as seen [here](_URL_0_).\n\nBut hey, this is a different community and context so it might work out.", "I've often seen these trials end in failure considering it's just a style sheet change (correct me if I am wrong please). ", "I think this is a great idea as long as moderation stays strict and weeds out the bad questions.\n\nI've had experiences personally in /r/askscience where I thought something was a decent question and it immediately got downvoted and ignored.  Then, two days later, someone else would ask something similar with misspellings, or something much more ridiculous than my question, and it would get dozens of replies not by virtue of being BETTER but because it got lucky and somehow made it through the initial gauntlet.  Those initial downvotes can be a killer.", "I have to say, I'm really not sure if I agree with this or not.\n\nInitial reaction: Oh hell no. \n\nHowever, on further reflection, it's more nuanced than that. To explain my initial reaction, I'm another annoyed at the Hitler/WWII/America/Rome fixation, but I do realize that my interests are not everyone else's and there's not really any point in trying to force the issue. I also find myself annoyed sometimes at things sitting in the new queue that just don't make sense. I try to ask questions of the OP to clarify what their question really is, but often, I either don't get any answer and the question is buried, or I do get an answer and the question is buried. So people aren't getting their questions answered there.\n\nConversely, I see very specialized questions at times (and have been guilty of some myself) which get downvoted, not voted on, or only upvoted once or twice even though they're very good questions. But they lack broad appeal and so are buried and often unanswered. A sustained number of upvotes gives a post the life it needs to actually be seen by someone who knows the answer, but these specialized questions disappear.\n\nI can see how disabling downvotes on posts would ameliorate some of these questions, but also don't see how it will make a big impact. \n\nThe lack of variety on the main page of the subreddit is starting to drive me away. Again, I know this is my problem and not a function of the community, but I'm probably not the only person who feels this way. The thing is, though, there's actually a vast variety of questions posed, but most of them vanish without a splash, and Reddit seems to make it unnecessarily difficult to scroll through old posts to find the ones you're looking for (past all the questions being asked for the third time this week). Sometimes, an interesting question will only have a short answer without much meat, but no one else will post because it's obscure, lacks appeal, and was already \"answered.\"\n\nTo end my babbling, I'd like to say that I hope the mods are considering larger changes like a \"solved/unsolved\" toggle (which I've mentioned before) or maybe the ability to sort questions by flair type and solved status. That would make it easier for flaired users to find questions that are in their field, too.\n\nI generally support the moderation in this community and it really is one of the best places on Reddit (if not the best), but in this case, I can't really stand behind them. This change seems largely pointless.", "Can we sticky mod posts? And leave them up for several days? That alone would probably do more for this subreddit then removing downvotes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15orr4/meta_a_reminder_to_all_about_downvotes_and/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11f248/meta_a_number_of_things_that_i_believe_are/"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/16vx24/the_shortlived_experiment_with_hiding_the/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32n4v3", "title": "When did it become the norm for supermarkets to have fresh fruit and vegetables available any time of the year?", "selftext": "In regards to how modern shipping and globalization, how long did it take to build the infrastructure to support it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32n4v3/when_did_it_become_the_norm_for_supermarkets_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqcu9qv"], "score": [31], "text": ["By the time we have things we call \"supermarkets\" in the 1950's, both in Europe and the United States, there were already fresh fruits and vegetables available any time. Now, *exactly which* fruits and vegetables those are would vary from place and place and season to season, but certainly *something* fresh was available year round. Even older green-grocers decades before then usually managed to have something fresh most of the year. \n\nBut, if you're thinking of the usual spread of vegetables available in a Vons (is that a national chain?) or a Tesco's, like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, garlic, potatoes, peppers, maybe a few others, and fruit such as apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, and maybe some stone fruit or tropical fruit, the things that you pretty much expect to find whenever (and my students have NO IDEA when these things are in season, or even that they HAVE seasons) then basically we're talking about the postwar period. There was long-distance shipment of fresh goods before World War II, and even before World War I for some items like oranges, which were shipped from California and Florida to the eastern metropolis. However,  these things aren't really fully available year-round and at any large grocery store in Europe and the United States until after the war.\n\nThe large-scale infrastructure necessary was likely in place before 1945. Susan Freidberg has described the creation of a \"cold chain\" of refrigerated spaces like railways cars and warehouses connecting farms and markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though I believe that was typically used more for eggs, dairy, and meat than fruit and vegetables. The other major pieces of infrastructure were railways and steamships, both of which were well developed by the early 20th century. The real changes that came about with supermarkets were in the consumption patterns of families; we could equally think of this as \"infrastructure\" as well, but of a different sort, perhaps a smaller scale. Consumers had to begin buying things like automobiles and refrigerators, and those are not really common--and certainly not universal--until after the Second World War. Without those items, large supermarkets were impractical, and people shopped mostly at their local markets, many of which remained quite specialized as independent butchers, bakers, and grocers well into the postwar period, particularly in Europe. \n\nSee Victoria de Grazia, *Irresistible Empire* (which covers the spread of supermarkets from the US to Europe, though it is NOT a particularly good book), and Susan Freidberg, \"Moral Economies and the Cold Chain\" (behind a paywall [here](_URL_0_), sorry; I'm not sure if she has a monograph on the subject or not. I haven't seen one.)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2281.12076/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false"]]}
{"q_id": "1cjwrl", "title": "Are there any verified times when a media event greatly influenced the beliefs of a culture or actions of a national leader?", "selftext": "In 1983, there was a made for tv movie (in those days, they weren't abominations of bad like the sort we have now days on networks like SciFi) called [The Day After](_URL_2_) about a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  [You can watch the trailer for it here](_URL_3_), and I believe it is available for streaming on Netflix.\n\nAt the time of it's airing, it was watched by over 100 million Americans, almost half of the 230,000 million at the time.  Grief councilors were set up to talk to people about the film.  A debate on the show hosted by Ted Koppel [was where Carl Sagan](_URL_1_) gave his famous \"room awash in gasoline\" analogy about nuclear war.  You can watch the whole debate [here](_URL_0_), commercials and all!  The panel includes, Elie Weisel, William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scrowcroft, Robert McNamara, and George Schultz...so yeah, expect smart people talking to each other intelligently.\n\nAdditionally, Ronald Reagan wrote in his personal diary\n\n > \"Columbus Day. In the morning at Camp D. I ran the tape of the movie ABC is running Nov. 20. It's called THE DAY AFTER in which Lawrence, Kansas is wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It's very effective and left me greatly depressed...\"\n\nIts interesting to note that by 1985 to coincide with the assumption of power by Gorbachev, Reagan had softened his saber rattling against the Soviets.\n\nClearly the film had a major impact on American culture.  Are there comparable events that were reactions to *scripted* media or artwork (not news events like the JFK assassination or the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine?)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cjwrl/are_there_any_verified_times_when_a_media_event/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9h8syi", "c9h9h03", "c9h9jwe", "c9h9mlu", "c9hc2p7", "c9hc49v", "c9hhun9", "c9hjwze", "c9hk4x2", "c9hknlr", "c9hmupj"], "score": [16, 15, 24, 46, 4, 6, 9, 8, 5, 2, 2], "text": ["I believe a similar TV movie called \"Threads\" was aired in the UK around that time, and strengthened the anti-war/anti-nuclear movement.\n\nSpeaking of anti-nuclear, the movie China Syndrome greatly increased public fear during the Three Mile Island incident that occurred soon after.", "* The movie [Birth of a Nation]( _URL_0_) is said to have usherer in the 2nd era of KKK.\n\n* When Orson Welles did *War of the Worlds* as a radio show, Adolph Hitler noted the public panic it caused and cited it as evidence of the decadence of Democracy.\n\n* The movie *Jaws* kept a whole lot of beach goers out of the water for at least a season.\n\n* The movie *Sideways* was linked to a decline in Merlot sales. In fact, its called [the Sideways effect]( _URL_1_) in the industry.", "I know there are a ton of excellent Holocaust specialists around here who can explain this much better than I can, so I'll just briefly suggest the American TV miniseries *Holocaust*, which aired in 1978 on NBC and starred a young Meryl Streep alongside actors like Fritz Weaver, James Woods and Michael Moriarty. The story takes place from the perspective of the well-to-do Weiss family, who were German Jews, and a young and ambitious SS officer. It follows the protagonists through many of the major episodes and experiences of WWII and the Holocaust, including Kristallnacht, Buchenwald, Jewish ghettos, Jewish resistance, and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. One of the Weiss daughters is even raped by German soldiers.\n\n*Holocaust* was huge. It won Emmy Awards and earned as much as a 50 per cent market share in up to 15 million homes during its original airings, which is something unheard of today. For a lot of Americans, the series served as a first in-depth look into the horrors of the Holocaust, and was crucial in shaping how Americans (and others) would come to understand the event. It was aired in countries around the world. There were criticisms, too. Some felt the series trivialized the Holocaust, exploited its victims for entertainment, did not present it in all its gruesome reality (by TV-ifying it), and Elie Wiesel panned it as \"untrue and offensive.\" But it was a cultural phenomenon, to be sure.\n\nScholars have generally viewed *Holocaust* as a watershed moment in the formation of Holocaust memory (by which they mean public collective memory of the Holocaust). Judith Doneson argues that \"the amazing aspect\" of the series was that it held real-life political and moral repercussions in the places where it aired, which went way beyond the impact of any previous representations of the Holocaust. She argues that American audiences reacted to the series with moral outrage, while in West Germany and other parts of Europe it caused political tensions and brought audiences to the discomfiting position of having to face their own participation in the destruction of European Jewry. Other scholars have noted that the series was reacted to differently among different audiences; Emiliano Perra notes that the series was *not* such a formative event in Italy, and argues that instead of viewing the series in terms of the country's complicity, Italian audiences and commenters focused disproportionately on instances wherein Italians attempted to rescue or help Jews, and on Italian victimization at the hands of the Nazis, thereby avoiding frank discussions of guilt and complicity. \n\nSuffice to say then, at the very least, *Holocaust* spawned all kinds of public conversations about the Holocaust, how we represent it, and how we remember it.\n\nAlso, *Roots*. The two are not unrelated; *Holocaust* was released on the heels of *Roots* and the two series shared a director (Martin Chomsky). I am equally as ill-equipped to speak to the cultural impact of *Roots* as I am with regard to *Holocaust*, but I'll throw it out there.\n\n**References:**\n\nJudith Doneson, *The Holocaust in American Film* (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).\n\nEmiliano Perro, \"Narratives of Innocence and Victimhood: The Reception of the Miniseries Holocaust in Italy,\" *Holocaust and Genocide Studies* 22, no. 3 (Winter 2008).", "What about the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel *Uncle Tom's Cabin*?  Or Upton Sinclair's novel *The Jungle*?  \n\n**Edit**:  [*Uncle Tom's Cabin*](_URL_0_) was said to have helped fuel the abolitionist movement and also may have helped discourage the United Kingdom from supporting the South in any way.\n\n[*The Jungle*](_URL_1_) was said to have led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, with the latter establishing the Bureau of Chemistry (in 1930 renamed as the Food and Drug Administration).\n\n\n", "The fall of the Berlin wall comes to mind. They accidently said that the borders were open during a press conference and it resulted in chaos and ultimately the end of the GDR. I wont go into details but Mary Sarotte's 1989 sums it up excellently.", "The Cold War had a continuous series of films made about it so it's hard to isolate one film.\n\nOne anecdote I've heard often is how when Ronald Reagan became President, he thought the Pentagon had a 'war room' like in Dr. Strangelove, and one was built later to accommodate him.\n\nA quick googling turned up this from the Guardian, however it doesn't cite its source - \n_URL_0_", "While not really a media event, *Silent Spring* by Rachel Carson was a partial cause of the ban on DDT, despite being a shaky case at best.  The knock on effects from the ban on DDT are numerous.\n\nAfter it was published in 1962, it also helped start the American Environmental movement, adopted by the hippies, that has spread worldwide.\n\n[Wikipedia article](_URL_0_), sorry too busy for real sources", "President Woodrow Wilson once said about *Birth Of a Nation*: \"It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.\"\n_URL_0_\n\nIt definitely influenced his attitude and supported the racist beliefs of the time.\n\nWhen Abraham Lincoln met with Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of *Uncle Tom's Cabin*), he was reported to have said \"So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!\"\n\nHer book generated a lot of anger in the South, and hyped up sectionalist feelings. It provided proof of the North's prejudice towards Southerners. Some states even managed to limit the amount of anti-slavery literature that was published and sold there.\n\nSource: *United States History: Preparing For the Advanced Placement Examination* by John J. Newman and John Schmalbach (pgs. 243, 244)", "While studying Herodotus's Histories our professor told us that there were rumors Lysander was reading the histories during the final battle against Athens, and the reason he decided not to destroy the city was because he was so moved by the memory of the two great allies uniting and defeating the Persian empire together.\n\nOf course I can't find any verification of this with a google search.  It's a lovely thought, though.", "I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Thomas Paine's \"Common Sense\" and \"The American Crisis\".  Both were incredibly influential when they were written, and changed the mind-set of the entire nation.", " > Its interesting to note that by 1985 to coincide with the assumption of power by Gorbachev, Reagan had softened his saber rattling against the Soviets.\n\nJust as a side note, Reagan had toned down his saber rattling after almost getting us into a nuclear war with the Soviets in 1983. After a KGB defector reported how seriously the USSR took the [Able Archer 83](_URL_0_) exercise, Reagan greatly toned down his rhetoric. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?c=1823", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO1EOjr_s9s", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBfZTkuVzt4"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation", "http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=features&content=61265"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin#Contemporary_and_world_reaction", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Federal_response"], [], ["http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/nov/14/artsfeatures1"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_spring"], ["http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_birth.html"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83"]]}
{"q_id": "5z5ts5", "title": "How accurate was Kremlinology?", "selftext": "\"Kremlinology\" is a somewhat derisive term for mountains-out-of-molehill analysis of opaque, authoritarian political systems, doing things like looking at seating arrangements in public events to determine what factions are in or out of favor. But I have never seen an analysis of whether or not the Kremlinologists during the Col War tended to get things right or not, and whether their focus on minor details like image framing was an accurate reflection of how the Soviet media arm functioned.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z5ts5/how_accurate_was_kremlinology/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dexcgc9", "dexez33"], "score": [3, 9], "text": ["As a follow up-question, did the Soviets have an equivalent (as in \"Washingtonology\") and if so, did it provide any useful information for Soviet intelligence?", "The problem with Kremlinology is roughly the same as what you get with the study of similarly restricted states - and the more restrictive the state is, the tougher it is to conduct meaningful analysis. Simply put, conventional sources of information are often unavailable or are otherwise difficult to access. \n\nAs you say, sometimes it devolves into making judgments based on otherwise inconsequential information like what people are wearing on official photographs, and whether or not some people are present in them (or where they happen to be standing). \n\nIn general, I would say that there is a definitely a difference between \"Kremlinology\" and genuine scholarly research on the topic. Not to say that the Kremlinologists never got things right, but the methods and sources that were available to them were very limited. In the nutshell, classic \"Kremlinology\" implies subjecting the Soviet press and other published material to thorough examination, attempting to ascertain and judge Soviet policies and, importantly, *predict* Soviet actions (something that a relatively small proportion of purely scholarly material sets out to accomplish).  Naturally, the biggest problem here is the trustworthiness of the published materials in question - at worst they contain completely fabricated information, at best they leave many points uncertain and under-illuminated. \n\nSo, working from there I would also say that the viability of \"Kremlinology\" depended largely on when we're talking - specifically the degree to which the Soviet Union was closed to outside observers. Simply put, when you can just go to Moscow and do research there, even with some limitations, you obviously are better off doing that instead of trying to analyze state-sanctioned Soviet press sources. In other words, Kremlinology was more of a necessity at times, brought upon by the lack of viable alternatives. Especially during the Stalin period the researchers had little to go by apart from the Soviet media. Ironically, at the time the same can largely be said about the general Soviet populace. \n\nArguably, the biggest blow to the credibility of classic Kremlinology (or the state it ended up evolving into by the end of the 1980s - more on that later) was its failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fairness, the same can be said of pretty much everyone else who was studying the Soviet system at the time of the collapse, including the more traditional academic research - but then again, most did not set out to plot USSR's course for the years to come as their ultimate goal. With that in mind, a lot of the Kremlinologists openly admitted that their approach offered too little reliable information to properly understand what is actually happening in the country, and a lot of them reverted to some of the more conventional research methods when and if the opportunity presented itself to them.\n\nThe proportion of Kremlinology that tended to end up on the pages of regular press tended to be almost entirely speculative in nature as a result, and hardly anything of what it \"predicted\" was presented in concrete terms. On a personal note, I can say that much the same thing can be said about the contemporary reporting of mainstream press on Russia - they rarely refer to actual specialist on the matter, that is to say the people who studied Russia professionally, or were otherwise engaged with Russia (and IN Russia) in some professional capacity, and rely on either anonymous sources, or sources with shaky credentials - for example this article from [The New Yorker](_URL_0_) quotes Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister between 1990 and 1996, but hasn't been active in politics since the late 90s, and since 2012 has been living in the States, while Oleg Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general they also referred to, has been living in the States since 1995, so their viability as reliable sources of information for analyzing *contemporary* Russian policies is very questionable. The situation was much the same with most of the Kremlinology during the Cold War. So a lot of the \"predictions\" were more semi-educated guesses, and a lot were purposefully ambiguous in their prognosis, so it is hard to accurately gauge their predictions. Those that weren't ambiguous were instead overtly ambitious - claiming that they could ascertain that the leadership struggle was becoming more heated because the portraits of Beria and Malenkov changed their spots twice within the same day during the October Revolution Day festivities in 1947 for example. At the time, when there was nothing else to go on, these predictions were literally everything you could work with, and were treated very seriously, but in retrospect their conclusions were more often off the mark than not. \n\nAs the conditions for reporting on Soviet Union loosened up after the death of Stalin, serious Kremlinology started to fade away, becoming history's equivalent of alchemy so to speak. By the mid 1970s it was mostly an anachronism and was already largely used in a pejorative sense to describe the \"guessers\". \n\nNowadays the reasons for employing the same methods, that is to say Kremlinology in relation to states such as North Korea, are the same as before (with the same implications for producing accurate analyses and predictions) - the lack of other available information.\n\nHopefully this answers your question, at least in part. \n\nSome decent relatively recent academic articles on the subject (behind the paywall unless you are accessing them from an academic institution I'm afraid): \n\n* Zachary J. Jacobson. \"On the \u2018arcane modern science of Kremlinology\u2019 or the case of the vanishing birthdays,\" Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 141-158.\n\n*  Stephen Kotkin. \u201cThe State \u2013 Is it Us? Memoirs, archives, and Kremlinologists,\u201d Russian Review 61, no. 1 (2002): 48\u201349."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war"]]}
{"q_id": "arj6hu", "title": "The film The Favourite depicts Queen Anne engaged in lesbian relations with both Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill. Does this have any basis in history or is it just a fanciful creation of the scriptwriter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/arj6hu/the_film_the_favourite_depicts_queen_anne_engaged/", "answers": {"a_id": ["egnno6h"], "score": [30], "text": ["Here is an answer that was posted a short while ago by u/cdesmoulins : \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn case of the movie it's generally a good idea to remember that director Yorgos Lanthimos said that they intentionally went for a narrative and presentation that was more fiction than accurate."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ai3a3x/in_the_new_movie_the_favourite_queen_anne_is/eelngqs"]]}
{"q_id": "1pduwn", "title": "Where does gingerbread originally come from?", "selftext": "I was looking at the origins of biscuits/cookies (depending on your side of the Atlantic), and one of the earliest referenced types of sweet biscuit is gingerbread. There have been two common references to its origins across what I've looked at, and one is a corrupted version of the other; the former is citing Medieval monks in Europe, and the latter is pointing a particular Armenian monk as introducing the recipe into Europe during the 10th century AD. The latter seems the more well attested, but also doesn't answer the question as it is specifically referring of the introduction of gingerbread to Europe, not its origin as a *thing*. But, as seems likely, gingerbread seems not to have originated as a recipe or concept in Europe. So I find myself wondering; where *did* this particular idea originate, if the answer is even known at all?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pduwn/where_does_gingerbread_originally_come_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd1rhga", "cd1s2l5"], "score": [5, 6], "text": ["11 hours and NO answers???\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI saw this paper given last summer. It was excellent, though I've no idea if the author has studied the really deep origins of gingerbread, as you seek. You might be able to get in touch with her and see if she's got any books to recommend.\n\nWhile we're on the topic though, what did you find about the origins of biscuits? I gave a paper on the 19th-century industrialization of biscuits at this same conference. All I ever came across was that Romans and perhaps even older societies had twice-baked, dried bread products useful for traveling. I sort of left it at that and picked up my account in about 1830. What have you found?", "Probably lost in the mists of time along with the origin of breads and cakes.  Ginger seems to have been originally domesticated in India or Southeast Asia(1), but had spread to the Mediterranean basin and China by the 1st century B.C.(2).  Ginger cannot be grown, at least not outdoors, in much of Northern Europe, but unlike pepper or other spice plants that generally require true topical conditions, ginger can be grown anywhere that there is 6-9 months: of average daytime temperatures above 75F, nighttime temperatures above 50F, at around 2.5 inches of rain per month over the course of the growing season.(3)  \n\nThis means that ginger can be grown in most of the Mediterranean basin, including Italy and Iberia.  Thus by the later middle ages it could be obtained within Europe as a trade good.  First attestation in English is in the 11th century.(4)  The OED reports that the modern meaning of \"gingerbread\" is first attested in the late 13th century.(5) \n\nSources:  \n(1) _URL_2_  \n(2) _URL_3_  \n(3) _URL_0_  \n(4) _URL_3_  \n(5) _URL_1_  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://prezi.com/xdrmp0uijeeg/ihr_gingerbread/"], ["http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=a763", "http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/78377?print", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1479262111000670", "http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/233889/ginger"]]}
{"q_id": "2f3aj6", "title": "Is there any evidence of USSR officials reacting to Animal Farm or 1984?", "selftext": "For example, Soldier Nitzkin was arrested, but he was a Russian Citizen.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2f3aj6/is_there_any_evidence_of_ussr_officials_reacting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck63ea5"], "score": [18], "text": ["Orwell was persona non grata in the USSR by 1945, the time of *Animal Farm*'s publication. Orwell had been tried in absentia by the POUM in Spain for the ideological deviance of being a Trotskyite. Although the Soviet Union would only allow legal publication of *1984* in  1989, the critical acclaim its original publication received  necessitated a degree of reaction from Soviet cultural officials and their fellow travelers in the West. Most of these critiques are trenchant exercises in completely missing the Orwell's point.\n\nFor example, I. Anisimov's May 1950 review in *Pravda* asserted Orwell's dystopia was component of American propaganda:\n\n > It is clear that Orwell\u2019s filthy book is in the spirit of such a vital\norgan of American propaganda as the *Reader\u2019s Digest* which published this work, and *Life* which presented it with many\nillustrations.\n > Thus, gruesome prognostications, which are being made in our\ntimes by a whole army of venal writers on the orders and instigation of Wall Street, are real attacks against the people of the world\u2026\n\nThe *Pravda* review concluded with a truly Orwellian paean to the USSR:\n\n > The living forces of peace are uniting ever more firmly into an\norganized front in defense of peace, freedom and life. They are the\nonly hope man has for the salvation of culture. Led by the Soviet\nUnion, these forces are mighty and indomitable. They will assure\nmankind happiness and prosperity despite the monstrous intrigues\nof the imperialists, the instigators of war.\n\nSamuel Sillen, one of the Communist party USA's cultural intellectuals, had a similarly hysteric misreading of *1984*\n\n > Not even the robots of Orwell\u2019s dyspeptic vision of the world in 1984 seem as solidly regimented as the freedom-shouters who chose it for the Book of the Month Club, serialized it in Reader\u2019s Digest, illustrated it in eight pages of Life, and wrote pious homilies on it in Partisan Review and the New York Times. Indeed the response is far more significant than the book itself; it demonstrates that Orwell\u2019s sickness is epidemic.\n\nAfter invoking Orwell's Trotskyite betrayal of antifascism in Spain, Sillen portrays *1984* as a sign of the imminent collapse of capitalism:\n\n > The bourgeoisie, in its younger days, could find spokesmen who\npainted rosy visions of the future. In its decay, surrounded by\nburgeoning socialism, it is capable only of hate-filled, dehumanized\nanti-Utopias. Confidence has given way to the nihilistic literature\nof the graveyard. Now that Ezra Pound has been given a government award [Pound had conducted propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini] and George Orwell has become a best-seller we would seem to have reached bottom. But there is a hideous ingenuity in the perversions of a dying capitalism, and it will keep probing for new depths of rottenness which the maggots will find \"brilliant and morally invigorating.\"\n\nNor were these aspersions against Orwell limited just to the US and and USSR; Orwell's Britain had a number of intellectuals critiquing Orwell's betrayal and his popularity among anti-communists. E. P. Thompson would accuse Orwell of being ignorant of the \"deformities\" of the Communist system and Orwell conflated them with \"the nature and function of the movement itself.\"  A 1956 review in *Marxist Quarterly* by James Walsh continues to assert Orwell was \"a mouthpiece\nfor some of the most deep-seated petit-bourgeois illusions\" and:\n\n > Orwell\u2019s neurotic hatreds are revealed: continental socialism which has brought even its decimal system, steel-and-glass industrialism, the smell of the lower classes. This dismal trial of prejudice continues right through the book; this sensitive soul of the middle class Orwell has been bruised by capitalism, which he hates, and by socialism, which he hates more. He joins the socialist movement for a while, long enough to learn a few superficial facts about it, and then runs shrieking into the arms of the capitalist publishers with a couple of horror comics which bring him fame and fortune, and recognition of his individuality and love of freedom.\n\nPerhaps most strange is the British-based emigre journalist Isaac Deutscher who contended in a 1955 essay on Orwell that he was provincial Englishman without any practical experience of Marxism, so he naturally could not see the rational behind the Stalinist purges. \n\nMany of these critiques would zero in on Orwell's alleged complicity within the British empire (which begs the question did they **read** *Burmese Days*!). For example, Walsh sneers Orwell was  \"petty colonial dictator and as a minor official in the main capitalist propaganda agency.\" Sillen was less subtle:\n\n > The author of this cynical rot is quite a hero himself. He served\nfor five years in the Indian Imperial Police, an excellent training\ncenter for dealing with the \"proles.\"\n\nThese critiques were an unsubtle ideological attacks on Orwell and quite frankly hatchet jobs (Sillen mistakenly declares Winston is shot at the end of *1984*). In reflexively attacking him for abandoning the cause in such a patent and crude manner, the inadvertently proved Orwell's point.\n\n*Sources*\n\nCaute, David. *Politics and the Novel During the Cold War*. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2010.   \n\nMeyers, Jeffrey, editor. *George Orwell: The Critical Heritage*. London: Routledge, 2011. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4rjbd7", "title": "How did the Arabic word \"alcohol\" come into usage in Europe rather than the Latin word \"vocatus?\"", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rjbd7/how_did_the_arabic_word_alcohol_come_into_usage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d51n1ff", "d51sp6n"], "score": [42, 9], "text": ["Words very often get tied to a new technology or skill.  So they learn the name of the technology in the source language.\n\nAlcohol in Arabic (al kuhul) referred broadly to the process of distillation in any form, including eyeshadow or any fine powder.  This is true into the 18th century.  So it didn't refer to exclusively to the beverage until very late.\n\nThe other half of the story is that the Greeks and Romans fermented, but they didn't distill.  So when the skill of distillation spread, it used the Arabic word and the outcome was referred to as alcohol.  And since the word 'alcohol' applied not just to the liquid product, but the process by which the liquid product was achieved, it was going to stick.  \n\nEventually the word was then applied to a specific chemical compound that became known as 'alcohol'.  And since that compound is found in beer and wine as well, they became known as alcoholic beverages too.\n\nSo basically you can thank science for that one.", "Where are you getting \"vocatus\" from? I havent come across this\n\nAlso, the answer of pastillus_fartus is correct."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1kr9xu", "title": "I have read that the Koran was not translated and the meaning of the text was virtually unobtainable until fairly recently. what is the history of the translation of the Koran?", "selftext": "I read this in Benedict Anderson's, Imagined communities. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kr9xu/i_have_read_that_the_koran_was_not_translated_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbry5a3", "cbryahg", "cbs0kuw"], "score": [39, 10, 6], "text": ["fairly accurate. there use to be a strong cultural taboo about copying the koran into other languages. Arabic was considered a holy language, so to change it from Arabic to another language would literally alter the word of god. Another argument they made against translation was a word that has one meaning in its primary language, could have shades of unintended definitions. it wasn't translated into another language until ~880 CE under the orders. even in modern times this taboo extends. This is why every copy of the Koran includes the annotation that its only a translation and Arabic Korans are more accurate.", "\"**With it came down the Spirit of Faith and Truth; to your heart and mind, that you may admonish; in the perspicuous Arabic tongue**\" (Ash-Shu`ara' 26: 193-195).\n\n\n >  The task of translation is not an easy one; some native Arab-speakers will confirm that some Qur'anic passages are difficult to understand even in the original Arabic. A part of this is the innate difficulty of any translation; in Arabic, as in other languages, a single word can have a variety of meanings.[3] There is always an element of human judgement involved in understanding and translating a text. This factor is made more complex by the fact that the usage of words has changed a great deal between classical and modern Arabic.", "Would someone who speaks MSA be able to interpret the full meaning of the Koran or has Arabic changed that much since then?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8r3apb", "title": "Get Cultured II, Acculturation and its Discontents! - Massive Cultural History Panel AMA", "selftext": "It has been a long time since we've done a panel AMA and even longer since we have[ done one on Cultural History](_URL_0_)! So let this be the day where we correct those mistakes.\n\nIf history if the record of our successes and mistakes as a species, than cultural history is perhaps our way of *expressing* those successes and failures. While many other species have demonstrated creativity and variety of culture, none have done so as widespread or as massively as humans have. As a field, cultural history is usually dated to Fran\u00e7ois Furet's 1978 essay *Interpreting the French Revolution* which attempted to locate the reasons for the French revolution away from Marxism and to a more general politico-cultural understanding. However, since then (and really, honestly, before) there has been an explosion in varieties of methods of cultural history.\n\nIn our last panel AMA, /u/depanneur wrote\n\n > So then, what is cultural history? Admittedly, it is a fairly nebulously defined subfield when compared to its sisters like economic or military history. Peter Burke answered the same question thusly: \u201cit still awaits a definitive answer.\u201d Cultural history can be done across time and space, and study nearly any aspect of a society: there exist cultural histories of animals, of clothing, of landscapes, finance, religious beliefs, warfare and so on. Burke posited that because cultural historians study such a multitude of subjects, it is their methods, not objects of study, which unites them:\n\n > \u201cthe common ground of cultural historians might be defined as a concern with the symbolic and its interpretation. Symbols, conscious or unconscious, can be found everywhere, from art to everyday life, but an approach to the past in terms of symbolism is just one approach among others.\u201d\n\nWhich is as good of an introduction as any. We are cultural historians! Ask us anything.\n\nWithout further ado, our list of panelist-participants:\n\n\n\n\n-------------------------\n\n/u/flotiste Western concert music (\"classical\" music), from the Renaissance to the mid 20th century. Particular areas of expertise:\n\n- propaganda music and banned music in the 3rd Reich\n- development of woodwind instruments\n- performance practices of opera\n- classical and romantic era of opera\n\nBackground is University education in music, specializing in flute and opera performance. Am an active professional flautist and opera singer.\n\n------------------------\n\n/u/depanneur  I study the terminology of insanity in old irish and also specialized in the history of emotions in early irish history\n---------------------\n\n/u/agentdcf: I am a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain, with particular thematic emphases in culture, environment, and food. My research is a cultural and environmental history of wheat, flour, and bread, and it stands at the intersection of several (usually separate) themes and methodologies: cultural history (which I would define as histories of \"meaning,\" broadly defined), social history, environmental history, food, science and medicine, the body, and consumption. I'm best-equipped to answer questions about food and ideas of nature, though I can take a stab at questions of cultural history across the West in the modern period. I have a lot of teaching experience in Western Civilization, world history, environmental history, and some US history (especially California, my home state); this has given me a long and global view of things, but a fairly spotty expertise.\n\n\n------------------\n\n/u/chocolatepot\n is a fashion historian, specializing in women's clothing from the 18th through early 20th centuries, and the author of Regency Women's Dress: Techniques and Patterns, 1800-1829. More broadly, she can answer questions relating to women and society during the same time period.\n\n\n----------------------------\n\nu/Stormtemplar\n, better known as Joe IRL is a recent graduate in literature, focusing on the Medieval period. His research interests are Medieval Literary Theory and the overlap between Oral and Literary Culture in the Middle Ages. He's happy to take a swing at any questions involving medieval intellectual or literary culture or the medieval mind generally, and has written a fair bit about the ideology of the Crusades on this sub.\n\n-------------------\n\n\n/u/itsallfolklore Ronald M. James, \n, is a historian of the American West and a trained folklorist who has worked with Western American as well as European beliefs and traditions. He can address general topics dealing with folklore - understanding that no one can answer specific questions about all the world's traditions. Specifically, he can discuss topics dealing with the folklore/culture of Northern Europe and the American West. James is about to release a book on Cornish folklore, dealing with topics including storytelling as well as Celtic studies and its relationship to Scandinavia.\n\n-----------------------\n\nu/drylaw is a phd candidate studying native authors of central colonial Mexico and their relation to the pre-Hispanic past. For this AMA he can also talk about history writing on the Aztec-Spanish war and more generally on early Spanish America. Connected interests include transcultural studies, colonial and intellectual history.\n\n\n-------------------------\n\n/u/amandycat I studied a Masters degree in early modern English literature, focusing on Christopher Marlowe's drama in my dissertation. I am now part-way through a PhD on early modern manuscript culture, in particular, the way in which epitaphs are presented in manuscripts (if this kind of thing tickles your fancy, you will probably enjoy the episode of the AH Podcast I took part in recently). Ask me anything about the early modern English theatre, early modern manuscripts, and death culture!\n\n\n--------------------------------\n\n\n/u/Commiespaceinvader is a PhD student writing about everyday life in Serbia under German occupation. In the course of his research he is applying cultural history as a method, especially history from below, history of everyday life and microhistory.\n\n\n---------------------\n\n\n\nu/bigfridge224 aka Stuart Mickie \n is a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Manchester in the UK. His research is on magic and religion in the Roman north-west, but he's happy to cover anything relating to Roman cultural or social history if he can!\n\n-------------\n\n/u/AnnalsPornographie, aka Brian Watson is primarily a historian of the book, but focuses specifically on the history of pornography and obscenity, with a heavy focus on histories of sexuality, marriage, and privacy. He he is the author of *Annals Of Pornographie: How Porn Became Bad*. He is happy to answer questions about the overlap between cultural and intellectual historians, or how the book can be a cultural force.\n\n\n-----------\n\n\nAlso around are /u/historiagrephour and /u/sunagainstgold, I'm just waiting on their bios :)\n\n\nPlease feel free to address your questions to the panel as a whole or to individuals by tagging them with the /u/ tag. Also of note: not everyone is here! This AMA will run from noon today until noon tomorrow.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8r3apb/get_cultured_ii_acculturation_and_its_discontents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0o2xjs", "e0o47wc", "e0o4gku", "e0o7net", "e0o8v8f", "e0o8y5t", "e0o90ng", "e0oaqac", "e0ob0l1", "e0obvu5", "e0od4xi", "e0oicvp", "e0ojomk", "e0ooyw5", "e0or6fz", "e0ot4bt"], "score": [8, 9, 6, 8, 12, 7, 7, 8, 7, 6, 3, 5, 3, 3, 4, 3], "text": ["Here's my opening gambit for the whole panel:\n\nWhat does cultural history mean to you? How do you research something as squiggly or as weird, something that's not just the cold hard facts ma'am?\n\n", "Does the panel think that cultural history will reach (or perhaps has reached!) the same point of ubiquity that social history seemed to after a few decades - that its methods and questions will have become so broad and all-encompassing that virtually everyone is doing cultural history in one way or another?", "How hard is it to get a more whole picture of a cultural history when literacy for poorer people was relativity low. Also a second question what is looked for to build a cultural history for a non writing people.", "How can historians situate difficult aspects of cultural history (unpleasant attitudes, behaviors and attitudes that seem alien to many modern people, material goods that serve a somewhat obscure purpose, etc.) when we're engaging with the public without making out the past and its inhabitants as totally alien or falling into polite inaccuracies? I know this is an *incredibly* broad question, and any of you might have the opposite problem altogether, but feel free to approach it from whatever angle you feel like. ", "I teach AP World History to 9th and 10th graders. \n\nCultural and social history is obviously of far greater emphasis in college curriculum than it was a few decades ago, yet my students find them the most boring of the five AP framework categories (Social, Political, Interaction with Environment, Cultural, Economic). \n\nI find this especially with male students- they want the battles, they want the great men and the rise and fall. Not so interested in social hierarchies/patriarchy. \n\nWhat would be your advice to make complex social/cultural history more accessible/interesting for them?", "What are some examples of cultural historical context (that the general educated population might not know) that would paint a commonly known historical occurrence in a whole new light?", "Did Japonism have an effect on fashion in Europe? I know of the art that has been inspired by Japonism but did it affect what people wore and start any trends, was it mainly limited to just kimonos being fashionable?", "Hi u/depanneur\n\nHow ubiquitous is belief in Irish magic / paganism / the fae today? Has Ireland preserved some of their magicoreligious traditions better than other European regions?", "u/Stormtemplar\n\nWhat would be considered popular literature to a peasant of 12th century Europe? Right at the cusp between a literary culture and an oral one, Europe in the premodern period must have been awash with legends, ancient folklore, and biblical allegory. We're any predominant before the Crusades? If so, was this due to direct involvement from the Church or was it a symptom of a highly Christianized society?", "Big thanks to all the contributors to the panel!\n\nHow do cultural historians incorporate concepts like contingency and individual choice into their understanding of their subjects?  A lot of social and cultural history gets stereotyped as vast impersonal forces driving history, with all of us just along for the ride, so I'd be interested in seeing how these different forces interact.", "You all seem to talk about cultural transmission by way of books or oral history. What about other media? I'll give an example: after WW2 most italians were uneducated. Many had only a few years of school and had not even finished the elementary schools (5th grade) and many were complete analphabets. Television changed all this. On the Rai tv channel a school teacher began to give lessons on writing, reading and other basic stuff and the rate of alphabetisation changed dramatically. That's why the Rai channel was called \"mamma Rai\" (mother Rai) for a long time, by the way.", "The late Medieval \"Book of Hours\" (or books as if I understand correctly there were innumerable different versions) was a mega popular and important literary and religious work, surpassing in numbers any other written work in circulation, including the Bible. How did this come about, and why was the Book of Hours so popular?", "Hi /u/itsallfolklore, I know it's not your specialty but maybe you could recommend me some literature on pre-Christian West Slavic folklore? I'm not particularly picky, anything that you think or heard is worthwhile I'd be willing to check out. Thanks!", "Big thanks to all. I worry this maybe pushing the bounderies a tad, but how would you all define \"Diaspora\", specifically around the 10th century in Northern Europe? I'm doing an undergrad level essay on it and am happy with what I have, just wondering what other people think.\n\nSomewhat related, how far would you say Scandinavians and Vikings could be entwined as a culture? Ie were they the same, or would you think Vikings were just one section of society?\n\n\nBest \n\n", "[u/chocolatepot](_URL_0_) \n\nIn a light of a recent controversy about cheongsam, when a Canadian teenager was accused in the most ignorant and ironic fashion of \"culturally appropriating\" this autochthonic Chinese dress, I would like to ask how prevalent were fusion dresses like this? Have Japanese or Koreans crafted dresses similarly influenced by the Western fashion? Have \"Oriental\" styles influenced the Western fashion?\n\n[u/AnnalsPornographie](_URL_1_) \n\nHow did child pornography become not just illegal, but deeply immoral?\n\nI read (don't ask me where) that magazines containing child pornography were sold semi-openly in Northern European countries until the 70s. Taking a glance at [Wikipedia article on the US legislation](_URL_2_),  the laws against it begun picking at the 80s. Nowadays the stigma of associating with any sexual crime related to children is often worse than one associated with a murder. This for me indicates a deep cultural shift.", "/u/agentdcf --  re: the 19th century especially, I was wondering if you have come across sources that mention composting (now a very common practise in organic gardening/farming) as I have found little mention of it. Also, how was human waste dealt with by farmers \u2014 did they incorporate it into manuring practises? again, I find little mention of this\u2026 Finally, have you found sources mentioning what methods of pest control farmers employed for wheat and other crops, since at that time there were no petro-chemical solutions? Thanks!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=askhistorianspanel&utm_content=t3_8kesna"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/u/chocolatepot", "https://www.reddit.com/u/AnnalsPornographie", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_United_States"], []]}
{"q_id": "6r8md8", "title": "Did the knights of medieval Europe ever study battle techniques of ancient or foreign cultures?", "selftext": "Did the knights of medieval Europe study the battle techniques of other cultures? Either ancient such as the Romans, Greeks or Persians; or concurrent at the time such as Chinese, Arabian or African.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6r8md8/did_the_knights_of_medieval_europe_ever_study/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3qi38"], "score": [12], "text": ["Follow-up question: How much strategy would an average knight would have known in the middle ages? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6lzlzw", "title": "Do we know how \"smooth\" was the dissolution of KGB? How significant was the initial overlap in personnel with the FSK and later FSB? Were the methods and role of KGB ever officially condemned by the new organizations (or the state)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6lzlzw/do_we_know_how_smooth_was_the_dissolution_of_kgb/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djyj8j7", "djytmjt"], "score": [6, 8], "text": ["[I asked a similar question during Espionage week and got good responses](_URL_0_) from /u/k1990, /u/Slide_Jeremy, and /u/klieslowskifan.", "This is a question that is very difficult to answer within a twenty year time frame, because certain developments set in motion in 1991 did not reach fruition until the 2000s. I am almost entirely drawing from Soldatov and Borogan's *The New Nobility*, which is technically a piece of journalism but that sort of thing is neccesary given the topic, and they are generally considered the experts on the topic of the FSB.\n\nThe broad answer to your question of whether the transfer was smooth is is yes and no. The KGB was a very sprawling organization with an enormous amount of power that was still tightly controlled by the Communist Party (a feature that differentiates it from its successors). Its power, and the fact that its director was a key participant in the 1991 coup attempt, led Boris Yeltsin and his administration to be deeply suspicious of the organization, but the political uncertainty of the early 1990s meant he was also unwilling to really dissipate its power. So the KGB was broken up into a number of different organizations, such as the FSK/FSB, the largest and focused on counter espionage/counter terrorism, but also the FSV (focused on foreign intelligence) and the GUSP (focused on secret underground KGB projects, no joke). The KGB itself was hardly a model of internal harmony, and its power being divided among different organizations likewise did not produce harmony, particularly seeing as Yeltsin encouraged infighting and division to head off political challenge (for example, the FSK was in charge of counter espionage, but communications in general was handled by the FAPSI, so the two butted heads over jurisdiction and thus Yeltsin could benefit from their correspondence). This did not lead to particularly effective action, but Soldatov and Borogan frame this as a feature rather than a bug: the Soviet Communist Party had cells in virtually every level of KGB administration, which meant that no matter how powerful it got it could never escape political control. This was not possible in the liberal democratic political structure that Yeltsin sort of attempted to build, but as noted earlier he did not ant to actually give up the state's power. So he tried to use competition and mutual enmity as controls. In this way, the transfer was organizationally chaotic, very much unsmooth, but perhaps purposely so.\n\nTo step outside of the twenty year window a bit, the FSB later absorbed many of the KGB splinter departments. It would be very easy to attribute this to Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB, but the groundwork was laid at least as far back as 1995, when the FSK's problems were lay bare in Chechnya.\n\nOn a personal level it could also be very difficult. KGB officers were highly valued in Soviet society and entitled to apartments, pensions as well as general benefits accruing to the prestigious. The collapse of the Soviet system put this in jeopardy and many officers were forced to find work elsewhere--there is something of a cliched image of a ex-KGB officer working for a mobster or in an oligarch\u2019s employ that was not entirely fictional. The 1990s were dangerous, even for the rich and powerful, and KGB officers were the best trained to deal with that. Ging from honored defenders of the state to gangster bodyguard is a bit of a step down in self esteem terms.\n\nBut to use another cliche, there is no such thing as a former KGB officer. Despite its rivalries it was a very close knit organization, even generationally--many KGB were the children of KGB. Adding to this, many of the former KGB were in fact so-called \u201cactive reserve\u201d or undercover agents (although for sort of complicated bureaucratic details of pay many actually had greater ties to their new bosses). So while the KGB underwent wrenching organizational and personnel changes, the internal culture and camaraderie remained, Putin himself being a very good example of this, as he left the KGB in 1991 but, stepping outside of the twenty year rule, has clearly not forgotten the people there.\n\nSo the broad answer is that yes it was wrenching, but no the changes did not really provide a long term weakening of the security services. The details are within twenty years (hell, within one year), so I can only suggest you read Soldatov and Borogan\u2019s book."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gmv0w/was_there_a_tsarist_secret_police_what_was_the/"], []]}
{"q_id": "ab730v", "title": "In the Chinese Civil War, why did the Soviets recognize the KMT?", "selftext": "Why did the Soviets recognize the Kuomintang (KMT) as the government of China instead of the Chinese Communist Party?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ab730v/in_the_chinese_civil_war_why_did_the_soviets/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ecy7qoq", "ecyut50"], "score": [32, 16], "text": ["This [answer](_URL_0_) by u/ParkSungJun, about why soviet-sino relations broke down, partly answers why the soviets supported the KMT over CPC initally.\n", "The Soviets recognition of the KMT as the government of China goes back prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War (or World War II) with Sun Yet-sun.  The recognition had nothing to do with ideology and mostly for practical reason. The KMT loosely kept the country together and due to United States isolationists policies, turned to the Soviet Union for foreign assistance and military training.  In return, Sun Yet-sun allowed CCP members to part of the government.  The CCP was a handful of people at the time and the KMT controlled the military, the money and had governance over the country.  During Japanese expansion into Manchuria, the Soviets were concern of Japanese expansion into Russian territory so, like the  United States, were incentives to keep China afloat against the Japanese during the war, thereby helping the KMT.  They even intervened through the Communists International (Comintern) to force the CCP to form the Second United Front with the KMT to fight against the Japanese.   \n\nFast forward several years, and when the Chinese Civil War erupted, by every metric Mao was not suppose to win the war.  Chiang had a veteran military, controlled all the resources and major cities, while Mao had peasants and was hiding in the mountains.  However, while the Soviets did recognize the KMT, they were also secretly assisting the CCP, financially and militarily.  After CCP outmaneuvered the KMT in the Northeast (Manchuria), city after city, the CCP took every major city, mostly without spilling a single drop of blood as the regional generals surrendered and join the CCP without putting up a fight.  Chiang fled to Taiwan, the Soviets recognized the CCP's victory and the People's Republic of China as the government of China and the rest is history.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6of14g/what_were_some_of_the_reasons_for_the_sinosoviet/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2b89sa", "title": "Did planes carrying diplomatic leaders get special privileges to not be shot down during WWII?", "selftext": "In particular, when Churchill flew to Moscow in August 1942, did his plane fly over German occupied Russia, or did it just take the long route through the Arctic?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b89sa/did_planes_carrying_diplomatic_leaders_get/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj2tv3v", "cj31tc7"], "score": [70, 17], "text": ["No. In fact, BOAC Flight 777 (a civilian flight) flying from Lisbon to Bristol was shot down by the Germans. The predominant theory for the reason the plane was shot down was that the [Germans thought Churchill was on board](_URL_1_). Of course, that wasn't the case. Instead, the actor [Leslie Howard](_URL_0_), who acted in *Gone With the Wind*, was on-board along with several other passengers and crew. ", "Molotov's 1942 flight to the US crossed over the front lines in a converted Pe-8 four-engined bomber. It traveled over the Baltic and made refueling stops in Scotland, Canada, and the US. The flight evaded enemy patrols, but was attacked twice on the return leg by both German and Soviet fighters without sustaining damage.\n\n*Source*\n\nRzheshevskii\u0306, Oleg Aleksandrovich. *War and diplomacy: the making of the Grand Alliance ; documents from Stalin's archives edited with a commentary*. Australia: Harwood Academic, 1996.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=S0_gLwEACAAJ&dq=Flight+777:+The+Mystery+Of+Leslie+Howard.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QTLMU7_TGem-sQSnwIHoDQ&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA", "http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/other_1ashley.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "118ims", "title": "In '1493' Charles Mann makes a brief mention of Japanese samurai working in South America in the early 1600s protecting the Spaniards' silver shipments. Does anyone have any more info on this phenomenon? Also, why is this not a movie?", "selftext": "pg 364\n\n*Known collectively as* chinos, *Asian migrants spread slowly along the silver highway from Alcapulco to Mexico City, Puebla, and Veracruz. Indeed, the road was patrolled by them--Japanese samurai perhaps in particular. Katana swinging Japanese had helped suppress Chinese rebellions in Manila in 1603 and 1609. When Japan closed its borders to foreigners in the 1630s, Japanese expatriates were stranded wherever they were. Scores, perhaps hundreds, migrated to Mexico. Initially the viceroy had forbidden...* chinos *to carry weapons. The Spaniards made an exception for samurai, allowing them to wield their katanas and tantos to protect the silver shipments against the escaped-slaves-turned highwaymen in the hills.*\n\nI found this idea badass and fascinating, but haven't been able to find any more info on 17th Century South American Samurai. Anybody know anything about this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/118ims/in_1493_charles_mann_makes_a_brief_mention_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6k8wlb", "c6ka9ec", "c6kb34l", "c6kb7nq", "c6kbkub", "c6kc1js", "c6kcxzl", "c6kf9eq", "c6kfzhh", "c6kggi4", "c6khww9"], "score": [38, 5, 7, 26, 8, 21, 7, 3, 3, 6, 3], "text": ["I don't know anything about them being in South America, but I do know about them being in Manilla. [They were Japanese Catholics who were hired to fight against the Dutch](_URL_0_). [They were driven out of Japan in the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion](_URL_1_), in which [the Dutch had helped the Tokugawa Shogunate defeat the Catholic rebels](_URL_2_) and marked the beginning of serious persecution of Catholics in Japan.", "I also read recently that post-Tokugawa ronin fought for Thailand. The fact that some got all the way to America blows my mind.", "I can't remember who but someone kept quoting (in a neckbeard western vs eastern martial arts issue) that the Portuguese fought against samurai, buckler and rapier/rapier and dagger, has anyone even remotely heard of any sources which enforce this?", "Mexico is not in South America", "I actually have a source on this one somewhere. IIRC, there was a colony of Japanese exiles in the Philippines, and once the Spanish took the place over they started getting jobs on the galleon fleets. If I remember after work, i'll try to hunt for the footnote again.", "Am I the only one who isn't at all sure that the OP's quote from *1493* actually states that samurai ended up protecting silver shipments in Mexico?\n\nIt mentions Japanese expats and samurai in Manila, certainly plausible, and that some of the expatriates migrated to Mexico in the 1630s, also plausible. But where does it say that the silver shipments being protected by samurai were in Mexico and not Manila/the Philippines?\n\nFor one, the governership of Manila was overseen by the Viceroy in Mexico City, so the ban on weapons would have come from him regardless of whether it was in Manila or Mexico, so that part isn't conclusive. Next, so far as I know Mexico furnished decent amounts of gold but much less silver. Most silver from the Spanish Americas came from Peru, IIRC, not Mexico. What's more, the Manila-Acapulco trade carried American silver all the time, so samurai in Manila would certainly have been in a position to protect it there if the Spanish had allowed it.\n\nI'm admittedly not a historian of this era specifically but I ~~did stay at a Holiday Inn last night~~ am taking a seminar on the subject at the moment, and I'm not sure Mann's text is saying what the OP thinks it's saying.\n\nedit: OP should check out Mann's bibliography/references for that page, as there's bound to be a citation (look for the little endnote numbers on page 364. If that passage isn't cited anywhere specifically in Mann's text, I wouldn't trust it. But if it's there, I might be proven wrong.\n\nedit 2: there's semi relevant evidence in the form of [Hasekura Tsunenaga](_URL_0_), a Japanese samurai who traveled the Manila-Acapulco route on a diplomatic mission to Europe in the early 17th century, about 15-20 years before the events Mann is alluding to. This guy was on a diplomatic mission, didn't stay long in Mexico or protect silver shipments, but it is an instance of a samurai entering into Mexico (and evidently for the first time).", "I think these Samurai were ex-member of Keich\u014d Embassy (wikipedia's article is [here](_URL_1_)).\nAs far as I remember [this book](_URL_0_) (\"Samurais who were missing in Europe\"), which focus on vestige of Keich\u014d Embassy,some of the members and the shipcrews were left mission due to Tokugawa shogunate's persecution of the Christian faith, and settled Spain,and Mexico. And few Spainish documents (I can't remember but probably New Spain's record) mentioned Japanese mercenary,i.e. Samurai, several years after departure of the mission.\n(Sorry for my poor English and vague answer)", "True or not there needs to be a movie. I'd watch it like twice! Anyways there does need to be more love for the Manila galleon route. I think I saw some show or read some book taking about many Filipinos in Acupolco from the galleon days but the been in Mexico so long and people were. It called Filipinos when they came over. Also before WWII Davao city was mostly Japanese abaca and production center. Remember Philippines was governeerd through Mexico before Mexican independence and the. On crucified Japanese Catholics were shipped to Philippines. It's like a big triangle with Philippines in the middle.  So it can be plausible but with out some solid evidence just can only reflect upon the epicness of it all.", "So I found [this book](_URL_0_) while trying to find more information on Hispanic-Asian interaction. I would try searching through the book for relevant information, but I have to go to class. Hopefully one of you guys can gather some more information.", "This was floating around TIL today: _URL_0_\n\nSemi-related, a town in Spain with the descendants of 17th century samurai", "_URL_0_\n\nsemi- relevant, but some Japanese sailed accross the Pacific to Mexico with some Spaniards. Thanks for introducing me to William Adams, fascinating ! "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=kk_iU0f-iT8C&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=japanese+samurai+galleons&source=bl&ots=Dc-ovzVQWf&sig=yfYhZ8mQ5Xv90vIjVG_7Zywu3Sk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z_90UILvC8SDjAKc24Fg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=japanese%20samurai%20galleons&f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=RMBdoimD2kIC&pg=PA260&lpg=PA260&dq=japanese+samurai+galleons&source=bl&ots=VcYIa36YyB&sig=MnPfxAwvEbPFI2LRIsIuJGCDWMc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rf50UOa5N-vpiwL934HQDQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=japanese%20samurai%20galleons&f=false", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion"], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_Tsunenaga"], ["http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%83%91%E3%81%AB%E6%B6%88%E3%81%88%E3%81%9F%E3%82%B5%E3%83%A0%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1-%E3%81%A1%E3%81%8F%E3%81%BE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E5%A4%AA%E7%94%B0-%E5%B0%9A%E6%A8%B9/dp/4480422951", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasekura_Tsunenaga"], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/They-Need-Nothing-Hispanic-Asian-Encounters/dp/1442645113/ref=sr_1_114?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349887681&sr=1-114&keywords=Samurai+Europe"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/118syg/til_that_there_is_a_town_in_spain_where_700/"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Sh%C5%8Dsuke"]]}
{"q_id": "1wxbry", "title": "Were the late Merovingian kings really as useless as the record painted them out to be?", "selftext": "Additionally, how was it that the mayors of the palace began to usurp the authority of the monarch? Was it a very gradual process, or did a single weak king let it all go? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wxbry/were_the_late_merovingian_kings_really_as_useless/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf69f4w", "cf6es1e"], "score": [76, 8], "text": ["Let's break it down into phases:\n\n(1) During the reigns of Chlothar II and his son Dagobert, the Merovingian kings are seemingly experiencing a temporary apogee. For instance, in 626/7, a church council celebrates King Chlothar, comparing him to prophet kings of the Old Testament, and the subsequent edict he publishes reasserts his right to nominate bishops. Similarly, his son, Dagobert, seems to control an extensive network of courtiers, who had been brought up in the palace and then nominated as bishops (people like Didier of Cahors, Dado/Audoin, or the most famous one, Eligius (French \u00c9loi)). On the other hand, this consensus may be superficial: we know that factions already beset the aristocracy. A good example of this is the treatment given to Dagobert in the *Chronicle of the pseudo-Fredegar.* The anonymous author of the work apparently had austro-burgundian sympathies (I am assuming you know about the *tria regna*; if it is not the case, ask me) and basically said that while Dagobert was ruling in Austrasia, he was the ideal king, but that he became perverted and luxurious upon his arrival in Neustria. Of course, that was the expression of the fact that Dagobert dismissed his Austrasian advisors (Pippin and Arnulf, two precursors of the Carolingian line) in favour of Neustrian courtiers. The underlying tensions that would give way to civil war were already there, and the importance of these advisors must not be underestimated in this period.\n\n(2) Then, apparently, after the death of Dagobert (639), everything changes. There, we have an obvious problem with sources. The *Chronicle of Fredegar*, which was nowhere near as good as the *Ten books of history* of Gregory of Tours, was still quite accurate, but it ends in 641. For the following years, narrative sources become quite poor, and we are often obliged to fill in the gaps with hagiography, not the most reliable thing around. Even the narrative sources we have write with later developments in hindsight: so their emphasis on the aristocracy might reflect rather what was happening when their authors were writing than in the 640s. As a result, our understanding of very important events is often quite shaky \u2014 and most historians tend to avoid this utter mess, hence the lack of a good synthesis work on the topic. It is clear, however, that the young age of Dagobert's two heirs led to an empowerment of aristocrats (but then, Chlothar II also was a minor king for a very long time, and he did manage to create a solid basis for his rule). This generation might have been the weakest, but it is rather due to the age of the kings than to their personal dispositions. But without even trying to explain some of the most intriguing events of the period (for instance, the mystery of Childebert the Adopted), let's just say that some things seem to show that kings still have a degree of power and influence in the second part of the 7th century. Childeric II (king from 662 to 675), for instance, actively struggles against some of the factions (mainly that of Ebroin: the subsequent events would prove that he was right to do so); we are told that he \u201coppresses\u201d the nobility by hostile sources, which suggest that he was actually quite energetic. However, his final audacity (ordering the assassination of an aristocrat) costed him his throne and his life. \n\n(3) After that point, our sources do not give indications at all on the role of kings. It seems that they could, in some occasions, manage to get some power: the simple fact that Dagobert II, king of Austrasia from 676 to 679, ends up assassinated (by Neustrians?) shows that he had an importance, even if we cannot know how he effectively enforced it. After 679, our knowledge of Merovingian kings disappears. The civil war that had begun c. 673 was all about aristocratic power \u2014 Ebroin and his clique leading the Neustrian nobility, crushing Leodegar in Burgundy, and then getting assassinated; and, eventually, the Austrasian victory of 687 in Tertry against the troops of Berthar (a Neustrian mayor). After this point, no Mervongian king has a visible role besides the signature of charters. It seems, however, that the Merovingians still retained a part of their charisma \u2014 the Pippinids/Carolingians would not topple their last puppet king, Theuderic III, before 751. Hence, many historians have thought that there was maybe more to it than meets the eye, but we cannot know for sure.\n\nSo, to answer your question: the inappropriateness of sources makes really hard to understand what was happening. Overall, however, it is clear that royal power was still there during the 670s, even if was being challenged. No single king was responsible, even if we might argue that the two sons of Dagobert, being minors, revealed the fragility of kingship. One last thing about the mayors: it is I think wrong to analyse this position in institutional terms (or at least this is not the most important thing). People did not get powerful because they are mayors; they became mayor *because* they were powerful. Indeed, it is much more helpful to envision them as spokesmen of the aristocracy (or of the majority of a regional aristocracy). The role of the mayors became much more important because the aristocracy was becoming more powerful (and an important thing to consider is that kings are all-important in this process: the first revendication of aristocrats is not to rule, it is to have a king at hand to give them favours and lands. The very rise of the aristocracy, therefore, pretty much depends on the importance given to kings. The fact that factions expressed their disagreements by setting up rival courts is quite revelatory in this regard)\n\n(as I have said, there is no useful synthesis on the 7th century, as far as I know; but I. Wood's *The Merovingian Kingdoms* is as useful as ever, and *Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography* gives a range of useful sources with interesting prefaces/notes)", "/u/GeorgiusFlorentius has a thorough response but let me also add to the readings Paul Fouracre's great article [\"Long Shadow of the Merovingians\"](_URL_0_). It deals with the subsequent *reception/ memory* of the Merovingians, particularly under the Carolingians, and why the Merovingians got such a bad rap. Short answer: the Carolingians wanted to cover up their coup d'etat."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=vTbvq_8HFPUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "tssyz", "title": "[meta]Let's talk about downvoting.", "selftext": "It generally isn't a problem, but when it does arise, it is a pretty severe problem.\n\nDownvoting should only occur as noted in the sidebar when:\n\n > comments that are off topic, antagonistic, or trollish\n\nNot when you don't like them.  In this subreddit, you will have your opinions and positions challenged sometimes.  Unlike many opinions you may have, like best quarterback or best way to cook a steak, how you view history can sometimes be an integral part of how you view the world.  If you are a Marxist/Communist, you will view history through that prism, Anarchist, Capitalist, Austrian School, Democrat, Republican, Whig, East Coast Liberal, Labour, etc. will all affect you the same way.  You want to see history through that particular tint of  glasses.\n\nUnfortunately, that tint can obscure real and valid facts that make your position less tenable, or challenge it's foundations.  Sometimes this will challenge you personally because it is an integral part of how you see the world.  Sometimes when you view the U.S. as a noble nation facts about Manifest Destiny and Native Americans or perhaps slavery will challenge that view.  Perhaps you see America as an evil villian out to crush good honest workers and minorities, but there will be facts that counter act that view.  This will of course make you uncomfortable and probably even angry.\n\nWhen this happens.  *Keep your mouse off the downvote button*.  You only downvote if it's trollish, antagonistic, off topic or just blatantly wrong i.e. \"Christopher Columbus was a Spaniard who discovered America in 1423\".  \n\nDO NOT DOWNVOTE IF THE ARGUMENT IS VALID AND MERELY UPSETS YOU.  \n\nSorry.  But history requires you to play hardball with your belief systems and your world view.  If you get hit, it's gonna hurt, and you won't like it.  That's part of the game, and honestly part of life.  If you can't handle having your views challenged then you really shouldn't play outside or with others, it's gonna happen.\n\nMost egregiously, if you downvote because the statement upsets you, and don't write a reply...in a way, that is saying, \"I don't like what you said but I can't refute it.\"  If you can't refute the point, then don't downvote because you disagree.  That's about a close minded as you can get on Reddit.\n\n*Remember folks, downvoting is only for trolls, bad info, antagonism, and off topic discussions, not for opinions you don't like and or can't refute.*", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tssyz/metalets_talk_about_downvoting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4pfjdt", "c4pg07p", "c4pgbkr", "c4pggt2", "c4pgjmh", "c4pj4h5", "c4pk7ed"], "score": [59, 15, 6, 53, 6, 4, 3], "text": ["You say it at the end there but it isn't in the side bar. Downvoting \"Bad info\" is important in keeping the quality here at a high level. The sidebar should make an explicit mention of downvoting posts which are counter to established historical facts, the interpretation of said facts is however another matter entirely.", "We have the same problem over in /r/AskSocialScience, where threads dealing with political subjects will have panelists with flair voted down below the visible threshold while laypersons' answers get voted to the top.  I spoke to one of the mods about it, and floated the idea of going upvote-only like some other subreddits, but he didn't seem terribly concerned.  Instead we have a weekly PSA reminding people to cite sources.\n\nI'm not sure there's anything you can do about it, because history deals with political subjects.  Whereas over at /r/AskScience the physical/natural sciences have fairly objective answers, you're always going to have answers here that are contestable and subjective.  People on reddit are simply not going to resist the urge to downvote things they disagree with politically, whether downvoting Marxism, conservatism, libertarianism, or what-have-you.", "This is one of the best subreddits on the site.  I'm very grateful for the heavy moderation here.  Honestly, it's one of the few havens from jokey, karma whore BS.", "But can we agree on downvoting those dreadful pun threads, bad jokes, \"funny\" images and anything similiar? If you like those, you can view them on 99% of reddit. I think they don't belong here at all and this subreddit should stay more professional.", "This is kind of off topic, but someone is downvoting every single post in this subreddit.  It's weird.  ", "You guys should institute something like they have on the /r/nba subreddit, where if you hover over the downvote a red message appears that says \"Please do not downvote based on fandom\". For /r/AskHistorians it should also be a red bar and it should say something like \"Please do not downvote valid arguments just because they challenge your beliefs\"", "While this is a thread about downvotes, I think it is a good time to bring up the role of the moderators in this subreddit. I am a strong believer that AskHistorians should have an active and powerful moderator team. They should remove posts that don't fit the rules and police the subreddit on the model of AskScience. For a subreddit of 600,000 people, it is still fantastic and hasn't devolved into chaos like so many other subreddits have. I sense a lot of fear in this thread over this subreddit turning into /r/atheism. \n\nSo what I'd like is for moderators to remove spammy comments. I would say off-topic, but I feel that if the thread is on, say, British colonialism in Africa, and someone asked about the French in Africa, that is technically off-topic, but I feel that is relevant anyways. So spammy. I recognize that this rarely happens in this subreddit. To be honest, I can't recall a single thread that I would have removed like this. What I think is important, though, is that the mods have the ability to do this and not find themselves the subject of /r/subredditdrama.\n\nYes, this would probably be a lot of work. I don't have a vendetta against the mods and want to swamp them in work. Even if they don't get everything, but remove at least part of the spam, the subreddit will be better for it.\n\nI don't think this should apply to bad history, though. Bad history should be kept in the threads, but downvoted and made clear why it is not good history. I think AskScience removes stuff like this, but history is so full of misconceptions, and I think that showing why it is wrong is more important than keeping the threads only full of good explanations. Bad history should be downvoted unmercifully, and more importantly, explained why it is bad.\n\nSomeone posted below about how their flair got taken away, apparently for unjustified reasons. I don't believe that is true, but maybe flair removal should be made public. Maybe there should be some sort of council made up of the flaired users to determine whether or not the users should have flair or not. That would prevent moderator abuse of flair removal, and give a say to the supposed experts of the subreddit. I'm not really sure how this would be done, really. I feel that posting about it would just cause drama. Maybe a thread for all questions on whether users should have flair, but reddit is very ill suited for this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "26dv1a", "title": "During the great emigration wave from Europe in the 19th-early 20th century, how did people decide which country to emigrate to? Were there advertisements? What made someone pick Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa or somewhere other than the United States?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26dv1a/during_the_great_emigration_wave_from_europe_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chq4lgg", "chqfjju"], "score": [47, 6], "text": ["There were indeed advertisements, but each place operated differently in that regard. In the United States, I don't know of any ads placed directly by the federal government, but state governments (_URL_1_) did. For the USA, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand (the 'white' dominions as it were) there was also advertisements in Europe (and especially Britain) targeted at attracting people to the new colonies. More 'colonial' states, like India, and certain African Colonies, women were also specifically targeted (which was nothing new; similar strategies had taken place for Quebec and New England).\n\nThese new colonies were not the only ones advertising of course. There was also a big influence from shipping companies, who stood to benefit from the increased traffic (and indeed, some countries placed the blame squarely on shipping companies for attracting their poor workers). _URL_0_\n\nAs for the decision why, it is almost certainly a factor of opportunity. For example, let's take Canada and the USA. Canada did not really experience an immigration boom until land in the United States became more scarce. The United States, Canada, Australia, and many other colonial states offered the chance at owning land, something that we take for granted here in North America, but which was extreme rare in Europe during this period. Arable land continued to be controlled in the majority by wealthy estate owners, farmed by tenants. These vast new places not only offered the chance at ownership, they offered it for essentially the price of a steamship ticket. Other reasons people were attracted to particular countries stems largely from nationalism, language, and politics. The United States was very attractive to certain people seeking a more democratic environment (Germans and Irish were particularly keen, for obvious reason) while the colonial empires provided a supported environment for those who wished to remain under the control of their home countries. Some instances seem a bit confusing here as well. For example, why did Argentina receive so many immigrants while places like Colombia or Peru did not? The answer is the land issue again; the Rio de Plata and surrounds is much closer to the land characteristics of North America than what we associate with South America. ", "Canada actually had an entire campaign to lure immigrants to the Prairies.  In (what is today) Saskatchewan (and parts of Manitoba and what would become Alberta) there were vast swaths of land that were going unoccupied and unfarmed.  In order to lure European immigrants, the government of Canada began the \"Last Best West\" campaign, advertising the Prairies as the last great plains left to settle.\n\nThe Dominion Lands Act also gave newly arrived farmers 160 acres of land to cultivate, for only a small administrative fee, a further incentive to move to Canada."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.russborough.com/antique_prints/posters/canada_immigration_posters.html#white_star_olympic", "http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-018/?action=more_essay"], []]}
{"q_id": "1uuq3q", "title": "I tend to see a lot posts about WWII vets that have guns from an enemy soldier that they killed. Exactly how easy was it to get these weapons home?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uuq3q/i_tend_to_see_a_lot_posts_about_wwii_vets_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cely2be", "cely8wg", "cem4f42", "cemfs1w"], "score": [8, 3, 32, 3], "text": ["Also a question:  How many vets took issued weapons back home?", "I think he is asking what were the rules on what can be brought back. Like could i bring back a mg-42 I found or a pistol or rifle about it?", "Pretty damn easy. The government even footed the shipping costs for occupation troops to send stuff home after the war, not exceeding 25 pounds, plus a premium for officers. All war bring backs were supposed to have capture papers though. Here is an [example of one](_URL_1_) for a .25 pistol. It basically showed that the soldier had gotten permission to send it back, and someone had inspected the weapon to make sure it was eligible. Weapons with their capture papers these days fetch a very high premium from collectors.\n\nOriginally, you could even bring back machine guns, as long as you registered it under the National Firearms Act upon importing it to the country, but the practice it was decided that they were no longer allowed in mid-1945 (This was via Circular 155 referenced below). And regardless, in more recent conflicts, any fully automatic weapon is prohibited from import due to the Gun Control Act of 1968 (and registration was ended, period, in 1986), and I am unsure what current military policy is in general, although I know that the ATF does have a form for the importation of war trophies, so it can be done. \n\n[This document has some more information](_URL_0_) (but can't be copy/pasted so you'll have to click through). As you can see, allowing the importation of 'war trophies' was considered an issue of morale, and the Circular lays out the explicit ground rules on pages 3-7, including the prohibition of live ammo, and automatic weapons (which, again, were allowed up until then. The circular doesn't say *why*, but I imagine it was a headache to deal with since they had to be registered immediately upon entering the country. ", "I don't know if any Australian troops brought weapons home, is there any example of these and how did they do it. Most of these answers seem very Amero-centric"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/WD_Cir_No_155_28_May_45.pdf", "http://i416.photobucket.com/albums/pp244/wleoff/CapturePapersEM.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "32tmuo", "title": "Where does the stereotypical Native American music you hear in western movies come from?", "selftext": "Does it have any resemblance to the real thing or is it just a cinematic invention?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32tmuo/where_does_the_stereotypical_native_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqenco7", "cqeo0ka", "cqf67bt"], "score": [44, 30, 3], "text": ["Found an interesting [Smithsonian Folkways article](_URL_0_) about Hopi songs recorded in 1924. It was an official recording by the Smithsonian Institution and Bureau of American Ethnology so I feel comfortable linking it here. These are Hopi chants / songs and were recorded in Arizona so it is only representative of that tribe.\n\nIn the [PDF liner notes](_URL_1_) there are mentions of recordings made as early as 1889, but I couldn't track down any samples. Very interesting read nonetheless.", "It's hard to say what general \"stereotypical\" native american music might consist of, but in my experience Hollywood Westerns do tend to use somewhat authentic music for their depictions of Southwestern US and Plains Indian cultures. I used to attend Ute pow-wows regularly, and the heavy rhythmic drumming, undulating singing, and occasional flute is definitely in line with what you'd hear in a Western. \n\nOf course, whether or not modern pow-wows are a good representation of the historical culture is absolutely up for question and I sadly can't find any real academic information on it. \nMicrostudies of specific Native American cultures are ridiculously hard to come by, at least for a amateur like myself.\n\nMore generally, [this seems worth a read](_URL_0_). \nThe details about two-three tone chanting and AABB or ABAB rhythmic structures in the Paiute section definitely correspond with what you hear today - not surprising however, since this survey is based on recordings made in the 1940s. ", "You might repost this question under [/r/ethnomusicology](_URL_0_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.folkways.si.edu/hopi-katcina-songs-and-six-songs-by-chanters/american-indian/music/album/smithsonian", "http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW04394.pdf"], ["http://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/AFSL38GreatBasin.pdf"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/ethnomusicology/"]]}
{"q_id": "21fby3", "title": "How did Judaism's 'Satan' (Heaven's Attorney-General) become the evil ruler of the world in Christianity? (X-post from DebateReligion)", "selftext": "(I have posted this in DebateReligion first but have been advised to put it here. I am subscribed to r/AcademicBiblical but the community on there is very small and I figured you guys might also be able to help).\n\nHello,\nI would like to ask anybody who knows about the history and theology pertaining to the existence of the devil in Christianity and specifically how the concept of a malevolent supernatural evil ruling the physical world superseded the portrait of 'Satan' in the Hebrew Bible as a heavenly prosecutor who presented sinners before God to accuse them. I've read much of The Birth of Satan but I am still at a loss to how the Jesus movement in the 1st century CE, from the apostles to the Gospel writers and Paul's Gentile converts, came to believe in an 'evil one' who opposed everything God did and actively fought against the work of the Lord. The idea of the devil is so central to Christianity that one may say that as one must believe in Christ in order to be saved, one must also believe in (the existence of) the devil as an evil being in order for the entire narrative to make sense. I know some Christians have reinterpreted the devil to be an allegory for personal temptation and shortcomings, but ultimately the New Testament is very clear: the devil is real, the source of everything that is evil, the 'father of lies' and he will eventually be destroyed in the Lake of Fire.\nThis picture seems so contradictory to everything about 'Satan' in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that it defies belief. The amount of projection involved in reconciling the two pictures does little service to Christianity, in my opinion. How many Christians believe that the serpent in Genesis is the devil or a servant of him based on a single vague reference to 'the ancient serpent' in Revelations? The Lucifer/king of Babylon/Satan elision is a similar problem. The amount of reinterpretation involved almost resembles retconning in fictional canons and for me, it presents great difficulty in believing the central tenets of the Bible.\nPopular folk beliefs that the devil 'rules hell' or will be responsible for torturing sinners himself are rooted in mythology and popular culture and are of course not in line with Christian orthodoxy. But then again, are these popular folk beliefs really that out of tune with the original role of Satan compared to Christian orthodox understanding of him? The 'movie Devil' who torments sinners in hell is at least serving a purpose for God in punishing the wicked, closer to his original Jewish perceptions than the world-ruler presented in the New Testament.\nIf anyone can shed light on this it will help a lot. How common was belief in the \"devil as evil world-ruler\" before the ministry of Jesus? Had Second Temple Judaism produced a wider new understanding of 'Satan'? How influential were books like Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve on the early Christians and the Gospel writers (bigger question I know but if it helps what I'm looking for)? And why didn't this understanding of the devil emerge earlier in the Hebrew Bible, if it is the correct understanding?\nI am seeking dates, places, books, specifics of who believed what and when. I read the Epistles and the Gospels and they seem to presume prior knowledge of the devil and what he does.\nThanks for any and all perspectives\n\nEDIT: Wow, was not expecting this level of a response, thanks everyone!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21fby3/how_did_judaisms_satan_heavens_attorneygeneral/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgcm4e6", "cgcmiz0", "cgcqgks", "cgcsjmf", "cgcum6b"], "score": [14, 76, 2, 12, 12], "text": ["It was under my impression that when Jews were exiled from the Holy Land and sent across the Middle East into a diaspora, Zoroastrian influences entered the religion and the idea of Good versus Evil came into being, but that happened far before Christianity, so I'm curious as to whether it was because of that or not.\n\nSo to add to the original question, did Zoroastrianism influence Judaism and add the conflict of good versus evil or did it influence early Christianity and add the conflict of good versus evil? I'm expecting that whoever can answer OP can also answer this question too.", "Note that, regardless of whatever the earliest function of (a) 'satan' was, even in the Hebrew Bible this was conceived of as a being that could simply take up \"certain less pleasant aspects of the deity\u2019s work\" (to quote Strokes 2009, writing about the ambiguity of the term in the Hebrew Bible). But not only did this satan take up the unpleasant work of the deity, but could also be the one \u201cresponsible\u201d for leading someone to commit a sin or make a bad decision (cf. [this](_URL_2_); and in the New Testament, see Luke 22:3 and Acts 5:3). In fact, there's a [post](_URL_0_) still at the top of AskHistorians that's a good example of this, about the so-called \u201cSatanic verses\u201d of the Qur'an. In this case, there were some verses originally present in the Qur'anic text that early Muslims considered highly embarrassing \u2013 and so later apologists ascribed their original composition to \u201cSatanic\u201d influence.\n\nThese functions transfer over quite easily to several different ideas. For one, this need not be limited solely to *individuals*. One could imagine *groups* of people being collectively misled by this evil force. Second, a range of negative things could be ascribed to this evil being: which is where we can see a tie-in with demonic possession and such (Mk 2:23, \"How can Satan cast out Satan?\").\n\nWhat motivated these innovations is a complicated question. In early Judaism and Christianity, we could perhaps imagine that Iranian (cf. Zoroastrian) ideas had some influence on the idea that a large portion of humanity can be \u201censlaved\u201d to forces of darkness. Qumran (the DSS) is a good place to look for stuff relevant to this. There could also be tie-ins with Greco-Roman astrology, or the idea that people (or even entire nations!) could have their own supernatural \u201cguardian\u201d (which, in the case of the \u201cenemy\u201d \u2013 like Rome \u2013 would be thought of as a malevolent being). You might also want to look into [Mastema](_URL_1_) from the book of Jubilees.\n\nI gotta run for a second, but I'd be happy to expand on any of this soon. As for some of the more specific things you mentioned: the Book of Enoch certainly had an enormous influence on more general demonological ideas in the mid/late Second Temple period. The only mention of Satan (Sataniel, IIRC?) comes from the Parables/Similitudes, which was the latest written section. This is the earliest instance in which the serpent in the garden is explicitly associated with Satan.\n\nAs for the *Greek Life of Adam and Eve*: these days, this is usually held to have been composed quite a bit later than the writings of the New Testament. So it's probably not of great relevance here (though some of the ideas that appear in it certainly have a longer history).", "Anyone have suggestions for academic texts, articles, etc. addressing this question?", "It's important to remember that there really is not a consensus on the origins of satan within the christian church. Some denominations do not even recognize the devil as a real entity. Others, especially presbyterian reformed members, believe that satan is very real and is very active in todays world. \n\nAccording to reformed theology satan held, as you had mentioned, a high position in heaven. This concept as well as the reason and subsequent fall, can be seen in Isaiah 14:9-20. Though the hebrew scriptures mention satan only 14 times in the entire old testament, only three of those occurrences fall outside of the book of Job. Most reformed people will sight those verses in Isaiah as one one those instances.\n\nContemporary understanding of satan is that he is the author of evil and temptation. However, in ancient hebrew days, the jews understood god to be the sole mover and shaker of all things. Including evil and temptation. God gave you fortune and he took it away.\n\nThe concept of satan really started in Babylonia while the jews were in captivity. Persian religion was strong in duality deities and the concept of a dark lord dishing up famine, illness and general shit was strong. The Israelites were quick to adopt this given there current misfortunes. The book of job was likely written during this time.\n\nA full description of who and what satan is wasnt really presented until the new testament. There he is a very prominent figure. He tempts christ, he unleashes demons and is credited as the cause of judas betraying jesus. Notice that in all new testament scripture that no one had issues with satan being in the mix of all this. This tells us that satan, as the evil doer, is very present and highly accepted with in the jewish culture by this time. The new testament is said to have been started about 400 years after the last book of the old testament was written.\n\nThe book of revelation makes several references to satan. Even calling him the \"snake\". This is where people start to put two and two together. This is the same snake that was in the garden of eden in the book of genesis. This is the guy that tricked eve into eating the apple and in doing so introduced sin into the world. \n\nThen you bring in the doctrine of original sin. This is where the dispute really starts. Not to go into it much here but most take one of two sides, original sin (total depravity) is scriptural proof that all need christ as savior since we are all born in sin. Or their was no original sin (not born into sin) and there fore christ is a gift of redemption for all despite everything. Thats a severe over simplification, but you get the gist.\n\nIf you buy into total depravity then you sight gen 3:15 as the covenant of grace, the first promise from god and the first hint at christ coming to earth. You need this because your sinful blah blah blah....\n\nThat all being said, I am not a historian, I have just had the displeasure of being around some fundamentalist reformed/puritan christians quite a bit and so this is mostly a regurgitation of things I have picked up.\n", "I'm a Jehovah's Witness who has done extensive research on this and other subjects. Allow me to shed some light on the information I have found on the character known as 'Satan':\n\nFirst off, I will quote a few scriptures to show what information the Bible itself gives on this figure. I know this subreddit is about historical documentation but as this is a somewhat religious question hopefully this will be okay.\n\nIn many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the word sa\u00b7tan\u2032 appears without the definite article. Used in this way, it applies in its first appearance to the angel that stood in the road to resist Balaam as he set out with the objective of cursing the Israelites. **(Nu 22:22, 32)**\n\nIn other instances it refers to individuals as resisters of other men. **(1Sa 29:4; 2Sa 19:21, 22; 1Ki 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25)**\n\nBut it is used with the definite article ha to refer to Satan the Devil, the chief Adversary of God. **(Job 1:6, 2:1-7; Zec 3:1, 2)**\n\nThe verses in Job and Zechariah are perhaps the oldest recordings of Satan used as a definite article. These passages refer to Satan acting out against God's interests by attacking one of his servants in Job and Satan being rebuked by an Angel of God in Zechariah.\n\nThe name 'Satan' isn't exactly a name either, and whatever his real name is we don't know it. As I said earlier, 'Satan' by itself is defines as a sort of 'resistor' or 'rebel'.\n\nThe examples in Job and Zechariah show that even in the Old Testament Satan was not an 'idea' or a symbol of evil, but was an actual person.\n\nAs far as modern beliefs regarding hellfire and eternal torment these are teachings that were adopted from non-christian origins. \n\nThe *Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205)* under \u201cHell\u201d says: \u201cHindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment.\u201d\n\nIf you check out _URL_0_ you can see that numerous religious bodies had their own concept of hell. The Bible itself does not include a 'Hell' but certain churches added and encouraged this concept. It is not a coincidence that the Norse underworld as well as its ruler were named 'Hel'. \n\n*-Cleasby-Vigfusson, pg. 255, s.v. \"hel-viti\"; pg. 718, s.v. \"viti\"*\n\n*-Hensleigh, pg. 233, s.v. \"Hell\"*\n\nAs far as the other modern interpretations of Satan in regard to his position as an evil ruler of the world, **1 John 5:19** says: \"We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.\" This verse along with the previous ones I quoted could easily lead Christians to believe that Satan is the evil ruler of the world."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ejqe/how_much_truth_is_there_in_the_book_by_salman/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastema", "http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/1a7rtb/any_insight_on_the_apparent_contradiction_of/c8uvand"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell"]]}
{"q_id": "7a3htl", "title": "Is there any evidence that medieval women used broomsticks to rub hallucinogens into their vaginas?", "selftext": "I've seen this rather weird explanation of the witches-flying-on-broomsticks trope a few times, most recently in\n [this article](_URL_0_).\n\nIs there any reason to think it is accurate?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7a3htl/is_there_any_evidence_that_medieval_women_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp6zbvo"], "score": [218], "text": ["No. This story is a complete modern fabrication. It is titillating, it is sexist, it brings Science and Reason to the supernatural, and it is a whole lot more comfortable than the reality it was invented to explain away.\n\nThe various pieces of the figure that would become \"the witch\" in the early modern era were falling into place by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Broomsticks enter the legend fairly early on, but not nearly as early as that article would have you believe.\n\nThe trial of Alice Kyteler and Petronilla of Mearth (who never gets mentioned despite being the one who was actually burned at the stake--guess which one was the aristocrat and which one was the servant) referenced in the article, in 1324, predates *maleficium* as a formal charge; Petronilla was burned as a heretic, not a witch. But it's considered a very important sign of the diabolization of 'black magic' because a lot of the pieces of the later witch trope are present.\n\nBut not the broomstick.\n\nYou'll notice the article's quotation uses some funky spelling: ladie, staffe, and so on. That's because this is not from the chronicle account written by Bishop Richard Ledrede, who was present for the actual events, translated from its Latin into modern English. It's from *Holinshed's Chronicles*, which is to say, 1577. The closest Ledrede comes is:\n\n >  The bishop [i.e. the author] made a huge fire in the center of Kilkenny, and on it, for all to see, he burnt a sack full of potions, powders, oils, nails, hair, herbs, worms, and countless other horrible items which Alice had used in her sorcery and magic.\n\nWhatever the \"truth\" behind Ledrede's account (his narrative has little to do with the actual heresy case and is much more concerned with discussing injustices against him and the matter of Church versus secular authority, so he needs to make himself look good), we see the trappings of what appear to be spells and potions *if* one is already inclined to see their owner as a witch.\n\nThis is important when looking at the full passage from Holinshed and other later accounts with almost the same wording (but not Ledrede's). They recount among the charges against Kyteler:\n\n >  Also that she swept the streets of Kilkennie between Compline and twilight, raking all the filth towards the doores of hir sonne William, murmuring secretlie with hir self these words: *To the house of William my sonne / Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne.*\n\nFirst, Holinshed is sort of right about some of the other charges (Kyteler's alleged sexual liason with a demon/incubus called the Son of Art or Robin, Son of Art, becomes a \"nightly conference with a spirit called Robert Artisson, to whom she sacrificed on the highway nine red cocks and nine peacocks' eyes.\") However, the broom/sweeping bit is a post-14th century addition to the tale. This is important became it makes the broom another one of those \"tools of the witch's trade.\"\n\nThat is to say, the broom in the witch legend by the late 16th century was an everyday object assimilated into people's idea of the \"witch's toolbox\". The interesting thing is, it wasn't the only one initially. Early witch iconography from Germany has witches with cooking forks as their symbol--cooking and consumption (including cannibalism) were major components of the witch legend, too. However, the imagery of broomsticks became more popular in France first. From a group of 1420s-40s witch hunts, royal magistrate Claude Tholosan pieced together the following information out of confessions. (Broedel observes that this was a different version of cannibalism than Tholosan had originally found in stories of non-witch heretical movements).\n\n*His* witches would go out one night a week, identify an unlucky local child, and slaughter them. The witches would cook the victim, literally. The fat from the child would be the ointment smeared on the broomstick to enable them to fly to their feasts with the devil. It's a specific, gory, and well-attested in global cannibalism folklore idea of the \"witches' brew\" used in a spell--here, to animate the broomstick.\n\nBut /u/sunagainstgold, you say, there's a problem. You're citing official investigative reports and the actual confessions of women accused as witches as though they were factual.\n\nAnd therein lies exactly the problem: *women and men in early modern Europe confessed to witchcraft.*\n\nAnd not just confessed. Confessed in all the gruesome, sacrilegious, titillating, diabolic detail their inquisitors could record. The pattern happens frequently enough across national/cultural/linguistic boundaries (with details varying regionally), and is found in diverse enough types of sources, that scholars are very comfortable saying: yes, women and men accused of witchcraft confessed, and named their accomplices, even knowing there was a high risk they were sentencing themselves and their friends to a horrible death. They told stories of naked nighttime flights to have sex with Satan, of wild parties with the other witches of the town in the woods, of the deceptions they laid on other people, the things they made other people believe they saw. They said these things under oath and despite the potential, or certain, death to follow. They said these things despite them not being in the least bit true.\n\nThis should be deeply unsettling to us.\n\nThat's where the hallucinogenic dildos come in.\n\nThere's this idea perennially circulating in various pop medieval/early modern bad history about ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that can grow on various grains and cause a whole bunch of bad symptoms before it kills the person who inadvertently eats it. Ergot poisoning has been used to explain medieval prophetic visions, the Anabaptist kingdom in Munster, most famously the testimony of the *accusers* at Salem--and here it is pressed into service to explain why 50,000 women and men across Europe died at the stake, in the river, or on the gallows as witches.\n\nWe crave a \"biological\" explanation for the confessions. The witches, it is comforting to believe, *believed* what they were confessing was true, and believed it because of Science. In the modern world, we can prevent this by preventing rye poison. We're smarter, we're better, it can't happen again.\n\nErgot poisoning, as numerous scholars have shown, bears very little resemblance to the actual situations noted above...unless those 50,000 people also developed seizures, gangrene, diarrhea, vomiting, skin peeling off, and other fun things *without this being noted in records.* Some people occasionally fall into hallucinations or psychosis. But, you know, Science.\n\nAnd you'll notice one more important part about this myth: it implicates the *victims,* and does so in a way that criminalizes female sexuality. Medieval women trying to get themselves off did a thing that made them believe they were witches. And this practice is why, when faced with physical and psychological torture, they told stories of flying through the night to consort with Satan. Because in this worldview women are just that lustful, and that can only ever be a bad thing.\n\nThe intentional stimulation of visions of the divine played a major role in later medieval culture. It was in fact associated with women in particular. This association grew stronger over the 14th century as male theologians grew ever more anxious about the power of women's visions and the potential that women, the weaker sex, could so so easily be corrupted (\"seduced\") like Eve. It was an interpretation forced onto and yet accepted by women visionaries,  a bargain for the potential authority their visions might grant them in a deeply patriarchal world. By the 15th, it was an open question whether a woman's visions of God and Christ, once only needing her word to confirm their veracity, came from \"nature\" (hallucinations), God--or the devil.\n\nBut when these women (and much more rarely in this case, men) had visions of the devil, they recounted themselves *oppressed* and *tempted* by the demons, they told of their *victories over* Satan. And they didn't need hallucinogens smeared on *instrumenta vel machinae* to produce these visions.\n\nThe method that medieval monks had developed to provoke the mind to higher contemplation of God, the method that filtered out to lay people? Reading religious books."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2017/10/31/the-origin-of-witches-riding-broomsticks-drugs-from-nature-plus-shakespeare/#2558004e61a9"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5260q7", "title": "Did females in US public schools have to swim naked in PE class back in the 40s and 50s?", "selftext": "I was talking to a 63 year old man who said that when he was in high school in South Chicago they had to swim naked in PE class in the school swimming pool. They could wear caps to cover their heads, but they were told they could not wear suits because the fabric would clog the filters. He said when swimsuits options came out with silk swimming trunks, they could wear those, since silk would not clog up the filters. Since PE classes were segregated by sex, he doesn't know if they same rules applied for girls at the time. It seems strange that boys would swim naked but girls would not, but that is why I am offering this question up to the sages here at r/askhistorians! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5260q7/did_females_in_us_public_schools_have_to_swim/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7i5y8b", "d7ieq40"], "score": [33, 2], "text": ["A point of chronology: Your question asks about the 40s and 50s, but if the guy is 63, then he was born in 1952 at the earliest. He would have started high school 14 years later in 1966.", "Can someone also comment on the plausibility of the technical aspects of this anecdote? Weren't synthetic fibers starting to become widely available by the early 60s? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "cw0255", "title": "Why was Mars viewed with more respect in Rome than his counterpart Ares did in Greece?", "selftext": "In Greece, it seemed that Ares was considered a god of senseless violence that represented the savage side of war. However the Romans in contrast viewed Mars as a major god who was dignified and represented wars fought for the purpose of peace. Is there a reason for this stark difference?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cw0255/why_was_mars_viewed_with_more_respect_in_rome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ey8gfh1"], "score": [56], "text": ["I have some problems with the premises of this question, but I\u2019ll try to answer it as best I can. Hopefully I don\u2019t end up answering the question I wish you\u2019d asked, rather than the one you actually asked! I should also say right at the beginning that although I\u2019m good on Roman religion, my knowledge of religion in Ancient Greece is patchy so I\u2019m not going to address that side of the question. In terms of how I\u2019m going to approach this topic it\u2019s actually not a problem \u2013 one of the premises of the question that I find problematic is the idea that there were these two separate things called \u2018Greek culture\u2019 and \u2018Roman culture\u2019 that can be compared and contrasted as neat, bounded entities. It\u2019s probably too much of a tangent for me to address that properly here \u2013 perhaps we can go into it later if someone is interested.\n\nOK, so let\u2019s focus on Mars. He seems to have been worshipped at Rome from very early on, although the evidence for archaic Rome is not good. Later Romans would have us believe that the whole edifice of Roman religion was invented by Romulus and Numa, the first two legendary kings of Rome. This includes the worship of Mars \u2013 Livy (1.20), Plutarch (*Numa* 13) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2.70) all attribute the foundation of either one or both major priesthoods of Mars (the *flamines Martialis* and the Salii) to Numa. The major problem here is that all these writers, and indeed all the information we have on archaic Rome, come from much later \u2013 no earlier than the 1st century BC. They were not writing what we would call an \u2018accurate\u2019 history of the city\u2019s early history but were using these descriptions to define Roman culture for themselves and their contemporaries, and to debate its problems and peculiarities. Again, probably too much of a tangent to go into too much detail here but suffice to say that the literary record on Rome\u2019s early history must be read very, very carefully. Nevertheless, we have no reason to doubt the fact that Mars was worshipped in early republican Rome by dedicated priesthoods, and that this worship was connected to the army.\n\nHowever, the Roman association of Mars with war was more complicated than just the overseer of battles and armies. He was more closely connected with the purification and protection of the army, and by extension the whole city. The major festivals for Mars were clustered in March (the month named after him), at the beginning of the campaign season, and October at the end. In the March festivals, Mars was asked to protect the soldiers and their equipment in the coming battles, and in October the rituals remove any spiritual pollution picked up over the summer, thereby protecting the army and the city as a whole. It\u2019s important to remember that for the entire republican period there was no professional Roman army \u2013 all the soldiers were conscripted citizens who were drafted for particular campaigns and then disbanded once they were no longer needed. Hence the close connection between the army and Rome more generally \u2013 the army was the citizenry and vice versa.\n\nThis connection with the ordinary citizenry brings us onto Mars\u2019 other main area of influence in Roman religion: agriculture. Cato the Elder, in his handbook on agriculture, makes it very clear that Mars was called upon to protect farmland, and that specific sacrifices were expected before using land for the first time. Again, Mars is being called on as a protector and purifier and is worshipped using the same rituals that were used to purify the army before going into battle. It\u2019s interesting that Cato specifies that the sacrifices be offered to a particular version of Mars \u2013 Mars Pater or Father Mars. This is almost certainly a reference to the fact that Mars was supposedly the father of Romulus and Remus (having raped their mother), and therefore symbolically the father of the whole Roman people.\n\nSo, we\u2019ve got a relatively clear picture in the republican period of Mars as a protecting and purifying god, connected with the army as a god of war, but also presiding over farmland and the population of Rome in general. I\u2019m not quite sure where you\u2019re getting the idea that Mars represented wars that brought peace \u2013 I can\u2019t really think of any specific ancient sources that discuss him like that, although I\u2019d love you to point me in their direction!\n\nI wonder if the question as you\u2019ve asked it is actually more to do with Roman attitudes towards and justifications of their own wars of imperial conquest, rather than being specifically about the god Mars. It is certainly true that from at least the first century BC, the Romans were starting to think about why they go to war and the ways in which they have conquered their empire. In his speech on the Lex Manilia, Cicero gives hints that the idea of so-called \u2018defensive imperialism\u2019 is already being bounced around, suggesting that the Romans waged war on their enemies to ensure security, peace and prosperity for themselves and their allies. This idea gets a huge boost under Augustus after 27 BC, once he\u2019s ended the civil wars and installed himself as the first emperor. From then on Rome supposedly entered a new Golden Age of peace \u2013 the Pax Augusta \u2013 free from strife and bloodshed. The job of the army now was to preserve the peace, even if that often still meant fighting offensive campaigns against the barbarians outside the Roman frontiers. The Roman historian Tacitus criticises the obvious paradox in this image \u2013 into the mouth of Calcagus, leader of the Caledonian resistance to the Roman invasion of Scotland, he puts the now-infamous words: \u201cTo robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2ulcya", "title": "There has been an article floating around recently that claims Africans discovered America before Columbus. I was wondering if anybody could speak to the validity of some of the claims it makes.", "selftext": "_URL_1_\n\n\nI don't find it to be very trustworthy and found some [scholarship](_URL_0_) disputing some claims, but can't find evidence disputing all the claims it makes, but also find the claims somewhat hard to believe.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ulcya/there_has_been_an_article_floating_around/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co9ltxv", "co9md1l"], "score": [11, 45], "text": ["I only know bits and pieces about this, mainly relating to Musa I of Mali. He was a King whose predecessor had sailed into the Atlantic with a large fleet(supposedly more than a thousand ships) to see what was beyond the water. A previous fleet had gone ahead and only one ship had returned, saying that the rest were lost in a giant whirlpool.\n\n[This answer by /u/Reedstilt is far more detailed and gives a good overview of the question.](_URL_0_) It won't counter all of the claims in your article, but most of those are more cases of choosing a theory and then finding things that fit it, such as the appearance of pyramids in both the Americas and Africa. Coincidentally, that was explained a week or two back by someone else here as a logical building development of a basic shape(a triangle).", "You're right to be skeptical. This all kinds of wrong.\n\nIn the order of claims:\n\n1. _URL_5_\n\n2. _URL_4_\n\n3. I'm sorry, but no. Egyptian artifacts were not found in Arizona. The closest thing to this that's *actually* been found is the [Calixtlahuaca head](_URL_6_), but that is widely considered a hoax. If only Payon had properly recorded his digs...\n\n4. Their evidence that there's no progression in Mesoamerican pyramid design is just ridiculous. Here's a picture of [La Venta](_URL_0_). Interestingly, just like early egyptian Pyramids, La venta was in fact probably stepped. Designed eventually moved from that to more complicated structures, like that of the [Pyramid of the Niches](_URL_3_) (which was not Olmec). \n\n5. I'd just like to quote a review of Wiercinski's work, because its quality really speaks for itself:\n >  To determine the racial heritage of the ancient Olmecs, Dr. Wiercinski (1972b) used classic diagnostic traits determined by craniometric and cranioscopic methods. These measurements were then compared to a series of three crania sets from Poland, Mongolia and Uganda to represent the three racial categories of mankind.\n\n6. Which American and African religions are actually being discussed? Egyptian religion was definitely not the same as religion in Western Africa, nor was Aztec religion at all related to the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. \n\n7. Nunez de Balboa's visit to the Americas was in 1552. Spaniards had been transporting African slaves to the Americas for roughly half a century by that point. It's not entirely improbable that some escaped and were seen. This was certainly a common occurrence later. \n\n8. _URL_2_\n\n9. I'm not sure how stylized stone heads can be \"clearly crafted in the likeness of Africans\", considering the diversity of appearances on that continent. This says more about the author's preconceptions  than anything else.\n\n10. Interestingly, I'd never heard of this particular theory before. It appears to be a variation on the [Lake Tritonis](_URL_1_) idea. Unfortunately, the desertification of the Sahara precedes the evolution of humans and Lake Chad has never extended into Egypt. Similarly, the idea that African traders introduced cotton to the Americas is... amusing. Genetic evidence indicates the American and Afroeurasian genuses diverged around a million years ago.^1 In order for this timeline to make sense, we'd either have to rewrite essentially everything we know about human evolutionary history or concede that Cotton is probably native to the Americas.\n\n^1 Wendel, J. F.,  &  Cronn, R. C. (2003). Polyploidy and the evolutionary history of cotton. *Advances in agronomy*, 78, 139-186."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/vansertima.pdf", "http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/23/10-pieces-of-evidence-that-prove-black-people-sailed-to-the-americas-long-before-columbus/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zmi5t/is_there_any_evidence_that_moors_reached_the/cfuzqd8"], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/La_Venta_Pir%C3%A1mide_cara_sur.jpg/1024px-La_Venta_Pir%C3%A1mide_cara_sur.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tritonis", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nvf4c/did_the_ancient_egyptians_ever_cross_the_ocean/ccmm135", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/PyramidNiches1.JPG", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wlujw/over_on_rtodayilearned_theres_a_big_thread_right/cf3ja4z", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2meuz5/recep_erdogan_just_claimed_muslim_sailors/#cm3nqr3&context=1", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Tecaxic_calixtlahuaca_head.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3yx1rb", "title": "Contemporary spy novels were popular in the west during the cold war - did the eastern bloc have an equivalent?", "selftext": "Considering the popularity of the format, and the opportunity to portray 'the other side' how you wish, were there novels about brave Soviet agents trying to get home across the Berlin wall, albeit in the opposite direction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yx1rb/contemporary_spy_novels_were_popular_in_the_west/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyi3dfh", "cyi9h6k"], "score": [2, 2], "text": ["Leaving open the possibility of new responses, you might also find [this earlier thread on a similar question helpful](_URL_0_).", "\"The Soviet James Bond\".\n\nBBC R4 Documentary.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/188xka/during_the_cold_war_did_the_soviets_have_their/"], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59h9"]]}
{"q_id": "98jy6z", "title": "Was Hermann Goering in ANY way competent or useful ?", "selftext": "My impression of him was that he was incredibly incompetent, so why was he in charge in the first place ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/98jy6z/was_hermann_goering_in_any_way_competent_or_useful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e4gk2ri"], "score": [162], "text": ["From [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)\n\nOne of the common denominators of accounts from Allied personnel who encountered G\u00f6ring was that they were shocked at his intelligence. Allied prosecutors at the IMT tended to see him as one of the cannier defendants as did the journalists that covered the Tribunals. The RAF officer Eric Brown also found G\u00f6ring to be intelligent and well-versed on technical matters after the fact. These accounts of his intelligence were not just impressions either; IQ tests conducted by the Allied authorities placed G\u00f6ring in the 99th percentile. This picture of a highly intelligent Reichsmarschall is at odds with though with G\u00f6ring's leadership of the Luftwaffe. Postwar accounts by Adolf Galland and many of the *Jagdflieger* veterans were often at pains to stress G\u00f6ring's incompetence and unsuitability for his position. Nor was this postwar picture by Luftwaffe veterans entirely an attempt to blame-shift  defeat on their military chief. G\u00f6ring did have his hand in a number of disasters and did push the Luftwaffe down a number of strategic dead-ends. These two pictures though- the foolish air leader and the intelligent, charismatic individual- are not too hard to reconcile though. Intelligence and bad leadership were not mutually exclusive in the National Socialist state. \n\n*Pace* the common perception of G\u00f6ring as a complete failure, his leadership of the Luftwaffe in the early years was actually not that bad. G\u00f6ring knew enough to delegate to various Reichswehr leaders that had been prepping for aerial rearmament since the 1920s. In particular, G\u00f6ring relied very much on the technocratic and capable Erhard Milch at the helm of *Reichsluftfahrtministerium* (aviation ministry/RLM) to resolve the major technical and personnel issues that occurred when expanding a military force from scratch. Milch, in conjunction with Walter Wever formed a competent team that managed to create a structure that could be expanded quickly. G\u00f6ring himself also had fairly decent technical instincts towards certain aircraft in this early period  and appreciated that this was an era of great technical change. Milch also had a knowledgeable relationship with nascent German aviation industry and knew its capabilities. The industry itself also formed a profitable relationship with G\u00f6ring and the two worked in symbiosis in this period of expansion as G\u00f6ring's duties for the Four-Year Plan meant he could funnel resources into the aviation sector to enhance his own prestige within the National Socialist state hierarchy. \n\nThe Luftwaffe's successes of the early war years was a beneficiary of this prewar system. Germany possessed a large, technically advanced air force in September 1939 with a great deal of trained personnel and a coherent doctrine. This was no mean feat for a service that barely existed prior to 1933 beyond the Reichswehr's experimental units. The Luftwaffe procurement certainly did have its own boondoggles like the Ju-86. This bomber set to be powered by diesel engines, was obsolete before it even entered service and most Ju-86s were either sold or went immediately into training units. The Ju-86 debacle and other mistakes like adding too many requirements to the Ju-88 program were problems, but every air force in this period also had similar failures and setbacks. Dead-ends like the Ju-86 were normal in an era of massive technological change when promising technology like diesel aviation engines never quite delivered. \n\nNonetheless, the victories of 1939 and 1940 did mask a significant number of problems within the Luftwaffe that became more prominent as the war dragged on. The losses in the 1940 campaigns in France and Britain were quite severe. Despite this, German industry could only barely cover operational losses and the same could be said of the Luftwaffe's training establishment. Victory over France had vindicated the use of airpower, but no the Luftwaffe found itself facing a hard ceiling on its expansion. Milch's championship of American-style production techniques ran into resistance from aviation firms who came from an older German industrial tradition of craftsmanship and technical precision. The technocratic Milch was often abrasive to men like Willi Messerschmitt, and while industry could form a functional relationship with Milch in peace, this relationship suffered under wartime pressure. G\u00f6ring tended to side with industry over Milch in these internal squabbles as he both feared a potential rival within the Luftwaffe and he too found Milch abrasive.\n\nTechnical issues also began to loom more seriously for the long-term prospects of the Luftwaffe. A 1939 decision to focus all future production on only four aircraft types- the He-177, Me-210, Bf-109, and Ju-88, proved to be disastrous as only the latter two aircraft were able to resolve technical hurdles to become operational. A good deal of the blame for this problem was the leadership of Ernst Udet at the RLM technical office. Udet, who replaced Wever after the latter died in a crash landing, was like G\u00f6ring an flying ace from the last war and chosen for his job largely because of his connections to the Reichsmarschall. Udet was patently unsuitable for his job and often wasted precious time and resources on dead-ends and chimeras like making every bomber capable of dive attacks. Udet's leadership further exacerbated RLM's tendencies towards focusing too much on technical issues and solutions at the expense of the bigger picture. Additionally, Udet and the RLM's leadership as a whole was incapable of thinking flexibly about new roles and uses for aircraft despite their focus on high-technology solutions. Roles and aircraft for them sometimes had to be implemented on the ground as opposed to Berlin. Such was the case with the FW-200 which was derived from a Japanese order of a militarized version of the airliner and came into service largely at the behest of Hauptmann Edgar Petersen, an officer of the X.Fliegerkorps (the unit tasked with maritime strike), after he visited Focke-Wulf in September 1939 to ascertain whether or not civilian aircraft could be used for this role.\n\nIn fairness to G\u00f6ring, not all of the problems with the Luftwaffe in this period were entirely his fault. A number of postwar narratives have inflated his role in the decision to halt outside of Dunkirk. While G\u00f6ring certainly did claim the Luftwaffe could destroy the pocket alone, research by Karl Heinz Frieser has shown that such assertions only came after Hitler and his generals had made the decision to halt the ground forces. The decision to fight the Battle of Britain also fell in line with a number of air strategists around the world that felt that airpower alone was sufficient to force political results. G\u00f6ring may have reveled in the idea that *his* air force could force a British capitulation, but even without this egoism, this thought was not all that out of line with contemporary thinking on airpower. And G\u00f6ring does deserve some credit for the Fw-190 program. He was sufficiently impressed by a demonstration of Kurt Tank's fighter and understood that relying too much on the Bf-109 was unwise given the bottlenecks of Messerschmitt's plane like the troubled production of the DB 600 series of engines. \n\nCracks began to appear in the edifice of the Luftwaffe by 1941. Udet's suicide may have been prompted by a love affair, but the man was under extraordinary pressures from his failures at RLM like the Me-210. German procurement was left in chaos as attempts to inject rationalism and streamlining the process ran afoul of existing power blocs and created unnecessary frictions. Udet though was emblematic of a deep-seated problem within the Luftwaffe's leadership in that G\u00f6ring had a tendency to promote the wrong men to positions of authority. The Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff, Hans Jeschonnek, was typical of the wrong man in the wrong place. Although Jeschonnek possessed a keen mind, he was also slavishly subservient to higher authority. This was one of the attributes that endeared him G\u00f6ring, but also to Hitler. It was the Luftwaffe's chief of staff, not its commander, that assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could resupply the Stalingrad pocket. Jeschonnek had a tendency to agree with his superiors' desires and then try to find a way to make them work around existing capabilities. In the Stalingrad airlift decision, both G\u00f6ring and Hitler initially proceeded along Jeschonnek's optimistic assessments of German capabilities, and in fairness to the chief of staff, they were not inclined to investigate the matter on their own. It was telling of the Luftwaffe's habits of leadership that even though Jeschonnek later figured out his errors after consulting with frontline commanders, he never really tried correct them and committed to this course of action. This was one of the byproducts of the Luftwaffe's swift expansion within a National Socialist milieu. Younger officers tended to be promoted to the upper echelons well past their experiences while the Nazi system prioritized a type of political loyalty that verged on cronyism. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6o5cj9/hermann_goering_was_very_intelligent_and_an/"]]}
{"q_id": "13buoi", "title": "How would an Elizabethan audience react to Act V, scene i of Hamlet?", "selftext": "As many times as I've read this play, I've never understood how to interpret Hamlet's encounter with Yorick's skull.\n\nFirst, are we supposed to assume that the skull is indeed Yorick's, or is the clown/gravedigger continuing to screw with Hamlet -- as he did when asked whose grave he was digging? Considering the amount of bones and skulls tossed from the grave, how can the gravedigger be so sure? Is the gravedigger fucking with Hamlet? Or were gravediggers during Shakespeare's time just damn good at matching skulls to their former owners?\n\nSecond, how would an Elizabethan audience react to Hamlet fondling the remains of his former babysitter? It seems like this would be regarded as taboo. Would they see it as a further deepening of Hamlet's madness? Or would they just roll with it because it's theatre and interpret it as Hamlet coming to terms with his fate?\n\nAny articles or books would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13buoi/how_would_an_elizabethan_audience_react_to_act_v/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c72lfrd", "c72mp8g", "c72n5qw", "c72o8k9", "c72uhvx"], "score": [9, 38, 7, 57, 4], "text": ["There's also an [r/Shakespeare](_URL_0_) if you're interested. (I figured there just *had* to be a subreddit for that, given there's one for everything else, so I searched...)", "Honestly, this probably the most interesting question I've seen on this subreddit ever. It's rare to find a question that requires someone with actual deep knowledge of their field to apply to a unique query. Most of the junk on here can be answered with a google search. Kudos to you for putting the thought into asking a bright question. I don't care if this post is against the rules of \"only posting if you know an answer,\" this sort of content needs to be praised.", "[Here is a link to the text of the scene for quick reference.](_URL_0_)", "The gravediggers are comedy characters, and more specifically a fool or clown character. The Elizabethan \"fool\" character had a semi-magical quality that allowed them to simply know and speak truths, a fool cannot dissemble, so when a fool speaks, it is understood to be \"true\" for the purposes of the story. Feste as played by Ben Kingsley in the 1996 film is a good example of the power of the fool. Clowns often \"break the fourth wall\" and occupy both the setting of the play, and the setting of the performance. When a clown/fool says something on the Elizabethan stage, it's most likely going to be true. \n\n\nSo, the audience *most likely* would have simply accepted that the skull was Yorick because of the kind of character who was saying it, however this is Hamlet, and the level of what would now call \"meta references\" are huge: it's entirely possible that Shakespeare's audience had a thought process of \"How does he know that's Yorick's skull? It's probably not Yorick's skull... Wait, of course it isn't... I'm watching a play\"; there's a lot of that kind of thing in Hamlet, views of how much would be understood by Shakespeare's audience swings between \"none of it\" and \"more than we do\".\n\n\nIn a more specific sense, Yorrick is widely believed to have been a reference to Richard Tarlton, who was a pre-Shakespearean comedy legend that the audience would have been aware of, so they may well have simple \"got the reference\" and enjoyed it on that level.\n\n\nAs to the second point, when Hamlet handles the skull, rather than crazy semi-necrophiliac breaking a taboo, the audience would have seen it as a Memento Mori, a reminder that everyone must die, which was not seen as an especially crazy thing to do even up to the early 20th century (an example would be the Victorian custom of taking photographs of deceased people, it seems mental to us now, but was acceptable at the time). \n\n\nBooks to check out:\n_URL_2_\nHas lots of stuff about the performance of Hamlet in general, if I'm remembering correctly, there was some good stuff about the \"original way\" it was performed.\n\n\nUnfortunately, the best book I ever read about the Elizabethan fool (Enid Welsford's) seems to be out of print; but here's a thesis up on the Internet Archive that seems to cover the same ground:\n_URL_0_\n\n\nAnd there's a nice little article here which goes into the gravedigger scene specifically, among others:\n_URL_1_\n\n\n\n\n ", "Roll with it, I think. The Elizabethan audience after all were very au fait with histrionics on stage since the theatre at the time reveled in showing very extreme situations and reactions - recall Titus Andronicus putting people in pies and feeding them to their father. It was a way to showcase the best acting talents of the day and I think in the Elizabethan theatre (noisy, daylit) big performances were sometimes necessary to make an impact. They probably relished the very Shakespearian meta-ness of Hamlet's performance too - an actor playing a madman, or an actor playing a character playing a madman? \n\nRegarding the taboo question, somewhat tangential but it's fun to read Voltaire's reaction to seeing a Shakespeare play. He of course was used to the French drama of the time, which was very staid, Aristotelian, based on the [Classical Unities](_URL_0_).\n\nHere's his opinion on Hamlet:\n\n*Far be it from me to justify everything in the tragedy of Hamlet; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river, a grave is dug on the stage, and the grave-diggers talk quodlibets worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands; Hamlet responds to their nasty vulgarities in silliness no less disgusting. In the meanwhile another of the actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law, carouse on the stage; songs are sung at table; there is quarrelling, fighting, killing \u2013 one would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in Hamlet, by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages, worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatsoever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/shakespeare/"], [], ["http://www.enotes.com/hamlet-text/act-v-scene-i"], ["http://archive.org/details/studiesindevelop00busbuoft", "http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/shaksper/files/ROLE%20CLOWN.txt", "http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1717445.Acting_In_Shakespeare"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_unities"]]}
{"q_id": "455cod", "title": "What are the historical origins of stripper poles/pole dancing?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/455cod/what_are_the_historical_origins_of_stripper/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czvleed"], "score": [26], "text": ["Poles were used far back in other manners, like Mallakhamb in India with gymnastic poses, the athletic feats of the Chinese Pole, Panjat Pinang climbing games, or even the Maypole. The use of a pole for more modern dancing purposes came out of circus tents in the 1920s with the Hoochie Coochie side-shows where women dancing took to utilizing the tent poles as part of their act. The striptease itself comes out of Burlesque shows of the 19th century. Originally these shows were a mix of singing, dancing, comedy, pretty girls, and much more. Lydia Thompson is credited with bringing this show to America in 1868 with chorus lines of beautiful, scantily clad women called her \"British Blondes\". The girls were hugely popular in burlesque shows and over time became more and more of the acts. Stripping evolved out of some of the risque acts just before the turn into the 20th century. The can-can as well as the belly dance (which inspires the Hoochie Coochie) are also popularized in the 19th century. While the combination of pole dancing and stripping makes its way into bars in the 1950s, the first \"official\" pole dance was in 1968 by Belle Jangles in Oregon at a strip club. Nightclubs as well as strip clubs picked up the hugely popular new style, and with the boom of the strip club in the 1970s it spread easily."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8h2w9s", "title": "As I understand it, Romans of the Augustan period regarded the Republic as a failed state that resulted in incessant civil wars; what led the American founding fathers to hold the Roman Republic in such high regard? Would they have taken imperial Roman critiques of the Republic seriously?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8h2w9s/as_i_understand_it_romans_of_the_augustan_period/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyh3sjg", "dyhgjq7"], "score": [77, 16], "text": [" > As I understand it, Romans of the Augustan period regarded the Republic as a failed state\n\nOh good heavens no!  The whole conceit of the Augustan regime was that it was a restoration of the Republic!  Augustus made a point of remaining an informal power, only keeping hold of the Tribunician Power permanently.  Augustus cultivated a literature that celebrated the Republic - Livy is probably the best example of looking toward the Republic as a salve for the crisis of his times (he probably wrote that in the Triumviral period), but Virgil and Varro also showed an interest in Roman origins and continuity.  Velleius Paterculus, writing under Tiberius, still called the state a \"res publica\" I think unironically (though others disagree).\n\nThe first indication of \"the end of the republic\" as far as I know is Tacitus, who was writing under the Flavians.  He was the one that said the Republic died with the army of Cassius and Brutus.  That's something like 150 years later.  Also he has a political interest - he's afraid of criticizing the Flavians (he says so), so he writes about the previous regime, the Julio-Claudians.  He'll go back to the Flavians later, but his first attempt at long form history works as a sort of justifying Flavian rule.  It just happened that his account of the Republican past caught on in scholarship.\n\nI'm afraid I can't comment on the American Revolution bit, but I hope that correction about Augustan attitudes towards the Republic is helpful.", "I did some looking on the American end, and found some sources and historical precedent. It seems pretty clear the Founders were emulating not the corrupt late republic, but the noble early republic. The memoirs of Major General Lee (Washington's number one) refer to James I \"being expelled like Tarquin\". Tarquinus Superbus was the last king of Rome, before he got the boot and the republic was founded. Parallels between Tarquin and George III aren't difficult to infer.\n\nAnother key figure emulated was Cincinnatus.  This Roman is most famous for (according to Livy) assuming dictatorial powers, leading the army successfully against the Aquians and the Sabines, and then promptly resigning his office and returning to his farm.\n\nWashington set himself up as a deliberate parallel to Cincinnatus when he resigned his commission and dismissed his staff in 1783, and the Society of the Cincinnati was set up soon after by the Founders (and headed by Washington) to further this deliberate mirroring of the American Founding Fathers and the civic virtue of the High Roman Republic. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2ln4sv", "title": "If sitting with legs crossed was different enough to become known as sitting Indian Style how did Europeans sit when they didn't have a chair?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ln4sv/if_sitting_with_legs_crossed_was_different_enough/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clwdo9a", "clwl4bb"], "score": [11, 55], "text": ["...and how does this relate to sitting \"tailor fashion\", which is, well, sitting with your legs crossed?", "\"Tailor's fashion\" is the older term for the same sitting style. [Tailors sit cross-legged upon the board](_URL_0_) (table) rather than at it on a chair. It's a term still used in some European nations today and dates back very far. It's done this way to tighten up the back muscles so they don't wear out as quickly. In fact, studies have been done on tailors bodies that showed quite a few changes due to the constant sitting in this manner. The blood vessels enlarged to keep the legs from falling asleep and the long muscle that reaches from the pelvis into the tibia is longer than in normal people, hence why it is now termed the Sartorius muscle (word for tailor). \n\n*edited to correct the medical info that ExpectedChaos provided*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image/65635/anonymous-interior-of-a-tailors-shop-1767-1800"]]}
{"q_id": "10rhkn", "title": "[Meta--Historiography] Remembering Eric Hobsbawm", "selftext": "Dear Historians,\n\nThe eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm has died, aged 95 ([Guardian](_URL_0_)). Hobsbawm is probably best known for his sequence of histories of the 19th and 20th centuries, *The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848*, *The Age of Capital: 1848-1875*, *The Age of Empire: 1875-1914*, and *The Age of Extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914\u20131991*. However, a quick look at his published works reveals a historian whose influence on historiography in the past 50 years is undeniable: *Primitive Rebels* in 1959, *Captain Swing* in 1969, an *The Invention of Tradition* in 1983. I don't think it's a stretch to call him one of the most important historians of the last century. \n\nSo, with that in mind, let us send Professor Hobsbawm on his way with a few thoughts on his works. What has everyone read? What are his best works? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10rhkn/metahistoriography_remembering_eric_hobsbawm/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6g01wz", "c6g0tpn", "c6g12ki", "c6g174x", "c6g24ah", "c6g2mrb", "c6g3e4z", "c6gdn14"], "score": [16, 7, 4, 12, 6, 5, 2, 6], "text": ["Well this sucks. My buddy on facebook posted this about him\n\n > The phrase we informally inclined use when the honored old die is, \"s/he had a good run.\" For few is this saying truer than it is for Eric Hobsbawm. His was one of the great and, in many respects, representative (for good and for ill) lives of the twentieth century. As that century turns into increasingly-distant memory, and thus into a bone to be worried over by the usual crew of varying-quality academics and assorted culture-industry types, I think his example as an engaged intellectual who did not shy away from tackling big questions with eloquence and commitment will only grow in importance.", "Hobsbawm was probably the historian whose book made me decide to do history at university (On History, I think it was called). I'd say that he was one of the greatest (and prolific) historical writers of the 20th century.", "Eric was so awesome. I was around 19 when I laid my hands on History of the 20th Century, and, my God, did this guy have a prose. I read this behemoth of a book like it was a Paperback novel. I still remember going on vacations to the beach and reading that dorky huge book on the beach like a nerd, I was mind blown by it.\n\nI'm not a historian, but more of a recent-history buff, and Eric started that for me. He was the first to really convey how the masses and individuals at the end of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th fought for what we now consider \"basic rights\", putting their lives on the line every day. I became passionate about Anarchism during that period and it was this guy that really inspired me to learn more.\n\nBye Eric, as the guy above said, you had a hell of a good run. See you on the other side.", "If you want to talk about the idea of nationalism it's impossible to avoid Hobsbawm.  I leaned heavily on his idea of ethnic chauvinism in my work, and really it took over the direction of my paper.  *The Age of Empire* really was a spectacular read, as is *Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality*.", "As I sit here it is almost impossible for me to put into a short reddit post the impact Hobsbawn had on the field.  I suppose I'll just cut to the chase and say that his work was central to the evolution of the field in the last 50 years or so.  Although it is perhaps cliche to say that people live on through their work, if it ever applies, it certainly applies here.", "I've discovered him 2 years ago, in my first year at the university. For our modern history course, we had to read Age of the Extremes. I hope to discover more of him in the future, but this particular book was an excellent read. What a historian!", "I am an A level student (1 year before university). Hobsbawn's book *The Age of Empire* was a fascinating book. It put the British Empire, which I have much fascination for, into context in a world which was catching up with Britain. America, and Germany for that matter, were already steaming past Britian in many aspects. It easy to forget how the 'Empire in which the sun never sets' was already destined to die years before colonisation. Rest in Peace Hobsbawn, your book will always live with me.", "As a conservative guy, knowing he was Marxist, having read his The Age of Extremes, I must say he was a much more honest guy than most lefties so I respected him. At least in his old age, I don't know his younger works, but the Age of Extremes was more or less balanced  - although some leftie myths were still in there, he actually dispelled some others. For example I really liked how he explained that fascism was neither extreme capitalism nor a new version of the old, aristocratic conservatism, but something new and populist. He was a bit like a leftie version of John Lukacs (another great historian, a proudly reactionary one, still alive in his nineties), they balanced each other nicely. R.I.P."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-died-aged-95"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "aenqsa", "title": "Wikipedia says the vikings had to leave Britain in AD 1005 because a famine struck their army. Did that famine just effect them, or were the native English badly hit as well?", "selftext": "_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aenqsa/wikipedia_says_the_vikings_had_to_leave_britain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["edsc9kr"], "score": [17], "text": ["The source of the account of the famine in the year is Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E: The Laud MS)  a. 1005 ([edited]: , and F of the same year) that also states that the famine hit the Anglo-Saxons as well.  \n\n & nbsp;  \n\nThe following is the passage in question (sorry for my miserably rough translation, and I cannot type even proper OE for now):  \n\n > 'In this year there was so terrible famine across the Anglo-Saxons (*Angel cynn*) that no one remembered such so severe [famine], and also in this year the fleet left this land for Denmark, [edited]: and came back for a little after'.  \n\nThe original text comes from: Plummer, Charles (ed.), *Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel*, London, 1892, p.139.  \n\n & nbsp;  \n\nIt also seems to me in rather more straightforward reading of the source text that the primary victims of the famine was the Englishmen, not the Vikings.  \n\nDo you wish to have the more extensive information on the famine then in England?  \nI afraid that there not so much more primary sources can be found in this event itself, but I hope I can find some secondary literature on this period.   \n\n[Edited]: tweaks the format of the translation, and correct some translations. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1005"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2ti5fg", "title": "[Meta] Has there ever been a disagreement between Mods on /r/AskHistorians?", "selftext": "Hello, I've been browsing this fantastic Subbreddit for months now and I always love reading the incredible detailed and fascinating answers that mods regularly produce but I was wondering (as the title suggests) as there ever been an instances of flaired mods disagreeing on an event or answer in the comment section?\n\nFrom what I've seen, mods are typically very friendly to each other here but as Historian often has many points of debate and 'camps' so to speak I just thought it would be interesting to ask if these disagreements have found their way into a debate here.\n\nApologies if this is a silly question and I'd completely understand if this is to be removed. Regardless, thank you very much for your time :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ti5fg/meta_has_there_ever_been_a_disagreement_between/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnzagjt", "cnzbapw", "cnzc0qh", "cnzcql4", "cnzdwiq", "cnzgk1h", "cnzhdnh"], "score": [164, 10, 25, 34, 27, 14, 15], "text": ["We don't disagree on anything, mainly because, well, might as well admit this, we're all alt accounts of the same 73 year old white guy.", "[There has been disagreement](_URL_0_) over the Holodomor between several flaired users and rusoved, who is a mod, so that almost fulfils your criteria.", "Well any conflict is resolved through ritual duels at which hundreds of flairs will gather and watch the spectacle baying for blood.", "Imb4 post is removed to violating the 10 year rule /s\n\nMore seriously, their was a bit of a tiff when one flaired user asserted that the incident at wounded knee was a massacre and another flaired user asserted it was a battle. Their was even a bad history follow up post. That's some subredditdrama level hijinks right there. \n\nAlso, there was once an extended exchange between two flaired users over whether the atomic bombs or the soviet invasion of Manchuria was more important to convincing the Japanese leadership to surrender. I'm pretty sure that ended amicably though (the debate, not the war)\n\nAs for drama between actual mods? I can't think of any times that spilled out in public, which makes this subreddit pretty unique. The cabal is very good at keeping its internal workings shadowy. If they ever fight over something like how to dole out the shill money I assume that they go to bad history and settle the matter Churchill vs Stalin style: with absurd amounts of alcohol at ungodly hours of night", "So, to provide a serious answer to your question, we thrive on the diversity and knowledge of our flaired users. When scholars approach a subject from a different background (history, anthropology, archaeology, etc.), or as you suggest different 'camps', there is a chance that different approaches conflict in their interpretation of the past. \n\nWhat separates /r/AskHistorians from other more volatile forums is the dedication to civility and respect in debate while maintaining a solid grasp of the limits of your expertise and a teachable attitude. \n\nThe vetting process for flaired users intentionally selects those scholars with a proven background of maintaining civil discourse. When we disagree we still maintain respect the work, dedication to the field, and wealth of acquired knowledge of the other party. We know we can learn from a constructive debate, and welcome the chance to explore other interpretations. \n\nI'm still new to modding but I can't remember any \"big crisis moments\" because when there is a disagreement there isn't a major explosion, or drama, or fighting. If you read a thread with a debate, it is almost always civil, respectful, and a great opportunity to learn about the different facets of the question. You may not even notice you are reading a debate on a potentially heated topic. We approach the other party with respect, ask questions, willingly acknowledge we don't have all the answers, and see it as an opportunity to learn. \n\nThis environment is only possible because we trust and respect each other.", "So the question seems to be about differences of opinion between the *flaired users* (i.e. the subject matter experts, most of whom are not mods) on history topics, rather than scraps between the *moderators* (all of whom are flaired, most of whom are also experts) over subreddit policy.\n\nThe example that comes to my mind are some striking differences in opinion on how to approach Jared Diamond's pop history book *Guns Germs and Steel*, which range from blazing rage, to firm recommendations against, to ambivalence, to one flair who actually recommended it in some particular context. But these tend to happen in separate threads, rather than several flairs in the same thread challenging each other.", "To be honest, I can't really think of much in the way of major disagreements between flaired users--there have been a few, but it is rare. Part of the reason is that the questions asked just don't really lead themselves to much in the way of disagreement. From an academic standpoint, they are often pretty basic--which certainly isn't a bad thing! The other reason is that although there are a large number of total flairs, this is a number that covers the entirety of human history, and so there aren't all that many overlapping specialties. So for example, there are quite a few people flared for Greece and Rome, but nobody besides me really does the Roman economy, and so if I make a contentious statement I probably won't get called out."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20hf1i/did_stalin_really_kill_millions_of_people_how_do/"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4d6g39", "title": "Did Lenin actually want to create a single-party state, or was it unavoidable?", "selftext": "He had promised all power to the workers Soviets in his April theses and temporarily went along with the idea of a constituent assembly, but communism was slower than Lenin had wanted:\n\n - The rest of Europe didn't undergo socialist revolutions as Lenin had expected.\n - The unrest in the countryside meant that Lenin couldn't deny land to the peasants and so went against communist principles to give them ownership of the land.\n - Despite its name, War Communism went against the principles of Communism by taking power from the workers and putting factories under the control of industrialist individuals.\n\nDid the single-party state simply arise from the fact that socialism wasn't yet fully implemented yet in Russia, and the Communist party would need to stay in rule to embed it?\n\nEdit: Moreover Russia had been in a state of political flux for so long that economic issues had not been dealt with. Perhaps the single-party state was considered necessary until economic issues could be resolved.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d6g39/did_lenin_actually_want_to_create_a_singleparty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1oabd5", "d1pvnu9"], "score": [7, 2], "text": ["Were there any factions within the party (or any other single party system's party) that functioned as de facto parties?", "No, the Vanguard Party model (as it is known) was specifically put forward by Lenin. Speaking as a Leninist myself, the idea of the Vanguard Party is that it begins as a subset of the \"class-conscious\" (i.e. revolutionary) section of the working class which simultaneously educates their fellow workers as well as agitating for revolution within the structure of the capitalist state. When revolution arrives, the Vanguard Party leads the workers in combatting the capitalists, and when the socialist state is established, the Vanguard Party organizes the state in such a way as to be as interconnected between the government, the workplace, and the general public as possible - the idea being to create a government that was subservient to and a part of the working class, from top to bottom. \n\nTo give a rough outline of what such a system looked like, in the workplace (such as a factory), workers elected a representative to local workers' councils (Soviets, where the Soviet Union gets its name). These in turn elect regional legislatures, which send representatives to the legislature of their SSR, which in turn send representatives to the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature. In addition, all workplaces, as well as schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure-esque offices, also had Party representatives, to which any citizen could go to submit suggestions or complaints. Via the process of Democratic Centralism, which Lenin described as \"freedom of discussion, unity of action\" if I recall correctly, these issues could be brought before the Party, who would discuss and debate the issue freely as they so wished, and then cast a vote on the matter. Party members were expected to uphold the decision, no matter what it was. Lenin famously said that this model was \"1,000 times as democratic as bourgeois (capitalist) democracy\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "fjcp7r", "title": "Upon King Charles II of Spain's death, the coroner reported many medical irregularities. Were these meant to be taken literally?", "selftext": "\"His heart did not contain a single drop of blood, it was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.\" Are any of these legitimate medical conditions that would be possible?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fjcp7r/upon_king_charles_ii_of_spains_death_the_coroner/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkmhcj4"], "score": [42], "text": ["More can always be said of the topic, but I commend to your attention [this examination of this matter exactly](_URL_0_) by u/BedsideRounds."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a2dkmw/the_physician_in_the_autopsy_of_charles_ii_gave/"]]}
{"q_id": "96nmcf", "title": "When Belisarius was sent to reconquer Italy, he had just 7,500 troops. Why so few?", "selftext": "This seems like a laughably small force to retake the entire peninsula, given the number of Austrogothic forces, and especially relative to the 100,000 troops the empire had sent to Africa just a half-century earlier. If regaining Italy was so important to Justinian, why did he send such a puny force to do it? Was that really all the empire could spare? Were there recruitment problems? Were the rest of Byzantine forces tied down defending other parts of the empire? \nThanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96nmcf/when_belisarius_was_sent_to_reconquer_italy_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e42qc68"], "score": [21], "text": ["To start Belisarius' 7,000 man army wasn't \"laughably small\" its smaller size was likely a strategic choice. There several factors that may have played into Justinian's decision to send Belisarius with only 7,000 men. In addition to this Belisarius was an extremely capable general and Justinian most likely trusted that he would be able to make significant progress in the initial stages of the war with a smaller force. In addition to this Justinian also sent an army commanded by Mundus to capture Salona in Dalmatia. Justinian also had an alliance with the Franks who were a very powerful kingdom at this point.\n\n\nFirstly, acording to Procopius the war against the Goths began rather spontaneously: \n > And the emperor, upon learning what had befallen Amalasuntha, immediately entered upon war (Procopius *De Bello Gothico* I.V)\n\nAnd it seems that Justinian also wanted to invaded Italy before the Goths even knew they were at war:\n > And the emperor instructed Belisarius to give out that his destination was Carthage, but as soon as they should arrive at Sicily, they were to disembark there as it obliged for some reason to do so, and make trial of the Island. And if it should be possible to reduce it to subjection without any trouble, they were to take possession and not let it go again; but if they should meet with any obstacle they should sail with all speed to Libya, giving no one an opportunity to perceive what their intention was (Procopius *De Bello Gothico* I.V)\n\nSo the war was not only spontaneous but Justinian also wanted to keep the element of surprise up until Belisarius landed in Sicily. Forming an army of 15,000+ men would have taken much longer than it would to gather 7,500 men. This means that Mundus' invasion of Dalmatia either would have to be delayed, or he would have arrived and put the Goths on alert before Belisarius could reach Sicily. An army twice as large also means that Justinian would need twice as many ships to get them to Sicily. It would also make for a longer trip as it would likely take more time and effort to ensure that such a large number of ships stayed together for the entire journey. It would also be less believable that the emperor would send his best general with that many men to Carthage, when they already controlled North Africa. 7,500 men on the other hand could simply be perceived as a garrison force to help keep the peace in the newly conquered territory. Sicily also would not have been as heavily defended as the Italian mainland, and the entire island could be, and was, taken with a smaller force. A large number of these men were also described by Procopius as \"notable spearmen\" which probably means they were distinguished soldiers. He also would have hard men from his household guard with him, most of whom would have fought with him against the Vandals. In addition to these men Belisarius had approximately 3,000 Isaurians, who were elite troops the Empire often used in war (they even formed a large part of the imperial bodyguard for several centuries. So while we might perceive 7,500 men as being a \"small\" force, it was composed of some of the best men that the Empire had available and was led by their best general. There's also a possibility that Justinian and Belisarius had hopes that the non-Gothic population would support their war effort as many of them still viewed themselves as Romans. Also, controlling Sicily meant that Justinian could easily reinforce Belisarius if the need to do so arose. It also gave Belisarius easy access to the region of Calabria, whose Roman population was largely dissatisfied with Gothic rule.\n\n\nBelisarius actually managed to take nearly the entire island of Sicily without any Gothic opposition, the port city of Panormus being the only exception to this. Despite the resistance at Panormus Belisarius was still able to take the city with relative ease, and thus completed the conquest of Sicily. Meanwhile, Mundus defeated a Gothic army in battle and caprtured Salona. According to Procopius both of these events made the King Theodatus extremely afraid and he agreed to surrender the entirety of Italy to Justinian. If Procopius is right, then Belisarius and his \"small\" army was partially responsible for Theodatus admitting defeat, with minimal bloodshed. However, while the Romans and Goths were negotiating a treaty the army commanded by Mundus lost control of Salona. Mundus actually defeated the Goths in a second battle, but he was killed and his men then withdrew from Dalmatia. This emboldened Theodatus who immediately rescinded his promise to surrender Italy when he learned that the Goths had retaken Salona. \n\n\nThe composition of Belisarius' army likely played a role a role in its size as well. Based on Procopius' description of several battles, and troop movements, of the Gothic War, Belisarius' army contained a large number of elite cavalry. After crossing into Calabria, Belisarius would often send a smaller contingent of cavalry, around 2,000 men, to skirmish with larger Gothic armies and sometimes he would even send them to capture entire regions. The added mobility of an army composed largely of elite cavalry allowed Belisarius to take several cities before the Goths could even react. Belisarius was able to reach Rome with relative ease, the only major roadblock being the city of Naples, with this smaller army, largely because of the increased mobility that came along with its size and composition.  The armies ability to skirmish and then retreat before suffering significant casualties would have been an invaluable strategy for conserving manpower while also inflicting a large number of casualties on the Goths. Oftentimes this tactic also demoralized the Goths, as they were usually unable to kill very many, if any at all, Romans before they retreated back to their camp. Part of the reason they were so successful in these skirmishes is because a large number of Belisarius' cavalry were Huns and Slavs who were skilled at using the bow from horseback, and thus they could return to camp before the Goths were able to come anywhere near them. \n\nIn regards to not being able to spare more troops, Justinian certainly had plenty of soldiers that he could have sent with Belisarius to begin with. In fact during the siege of Rome Justinian sent around 6,000 men to reinforce Belisarius. The first force was approximately 1,600 cavalrymen who were mostly Huns and Slavs, and then another 4-5,000 Isaurians. The Empire had access to a large number of *foederati*, in fact most of Belisarius' army seems to have been made up of non-Romans, and they did not hesitate to use them in large numbers. \n\nThus its not that retaking Italy wasn't important, because it absolutely was considering how much money he spent in the attempt, or that Belisarius' army was small because the Empire couldn't spare or gather more troops. It just made strategic sense to give Belisasrius a smaller army to begin with, and then reinforce him over time if need be. If anything the size of his army speaks to Belisarius great skill as a general, and the amount of trust that Emperor Justinian had in him. \n\nSources:\n\nProcopius, *De Bello Gothico*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "bz17kf", "title": "Do we completely understand how Pre-Columbian Incan stone workers moved and dressed massive stones? Many documentaries claim its a mystery...is it?", "selftext": "There are many documentaries out there claiming that how exactly  Pre-Columbian Incan stone workers moved and dressed massive stones is a real mystery no one fully understands. \n\nIs that accurate? \n\nHow did they quarry, lift, transport, and then perfectly and precisely cut these stones with such primitive levels of technology?\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bz17kf/do_we_completely_understand_how_precolumbian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqpbmwk"], "score": [53], "text": ["No, it is not at all accurate to say we don\u2019t know how they built their temples and other structures. .\n\n\n[Here is a write up on Incan masonry techniques](_URL_1_) from /u/Mictlantecuhtli in /r/badhistory and here's a [short version](_URL_0_) posted in /r/AskHistorians.\n\n\nEdited to make it clear what I was saying no to."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://imgur.com/a/2Nzuj5t", "https://imgur.com/a/PMeAat3"], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/420d4o/ancient_inca_stone_softening/cz6jyp6/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3hx31g/all_in_all_its_just_another_12_sided_block_in_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "6ru768", "title": "Did the old testament really borrow from ancient Sumerian text? Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ru768/did_the_old_testament_really_borrow_from_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl8acfg"], "score": [21], "text": ["Which Sumerian text are you referring to? \n\nIf you're referring to the Atrahasis myth, yes and no. It's clear that there is some sort of general ANE flood myth (Noah, Atrahasis, Utnapishtim). Nobody in mainstream scholarship (whether conservative, liberal, or centrist) really disputes that, as any introductory textbook to the Hebrew Bible would tell you. See Collins' *An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,* for example. \n\nHowever, what is not immediately clear is whether or not the OT directly \"borrows\" these texts, or simply culls from the already well known story. While the OT certainly does have links to other pieces of ANE literature, it's not necessarily the case that these pieces of literature proper were being copied. In my view, just because you have a parallel in another piece of literature doesn't mean that it's necessarily one copying from the other; see Samuel Sandmel's article \"Parallelomania\" for a very interesting and enlightening discussion. \n\nI guess, to answer your question in a more direct way, there are far better explanations for the OT flood myth than a simple literary dependence of the OT upon a Sumerian text. The OT was written primarily in an oral culture, one in which stories were primarily communicated verbally, rather than via the written word (as the vast majority of the population was illiterate). The book to read on this is *The Flood Myth,* ed. Alan Dundes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "31130w", "title": "Is there any agreement among historians about who started the fire that's been burning since the world's been turning?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31130w/is_there_any_agreement_among_historians_about_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpxqjq2", "cpxrazv", "cpxsmt7", "cpxxnie", "cpy1pss", "cpy2574"], "score": [2, 13, 21, 17, 2, 2], "text": ["We didn't start the fire.", "I'm not a historian, but all I've ever read or heard it that we didn't start it. Maybe someone else will come in with a more solid answer but I doubt it. ", "The two current leading theories waffle between the Roman Emperor Nero and Mrs. O'Leary's cow.", "No one did.  It was *always* burning, since the world's been turning.  That indicates it predates life.", "I guess this prompts a similar question: When did the world start turning?", "I believe Dr. Schrute once concluded that Ryan started the fire. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3mqsf9", "title": "A Russian woman told me that Stalin's second wife, Nadya Alliluyeva, wanders the earth as a ghost, haunting the minds of young men. Is this a widespread myth or just a crazy old lady's fantasies?", "selftext": "According to her, the soul of Nadezhda Alliluyeva is condemned to Earth for eternity since she committed suicide, and that care should be taken while reading about her or thinking about her, or she'll visit you in your dreams with her face covered in blood.\n\nWhat fascinated me was that it sounded like a stereotypical old legend about wronged queens in Western Europe (Bloody Mary, for instance), but with the queen replaced with a modern, Bolshevik revolutionary and the wife of Stalin, who himself have repeatedly been compared to the old Czars (he also liked to compare himself to the Iranian Shahs).\n\n*If* this really is a widespread myth, are there other weird hybrids between folklore and the collective memory of Soviet statesmen and -women?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3mqsf9/a_russian_woman_told_me_that_stalins_second_wife/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvhomia", "cvhrdpp", "cvhykke"], "score": [9, 29, 21], "text": ["New here. Is this a valid question for this subreddit? Not about any historical facts, more just a speculation of current superstitious beliefs?", "While I can't speak on this specific legend, the short answer to your question is: yes, several pieces of folklore were re-worked under the the genre of socialist realism. See: *Politicizing Magic-An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales* by Marina Balina, Helena Goscilo, and Mark Lipovetsk. \n\nA couple specific examples mentioned in Politicizing Magic:\n\n- Tolstoy's *The Golden Key* is a retelling of *Pinocchio*\n- Lagin's *The Old Genie Khottabych* is a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights\n\nAll of which you should be able to find with a quick search. Moreover, many Soviet tales took familiar plot lines (e.g. the heroes quest) and motifs (e.g. repetition of the number 3) from folklore and put a Soviet spin on them, such as replacing the gain of personal wealth with the advancement of society as a whole. So while they weren't direct retelling the similarities are fairly easy to see when compared. I don't want to speak too much on this since I've only had one class on it a few years ago, and hopefully someone who's more informed can chime in.", "I can't speak specifically of this case, nor can I address the specific question of folklore and collective memory of Soviet statesmen and women. It's a great question and topic, and I suspect a great deal could be made of it.\n\nWhat I can do is provide some context, drawing on a couple of excerpts from my [Introduction to Folklore](_URL_0_). First, a general comment about suicides - a situation that many believed, following Europe tradition, required a special type of penance. Here is a paragraph from my Introduction:\n\n\"European folklore includes the idea that the time of death was pre-determined. There was a general feeling that a certain number of tasks or obligations must be completed before a person could die. Those who had committed suicide were forced to walk the earth as ghosts until the appointed time of their natural death. In addition, the place of burial was predestined. North American culture preserves the older European tradition of interpreting a sudden shiver as evidence that someone has just walked over one\u2019s final resting place \u2013 a location that is as predetermined as the time of death.\"\n\nAnd then there is a question about souls condemned to walk the earth because of some extraordinary sin. The sins Nadezhda Alliluyeva exceeded suicide because of her association with widespread murders in Stalin's period, so it should not be surprising to find folk belief that places her in the larger tradition of souls condemned to linger in a perpetual state of earthly penance.\n\nWhat I don't know is if this is a single person's imagining, placing Nadezhda Alliluyeva in a larger context of folk belief - that she concluded that Stalin's wife SHOULD be wandering the world and therefore she does. Or whether this is part of a larger specific tradition that has transformed the tortured life and death of this historical figure into a folk motif of legend. We need to hear from someone who can specifically address that question.\n\nOf the possible condemned souls, this instance you raise fits into #4 and #5 below. The story you cite FEELS like a real tradition, perhaps because it fits neatly into a context of folk belief. But whether it is a real traditional folk legend, as I have indicated, remains to be seen. \n\nHere is a second excerpt:\n\nEuropeans were fascinated by the idea of condemned souls, either of individuals or groups of people, who could not find rest. These unfortunates were forced to exist in a nether world, appearing occasionally before the living as evidence of their hideous or peculiar plight. Such motifs have been favorites with artists and writers. It is possible to identify six types of these beings.\n\n1. The \u201cWild Hunt\u201d is probably the oldest, occurring in ancient Greek sources and Scandinavian mythology. A cluster of stories refers to ghostly riders who race across the landscape or the night sky, questing for some phantom quarry that they can never catch. Legends tell of people seeing this eerie phenomenon. There are occasional references to the leader as being the god of death.\n\n2. The \u201cSleeping Army\u201d is a motif that appears in a variety of stories telling of a group of warriors killed in combat, who haunt the battlefield or wait inside a mound for some future conflict. People often believe such an army serves as a matter of last resort, a supernatural force that will rise up if their country is threatened with destruction. King Arthur\u2019s knights are often regarded as sleeping in this way, waiting for the return of their king, healed from his wounds after recuperating in the western island of Avalon.\n\n3. The \u201cFlying Dutchman\u201d is one of the better known and often used motifs of the condemned souls. This motif describes a phantom ship of ghostly sailors who travel the seas but never find harbor or rest. Their only respite comes every one hundred years, when they are allowed to anchor at a legendary port. Their ship is seen in bad weather. The story seems to be of medieval origin.\n\n4. The \u201cWandering Jew\u201d is also a motif belonging to this class. Like the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew appears to be of medieval origin. The legend tells of Ahasverus, a shoemaker of Jerusalem who refused to allow Jesus to sit while carrying his cross to Calvary. His fate is to wander the world, longing for rest.\n\n5. The Will-\u2019o-the-Wisp is described in Chapter 4. The character was not good enough for heaven and made himself feared by the devil, and so he was exiled from hell. He carries a burning ember, a relic from the time when he briefly entered the abode of Satan, and with this phantom light, he lures nighttime travelers away from their destination. This character is common in Britain.\n\n6. There are also various legends of medieval origin about cities that sank underground or into the sea because of some collective sin committed by the inhabitants. These towns return to earth every hundred years for a few hours, only to sink back to their eternal existence in perpetual limbo.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Folklore-Traditional-Studies-Elsewhere-ebook/dp/B00N65B0BY/ref=la_B001JS9G8Y_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443526004&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB001JS9G8Y"]]}
{"q_id": "4wbswf", "title": "Was the last Roman-Persian War (602-628) the biggest war in Antiquity?", "selftext": "There have been many wars between the Romans and Persians (and before that the Parthians). It seems to me the biggest and deadliest of those was the very last one, in which the Sassianians conquered huge parts of the Eastern Roman Empire but eventually were defeated by Heraclius.\n\nI was wondering then, how this war compare to the other wars of antiquity, particularly in the Roman World? If asked, I'd say the biggest war the Romans ever thought was the Punic Wars (especially the Second) but would I be wrong here?\n\nps: by biggest, I'm thinking number of troops deployed, sheer destruction and casualties.\n\nGratitude.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4wbswf/was_the_last_romanpersian_war_602628_the_biggest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d66i4ku", "d66jqdd"], "score": [5, 3], "text": ["Preface: I don't know anything about China so I'm not going to factor it into my post. There are also larger numbers for battles in various Greek sources but I'm no expert on those and I don't really believe most of them so I'll just talk about Rome.\n\nThere are lots of possible to answers, as huge numbers are often thrown around in the ancient sources. The last Roman-Persian war wouldn't make the list in terms of numbers, though it would be right up there in strategic and historical importance, especially considering its role in weakening the world's two superpowers just as Islam came on the scene. \n\nIn the Roman context, the largest pitched battle in antiquity in terms of casualties where we can be pretty confident of numbers might have been Battle of Cannae, with probably about 130,000 troops on the field and something like 80,000 Roman casualties, not to mention the thousands of Carthaginian casualties.* But the Battle of Arausio might be a better candidate, where the Romans appear to have suffered even greater casualties than at Cannae and the Germans probably suffered significantly more casualties than did Hannibal's troops at Cannae. At Arausio total battlefield deaths could easily be in the area of 100,000.** If we're going to believe the figures given in the ancient sources (aside from crazy outliers like many Persian numbers for Marathon or Thermopylae) then Roman victories such as Aquae Sextiae or Alesia are even greater in terms of casualties. Maybe I'm a bit of a sicko but I find the Roman defeats more interesting: overwhelming Roman victories are a dime a dozen.\n\nThe biggest war the Romans ever fought in terms of numbers was actually probably the long period of civil war that saw Augustus become the *princeps*, at the climax of which the Empire had 1.5 million troops in the field (Howarth 42). This was almost certainly the most troops any power of the ancient world had ever been able to field, and was without doubt never equaled. Whatever numbers you might read anywhere else, no other state but Rome in the entirety of antiquity had the logistical capacity to field such numbers.\n\n*Daly discusses these numbers on pp. 25-32, 202. Roman casualties might have been only around 50,000 (not including those captured) so maybe Arausio is a better example.\n\n**Compare that to one of the bloodiest days of WWI, the oft-referenced \"Black Day of the British Army\", the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where the British took half as many casualties, about 20,000 killed, over a front of several dozen kilometers.\n\nSources: \n\nGregory Daly, Cannae: The Experience of Battle, London: Routledge, 2002.\n\nHowarth, Randall S. War and Warfare in Ancient Rome, from The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, Eds. Brian Campbell and Lawrence A. Tritle, Oxford University Press,  New York, 2013, 29-45.", "In contrast to /u/PapiriusCursor, I will argue that the war of 603-628 (the war began a bit later) really was as significant as it looked, a war between two imperial powers that overshadowed anything that came before it, though obviously with the caveat that I know very little about what happened before 500. \n\nThe geopolitical implications of the war speak for themselves - war was unleashed not just on the borderlands of the two empires, but also in their very hearts. Constantinople was besieged for the first time ever by an army led by the Avar khagan in 626, whilst a Persian army looked on across the sea waiting for an opportunity to make the crossing and put an end to the ailing Roman empire. Merely two years later, Ctesiphon itself was under threat by a Roman army and the great Khusro II was overthrown by his son, an anticlimatic end to a career of unprecedented Persian military success. Powers beyond Rome and Persia were drawn in as well: the Avars with their Slavic confederates, the fractious Christian princes of the Transcaucasian mountains, and most decisively of all, the superpower of the Eurasian steppes, the Gokturk Khaganate. It was not a war between two powers of equal strength as before, but one fought by the Persians in order to destroy the Roman empire - a goal that had seemed so realistic in the 610s, and which the Romans themselves knew very well, for otherwise they would not have offered to become a vassal state of the Persians in 615, the lowest point the empire had ever sunk to.\n\nBut despite all that (or perhaps because of all the destruction caused), we still lack a good understanding of the war. The sources are poor and the best of the lot are very problematic. Persian accounts of the war can only be recovered from later Arab compilations, whilst contemporary Roman accounts leave much to be desired as well: the *Easter Chronicle* was far more interested in calculating the date and in events within Constantinople, saying only a little about the broader military situation, whilst the poetry of George of Pisidia is literally imperial propaganda written to glorify Heraclius, so it is hardly the sort of critical account of the war that historians want. Later sources often fill in the gaps, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to know how accurately they used their sources and how their agendas affected their telling of the earlier war. \n\nThe largest problem here is that we simply don't have the sources necessary to provide the numbers, yet the two opposing sides must have mustered huge armies in order to achieve their goals. For example, we know virtually nothing about the conquest of Egypt, the breadbasket of the Roman empire, apart from the fact that it happened and that the patriarch of Alexandria fled the province in dodgy circumstances. Yet presumably Roman forces must have given battle (and lost), whilst the Persians must have left behind a substantial garrison to integrate Egypt into their new empire. The same must be true for the Levant and Armenia. It is a shame that we cannot write a more substantial account than that, but surely this enterprise was a significant one, so when we think about the numbers involved we must take this into account.\n\nThe same was true for the Romans, since decently-seized garrisons were maintained throughout the empire. Between 603-608, significant forces were placed alongside the Danube frontier (no numbers are known, but one source recorded that Phocas sent back the Danubian troops after his seizure of power, so presumably the previously highly militarised imperial presence was maintained) and in North Africa, from which Heraclius would launch his coup. One rebellious army was sent into Egypt, provoking Phocas to send an army there rather than to defend the east, whilst the African navy sailed for the imperial capital itself. Both prongs of the rebel assault succeeded, so we can only assume that both forces were perceived as at least equal to the challenge of seizing both Constantinople and Egypt. There was a revolt in Italy c.615-7 as well, which had to be crushed by local imperial forces, whilst the Lombard threat must have ensured a heightened military presence even if this had not occurred. Spania, that strip of imperial territory Heraclius still had in Spain, was meanwhile finally lost in 624, taken by force by the Visigothic King Sisebut, which implies that there was a military struggle of some sort there too.\n\nWe do not know the numbers involved in any of these places, but it is important to remember that whilst the empire was struggling for its life, a good chunk of its army was elsewhere fighting their own battles. This made the Persian war all the more threatening and makes it even clearer that the war was greater than what the sources say on the surface. I find it difficult to think of a time when the empire was in such dire straits, in which it was embroiled in conflict on multiple fronts, though perhaps a classicist can help me out here.\n\nWe do of course have some figures for the number of soldiers involved, which I think are still fairly impressive. For the siege of Constantinople, there were supposedly 80,000 besiegers, whilst the defenders had 12,000 cavalry and an unknown number of infantry. Since there must have been more infantry than cavalry (especially in a siege), this battle must have easily involved more than 100,000 fighting men. We don't have any estimates for how big the Persian army at Chalcedon waiting to cross the straits was, but we can only assume that it was reasonably strong if it is to have any hope of surviving the march across Asia Minor and to help out in the siege. Altogether, the size of the forces involved actually compares quite favourably to the Battle of Cannae mentioned by /u/PapiriusCursor. These numbers can of course be criticised and Avar/Persian numbers are only Roman estimates, whilst the suggestion that more Roman infantry were involved is only a suggestion, so we can hardly be certain. But that is the nature of history and even if all these numbers are off by a few tens of thousands, the armies involved were still sizable ones.\n\nThe most well-recorded front was in the Transcaucasian mountains, in which Roman sources provide a variety of figures. Heraclius in 624 for example allegedly faced a Persian army of 40,000 men; he defeated this army and a multitude of other attacks, resulting in him having 50,000 captives by winter. This is I think fairly unreliable, since this is only preserved in the ninth-century Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. He probably had access to official records, but even if he did, how are we to judge whether these figures are correct? These are Roman estimates at best and only the size of one Persian army in the region was provided, who knows how many Persian soldiers were available there as a whole. Closer to the time, Pseudo-Sebeos, writing around 660, noted that 120,000 men marched with Heraclius on the campaign of 624, which is obviously a ludicrously large figure and should not be taken seriously, so this isn't particularly helpful either. For the campaign of 625, pseudo-Sebeos was a bit more sane and recorded a Persian pincer movement with one army of 30,000 men and another army of unknown size; this attack was repulsed. Later, a surprise Persian attack was also defeated by an elite Roman detachment of 20,000 men, but that's all we know.\n\nIn 626, a Persian army of about 50,000 in the Caucasus was recorded by Theophanes, which I think is significant when it took place at the same as the thrust towards to Constantinople, so (guessing wildly here) the Persians were perhaps able to muster up 100,000 men in one year, if we assume both armies to be of the same size. This is after the victories and defeats of the previous two decades, so this number is to me quite impressive. Near the end of the war, the Gokturks intervened in the war, allegedly sending 40,000 men to help Heraclius with his final campaign against the Persians, as well as presumably doing great damage on the Persians' eastern frontier. The numbers are obviously problematic, but from a strategic perspective it should be obvious that the Persians now not only had to defend their new provinces around the Mediterranean, but also the previously 'safe' territories in the east, just as the Romans still had to maintain a presence in the western Mediterranean.\n\nThis answer is a bit all over the place, but I hope I have demonstrated the problems with our sources and how the numbers we have are not illustrative of just how damaging the war was, simply because the 'true' number is unknown and must be much larger. I don't know what numbers historians have suggested for the Second Punic War, but I fail to see how a war fought on a far grander scale could have involved less people. Sources-wise, a fine summary of the war can be found in Peter Sarris' *Empires of Faith* (2011) in the relevant chapter, but keep an eye out in the future for James Howard-Johnston's *magnum opus*, a monograph focusing in particular on this 'last great war of antiquity', which I believe will be the definitive study of this conflict for a very long time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1jruhy", "title": "Is Cardinal Richelieu the great mastermind that some portray him to be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jruhy/is_cardinal_richelieu_the_great_mastermind_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbhzrkf"], "score": [21], "text": ["To break your question into two slightly different flavors:\n\n**Question #1**. Is the image of Cardinal Richelieu as a political mastermind purely a creation of popular fantasy, or are there historians who view it as roughly accurate?\n\nThe standard view is roughly that, yes, he was a particularly influential and adept negotiator of the political scene, who dominated the politics of France in his era, and played a key role in centralizing France and strengthening the monarchy. A good representative of that view is Jean-Vincent Blanchard's biography *\u00c9minence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France*; the introduction starts like so:\n\n >  Take a look at his portrait. See the poised authority of the statesman, the gaze that stares back with lucid intelligence, and maybe a touch of bemused irony, as if he had just been asked a question ignorant of the magnitude of his responsibilities, the immense task of making France a powerful and prestigious land. [...]\n\n >  These are not just effects born under the flattering paintbrush of the painter Philippe de Champaigne. Armand-Jean du Plessis\u2014Cardinal Richelieu's full name\u2014was a leader of the government of France, a chief of diplomacy, and a war commander. [...]\n\n...and continues for several pages recounting his always-central role in various events.\n\nOn the other hand we might ask,\n\n**Question #2**. Are there historians who consider the popular image of Richelieu as an era-dominating mastermind to be embellished or even outright wrong?\n\nYes to this question as well. A good representative is David Parrott's *Richelieu\u2019s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624-1642*. It's a large book arguing a lot of things, but has a general flavor of arguing that France was not as effectively centralized under Richelieu as some accounts portray, and Richelieu himself did not have as big a singlehanded effect on its development as popularly thought. Instead, Parrott emphasizes the larger set of social and political forces at work in 17th-century France.\n\n[This review of Parrott's book](_URL_0_) provides a good summary of that view:\n\n >  Parrott shows convincingly that the notion that \"Richelieu had laid the foundations for a strategy that was about to bear fruit in the 1640s must be questioned\" (162). If a centralized France prospered in the years after Richelieu\u2019s death, Parrott implies that the Cardinal Minister of Louis XIII merits little credit for it. If France ultimately emerged from the Thirty Years War in a powerful position, it must have been due to factors other than a brilliant Richelieu at the helm, for there was no overall direction of the French army in the era of his ministry, but rather various \"levels of administrative confusion and incoherence\" (415). In the light of this study, images of Cardinal Richelieu as the clever mastermind behind the triumph of French royal absolutism, at home and abroad, in peace and in war, may seem more part of the history of French government propaganda than as anything else."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://repositories.tdl.org/tdl/bitstream/handle/2249.1/5386/V60-I3-27-Worcestor.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "666tcy", "title": "Did ancient Polynesian civilizations actually use such decorated sails as depicted in Disney's Moana?", "selftext": "So sadly I only just now got around to watching the latest Disney animated movie. And this part honestly confused me slightly. As per my understanding, sails were really prone to breakage, falling apart, getting holes and such. And thus spending so much time on sails that were so finely and artistically decorated seems... pointless ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/666tcy/did_ancient_polynesian_civilizations_actually_use/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgrcave"], "score": [2], "text": ["I'm a tad late for it, but anyways. Your question has been replied here before _URL_0_ by /u/b1uepenguin"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fev2n/are_the_boat_designs_in_disneys_moana_accurate_to/?ref=search_posts"]]}
{"q_id": "85exmt", "title": "Was nude swimming really enforced in public swimming pools in the first part of the 20th century? If so, why?", "selftext": "I just heard this for the first time, and I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it before. Someone mentioned it in passing on a podcast I listen to and, after some quick Googling, it seems to be true. It seems crazy to me that this was the case, and that I had never heard of this until now.\n\nIs it true that most public swimming pools (including school pools) enforced a rule of nude-only swimming? What was the reasoning here? Also, what prompted the cultural shift away from this? It seems to be counter to the typical trend of society becoming less modest over time.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/85exmt/was_nude_swimming_really_enforced_in_public/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvxxbik"], "score": [28], "text": ["Yes, nude swimming (at least for males) was commonplace in schools, universities, and YMCAs all across the country. Pools or bathing times were segregated by sex.  \n\nThe official reason was to eliminate problems with mildew if damp suits were stored overnight, and to avoid problems with fabric threads in the pool filters. The American Public Health Association recommended nude bathing for males in their 1926 standards handbook.  Not until the 1960s were quick-drying nylon or similar swimsuits widely available. Same-sex nudity wasn't unusual at the time, when rural boys still skinny-dipped, and when soldiers, sailors, and athletic teams showered or bathed in groups.  Some teachers and youth leaders viewed group nudity for boys as a part of growing up and as preparation for military service. Same-sex nudity seems to be an area where American society has become much *more* modest since the 1970s.\n\n[This Chicago Public Radio report](_URL_0_) gives more detail on the nude-swimming requirement in Chicago public schools."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.wbez.org/shows/curious-city/baring-it-all-why-boys-swam-naked-in-chicago-high-schools/c9a3a9e2-6ae3-404b-80e5-0c4bf4d5a0be"]]}
{"q_id": "5zjn5p", "title": "When did doctors in the US stop making house calls? And why?", "selftext": "At what point in US history did this shift take place and what were the economic and/or sociological forces that prompted this shift?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5zjn5p/when_did_doctors_in_the_us_stop_making_house/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dez33l8"], "score": [9], "text": ["Tag on question, did this shift occur in other places around the globe and does it relate to population density/urbanisation?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3l5qp4", "title": "Why did the USSR reject genetics?", "selftext": "From the little I've read about it, the rejection seems to mainly be for ideological reasons. As in it didn't fit with the  communist ideas of equality and was too \"bourgeois\". Surely this can't be the whole story? Was there some economic benefit to it or some other type of pragmatic reasoning behind the rejection?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l5qp4/why_did_the_ussr_reject_genetics/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv3fazs", "cv3hzs2", "cv3lmsk"], "score": [10, 127, 6], "text": ["Just to clarify, I think he's asking about [Trofim Lysenko](_URL_0_) and I'm very curious about this myself.  I studied botany in college and am interested in the Soviet Union, and I never quite could figure this out.", "This is actually a very interesting case study for politics under Stalinism, and how Stalin's ideas moved on from the purely political, the theoretical, to the practical. They didn't so much reject genetics as adopt, for a time, a more politically convenient theory as their view of heredity.\n\nThe Soviets, and particularly Stalin, saw the Mendelian idea that competition was the basis for passing on genes as repugnant, *because he could not change them* as easily, and the parallels to capitalist *economic* theories were too inconvenient. There was an inherent competitive trait in both. Lysenko proposed a theory that somewhat sidetracked the idea of competition in genetics. It fit with Stalin's and the political establishments ideas on many levels.\n\nIf you look at Soviet education theories from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, a period sometimes referred to as \"High Stalinism\", there was a theory that the minds of children, and to some extent the working classes, were like empty pots. This was convenient for the Soviets as they could create a whole new kind of man through education.\n\nThe Soviet Union under Stalin was a place where total political control was not only seen as necessary but also *positive* in the move towards a true communist state. This idea that total control was a requirement grew into a state of mind where *everything* could be bent to political control. Including plants, animals, and the transfer of genes. \n\nIt went hand in hand with the drive for the new man, sometimes called *Homo Sovieticus*, where education had to be correct ideologically so too it had to be for scientific theory. The idea that Lysenko presented was attractive to the politics of the time in the Soviet hierarchy. The idea that children, plants, and animals could inherit *acquired traits* rather than genes were great news because it would make the creation of the New Soviet Man, and his society *easier*, all the while giving more weight to Soviet political dogma. \n\nIt all contributed to the way of thinking in the Soviet Union, and in other dictatorships, specifically the Third Reich, that everything around them could be molded, everything they controlled was plastic rather than hard stone, that with sufficient zeal and obedience, you could bend even the fundamental structures of life to your politics was a gold mine for the Soviet or Nazi regimes. It gave them equal parts motivation, and legitimacy for their actions.\n\nNothing these regimes did happened independently from politics, nothing happened in a bubble. Everything was tied to politics, and there was some understanding that a good career came with good, aligned with the regime, politics.\n\nBut the Soviets also thought it really worked on crops. Initially, the Soviets saw yield increases from Lysenko's theories, at least that's what they *thought*. But they started trying Lysenkos theories when they also started using tractors and *chemical fertilizers*. That's where the yield increases came from, but since Lyshenko was a favorite of Stalin, saying so was not only political suicide, but practical suicide too.\n\nSources include the following:\n\n*Iron Curtain: the crushing of Eastern Europe* by Applebaum, specifically chapter 13 *Homo Sovieticus* is of particular interest.\n\n*Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II * by Lowe \n\n*The Cold War* by Gaddis (not a lot from this one)\n\n*Revolutionary Russia* by Figes", "This BBC show from a few years ago:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nis about that very subject. I found it really to be a fascinating story. I'd say the short answer is that the picture it suggested of reality was inconvenient, ideologically. The guests on the show are estimable experts and explain it much better than I could."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko"], [], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bw51j"]]}
{"q_id": "9mufmn", "title": "What\u2019s the best way to check the accuracy of a documentary?", "selftext": "I feel like a lot of times documentaries aren\u2019t always accurate scientifically or historically (extreme example being discovery channel \u2018documentary\u2019 on mermaids). What\u2019s a good way of checking whether a documentary is actually historically accurate and not wildly lying to me? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9mufmn/whats_the_best_way_to_check_the_accuracy_of_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7if6c7"], "score": [24], "text": ["This is a great question, and one that I can actually talk about from my own personal experience because it directly impacted the rest of my life.  While it starts out as anecdotal, I will use this as an example into how you can fact check historical documentaries. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn August 2010, I was in the Army and had just come back from Iraq and was on leave, so I had a bunch of time on my hands.  I started watching random documentaries and somehow stumbled upon one called [The Revolution](_URL_1_) that was created by the History Channel.   It's a 13-episode show that spanned from the 1760s to 1800 in North America.  I blew through the series in a day or two and loved every second.  Part of what really drew me in was that there was a ton of information presented by the historians in it that I never heard before because American High Schools mainly teach a mythological version of this history that exemplifies America as the heroes.   Examples of new things I learned were: \n\n* The Boston Massacre wasn't actually a Massacre and the British soldiers weren't really villains in that particular scenario. \n* The Continental Congress constantly argued with one another.\n* Washington's 1775-1776 Army was dead awful, filled with unqualified leaders who had no idea what the hell they were doing.  \n* Slaves weren't granted automatic emancipation for fighting in the Revolution and the British were the first people to actually make this offer.\n\nSo after it was over, I found myself asking, \"is all this true?\" I wasn't a historian, so I didn't know how to find this stuff out.  So I reached out to an old professor of mine (I had dropped out of college years earlier) and asked him, 'how do you vet a documentary like this?'  He immediately asked me if historians were in the documentary (there were) then he told me to read some of their books.  A historian who was featured in the series named Bruce Chadwick had written a book that the documentary referenced so I ordered it ([George Washington's War](_URL_0_)).  The book was amazing and captivating. (This was also a year before I went back to school to become a historian and 6 years before I choose the Revolutionary period in Grad School for my speciality).  The book outlined so much info that I had no idea about, especially on Washington's life.  I then used this as a jumping off point since I realized that it was helpful to see Chadwick's work in book form, but I wanted to see if other historians or writers agreed with him.  So I went to Barns  &  Nobel and bought another book on Washington's Army and was again really surprised by what I saw.  \n\nWhile I didn't fully realize it at the time, what I was doing was cross checking my secondary source by finding out what the historians in the film actually said themselves (and not simply what the film makers wanted them to have said) but also checked to see if the film linked up with what other historians were saying about the same period.\n\nSimilarly, this is the best way for anyone to vet a documentary.  Find what historians in the documentary are saying for themselves and then cross check it with other historians not featured in the film. This can be done across disciplines and can be super helpful. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-War-Revolutionary-Presidency/dp/140220406X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539177556&sr=1-1&keywords=george+washington%27s+war", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-SwXEifHHo"]]}
{"q_id": "doylzp", "title": "In Disney's Mulan, how would Mulan have brought dishonor to the remains of her fellow soldiers by being revealed as a woman? And what would it have meant?", "selftext": "I recall that the emperor saying that Mulan dishonored the chinese army by disguising herself as a woman. Since he listed it along with assuming a false identity and destruction of property, I assume that the damage done to the honor (whatever it may be) was non-negotiable.  \nSo...what I want to know is if Mulan actually did screw people over in her masquerade, and how badly, and if she knew what she was putting on the line.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/doylzp/in_disneys_mulan_how_would_mulan_have_brought/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f5uwp8k"], "score": [185], "text": ["I feel a bit silly mentioning this, but I might as well: Disney's *Mulan* (1998) is not a historical representation of any period of Asian history. From the clothing to the setting to the politics to the architecture to the gender roles. (And for that matter, I'm sure 2020's version will be more of the same.) Really, Disney's *Mulan* (1998) is much more about America's changing understanding of identity and gender roles than about Chinese understanding in any era of dynastic history. \n\nI'll be the first to say it's an animated classic and list it up there as one of my favorite Disney films, but it's unfortunately a film steeped in Orientalism. Everything in the film is picked for it's \"Chinese-ness\" not for any role it actually played in Chinese history. Take for example the final scene of the Palace being blown up by the final fight between Mulan and Shan Yu (spoiler alert). It's portrayed atop the Forbidden City. Which began construction during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) but is portrayed at its Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) incarnation. That said, the Xiongnu (Huns) haven't been a threat to China since the *first century C.E.* But ultimately, as per *The Last Samurai* and *Lost Horizon*, the oriental setting is just that, a *setting* to play out Western understandings and ideas. *Note: that doesn't make them bad, but they're certainly not ideas that spring from classical Chinese poetry or philosophy. \n\nThe story of Mulan is a very popular Chinese story, so I'll focus on the two most classic interpretations of the story and won't bother dealing with the explosion of reinterpretations into the 20th Century (though we'll stop by Maxine Hong Kingston's work since it leads directly to 1998). \n\nThe earliest extant version of the Mulan story comes from a 12th Century text that the author, Guo Maoqian, claims comes from a 6th Century musical text. This ballad, which I'll refer to as \"the original\" Mulan, takes place during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-535). The Northern Wei, who referred to their country as Tuoba, were under threat not from the Xiongnu (Huns) but from the Rouren. What's especially notable about the Northern Wei is that they were not a native Chinese Dynasty, but were established by a nomadic tribe that took over China and established their rule. Prior to the establishment of Tuoba, Buddhism was a curiosity. An academic study, but was fundamentally averse to the Chinese understanding of the universe. If people reincarnate, then what use is honoring the ancestors? If, as Kong Tzu (Confucius) has said that fathers are supposed to be the head of the household, then how to understand monasticism and celibacy? \n\nTuoba, like future nomadic-based dynasties (the Mongols and the Manchu) had no such hang ups and used Buddhist imagery and institutions to justify their rule, placing them above native Taoist and Confucian justifications for rule. Until arguably the Republic but most definitely the Maoist victory in the Civil War, this was a feature of Chinese governance and their understanding of how the universe works. \n\nAnyway, if the 12th Century original is inspired by a 6th Century, i.e. a Tuoba text taking place during their war-time challenges with the Rouren, it can be read with that understanding in mind: \n\n >  Merits are recorded in twelve ranks\n >  And grants a hundred thousand strong.\n >  The Khan asks her what she desires.\n >  \"Mulan has no use for a high official's post.\n >  I wish to borrow a ten-thousand mile camel\n >  To take me back home.\"\n\nNote the use of \"her\" in this translation is for English users. The Chinese doesn't have a gender marker. It would initially lead an English reader to think that the Khan (note the title is not the Chinese *Emperor*) was never under the impression that Mulan was a man. (See the link at the bottom for the full text and translation)\n\nThat said, Mulan's family doesn't seem to be bothered by her cross dressing and gender role, but are more concerned that she might die and not return. \n\nAt the beginning: \n\n >  At dawn she bids farewell to Father and Mother,\n >  In the evening she camps on the bank of the Yellow River.\n >  She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling for Daughter,\n >  She only hears the Yellow River's flowing water cry jian-jian.\n.\n >  At dawn she bids farewell to the Yellow River,\n >  In the evening she arrives at the summit of Black Mountain.\n >  She doesn't hear the sound of Father and Mother calling for Daughter,\n >  She only hears Mount Yan's nomad horses cry jiu-jiu.\n\nAnd after the war: \n\n >  Father and Mother hear Daughter is coming\n >  They go outside the city wall, supporting each other.\n >  When Older Sister hears Younger Sister is coming\n >  Facing the door, she puts on rouge, .\n.\n >  When Little Brother hears Older Sister is coming\n > He sharpens the knife, quick, quick, for pig and sheep.\n\nOnly Mulan's comrades in arms were unaware. And presumably, we, the audience, are taken aback that Mulan was able to keep her identity hidden for so long. \n\n >  \"I open the door to my east room,\n >  I sit on my bed in the west room,\n.\n >  I take off my wartime gown\n >  And put on my old-time clothes.\"\n >  Facing the window she fixes the cloudlike hair on her temples,\n >  Facing a mirror she dabs on yellow flower powder\n.\n >  She goes out the door and sees her comrades.\n >  Her comrades are all shocked.\n >  Traveling together for twelve years\n >  They didn't know Mulan was a girl.\n\nIn other words, Mulan puts on women's clothes and when her comrades come to visit, they are shocked to discover that their brother-in-arms was a woman the whole time. \n\nIf I had to interpret this from the lens of the Northern Wei, assuming such a text exists, it's impossible for me not to see heavy Buddhist imagery. Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is primarily represented in China as his female form, most commonly known as her Tibetan variant, Tara, but popularly known in China as the Goddess Kuan Yin. As you can tell, Bodhisattvas take many forms. They have male forms, female forms, peaceful forms, and wrathful forms. And Mulan's role in the ballad, in my understanding, has far less to do with classical Chinese values, but places emphasis on her willingness to die for her family - her elderly father and her younger siblings particularly. \n\nRegardless of what it may be saying to the average listener or story teller beyond pure entertainment value, the original story of Mulan tells a very loud tale of the shifting understanding of Buddhism's gentle and caring nature within Chinese society, but also as a wrathful and protective force when it needs to be. In other words, how the Tuoba sought to be perceived to the Chinese they ruled over. \n\nHow that compares with contemporary Tuoba military practices is a little beyond my skill at the moment, but what we're concerned here with art and its interpretation over the centuries. \n\nNow all of that above is assuming that Guo more-or-less correctly transmitted the text about six centuries later. Even if he didn't, the Song Dynasty would have been quite Buddhist, and I find it hard to believe the Kuan Yin imagery would have been lost on him. \n\n1/2"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ebalpd", "title": "Movie swordfights nowadays are flashy but unrealistic. We don't know any better, but a medival citizen might. Were swordfights in medieval plays done realistically or flashily? And when/how did flashy swordfights become more popular on stage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ebalpd/movie_swordfights_nowadays_are_flashy_but/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fb60f6c", "fb68sm8"], "score": [10, 16], "text": ["We know little about fight scenes in Medieval plays. For example, Symes (2009) writes\n\n >  ... a group of new converts in Riga were terrified by the all\u2010too\u2010realistic battle scenes of 'an extremely well\u2010produced play of the prophets' performed by German missionaries. Who knew that *ordines prophetarum* even *had* battle scenes? We never would have guessed, were it not for this stray reference in Henry of Livonia's chronicle, since none of the scripts that survive contains such a scene.\n\nBut we know rather more about theatrical fight scenes from later times, when swords were still in use. Our modern tradition of theatrical combat - with slower, bigger movements than \"real\" combat, both for safety and for audience appreciation - has solid roots in Elizabethan theatre, when duels were still fought, and fencing was an important part of a gentleman's education. \"Gladiators\" (such as the famous James Figg) were still fighting with swords as sport for public viewing.\n\nThus, we have four kinds of swordfighting co-existing: fighting with swords on the battlefield, duelling, fighting on stage with sharp swords as a public sporting performance, and theatrical fighting. That theatrical fighting need not have been the same as the others should be no surprise. Today, people still fight with their fists on the street, in bars, etc. We have televised sports where people fight with their fists (e.g., boxing). Theatrical fistfights are often different.\n\nFilm and TV offer different conditions for fight choreography - it doesn't need to work in real time, special effects can be used, and the action is viewed from a specific camera angle. Even then, there are usually differences between \"real\" fistfights and TV/film versions. Film/TV also offers the opportunity for large scale battle scenes that are difficult or impossible to do on stage. Wars are still fought, and genuine combat footage is readily available, with some examples being famous, such as [\"With the Marines at Tawara\"] \n(_URL_0_)). Some TV/film goes to a lot of effort to deliver realistic battle scenes. Other TV/film gives us grossly unrealistic fight choreography (e.g., deliberately done to look more like modern computer games than real battles). Given the modern acceptance of - even preference for - unrealistic fight choreography even for types of fighting that still exists in the real world, I see no reason why the Medieval audience would have demanded realistic swordfighting.\n\nOutside Western Europe, we can see similar divergence between \"real\" fighting, and fighting as presented on stage, which originated when such fighting was still \"real\" (see, e.g., fight scenes in Beijing opera (AKA Peking opera)).\n\nA further clue to expectations of realism on the Medieval stage comes from literature. For example, *The Travels of Marco Polo* uses standard Medieval battle descriptions:\n\n >  And thenceforward the din of battle began to be heard loudly from this side and from that. And they rushed to work so doughtily with their bows and their maces, with their lances and swords, and with the arblasts of the footmen, that it was a wondrous sight to see. Now might you behold such flights of arrows from this side and from that, that the whole heaven was canopied with them and they fell like rain. Now might you see on this side and on that full many a cavalier and men-at-arms fall slain, insomuch that the whole field seemed covered with them. From this side and from that such cries arose from the crowds of the wounded and dying that had God thundered, you would not have heard Him! For fierce and furious was the battle, and quarter there was none given.\n\n >  But why should I make a long story of it? You must know that it was the most parlous and fierce and fearful battle that ever has been fought in our day. Nor have there ever been such forces in the field in actual fight, especially of horsemen, as were then engaged - for, taking both sides, there were not fewer than 760,000 horsemen, a mighty force! and that without reckoning the footmen, who were also very numerous. The battle endured with various fortune on this side and on that from morning till noon.\n\nIt's a conventional and non-realistic description of a battle. Readers were happy with it.\n\nReference:\n\nCarol Symes, \"The History of Medieval Theatre / Theatre of Medieval History: Dramatic Documents and the Performance of the Past\", *History Compass* 7/3 (2009): 1032\u20131048,  _URL_1_", "Great question! What you've asked actually requires a very dense response that touches not only on medieval theatre history, but also cultural, social, political, and classed aspects of sword usage from the medieval period into the modern era and the changing representations and significations that occurred with swords on stage through those periods. I'm a specialist on medieval theatre (it's was my PhD dissertation and remains my continued research in academia), so I'm going to focus most of my attention on that part of your question. I'll also touch upon the use of swords in theatre into the early modern period. Some things I can only provide minimal contextual information and I would look to other historians for help, including a wider history of the knowledge of sword fighting in the Middle Ages and other eras.\n\nLet me begin with a work that serves to highlight an interest in combat and sword fighting that was very influential throughout the Middle Ages\u2014especially in monastic settings. *Psychomachia*, by the fourth century Latin poet Prudentius, is a narrative allegorical tale that vividly details the conflict between vices and virtues based upon the Christian theological perspective of the world as a moral and spiritual battleground. The poet describes, in graphic detail, the fights that occur between the various allegorical characters. Many of the combatants wield swords. For example, in the fight between Chastity and Lust, Chastity wields a sword and \u201c[with only one thrust of her sword, she pierces the throat of the whore and stinking fumes with clots of blood are spat out; the foul breath poisons the near-by air](_URL_0_).\u201d *Psychomachia* is not considered a play, through it is highly dramatic and signifies distinct visual representations in its narrative, but it was nonetheless popular amongst early medieval monastic communities as an instructional text on the aims of Christian-centered rhetorical \u201ccombat\u201d and dedicating one\u2019s life to the advancement of Christian morals and ethics against all odds. Furthermore, there are significant parallels in the treatment of the allegorical characters between *Psychomachia* and the twelfth-century play, *Ordo Virtutum* by Hildegard of Bingen\u2014though, the Hildegard does not retain the mimetic violence of the earlier poem. What should be noted here is that swords and sword fighting served a dramatic function in medieval sources, representing the offensive might of those who wielded the weapons and to signify to the reader/viewer that the character carrying a sword is to be taken seriously. Additionally, the use of swords in dramatic imagery translated to the real-world settings in the form of instructional symbolism applicable to lessons on monastic life and activity.\n\nNow, turning to swords in medieval plays; perhaps the earliest extant representation of violence by sword(s) in medieval theatre comes from the so-called *Fleury Playbook* (eleventh century, archived at Orl\u00e9ans, Biblioth\u00e8que Municipale MS 201) in the form of the play, *The Murder of the Innocents* (*Ad interfectionem puerorum*). The play was performed as a part of the liturgy on the Feast of the Innocents (December 28) and tells the story from the Gospel of Matthew concerning Herod\u2019s decree that all the infants of Bethlehem be slaughtered in an effort to ensure the killing of the prophesied Christ child. In the play (I\u2019m using the edition in David Bevington, *Medieval Drama*, pp. 67-72), Herod gives a sword to a man-at-arms (*armiger*) and instructs him to \u201ccause the boys to perish by the sword\u201d (Bevington, 69). The man-at-arms then proceeds to kill the children. Thus, the sword is the material from which the power of the king meets (or ends) the life of the subject, even if that meeting is represented as morally reprehensible.\n\nIn more specific examples, there are two early medieval plays that clearly use descriptions of swords and sword fighting to affect the dramatic action of the plot. The so-called *Play about the Antichrist* (*Ludus de Antichristo*) from the imperial monastery at Tegernsee, Bavaria was written in the twelfth century and contains many battle scenes between armies of various European powers as well as the forces of the Antichrist. There is no indication as to how those battles would have been performed or how many people might have been involved but some characters, like the group known as the Hypocrites (who serve Antichrist), are instructed to carry swords under their garments. Written by monks for monks, the play shows, like *Psychomachia*, that monastic settings took particular interest in swords within violent contexts as a means to make effective (and affective) the deadly offensive aims of certain people. So it\u2019s no surprise that other medieval plays would also make use of swords. As u/wotan_weevil identified by pointing to the scholarship of Carol Symes and the thirteenth-century *Livonian Chronicle of Henry* (*Heinrici Cronicon Lyvoniae*), the document includes \u201ca short record of an audience, comprised of \u2018converts and pagans\u2019 (*tam neophitis quam paganis*), who had gathered to watch the performance of a liturgical *ludus magnus* (great play) in Riga during the Baltic Crusades at the beginning of the century\u201d (Kyle A. Thomas, \u201cThe Performing Arts and Their Audiences,\u201d in *A Cultural History of the Middle Ages*). Details on this performance are scant, but it\u2019s certain that this play was performed in the midst of a crusading context, so perhaps actual knights wielding swords and battle armor performed the battle scene in the play that caused the Riga audience \u201cto take flight, fearing lest they be killed\u201d (Brundage translation). This is perhaps the most direct evidence that not only did realistic portrayals of swords, sword fighting, and battle-ready fighters happen in medieval plays, but that audiences could interpret them as deadly real.\n\nWhile swords do appear in later medieval plays, they are sparse and mostly revolve around similar plots, settings (like *The Murder of the Innocents*), and symbolic affect of those plays already described. What changes in the mimetic representation of swords is the emphasis on gentlemanly, courtly identification that occurs beginning in the early modern period. This is easily recognizable in the plays of William Shakespeare. Whenever a character carries or brandishes their sword, they are almost always defending their honor of the honor of those to whom they are related or protecting. These are clear indicators of the classed social signiferes these characters are working to represent in his plays. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine that these characters also employ sword-fighting techniques that were a realistic representation of those learned by courtly gentlemen in the course of their education. And that actually brings us full circle: the sword, throughout the medieval and early modern periods, is consistently used in educational contexts to teach and represent authority, power, and offensive prowess.\n\nBibliography:\n\nJames A. Brundage, translator. *The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia*. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.\n\nPeter Dronke, *Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages: New Departures in Poetry, 1000-1150* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).\n\nBruce W. Hozeski, \u201cParallel Patterns in Prudentius\u2019s *Psychomachia* and Hildegard of Bingen\u2019s *Ordo Virtutum*,\u201d in *14th Century English Mystics Newsletter* Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 1982): 8-20.\n\nSin\u00e9ad O'Sullivan, *Early Medieval Glosses On Prudentius' Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradition* (Boston: Brill, 2004).\n\nKyle A. Thomas, \u201cThe *Ludus de Antichristo* and the Making of a Monastic Theatre: Imperial Politics and Performance at the Abbey of Tegernsee, 1000-1200.\u201d Unpublished dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: 2018."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JolhiCbU_u8", "https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00613.x"], ["https://web.archive.org/web/20020429135514/http://www.richmond.edu/~wstevens/grvaltexts/psychomachia.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3hwtcz", "title": "One week on: Only 10 percent more needed for AskHistorians fundraiser", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description", "answers": {"a_id": ["cub9m40", "cud714n", "cuf02m3", "cuhv3v0"], "score": [47, 10, 6, 6], "text": ["[In case you missed it last week,](_URL_0_) we announced that AskHistorians has been invited to present a panel at the American Historical Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia in February.\n\nThis is a **huge deal**; it's a chance for us to present Reddit to an academic audience and explain how public history outreach through the Internet is important. We've gathered panelists from as far away as New Zealand to participate and [present on a variety of topics](_URL_0_cu3gcsv).\n\nUnfortunately, plane tickets and hotel rooms aren't free. We've put together a budget that estimates it will cost $7,500 or so to send all our panelists to Atlanta.\n\nFortunately, you all have been incredibly generous. Thanks to a grant from Reddit, and donations you've pledged through Tilt, we're now 90 percent of the way toward our fundraising goal. We only need 10 percent more to complete our fundraising and ensure our panel can make it to Atlanta.\n\nIf you've been thinking about pledging but haven't signed up yet, please take the time to click the link and show your support. Even if you can only contribute a dollar, it'll be a help. Thank you.\n\n###[**DONATE HERE**](_URL_1_)", "356 more! So close :)", "Done my bit.  But you know, since it's Atlanta, there's a good chance some of you won't make it , will get stuck in traffic.", "Just put in $50 myself (penance for missing AHA this year)--we're $50 away from tilt level.  Who wants to match me?  We're so close now!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/", "https://www.tilt.com/tilts/aha-conference-fundraiser/description", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3h1nk7/mega_meta_announcement_askhistorians_will_be/cu3gcsv"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2g11k3", "title": "Did men kiss in 19th century Russia as much as they do in the Brothers Karamazov?", "selftext": "Men both \"embraced warmly and kissed\" and \"exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts.\" Was this standard behavior at the time and place, or supposed to show the extreme sentimentalism of the character?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g11k3/did_men_kiss_in_19th_century_russia_as_much_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckewzm3"], "score": [16], "text": ["As a follow up question, did this practice come from Western European, mainly French influences upon the nobility? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4hud9f", "title": "Was there anything special about geese in Rome?", "selftext": "So I'm reading a [fun piece of fiction](_URL_0_) about a Roman trader that got stranded on an expedition and is making their way back to Roman lands.   \n\nOne of the stories that came up is the following:  \n\n > Geese are sacred in Rome: once, when a huge horde of Gauls descended on Rome and tried to sneak into the city, the watchdogs failed to do their duty of warning their masters, but the geese clamoured loudly, warning the Romans of the Gauls\u2019 arrival.   \n\nI'm curious is this is complete fiction or if the author based it on anything more solid we know about the Romans or some sort of Roman myth.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hud9f/was_there_anything_special_about_geese_in_rome/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2sebql"], "score": [30], "text": ["It's a reference to the story in Livy and several other authors that when the Gauls attempted an assault on the Capitoline (the rest of the city having been taken already) the geese alerted the garrison with their calls. But geese were by no means sacred, they were one of the most commonly-eaten birds, either caught by hunting or trapping, or else kept in confinement and force-fed (to fatten their livers). Geese were important in augury, but so were all birds, that's sort of the point of augury. The goose was also a sacrificial animal (Ovid thinks Isis in particular received geese as offerings, which might go back to the common supposition among the Romans that geese were sacred to the Egyptians) but there wasn't anything especially sacred about them--Ovid actually jokes that despite the heroism of the Capitoline geese the animal is still eaten and offered as sacrifice. Other authors complain what a nasty bird the goose is, since its calls are irritating and it eats everything during migration time"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://ancient-adventures.com/2016/04/08/duck-and-cover/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3hv2q2", "title": "What was the process of clearing the trenches, barbed wire, and other war remnants from the French countryside after WWI?", "selftext": "We see hundreds of miles of torn up and destroyed countryside during the First World War. What was the process to repair the environment. Did much of it become usable again? Or was it just left alone? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hv2q2/what_was_the_process_of_clearing_the_trenches/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cublqp6"], "score": [8], "text": ["I visited the battlefield of verdun, which was one of the biggest battlefields on the french/german border. There you dont see any flat fields for hundrets of squarekilometers, everything is cratered. There are tons of explosives which are still dangerous and you see a lot of barbed wire which is mostly overgrown and rusty. When visiting, you should not leave the marked paths, as there are still mines everywhere. When you look on the ground you can still find shells and bullets, grenade debris and scrapped metal. besides nature, which grew all over the place, its a mess and we were told that its not possible to make this area human friendly again, the last bombs and shells which are still technically active will decay in 100s of years. \nTrenches quickly eroded, but barbed wire and mines are still an issue in regions where there was fought. In some places it was worth it to clean, as cities wanted to expand, but in more rural areas you can still find the remains. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "21cn88", "title": "Why is Hercules commonly referred to as Hercules as opposed to Heracles? He really seems to be the only figure from Greek Pantheon that favors his Roman name in the modern age.", "selftext": "More often than not we hear the Greek Pantheon referred to as Zeus, Athena, Hephaestus, and Ares by their Greek names instead of Jupiter, Minerva, Vulcan and Mars. Asides from Hercules it usually stays pretty Greek but at this point we really just seem to use their Greek names+Hercules and nobody really seems to notice.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21cn88/why_is_hercules_commonly_referred_to_as_hercules/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbznxf", "cgc2jj0"], "score": [28, 67], "text": ["I'm not sure you fully understand the difference between the Roman and Greek Pantheon.\n\nThink of it more as an adaption and an assimilation rather than just just renaming. The Roman's respected the Greek's and traced their roots to common ancestors and drew analogies between their religion and the Greeks but this all fitted inside the Roman religion. Much in the same way that a modern Christian has reinterpreted god from the Jewish faith, one could not say that the god of Chritianity is just the renamed Jewish god. For example you don't find the Lares or Penates in Greek mythology. \n\nIt is very bad practice to substitute Zeus for Jupiter, the only place it is appropriate is in a situation where one cannot tell the difference. For example a statue from the Roman period found in a villa on the Greek mainland.\n\nI would hazard that Hercules became the more commonly used name because throughout the medieval and renaissance period Hercules was still a popular figure and as the bible was in Latin people were reading the Latin myths rather than the Greek ones. This meant most medieval allegorical and mythological texts were written in Latin.\n\n", "It depends on what circles you move in, really. I rarely hear people refer to \"Hercules\" except when talking about the 1997 Disney film.\n\nIn the not-too-distant past it was standard to use Roman names for all Greek mythological figures: this is why, say, Alexander Pope's *Iliad* features Jove, Minerva, and Ulysses rather than Zeus, Athena, and Odysseus. That practice has been gradually diluted over time, but it's a half-life kind of thing: most names are more-or-less Greek now, but some Roman forms have persisted to the present. A chapter of Kenneth Graham's *The Wind in the Willows* (1908) is entitled \"The return of Ulysses\" (not Odysseus); Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot performed a set of *Twelve Labours of Hercules*  in a book of that title (1947) (not Herakles; of course that would miss the wordplay, anyway). Even in your post, you refer to \"Hephaestus\", writing the Greek name with Latin spelling, instead of \"Hephaistos\"; and there are other figures who still regularly go by Latin names in ways that go beyond typographic conventions: \"Achilles\" is still more common than \"Achilleus\", and I've never heard anyone referring to the god \"Apollon\" in English.\n\nIn some cases, the Latin names get periodically re-solidified in the popular imagination by high profile media depictions. A decade ago, the Spartan king who died at Thermopylai was known as \"Lee-ON-ee-das\" in my part of the world (and also in the part of the world that the actor who portrayed him comes from), but I've heard \"Lee-on-EYE-das\" becoming gradually more common lately. (There's nothing very Greek *or* Latin about either pronunciation, by the way: it's simply that popular culture is changing the names, for whatever reason.) In Herakles' case, the Disney film has had a similar effect, cementing him as \"Hercules\" for people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s. (I may be misremembering, but I have a vague recollection that Disney was even planning on releasing the film *in Greece* under the same title until popular backlash changed their minds -- I may have muddled that in my head with some other backlash, though.)\n\nNow, aside from these quirks of arbitrary tradition reinforced by popular culture, there are some circumstances where it's genuinely important to draw a distinction between Herakles and Hercules. Of course Herakles was an important figure in Greek myth; but Hercules was fairly important in specifically Roman myths too. This is because *some* figures of Greek myth were incorporated into the Etrusco-Latin imagination from a very early date, thanks to Greeks settling and trading in Italy from the 8th century BCE onwards. Figures like Hercle/Hercules, Uthuste/Ulixes (Odysseus), the Dioscuri (Dioskouroi), and Aineias came to have important roles in the native Italian mythologies, and were later recombined with their Greek counterparts. I notice that Wikipedia has separate entries for [\"Heracles\"](_URL_0_) and [\"Hercules\"](_URL_1_) (though, bizarrely, the \"Hercules\" article still focuses on *Greek* stories about him and ~~ignores the Roman ones~~ **edit:** just mentions the Cacus story in passing).\n\nIn Hercules' case, the two most important Roman stories would be the story of Hercules and Cacus (a villain that Hercules, on his way home from killing Geryon in the far west, encountered in Italy and killed); and the story of Acca Larentia, a prostitute who was given to Hercules (the god, i.e. after his death and deification), and who was later reimagined as the mother of Romulus and Remus."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules"]]}
{"q_id": "2uzip4", "title": "Why was the Roman General Germanicus considered a great Military Leader during his time?", "selftext": "Whilst studying the Julio-Claudian period I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of reference from my teacher and the text book to Germanicus being a great military leader. I believe Tacitus states that 'he would have equalled Alexander the Great'. I don't quite understand why Germanicus seemed to be held in such high regard, because the only reference to any of his military exploits I could find were to a kind of 'meh' Campaign against the Cherusci in order to find the remains of the three legions killed at Teutoberg. Certainly nothing Alexander the Great level, in terms of impact and military prowess. Were there some other campaigns that Germanicus was involved in that gave him this reputation? Or was his reputation a result of propaganda?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uzip4/why_was_the_roman_general_germanicus_considered_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["codkfrv"], "score": [7], "text": ["My personal opinion after reading lots and lots of Tacitus is basically in agreement with you that Germanicus was a fairly mediocre general. His Germanic campaigns were half successes if that, but he had a major advantage of timing in that they came immediately after the disaster at Teutoberg, and so even though it was only a half-success it could be bolstered as having \"restored the glory\" to Roman arms. I think in American history something like Antietam might be broadly comparable as really only a half success, but that was enough for the time. The fact that he died young only solidified his reputation.\n\nThat being said, probably the most important reason for his fame today is because of Tacitus himself, who very carefully sets Germanicus up as the \"hero\" of the early part of his narrative, both to serve as a foil for Tiberius and as part of his broader purpose of discussing the individual against the machine of the imperial system."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2fciyi", "title": "Has any terrorist organisation ever been fully defeated through military means alone?", "selftext": "In view of the current events in the Middle East, with IS making sweeping gains through the region, there has been much discussion about how to tackle this crisis - through precision strikes, arming the Kurds or even an invasion. The question begs to be asked - has any terrorist organisation in history ever been defeated/destroyed through military means alone, or at least predominantly military means, as opposed to negotiation, dialogue, political means etc?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fciyi/has_any_terrorist_organisation_ever_been_fully/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck7wzoy", "ck7x8n2", "ck83ami", "ck8ar2w", "ck8lyt1"], "score": [51, 39, 12, 3, 4], "text": ["I don't know about military force \"alone\", but terrorist groups have been defeated through primarily military means.  Generally though, military force is a rare solution.  The RAND corporation did a pretty indepth study of how terrorist groups \"end\", and concluded that military force was rarely the best option; with only 7% of the groups they studied being defeated primarily by military force.  However, when the terrorist groups become strong enough to conduct insurgencies, military force ups to about a 25% success rate for ending terrorist groups.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe bottom third or so of the report has a table that lists individual terrorist groups and shows what circumstances led to their end.", "In his book, *Violent Politics*, former Ambassador William Polk argues that military force is about 5% of the formula to defeating terrorists. The other 95% is undermining both their political power and their infrastructure; in other words, taking away their ability to recruit (by making them unattractive to join) and dismantling their ability to wage war (by removing financing or weapons shipments, for example). Purely military means rarely works as /u/houinator explains, and I can find no example of any violent group (insurgent, rebel, or terrorist) which was defeated through military means alone; most commanders and strategists use multi-tiered attacks upon their targets. Even the Romans when battling piracy in the Mediterranean mixed naval campaign with denying pirates ports.\n\nSource: William Polk *Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla Warfare from the American Insurgency to Iraq* Harper Perennial, New York, 2008.", "It might be worth pointing out that unfortunately, many interesting answers to this question would fall within the last 20 years, and the sub uses a 20 year rule to draw a line between historical and current discussion.", "Coincidentally, there is the case of the [Kharijites](_URL_0_)\n\nThis fanatical sect initially arose during the first Islamic Civil War period, where the camps of Ali and Muwaiya were at each others throats. They basically were the first hardline, extreme Islamism advocators who basically took the stance that none but God could rule over Muslims, and they rejected both Caliphal (?) candidates. This movement dispatched 3 assassins to kill 3 key political leaders in this time: Muwaiya (military governor of Syria, founder of the Umayyad dynasty), Amr ibn al'Aas (military governor of Egypt), and Ali (cousin/son in law of Prophet, 4th Rashidun Khalifah,  source of Shia-Sunni split). They were to be conducted simultaneously. First 2 failed, last one found Ali in the Grand Mosque of Kufa. Killed him with a poisoned blade while he was prostrating. Those assassins were found and killed as per Islamic law, and the movement petered out.\n\nThe Kharijites would resurface 2 centuries later under the Abbasids and sow [a rebellion](_URL_1_), again with more or less the same rhetoric. This was met with full military response over the course of rule of several Caliphs. There was no discourse, there was no push for compromise, there were no concessions entertained. The only acceptable solution was military extermination, and thats exactly what happened. Though it took a while, thats exactly what was done and the movement was stamped out for good...or so it would seem.  \n\nI think this is a fitting example for many reasons. Even though this is ancient history, the Kharijites not only fit the description of modern day terrorists to a tee, i.e non-state politically motivated violent actor with minimal public support, they were dealt with by violent military force: because quite frankly thats the only language they spoke. \n\nOn a less academic note, there is a popular sentiment in modern Islamic discourse that groups like ISIS and AQ are modern day incarnations of these same Kharijites. This doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but I do find the symbolism and parallels to be quite interesting..", "As with any discussion about terrorism, we ought to start out by defining what terrorism is. There are an inordinate amount of definitions of what terrorism is (even among the various American government agencies, there are varying definitions), but the common theme among all of them is that is the politically motivated use or threat of violence by (generally) non-state actors against non-combatants. \n\nAs this is /r/AskHistorians, let's examine who some of the first terrorist organizations were. Generally regarded as the first \"terrorist\" organization were the [Sicarii](_URL_1_), a fanatical splinter group of Jewish Zealots active in the first century CE in what is now modern day Israel. Seeking to push Rome out of the promised land, they would stab to death Romans and Roman sympathizers in broad daylight. These actions escalated hostilities between the Romans and the Jews, and eventually culminated in the First Jewish-Roman War. In their last stand at the Masada fort, the Sicarri succumbed to the overwhelming Roman army, and most of them committed suicide. So in this instance, military might alone did defeat terrorism. \n\nThe [Assassins](_URL_0_) were another proto-terrorist group that operated in Persia during the 12th and 13th centuries. In case you didn't figure it out by now, they are where we get the word \"assassin\" from. The Assassins were notorious for assassinating political figures in public. They were wiped out by the Mongols by the end of the 13th century. So in that instance as well, military might alone defeated terrorism. \n\nNow back in those days, world leaders tended to be much more liberal with their use of force against political threats. These days, most terrorist organizations are able to avoid complete decimation because they know that their demise will also mean a lot of collateral damage toward the civilian population, which most nations (with the arguable exception of nations like Russia and yes, the United States) do not want on their hands. So it is rare that terrorist groups are ever defeated through force these days. \n\nSo now we must differentiate the various types of terrorist groups. On one hand you have your religiously-motivated groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and Aum Shunrikyo. On the other hand you have separatist groups like the Irish Republican Army, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Basque ETA. You have your ethnocentric terrorist groups like the KKK. You also have your lone wolf terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber. More recently we have seen the emergence of narcoterrorist groups\u2014typically Mexican and South American drug cartels\u2014who have no real political ideology other than a bloodthirsty lust for wealth and will use whatever political influence possible to achieve that end.\n\nTo be clear, there is some overlap among all of these. ISIS could arguably be categorized as a separatist group due to their territorial claims, and the IRA/PLO could also be identified as having religious motivations as well.  \n\nBut the point is that how these groups end really depends on their types. Separatist groups tend to fare the best as they are the most open to negotiation. In the case of the PLO, the IRA and the ETA, they all reached some sort of consequential end that caused the majority of their members to either give up violence or splinter off to form a new group (e.g., Hamas). \n\nIn regard to religiously motivated groups: Because governments tend to be cautious when it comes to quelling this types of terrorist groups, what often happens is that these groups continue to exist but sort of fade into irrelevance. While politicians say they will \"crush\" or \"defeat\" terrorist groups, what they really mean is they will contain the threat that they pose. We have arguably contained the threat that al Qaeda once posed in terms of domestic attacks, but since this is /r/askhistorians, we won't really know for a long time how everything that is going on right now will play out. Of course, the threat that ISIS poses could be greater than what its godfather group posed. \n\nSo in modern history, it isn't too common to see terrorist groups defeated through military might alone\u2014though ironically, the *threat* of military force can hasten their demise. It's not really a joke to say that most terrorists tend to burn out on it after awhile (when I have more time, I'll dig up a study I remember reading that found that most terrorists quit their groups after being in them for a good number of years). Most modern terrorists tend to be underemployed, middle class, though decently educated men in their 20s. By the time they reach their 30s and 40s\u2014assuming they haven't been killed yet\u2014they just decide it's not worth it anymore, and their groups just fizzle out. \n\nLastly, as someone who studied terrorism as the primary focus of my undergraduate political science degree, my very humble opinion is that some incarnation of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS will always continue to exist so long as the Middle East remains a vastly unequal resource-rich, opportunity-poor, feverishly religious region. That's not to say military force is ineffective in reducing the threat that terrorism poses. But in this day and age, you do tend to need more than just missiles to defeat ideas. That is all just my own speculation, so take it with a grain of salt. Only time will tell.    \n\nSources:\n\n* *What Terrorists Want*. Louise Richardson. 2006."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG741-1.html"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khawarij", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharijite_Rebellion_\\(866%E2%80%93896\\)"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii"]]}
{"q_id": "7ypmyi", "title": "Is it true that ancient Irish Kings used to participate in a horse sex and eating ritual before they became kings?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ypmyi/is_it_true_that_ancient_irish_kings_used_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["duinaq5"], "score": [61], "text": ["It sounds like you're referencing this infamous section from Giraldus Cambrensis' *Topographia Hibernia*:\n\n > \u201cThere are some things which, if the exigencies of my account did not demand it, shame would discountenance their being described. But the austere discipline of history spares neither truth nor modesty. There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely Kenelcunill [Tyrconnell], a certain people which is accustomed to consecrate its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as chief, but as a beast, not as a king, but as an outlaw, embraces the animal before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, cut up in pieces, and boiled in water. A bath is prepared for the man afterwards in the same water. He sits in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round about him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingship and dominion has been conferred\u2026\u201d\n\nCambrensis' description of Ireland is pretty infamous for its generally dubious depiction of the indigenous Irish (except for his appreciation for Irish music). Coming to Ireland shortly after the Norman invasion of Ireland, Giraldus is often at pains to paint the indigenous Irish population as barbarians in contrast to his Norman compatriots. This has led many scholars and non-scholars to outright reject most of his seemingly derogatory characterizations of Irish culture in the 12th century, however there may be some truth behind this seemingly ghastly rite, which may have actually have been practiced along the lines of how Cambrensis described it.\n\nWhat you have to understand is that Irish kingship from the early medieval period backwards could be characterized as a sort of sacral kingship. Irish kings probably originated as some sort of cultic priestly figure who was entrusted with ensuring the fertility of the territory over which he ruled, which seems to be reflected in later Irish associations of good kingship with bountiful crops and cattle, abundant game and forage, good weather etc., while bad kingship was associated with famine, disease and destruction. The defining symbolic feature of early Irish kingship was not the wearing of crowns or being seated on a throne, but the abidance of supernatural taboos and prerogatives that feature prominently in contemporary literature and legal texts. If broken, these taboos were believed to bring destruction upon the king and end his rule as seen in the literary text *Togdail Bruidne Da Derga*, where the Irish king Conaire Mor is forced to break each of his supernatural taboos, leading to his inevitable destruction.\n\nHorse sex aside, Irish coronation ceremonies were nearly pre-Christian in nature by virtue of the Irish king's role as a sacerdotal figure meant to ensure his territory's fertility and uphold its metaphysical balance. Irish kings supposedly symbolically married the personification of the territory over which they ruled, and coronations often took place on ancient barrow-mounds or earthworks that had originally been constructed in the Bronze Age or even the Neolithic. In the context of the above quote, the white mare may have actually stood in to represent the fertility figure associated with territory ruled by the King of Tyrconnel.\n\nOne explanation for these seemingly archaic coronation rituals and features of the Irish office of kingship has been advanced by several scholars - that the Irish office of sacral kingship preserved a feature of Proto-Indo-European religious belief well into the early medieval period. The rite described by Cambrensis above appears to actually echo a similar rite performed by kings in India as far back as the 2nd Century BCE: the Ashvamedha. This ritual was performed by Indian kings as the most important manifestation of rulership, as it was the most important rite in the hierarchy of sacrifices. The general features of the Ashvamedha line up pretty closely with Cambrensis' description of that Irish coronation ceremony: both involved the union with the horse, its subsequent killing, the king being bathed and the horse's consumption by the king's people. Besides this sole source, it's also possible the hagiography of St. Moling makes reference to the horse-sacrifice and broth which the saint subverts by transforming it into mutton, inverting the pre-Christian associations carried by the horse's flesh and its broth.\n\nSo if you accept that Irish kingship was an archaic religious  &  political office that preserved some aspects of Proto-Indo-European belief which were also seen in Iron Age India, it's totally conceivable that some Irish kings might have gotten it on with a horse before having it been killed and eaten. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "97gwdw", "title": "Operation Dragoon, the Allied Invasion of southern France from the Mediterranean was 75 years ago today. How did the operation play out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/97gwdw/operation_dragoon_the_allied_invasion_of_southern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e4861yv", "e489n2x", "e48cgmy"], "score": [7, 27, 56], "text": ["Following up on this, what did the Allies hope to gain from invading France from the south after already gaining a firm foothold in Normandy?", "Operation Dragoon was one of the smoothest amphibious assaults of the war. The troops were landed with comparatively few casualties, opposition was low, and there was little confusion. The assault force was soon able to move inland, and to seize the major ports of Marseilles and Toulon, while the Germans withdrew in relative disarray.\n\nPlanning for an invasion against the south of France began in December 1943, under the codename Anvil. As the name suggests, it was supposed to be carried out at the same time as Operation Overlord, the invasion of northern France. However, it would be delayed, mainly due to British concerns over its effects on the Italian Campaign. The British hoped to use the Italian Campaign to draw off German troops from the French front, and to use Italy as a pathway to the 'soft underbelly' of Europe. General Sir Henry M. \u201cJumbo\u201d Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean, even suggested that rather than landing in southern France, the Allies land near Trieste, and advance towards Vienna. The Americans, meanwhile, were sceptical about the viability of the British strategy; it would require fighting through difficult terrain, the plan was seen as strongly supportive of British imperialism and interests, and it risked spoiling relations with Stalin. Instead, they wanted to invade southern France to secure the ports there in support of Overlord. Ultimately, the British were convinced of the merits of the American strategy, though not without a certain degree of complaining - the codename was changed to Dragoon because Churchill felt he had been 'dragooned into it'. The final plan was for a three division assault by General Lucian Truscott's VI Corps, to be followed up by the Free French Armee B under the command of Jean de Laitre de Tassigny.\n\nThere were a number of pre-invasion operations. From mid-July, the 15th Air Force carried out a heavy campaign against the bridges and railways the Germans would need to move troops to the region. They were joined in this by the French Resistance. By D-Day, 5 of the 6 major bridges across the Rhone had been destroyed by bombing, while another 32 smaller bridges had been knocked out by the Resistance. In the days immediately before D-Day, the 15th AF also carried out strikes against German coastal radars and defences. On the night of the 14th-15th August, a number of assault landings were carried out to destroy German coastal batteries that threatened the main landings. The American-Canadian First Special Service Force landed on the islands of Ile du Levant and Port-Cros. Neither landing met much resistance as they went ashore. On Ile du Levant, the objectives were captured quickly but the coastal guns were found to be dummies. On Port-Cros, the commandos were held up by German forces dug in in three Napoleonic-era forts, which did not surrender until the 17th August. 700 French commandos of the First Group Commandos Afrique were landed at Cape N\u00e8gre under Operation Romeo. They missed their assigned beach due to currents, and came ashore under heavy German fire. However, they were able to destroy the coastal guns there, and seize the roads inland shortly after dawn, thanks to heavy support from the cruisers *Dido* and *Augusta*. The last major pre-invasion landing was the airborne attack, carried out by the 1st Airborne Task Force, a joint Anglo-American force. While the Allies had learned well from the Normandy landings, they could not control the weather. The pathfinders, dropped before the main assault to mark landing zones, ran into heavy fog. As a result, the landings were heavily scattered; only 40% of the troops landed near their intended drop zones. This did have the unintentional effect of causing the Germans to overestimate the numbers of Allied paratroopers landed, and hence drew troops away from the beaches. The follow-up gliderborne troops, landing later in the morning, avoided the worst of the fog but ran into trees and anti-glider defences. This resulted in heavy casualties, with 283 men being killed or wounded during this phase. There were a number of diversionary operations. Dummy paratroopers were dropped at La Ciotat, further confusing the Germans. A naval diversion was carried out in the same area, with 21 small craft supported by the destroyer *Endicott* using radar reflectors and sound effects to suggest the appearance of a landing force there. Another similar diversion was carried out off Antibes. The performance at La Ciotat was repeated on the 16th-17th, this time provoking heavy German fire. On the morning of D-Day, a further diversion was carried out by a unit commanded by Lt. Cdr. Douglas Fairbanks Jr, which involved the landing of 67 French commandos at Pointe de\nl\u2019Esquillon. The landing was a failure, as the French troops immediately encountered a minefield before being pinned down by heavy German fire. The commandos were captured by the Germans, but later freed by the French Resistance.\n\nThe main assault was carried out in three sectors, each attacked by a separate division of VI Corps. The 3rd Infantry Division had the western-most sector, Alpha, which encompassed Cavalaire sur Mer and St Tropez. The 45th Infantry Division landed in the central sector, Delta, which covered the areas around Sainte-Maxime. Finally, the 36th Division brought up the right flank, landing in sector Camel around Frejus and Saint Rapha\u00ebl. I will cover each of these sectors in turn.\n\nThe 3rd Division was to be landed in the most critical sector. It was closest to the main objectives of Toulon and Marseilles, and was expected to face strong German counterattacks. However, the main initial threat was from German mines and coastal obstacles. The assault was preceded by a strong minesweeping force of 22 ships, plus a number of landing craft modified to serve as shallow-water sweepers. These cleared the route into the beaches, though few mines were actually found. The minesweeping effort was followed by a heavy air and naval bombardment, running from 6:15 to about 7:30. As the bombardment was ongoing, Allied forces were beginning to clear the beach obstacles. 'Apex' boats - radio-controlled LCVPs loaded with 8000lbs of explosives - were used to blow holes in the beach obstacles, before obstacle clearance teams were landed. Rocket-launching landing craft fired on the beach, hoping to detonate mines. Following all this, the assault troops went in at two separate beaches; Alpha Red in Cavalaire Bay, where the 7th Infantry Regiment landed, and Alpha Yellow near Pampellone, assaulted by the 15th Infantry Regiment. These two regiments were faced by a single battalion of German troops (using the term very lightly, as they were mainly 'Osttruppen', Soviet prisoners of war pressed into Wehrmacht service). At Alpha Red, the 7th encountered sporadic small arms fire, with the main threat coming from mines and artillery fire. Two LCVP were lost to mines with sixty casualties ensuing, but the troops were quickly moving inland. An hour and twenty minutes after the first troops of the 7th landed, the 30th Infantry Regiment was starting to come ashore - this swift landing of fresh troops showed how easy the landing had been. At Alpha Yellow, the experience was similar. The sole mishap came when control of one of the Apex boats was lost, causing it to explode near the motor launch *SC-1029*, causing heavy casualties aboard. French Resistance forces and local residents came out to assist with the clearing of the beach obstacles, while the troops pushed inland. In the afternoon, elements of the 15th linked up with misdropped paratroopers from the 509th Parachute Battalion and French Resistance forces to capture Saint-Tropez, the main objective for the day. By the end of the day, the 3rd Division had taken 264 losses, and captured 1627 German soldiers. \n\nDelta Sector was thought to be the most well-defended sector, with heavy gun batteries that could bring the beaches under a deadly crossfire. As such, it had the heaviest offshore support element, consisting of two American battleships (*Nevada* and *Texas*), an American cruiser (*Philadelphia*), two French cruisers (*Georges Leygues*, nicknamed 'Gorgeous Legs' by the RN, and *Montcalm*), three large French destroyers and eight American destroyers. The bombardment force opened up a heavy fire on the German gun batteries and coastal defences, albeit one hampered by fog and haze. The Germans responded with desultory fire. The landing ships went in at four beaches, Delta Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue, preceded again by Apex boats and rocket barrages. The overwhelming Allied firepower successfully suppressed the defences, to the point where the landing at Delta Red suffered only a single casualty from the assault battalion. The troops marched off the beaches and began securing the surrounding area. The 157th Infantry Regiment secured Sainte-Maxime with relative ease. The 180th Infantry Regiment secured the high ground behind the beaches with little trouble, but encountered significant German resistance as it began to push towards Saint-Aygulf. Other elements of the division linked up with the paratroop airhead, and helped the paras capture Le Muy. The division suffered just 183 casualties over the course of the day. The only naval casualties in the sector were the crew of *LST-691*, who suffered food poisoning after eating improperly refrigerated sandwiches. \n", "Hehe, well first of all, the Allies launched the operation 74 years ago today, not 75 (that would have been the two operations of Husky and Avalanche at Sicily and Salerno, respectively). The answer will be in three parts: background, the argument over the operation, and the operation itself.\n\nDragoon is a fascinating operation because it involves so many things unique to the ETO experience for the Allies.  It gets overlooked for a lot of other reasons.\n\n**Background**\n\nOperation Anvil, later renamed Dragoon, has not received the attention it deserves in the historiography of World War II. Academic works have seldom covered the operations in southern France. Mentions of the operation are usually made in passing. It is treated as though it was just a footnote in the war. Literature devoted solely to the operation is sorely lacking, and largely devoid of academic credentials. A scouring of several prominent one-volume histories of the war exemplifies this oversight. This is a typical example of the perfunctory coverage of this campaign:\n\n\"As this drive towards Paris began, Allied, air, sea and land forces launched Operation Dragoon, landing 94,000 men and 11,000 vehicles between Toulon and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast of France in a single day. Within twenty-four hours these troops had pushed nearly twenty miles inland. That day, in Paris, amid the excitement of the news of this fresh landing, the city's police force, hitherto a reluctant arm of German civic control, agree to put aside its uniforms, keep its arms and join the active resistance on the streets. But the revenge of the occupier was still not ended. That day, five French prisoners, among them de Gaulle's clandestine military representative in Paris, Colonel Andre Rondenay, were taken by the Gestapo to the village of Domont, twelve miles north of Paris, and shot. Their killers had then returned to Paris for an 'executioners' banquet', of champagne.\" (Martin Gilbert, The Second World War, 568)\n\nBy this point in the war, however, tactics were replaced in importance by logistics. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, suggests as much. Eisenhower needed as many divisions as he could get on the continent at once, following his broad-front strategy. Acquiring additional ports away from Normandy was the most efficient way to do this. It is this aspect that most historians have tended to ignore. Armies in Italy were unfortunately rendered irrelevant to the operational outcome of the war. The British resented having their main focus in Italy weakened, but forces were transferred from there to Anvil, an operation in which the British had almost zero participation. Operation Anvil was, according to Eisenhower, the most decisive advantage given to the Allies in the struggle with Germany after the Normandy invasion. Its primary value was logistical, in addition to adding hundreds of thousands of troops to the front lines. Anvil was complimentary to Operation Overlord. Just as Batman needs Robin, so too did Overlord need Anvil.\n\nWhat has emerged is an unbalanced narrative of the western European campaign. In regards to the Normandy campaign, there is a stunning lack of reference to the planning of Overlord in histories of the campaign. Most histories focus on a particular unit or individual segment of the battlefield. When planning is discussed, there is almost a universal lack of reference to Anvil.  This was the operation from which Overlord borrowed to make up for a lack of resources. This incomplete picture of the operation is usually followed by a breakout and a race to the Rhine. Nazi Germany's Ardennes offensive in the winter of 1944 caused a setback from inevitable victory, which was achieved in May 1945. A few historians have addressed this imbalance of coverage in recent works.\n\nThe fall of 1943 saw the United States repositioning itself among the Allies. For the first year of the war, the United States usually deferred to the British, who had been at war with the Axis for four years. It took until the end of 1942 before the United States began fighting in the ETO. As the Allies slowly advanced through North Africa, the Americans still relied heavily on the British for sound strategic, operational, and tactical advice. Generals Eisenhower and George C. Marshall followed Prime Minister Winston Churchill's lead on attacking peripheral territories held by the Nazis, famously known as the \"soft underbelly.\" Yet, the United States had the largest economy of the Allies, and its numbers were beginning to be felt across the theater. Increasingly the military makeup of the Allies was becoming more American. 1944 promised to be a year in which America would see its star rise higher than anyone else, and Anvil would be a part of that shift.  Conversely, Great Britain began to slow down throughout 1943. Its strategic commitments to the empire taxed every resource it possessed. The empire was near the end of its manpower reserves, having detached formations to every part of the globe.  Britain welcomed America's material wealth, and expected to dictate affairs, as they were accustomed to doing as a super power. America's leaders began to realize its contributions, and recognized they would only grow within the alliance. As such, they looked to contribute more in a primary way to the direction of the war. This would become clear at Cairo and Tehran, where the Sextant and Eureka conferences would take place. But Great Britain still felt like it should continue to be the driving force behind policy and implementation, and this would complicate Operation Anvil.\n\nInitial planning for Dragoon began in the summer of 1943 in Quebec at the Quadrant conference.  This conference is known primarily for the Allies' decision to invade Italy through it's town (Operations Avalanche, Baytown, and Slapstick).  Marshall asked Eisenhower for his opinion on operations in Italy and beyond. Eisenhower believed that the invasion of Italy should be used to prepare for an invasion of southern France, although what he called the \"annoying and limiting factor of shipping and landing craft\" was going to limit any new operations. Eisenhower wanted to use the forces that recently occupied northern Italy, keeping ten divisions there as a defensive reserve; he planned to use the rest to attack westward into southern France.  \n\nNext, we'll talk about Allied disagreements over the operation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "9cpghg", "title": "What do historians have to say about the destruction of the National Museum of Brazil?", "selftext": "Brazil's most important historical museum was destroyed in a fire today. How does this impact historical study and the historical profession both in Brazil and abroad? Or about the preservation of historical artifacts in the Global South?\n\nI guess it's a very open-ended question; I am just hoping for any insight from professionals or experts who can approach the subject from a more educated point of view. What was lost?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cpghg/what_do_historians_have_to_say_about_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5dg2dt", "e5dr28e"], "score": [21, 13], "text": ["From an archival and linguistics standpoint, this is a significant loss. Entire languages were more or less eradicated overnight.\n\nFull quote and translation as given by the Survey of California and other Indian Languages on Facebook:\n\n\"Pessoal, n\u00e3o salvou-se nada da Lingu\u00edstica. Perdemos todo o acervo de L\u00ednguas Ind\u00edgenas: as grava\u00e7\u00f5es desde 1958, os cantos em muitas l\u00ednguas sem falantes vivos, o arquivo Curt Nimuendaju: pap\u00e9is, fotos, negativos, o mapa \u00e9tnico-hist\u00f3rico-lingu\u00edstico original com a localiza\u00e7\u00e3o de todas as etnias do Brasil, \u00fanico registro que tinhamos datado de 1945. As refer\u00eancias etnol\u00f3gicas e arqueol\u00f3gicas das etnias do Brasil desde o Sec. XVI...Enfim, uma perda irrepar\u00e1vel para nossa Mem\u00f3ria Hist\u00f3rica. Est\u00e1 doendo demais ver tudo em cinzas.\"\n\n[translation (ours): \"Nothing was saved from Linguistics. We've lost everything in the Indigenous Languages Archive: the recordings from 1958 forward, the songs in many languages without living speakers, the collection of Curt Nimuendaj\u00fa: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethno-historico-linguistic map with the locations of all of the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we have from 1945. The ethnographic and archaeological records of the various ethnic groups of Brazil from the sixteenth century forward...In all, an irreparable loss for our historical memory. It hurts so much to see everything in ashes.\"]\n\n\n", "I'm Brasilian and I'm a historian. I never had the honor to work there but losing that place felt like loosing a family member. It's gone, it's all gone my children, my grandchildren and so on will never see it. \n\nWe lost 20 Million Artefacts, including Ancient Roman paintings, Egyptian Mummies and 1/3 of all Pterodactyl fossils in the world. We lost the first scientific institution of our nation, we lost the Slavery Abolition Law, signed by Princess Isabel herself in 1888. I would trade the lives of anyone in my family to save the museum, that building is bigger than you or me, people come and go but museums are supposed to remain forever for future generations"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "87tg6f", "title": "Media is currently reporting that University of Exeter researchers have found remnants of 81 towns that had about 1 million inhabitants, from 1000 to 1400 AC, in the centre of Amazon. Where did they go? How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87tg6f/media_is_currently_reporting_that_university_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwfxp42", "dwgmdqj"], "score": [112, 6], "text": ["Media reports don't always tell the full story, and don't always tell the story accurately. It's useful to look at the actual research paper. In this case, it's in *Nature Communications* and therefore open access (no subscription needed).\n\nThe paper is: Jonas Gregorio de Souza et al., Pre-Columbian earth-builders settled along the entire southern rim of the Amazon, *Nature Communications* 9, 1125 (2018), _URL_2_\n\nNote that the estimate of 1 million inhabitants is for an area of 400,000 km^2, for a population density of 2.5 persons/km^2. For context, this is approximately the population density of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland, and Russia in 1300, and about 1/10 the population density of much of Western Europe in 1300. This is not a high population density. It does mean that the area was populated by farmers rather than bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers.\n\n >  How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?\n\nIt looks like they did. From the paper:\n\n >  That the UTB [Upper Tapaj\u00f3s Basin] hid settlements comparable to those found to the east and west was suggested by 18th century accounts, where the region was portrayed as densely populated, with large villages connected by straight and wide roads.\n\nciting Pires de Campos, A. Breve not\u00edcia que d\u00e1 o capit\u00e3o Ant\u00f4nio Pires de Campos do gentio que h\u00e1 na derrota da viagem das minas do Cuyab\u00e1 e seu rec\u00f4ncavo. *Rev. Trimest. do Inst. Hist\u00f3tico, Geogr\u00e1fico, e Etnogr\u00e1fico do Bras.* 5, 437-449 (1862) for those 18th century accounts.\n\nThese villages weren't giant lost cities. They were villages. The estimate of 1,000,000 for the population is for the entire area, not for the 81 villages/towns (they estimate 1300 or more such villages for the whole area). The largest of the sites in the study had an estimated population of 2594 (see the supplementary information accompanying the paper; Supplementary Table 4 lists the sites and estimated populations); most had estimated populations well under 1,000, and the smaller ones under 100.\n\nThe above doesn't mean that the work reported in this paper is insignificant. The estimate of 1,000,000 people living in this area of 400,000 km^2 is the same as the low-end estimates for the pre-Columbian population of all of Amazonia, and lends credence to the high-end estimates in excess of 10,000,000 (for all Amazonia).\n\nOne thing that is not always clear from the media reports of work like this is the earlier work on the topic. The work discussed above isn't a sudden new relevation - it's another contribution to an ongoing body of work. For example, Clement CR, et al. The domestication of Amazonia before European conquest. *Proc. R. Soc. B* 282: 20150813 (2015), _URL_1_ discusses Amazonian agriculture and the pre-Columbian population (suggesting a minimum of 8-10 million). The modern work on this goes back to the last millenium, e.g., W\u00fcst, I.,  &  Barreto, C. (1999). The Ring Villages of Central Brazil: A Challenge for Amazonian Archaeology. *Latin American Antiquity*, 10(1), 3-23, _URL_0_\n\n >  Where did they go?\n\nAlmost certainly, disease played a major role.", " >  How come the Portuguese did not find them when arriving in Brazil?\n\nIf you'd like to read the early colonial accounts of the various Amazonian communities, I'd recommend checking out Orellana's *entrada*, which was the first major expedition by Europeans through the Amazon. Orellana began in the Andes and traveled downriver to the Atlantic. Buddy Levy's [River of Darkness](_URL_0_) is a good summation Orellana's expedition along with some archaeological context.\n\nFor the cliffnotes version, you may want to see [my older post on a related topic](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://doi.org/10.2307/972208", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0813", "http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03510-7"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=j4qP-GCsHfEC", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43phlf/why_did_no_complex_amazon_river_basin/czk25xa/"]]}
{"q_id": "4luv9r", "title": "Where did the notion of eating beef and other red meats \"medium rare\" come from?", "selftext": "I searched on /r/AskHistorians and Google, but couldn't really find anything on this, so hopefully this question is good to go.\n\nI love steak and beef roasts (as do many other people), and medium rare, more or less, is the preferred temperature, or doneness, that many people including myself eat their beef (or tuna, or deer, or duck, and so forth).\n\nHowever, where did that line of cooking and thinking come from? I guess intuitively it tastes better and it's more tender, but that can be subjective and depending on each individual's own tastes and palate. I also consider back in the day, where perhaps there was a knowledge of cooking raw meats killed off bacteria, and to make sure food-brone sickness were to be keep to a minimum via cooking with fire, so we simply decided before to cook stuff all the way through, until one day someone decided to not cook their cattle roast all the way through, and then slowly and gradually more people started to eat their meats at lower temperatures.\n\nThe jist of the question would be if we always liked our foods that way, or if we grew accustomed to it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4luv9r/where_did_the_notion_of_eating_beef_and_other_red/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3qstad"], "score": [21], "text": ["Also, an add-on to this, were there ever periods of time where eating medium rare pork/chicken were acceptable, or has it always historically been beef that was eaten medium rare?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "79gj7s", "title": "It's often said that William F. Buckley, Jr. began the modern Conservative movement in the U.S. If this is true, what did the Conservative movement look like before Buckley?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79gj7s/its_often_said_that_william_f_buckley_jr_began/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp1s4q2", "dp2evj9"], "score": [12, 26], "text": ["As a follow-on, I've read that he said something along the lines of \"We have kooks and they have kooks, but there are more kooks on our side\". Did he actually say that, and if so to whom was he referring? Obviously John Birch Society, but any other organized groups?", "Buckley emerged in an age in which Democrats and the New Deal coalition were dominant in America. This coalition would essentially give the Democrats 7 electoral wins out of 9 tries from FDR to LBJ with only Eisenhower in between. \n\nThere were various flavors of conservatism that opposed this coalition while it was around. These strands were not very well organized, but typically included ideas like pro-business policies, while also maintaining a preference for protectionism (there were strains of economic liberalism in these groups, but protectionism was typically more popular), social traditionalism, preference for small government, and non-interventionism. \n\nBuckley, in his attempts to define and put boundaries on American conservatism, promoted staunch anti-communism (also present in pre-Buckley conservatism) that also included the acceptance of an internationally active America and a preference for economic liberalism and free trade. His efforts were to unite the various, disparate groups that opposed the New Deal, including libertarians, traditionalists, and anticommunists. This laid the foundation for the rise of Movement Conservatism that culminated in the election of Reagan and is still leading group in the Republican Party today. Two notes: (1) there were other streams added to movement conservatism over time including neoconservatives and the religious right, who took were sort of more extreme incarnations of anticommunists and traditionalists; (2) Trump and his ideological allies are pushing against many accepted tenets of Movement Conservatism.\n\nBuckley, as he united certain groups, also attempted to keep out certain groups from conservatism who he saw as poisonous to the movement. This included Ayn Rand and her allies, the John Birch Society, anti-Semites, (eventually) segregationists and white supremacists, etc. \n\nIn all, prior to Buckley, there were a number of ideological streams that could be classified as conservative, including libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists, but they were not really united in any way. Buckley sought to unite these groups, while also keeping other groups out of mainstream American conservatism. \n\nSee for more:\n\n*The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945* by Nash (published in 1976, revised in 1996)\n\n*William F Buckley Jr* by Judis"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3s7gev", "title": "How likely was it that a soldier under Alexander the Great in his Balkan campaign would still be in his army at the end of his campaign in India?", "selftext": "I read that Coenus told Alexander that his men \"longed to again see their parents, their wives and children, their homeland\" and wondered if this meant that he was using the same army at the end of 9 years of campaigning as he was at the beginning. If this is the case, how likely was it for a soldier to survive fighting for that long?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3s7gev/how_likely_was_it_that_a_soldier_under_alexander/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwv5j25", "cwvazva"], "score": [97, 8], "text": ["Obviously we don't have precise information for the makeup of Alexander's army at any point, but there certainly would have been hundreds if not thousands of men in India that had initially set out from Greece/Macedonia with him. The army suffered casualties throughout its campaigning, of course, but it is important to remember that due to the nature of Alexander's campaigns he was able to secure victory without losing lots of men to attrition. Alexander, and his father Philip II before him, were firm believers in the idea of a decisive battle, so when they chose to fight they threw everything at it in an attempt to secure an ultimate victory. Even when initially rebuked, both Alexander and Philip II soon returned with overwhelming force to defeat their opponents.\n\nThe acts of brutality that Alexander implemented in some of his campaigns (notably against Tyre and, later, in the Indus Valley) were attempts to crush the morale of neighboring cities and settlements so that they would be completely cowed. A large portion of the massacres are somewhat blamed on the frustration of some of his soldiers, at least according to Ian Worthington and one of his brilliant graduate students (I was fortunate to learn from them). At the very least, many of the officers and generals would have been soldiers that left Greece/Macedonia with Alexander. It is important to mention, however, that Alexander regularly requested reinforcements from both Macedonia and the Greek city-states that were, effectively, his vassals. Even before Alexander died there were problems of former soldiers that had served with him running amok throughout his newly-conquered empire (mainly Mesopotamia and Anatolia).\n\nAlexander the Great: A Reader by Ian Worthington\n\nA Companion to Ancient Macedonia by Roisman and Worthington", "As a follow up question, how would these soldiers have kept or transferred their spoils of war?  Was there a secure way to send money back home?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1bsivr", "title": "Was India ever really an economic superpower?", "selftext": "Our politicians love saying that for about 1800 years India was the world's largest economy. Of course, being politicians, they never give any specifics, So my question is, was India really a strong economy for a sustained period of time, at anytime in history?\n\nI know there wasn't really an \"India\" until independence, but I hope you understand the question.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bsivr/was_india_ever_really_an_economic_superpower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c99njtr", "c99ryow", "c99sbk9"], "score": [64, 6, 17], "text": ["India has fantastic farmland and therefore could grow a crapton of crops which led to a huge population and therefore more wealth (overall, per capita is more of a stretch). They also had the edge in trading situations due to their cotton and access to spices. The livelihood of many Central Asian turkic empires was based on sacking India and bringing the goods back to Samarkand, Balkh, or Bukhara.\n\nI haven't studied India's history pre-Mughals, but the Mughals (Muslim-Turkic empire, most important capital was Agra, built the Taj Mahal) were arguably the richest empire of their time (the Ming Chinese were pretty beastly too). The throne alone (The peacock throne) was made of more than 2500 pounds of solid gold. By 1600, more than 20% of the world GDP was funneling through Mughal hands. So, India was a player on the financial world stage.\n\n\"Compared to Shah Jahan's annual income - worth nearly \u00a325 million sterling at contemporary rates - the monarchs of Europe were struggling on paltry sums. In 1635 Britain, even as Quen Mumtaz-Mahal's tomb was well underway, King Charles I was mired in financial crisis. Struggling to maintain his lavish court and household on an annual budget of half a million pounds...\" (Fergus Nicoll, Shah Jahan, pg. 199)\n\nJust to flesh out those names: Shah Jahan was the fifth (arguably sixth) Mughal Emperor (r. 1628-1658). Mumtaz-Mahal was his wife and the Taj Mahal was made as her tomb. Charles I was the king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (r. 1625-1649)\n\nEDIT: Found this fun little table on wiki that lets you look at regions by GDP throughout history: _URL_0_\n\n**EDIT 2**: Tiako has rightly called into question Maddison's estimations. Also, England was undoubtedly very unimpresive at the time. The best comparison I can come up with outside of that is this:\n\nShah Jahan's income is at 188 million rupees and 188 million rupees equals about 282 million livres. Richard Bonney's \"France, 1494\u20131815\" in \"The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1200\u20131815.\" (Can't get the exact number because I don't want to pay the $180 for the book) has royal revenue of France at nearly 30 million livres (in the 1590s).\nSo, based on Hanafi's numbers and Tavernier's conversion, Shah Jahan's income is at 282 million livres. France in the 1590s (about 30 years earlier), based on Bonney's assessment, has a royal revenue at nearly 30 million livres. Shah Jahan's income in 1628 is at least 9x that of the French monarchy 30 years earlier.", "India was such an economic superpower that the British traders had nothing that really interested the Mughal empire to inspire bilateral trade. The East India Company resorted to colonial rule as the only way they could get the Indian products that Europeans coveted without draining gold and silver from Europe.\n\nA similar situation existed with China, so the East India Company grew opium in India and illegally foisted it on China so that it had something to trade. Amitav Ghosh does a beautiful job of writing historical fiction that brings this period to life at the individual level. ", "There isn't really such a thing as a \"superpower\" until the modern age of full globalization, and even then I don't think we can really name one as such before the post-WWII US and USSR (not even the British Empire). India (by which I mean the various Indian states, empires and kingdoms) has been extraordinarily wealthy in many periods of history, but it did not exert the sort of global economic dominance the US does today. This seems like semantics, but the term \"superpower\" has a specific set of connotations that does not apply to India, or any country, until the modern period.\n\nThe other problem is that there is just no way to compare economies before modern practices in record keeping and economic data recording. What was wealthier, the Gupta Empire under Chandra, or the Romans under Constantine? The Medieval Cholas or the early Song? The Maurya or the Hellenistic kingdoms? We simply don't have a good way to compare one to the other. The claim that \"India\" was the world's largest economy for 1800 years is nothing but meaningless nationalist posturing.\n\nThis is not to say that Indian kingdoms and empires have not been extraordinarily wealthy: the Gupta earned their golden epithet, and the Ellora Caves are a testament to the wealth of the Rashtrakuta. But saying whether they were the *most* wealthy is within the purview of nationalists, not historians."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#World_1.E2.80.932003_.28Maddison.29"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "79lhvs", "title": "As I understand it, in the ancient world sexuality was viewed through a different prism (active versus passive). How did lesbianism fit into their worldview? How did the isle of Lesbos establish its place in sexual history, and were its associations earned?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79lhvs/as_i_understand_it_in_the_ancient_world_sexuality/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp4osys"], "score": [12], "text": ["The ancient world is a term that covers a lot of space and a long range of time. For some of those places and times we don't know a whole lot about sexuality. But we do know that importing our own sexual distinctions is problematic. So with that, giant caveat, I will move into some sweeping generalities.\n\nLet's talk about the Greeks. Lesbos owes its association with lesbianism to Sappho, A Greek poetess of the 7th/6th century. Sappho wrote lyric poetry, which survives in scattered fragments. Her poems were like this:\n > He\u2019s equal with the Gods, that man\n\n > Who sits across from you,\n\n > Face to face, close enough, to sip\n\n > Your voice\u2019s sweetness,\n\n\n\n > And what excites my mind,\n\n > Your laughter, glittering. So,\n\n > When I see you, for a moment,\n\n > My voice goes,\n\n\n\n > My tongue freezes. Fire,\n\n > Delicate fire, in the flesh.\n\n > Blind, stunned, the sound\n\n > Of thunder, in my ears.\n\n\n\n > Shivering with sweat, cold\n\n > Tremors over the skin,\n\n > I turn the colour of dead grass,\n\n > And I\u2019m an inch from dying.\n\n\nNow you might see where the idea that Sappho was a lesbian comes in. This poem is clearly a love poem and it seems to be written to a woman... right?\n\nThe thing is, this type of poetry belongs to a rich tradition of choral and epithalamic (wedding) songs which feature female speakers extolling the beauty of one of their companions. It's a literary trope and we have plenty of evidence for it. For example, Sappho's contemporary Alcman writes lyric poetry sung by choruses of girls where one girl is singled out and described by the others. This seems to have been a rather standard part of courting rituals at the time. (Maybe because sexual segregation in Greek communities meant that the men had to take the girl's peers praise as a way to decide on the most desirable wife.) What is so interesting about Sappho is that she is one of our only direct female voices to survive from ancient Greece.\n\nThe Greeks didn't seem to make much of the lesbian aspect, really. The biographical tradition of Sappho definitely presents her as sexual, but in fact her sexuality is targeted towards men. In a story that is definitely true she pissed off Aphrodite and was punished by falling in love with the ferryman, Phaon, who Aphrodite had magically rejuvenated. Sappho threw herself to her death when he rejected her.\n\nThe active/passive distinction that you make is one that's been argued for especially in the case of Roman sexuality. I would say that Greek is a bit like that, but also has an age component to sexuality. Amongst males, adolescent boys were the objects of affection for mature companions. There's a lot of regional/temporal variety and debate about the exact nature of these relationships and they were complicated by issues of social hierarchy. In Athens, for example, it seems that young noble boys were considered the ultimate object of desire. However, it wasn't right to penetrate a freeborn citizen. As these boys grew up it was assumed that they would transition to the active penetrative role and that they would then have sex with women and boys and even men who were foreigners/slaves and therefore had no dignity to preserve by their society's standards. \n\nThe choral poetry seems to suggest that a certain amount of homoeroticism between girls was acceptable or even desirable. To the men of Greek society, lesbianism basically didn't count. Men and women lived and slept separately and while Greek men essentially had to divorce their wives if they found them with another man, being with a woman simply didn't seem to strike their radar as a problem because it didn't threaten the legitimacy of their family.\n\nBasically, we have almost nothing attesting to how women felt or characterized their sexuality in the Greek world and men didn't seem to perceive lesbianism as a \"thing.\"\n\nThe idea of Sappho as a \"lesbian\" in our sense seems to come from Ovid. As a quick tl;dr on the Romans, they acknowledged lesbianism more than the Greeks did. Some, like Ovid, describe women so crazed by sex that they make no gender distinctions. Other, like Martial, think lesbianism is the worst (aside from maybe a man performing oral sex on a woman)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "15on9p", "title": "Why were gnostic religions very popular at a certain point in human history and not today?  Is it just because they \"lost\" to Catholicism and Islam, or were there broader trends at work?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15on9p/why_were_gnostic_religions_very_popular_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7of0o0", "c7ogp1a", "c7oksu5"], "score": [42, 11, 2], "text": ["Gnosticism is essentially a blend of the mother religion and Neoplatonistic philosophy. Within Christianity, while there were several strands, they eventually morphed and coalesced into two main religious offshoots: Valentinian Gnosticism, which is the most Greek and Neoplatonic, and Manichaeism, an Eastern Dualist religion that borrows from both Persian Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism. There, by the way, is still one last Gnostic Christian Sect that is not a recreation: the [Mandaeans](_URL_0_), who number about 70,000.\n\nValentinian Gnosticism was essentially muscled out by Christianity and probably reabsorbed into Manichaeism, which lasted much longer. Manichaeism had significant success in Persia, Afghanistan, India, and China, but it later died out because of Islam. There was a resurgence of Neomanichaeans, with the Paulicans, who were later the Bogomils and the Cathars. In Western Europe, they were persecuted by the Catholic Church during the Albigensian Crusade. However, in Eastern Europe, they were grouped into Thema Manichaea by the Byzantines and many of them later converted Christianity or Islam. In Bosnia, there also existed Manichaean sects, but they later converted to Islam as well.\n\nWith Islam, I am not too sure, but they later virulently opposed Neoplatonic diction. I think that the Sufis and some other mystical branches have Neoplatonic elements, but not a lot.\n\nWithin Judaism, Kabbalism is the most similar to Gnosticism and it is embraced wholeheartedly simply because Jews are more interested in Orthopraxis rather than Orthodoxy.\n\nGnosticism usually failed because it had high barriers to entry (full members were required to be vegan, celibate, and ascetic, eschewing and shunning procreation and material wealth), often was out argued by other religions (namely Christianity; they made several serious claims about Jesus and the Apostles which do not fit with the more authoritative Christian Gospels), and often lacked any legal protection.", "Layton in his introduction to the Gnostic Scriptures implies that it was gnostic disdain of sex that generally done did them in. Not a real surprise. Despite what Irenaus may have said, most Gnostics despised sex and sexual fleshy organs--flesh is a big bad thing. This view is even evident in the Gospel of Thomas, a proto gnostic text. See Thomas 114. ", "My instinct, and please offer an second opinion, is that the term \"gnostic\" is a 20th century category transposed onto the past rather a historical reality. In the area of Jewish History alone(my major) I have seen the term used to describe such unconnected things as:\n\n1. Jewish Mystical Texts and movements\n(Gerschom Scholem , _URL_1_) from the Talmud to 1700th century kabbalistic movements(notably that of Shabtai Zvi and Lurianic Kabbala)\n2. 4rd century Jewish Mosaics in northern Israel:\n which have been used on the wrong assumption that Jews and Rabbis don't make art to argue that the the majority of Jews were anti-rabbinic and in fact followed a Gnostic religion which which is undescribed in any sources and could be deciphered by decoding 4th century Jewish Mosaics (see Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period)\n3. The Dead Sea Scrolls and second temple apocalyptic literature as a whole.--The Essnes are pegged as Gnostics regularly in a certain generation of old scholarship. \n\nBeyond this I have seen the term \"Gnostic\" used to describe so many groups over a huge range of unconnected periods(often in periods with only a scant supply of primary documents), places and peoples, that the assumption that there is a link between all these different groups strikes me as unlikely:\n\n1. A variety of 3rd century Christian groups with a mystical bent, based on a trove of texts found in the Egyptian Desert(_URL_0_) \n2. Greco-Roman mystery Cults\n3. Manicheans \n4. Early Islamic sects and all sorts of Shiite sects\n5.Sufis \n6. Jews throughout the ages(as noted above)\n7. Zoroastrians  \n8. Any and all neo-platonic philosophical groups going into the middle ages \n9. Cathars--Catholic heretics\n\nI'm convinced the category of Gnosticism is spread so thin over so many different groups in so many different context that it can't hold up the weight of evidence. \n\nI wonder what the idea of Gnosticism says about the 20th century historians who superimposed the category over so many different groups?\n\nThoughts?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism"], [], ["http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html", "http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scholem/"]]}
{"q_id": "f0cncv", "title": "I\u2019m a citizen in Ancient Rome and I\u2019ve committed a horrible crime. How difficult would it be for me to disappear into another part of the Empire or another country?", "selftext": "How did I get a Roman passport? How did I prove I was a Roman citizen and not a runway slave? Could other cities in Rome ever find out what I did? How did neighboring countries deal with immigrants from Rome?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f0cncv/im_a_citizen_in_ancient_rome_and_ive_committed_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fh6fv87"], "score": [8], "text": ["A similar question was asked a while back:\n\n[Was it possible for an ancient Roman slave (who spoke latin) to steal their owners money and clothes and run away to another town, then lie about being a citizen during the imperial period?](_URL_0_)\n\n. . . where u/Aithiopika and I dug into this topic\n\nOf course, there's always more that can be said . . . take a look at the prior discussion and see if there's something that might be expanded on.\n\nNote that there was no \"Roman passport\" -- proving \"who I am\" would be a matter of my references, eg \"where you say you're from, who you know\" and so on. There were documents that people might possess, a manumitted slave would have a document to that effect, a veteran soldier would have a kind of military diploma, but there was no one identity document. With limited media, it would have been harder than it is today to convince someone that you were from someplace other than where you actually were from-- you would have limited access to the information you'd need to plan a backstory.\n\nRome had deep social networks, and trying to hold together a story would be hard. . . as u/Athiopika noted:\n\n > \"Roman society has been described as a face-to-face honor society. Social ties, ancestry, relationships, etc. are very important in establishing one's public identity and status. If a stranger shows up in, say, Pompeii claiming to be a local citizen, people will want to know why they've never heard of you or your family.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\n. ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a6pvvx/was_it_possible_for_an_ancient_roman_slave_who/"]]}
{"q_id": "7xieup", "title": "I am a 17 year old German man in december 1942 turning 18 in a few weeks. im skeptical of the war and after hearing about the horrible eastern front my only goal is increasing my own chances of survival any way i can. What are some steps i should take and consider to increase my chances?", "selftext": "Some framework for the question.\n\n\n1. Surrendering to the western allies is a good outcome if possible, but only if an opportunity arises. \n\n2. i dont have any special skills, but im willing to learn or lie if doing so means being assigned to something/somewhere less dangerous.\n\norder of priority\n\n1. survive\n\n2. Not serve on the eastern front", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7xieup/i_am_a_17_year_old_german_man_in_december_1942/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du8jvek", "du93o06"], "score": [142, 3], "text": ["Well most likely if you are about to turn 18, you will be receiving some sort of conscription notice in to the Wehrmacht (the German Military), and more specifically the Heer (the German Army) shortly before your birthday. This notice will give you recruitment / draft location to report to, usually within a few weeks to a month of your 18th birthday.  After you go through your initial physical and mental testing, and various other aptitude tests, you will then be given a notice of enlistment in to that branch of the military. Usually you would be called up to basic training within another short period of time.  You report to basic training, and join a locally raised unit, or are sent to another unit already serving at the front as a replacement. There is no getting out of it, except for \u201cDiving\u201d (Going underground or going on the run. what draft dodgers, and others on the run from the Nazis did. The term is derived from U-Boats diving under water). \nNow, you are 17 years old and it is waning days of 1942, most likely you have already been active in the war effort. Most likely you are part of the Hitler Youth, and maybe have done your one year assignment doing work for your country (that all German youths are required to do); probably working to dig defenses ditches, or plowing farmers\u2019 fields etc\u2026 This was required work for almost all German teen youths. You have also been heavily indoctrinated in to Nazism for almost 10 years now, so since you were seven. You probably believe in your government, your people, and that your nation is at war for a just and right reason. You may not want to go to war, but many of your peers do. So you do not want to look like a coward in the face of your Hitler Youth comrades. Then again you could have an older brother, or father, or friends already at the front (or came home wounded, or died at the front), which in that case you may have a very cynical view of the war. Or maybe you live in a metropolitan area that has been bombed relentlessly by the RAF and USAAF, and are skeptical about the war because of that. \n\nSo now if say one or both of those latter examples has jaded you to the cause, and you want to get out of it, or at least not fight the Soviets. What can you do? Easy, get a voucher saying that the work you provide for Germany is invaluable, and thus you are exempt from the draft. Now in order to get these vouchers you need to work in an armaments industry, or a coal mine, or be an Engineer working on some sort of national project under Organization Todt (like working on the Autobahn, or building concrete bunkers somewhere). So you better get one of those jobs. But if say they are not hiring, are full up, or you just do not have the technical skill, then your only other option is to voluntarily enlist in either the Luftwaffe (Air Force) or the Kriegsmarine (Navy). Once in either of those branches, express interest in learning a Military trade / career as a mechanic or some other non- Frontline type military career field.  Now this is not a guarantee to get you away from the Soviets, or from war, but it does increase your chances. \n\nHOWEVER, by late 1942, early 1943 the Army was needing more and more replacements for the meat grinder that was the Russian Front. The German Sixth Army was encircled and being annihilated at Stalingrad \u2013 eventually surrendering in February 1943. An entire Army went in to captivity and was removed from the military index. The German Army needed replacements, and they needed them as soon as possible. So your timing of birth was utterly horrible. Looks like you are most likely going to get drafted in to the Army. Even the Airforce was raising infantry, paratrooper, and armored units to fight like army field units on the ground. So the Navy and Airforce might not even accept your voluntary enlistment \u2013 especially if the Army (and the Army came first) needed troops!  Now of course once in the Army, which is the most likely scenario, you have 0 control over where your unit is sent. You do have a minor amount of control over your career field \u2013 especially if you show excellence and aptitude in something considered vital, but not combative, or combative but slightly behind the lines like heavy artillery (like if you are excellent at physics and math, this could really help you in an artillery field path). However, if not, you are most likely being sent to an infantry company. \n\nBut for realism argument sake, let\u2019s just say you are average Hans Deutsch. Nothing special about you, you are just the ordinary German almost 18 year old. You are physically and mentally normal. You are drafted in to the Army, and you are sent to a locally raised infantry unit \u2013 that is about to go to front. You have zero control of your destiny. Now after all of that training, and being transferred to units etc\u2026 this puts you at summer 1943. The only theater where Germany is actively fighting the Western Allies is in Sicily and soon after southern Italy.  Unless you are stationed on some Greek Island, to guard against British commando raids. So let\u2019s assume for arguments sake you luck out and your division has been called up to fight in Italy. Phew you lucked out from fighting on the Russian steppe, or in the tundra! \n\nGermany did well at first fighting in Italy. This was not a cakewalk or \u201cthe soft underbelly of Europe\u201d that the Allies thought it would be. You are actively engaged in combat, most likely fighting the British or Commonwealth soldiers, but maybe the USA too. You love the local atmosphere, but hate being at war. However, your unit is well dug in along a ridgeline in the Apennine Mountains. This war has now basically turned in to mountain warfare similar to World War I. Trenches, small artillery, mortars, snipers, Machine Guns, minefields and barbed-wire galore! Rain, muck and mud. You hate it. You have to get your rations from some donkey or mule that brings them up the mountain from your field kitchen. Depending on how pitched the battle is, will depend on how often you get hot food! You will most likely not see a warm meal but for a few times a week. \n\nYou cannot take it and you want to go over the top, and run to the allied lines and surrender. However, you also do not want to betray and abandon your comrades \u2013 whom you have formed a close bond with over the past few months of fighting in this hellish condition, and whom you went through basic training with. They are now like brothers to you. Hell they are more than brothers to you! But man you really want to get out of the war. You are not fighting the Soviets, but the British! This is a great opportunity. But man the constant lobbing of mortars and small artillery, and MG fire back and forth at each other across ridgelines makes this task virtually impossible. It also really hinders things that your regiment\u2019s pioneer (engineer) company has planted an assortment of landmines in the valley and gully between the lines, in No-Mans-Land! And you do not have a map of the minefield. You are stuck. Both stuck out of duty for your country, but most of all for your comrades. And also stuck by the physical barriers and circumstances. \n\nIn the middle of the night you hear \u201cBoom! Boom! Thud!\u201d and then a cacophony of sound. The British have somehow made their way up your side of the mountain, through the minefield, and are now raiding your lines. Your comrades in the next trench over are fighting hand to hand and with pistols, submachine guns etc\u2026 You think \u201cNo! They are getting slaughtered!\u201d your mind rushes to saving your comrades, instead of using this as an opportunity to surrender. You pick up your Kar98 rifle, alert the Machine Gun crew that you are a part of, and redirect the fire towards the advancing British and on to the neighboring trench. Mowing down the British raiding patrol. You have helped saved the day, and are rewarded with your actions of bravery and are given an Iron Cross, and because of some deaths you are now promoted to Corporal (or Sergeant in equal to American Military terms) and are now a squad leader! Shit! No way out now!\n\nI can continue the story\u2026 if you want! I mean a lot of is fictitious, but it is all based off of reality. You could surrender later on in the Italian campaign when it is clear Germany is losing \u2013 assuming you have not been killed, wounded, or transferred to another front. \n\nEdit: Edited some grammatical and spelling mistakes. \n", "Related question- what if you just refused to work?  I mean, didn't follow any order given, didn't show up where you were supposed to, etc.  I'm guessing you might get beaten up, and probably thrown in jail, but wouldn't that be preferable to the Eastern Front?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3qyw8y", "title": "How exactly did the papal/medieval inquisition work? More specifically, what kind of person became an inquisitor?", "selftext": "I know it was common for Dominicans and Franciscans to serve, but not much beyond that.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qyw8y/how_exactly_did_the_papalmedieval_inquisition/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwjh6b6"], "score": [92], "text": ["When we hear the word 'inquisition' we immediately think of superstitions, torture, imprisonment, execution. And this meaning was well-earned by the medieval and early modern Catholic Church. And yet in modern Europe (Italy, France, Spain) the word 'inquisition' is still used for the modern court. Why? The story is fascinating and goes to the heart of the invention of the modern legal system in the High Middle Ages.\n\n\n**Legal Systems before the 'Inquisition'**\n\nFor much of the early middle ages right up to the 12th century, 'court actions' (and here 'court' goes back to it's roots: the court of a lord) were driven by the accusatorial method: someone complained to the lord about a theft, a murder, as injury to property; no action would *ever* take place without a complainant. The accuser and accused would appear before the court, they would each tell their story. The aim seems to have been reconciliation before anything else (something like arbitration in modern terms). If the accused did not confess, and there was no reconciliation, the accused would have to go through an ordeal: ordeal by hot or cold water, ordeal by hot metal, ordeal by fire, ordeal by compunction, ordeal by battle, etc. Some were more common than others. The ordeals were conducted jointly by secular and ecclesiastic authority: after all, the ordeal was meant to reveal God's independent judgement. The ordeal is not fully understood \u2013 we have to make some guesses about it as these things were not recorded in an oral society like Western Europe before the 12th century. \n\nOne of the chief problems of the idea of 'feudalism' is that it completely obscures the relationship of the Church to medieval society, particularly the 9th-13th centuries which are the subject of this post. It is well known that the 'Church' in the medieval period controlled something around 30% of the arable land mass \u2013 and we know that land at this time was the source of power.  That power was very material. The bishop (or abbot of a monastery) was often a secular lord equal to their secular peers. This meant that ecclesiastical lords were responsible not only for the 'spiritual' jurisdiction of the Church (marriage, death, baptism, etc), but also the material lordship of land and property, and often went to war just as easily as their secular peers. By the 11th century, the 'courts' of bishops and abbots were stuffed, as ecclesiastics exerted their jurisdiction over disputes both spiritual and *material*. As the investiture controversy sorted itself out on the ground through the 11th and 12th centuries, the juridical requirements of the Church became over-extended, particularly because the basis of the procedure was customary (even in application of Canon Law - which affected both spiritual and material jurisdictions - which was still unorganized in any comprehensive way). Even if the ordeal wasn't used in particular, court processes just did not exist.\n\nWell, legal 'processes' changed profoundly in the 12th century due to the Roman Church \u2013 changes which determined the legal apparatus we live with today. By the late 11th - early 12th century, two key things happened: \n\n1. The Papacy had consolidated power and centralized authority (as a political corollary to, and result of, the investiture controversy): the chief problem it created for itself was that it said that the Papal court in Rome was the highest level of appeal, and that any Christian could appeal a local decision (ie a decision of a bishop's court) to it \u2013 before the deicsion was even rendered! And the appeals began to flood in as bishops rendered decisions which were objected to by nobility and peasantry alike, for whatever reason. Very quickly in the 12th century the Papacy was swamped with an overwhelming tide of claims before it; it wasn't long before the Papacy had to begin delegating Papal judicial responsibility to secondary courts both in Rome and in the provinces.\n\n2. The Church began forbidding priests and other ecclesiastics from participating in the ordeal (finally outlawing it in Lateran IV of 1215). The ordeal began to be put under theological scrutiny and was rejected as heretical: humans cannot call up God as their servant to render decisions for them. Without ordeals, secular and ecclesiastical courts had to find other modes of proof of guilt.\n\nThese were the fulcrum for change in judicial processes which define the judicial systems which we live with even today.\n\nAt the same time, Roman Law was being excavated from archives and studied and taught in northern Italy (why that happened is a fascinating story of its own, but beyond the scope of this answer). However that retrieval of Roman Law, specifically parts of the Justinian Code (the [*Corpus juris civilis*](_URL_0_)), set in motion the transformation of the legal systems of Europe.\n\nThe problem for the Papacy in point # 1 above was not just who would handle the appeals, but how could those waves of appeals swamping Rome be handled efficiently and consistently? \n\nBy this time, early to mid-12th century, Gratian had published the first Codex of Canon Law, the Concordia discordantium canonum: the first codex of law of the middle ages, the first of its kind in the history of the western Church, and it was a throughly organized blend of Canon statute and legal procedure drawn from the books of Justinianic *Corpus juris civilis* that had lain dead for 600 years. Moreover, it was the study of this dead legal code which drew people from across Europe to study at Bologna - the first known university in the West - and which started to produce hordes of trained lawyers under the tutelage of brilliant teachers such as Bulgarus:\n\n > ...the papal chancellor, Haimeric, asked the leading teacher of Roman law in Bologna, Bulgarus, for a treatise on procedure in the 1130s, [and] he did so for practical reasons, not because of intellectual curiosity ([Pennington](_URL_2_))\n\nThis treatise *De arbitris* laid the foundations for what became the *ordo iudiciarius*. In principle, the *ordo* re-organized the court under a judge who directed inquiries, and set out rules and processes for the submission of arguments, evidence, and oral and written testimony. This organizing of judicial process, the first in the medieval period, took wing in the late 12th century and displaced the ordeal with a accusatorial process centered on a judge who evaluated evidence that was submitted through formal processes.\n\nYou can see the text of *De arbitris* [here](_URL_1_) in English. Note how thoroughly *modern* the ideas are and what a fundamental shift they are from an ordeal. The ideas in *De arbitris* would be at home in courtrooms today. Moreover, the organization of a court room in the late 12th century looked virtually the same as they do today.\n\nMoreover, we can credit the modern notion of 'due process' to these same jurists who derived their jurisprudence, and even the justification of these new court processes themselves, from the first pages of the Bible.\n\n > The form of pleading was first found in paradise when the first man was questioned about the crime of disobedience.  When the Lord questioned him about the report of the crime or of use he transferred the guilt to his wife by asserting \"The wife whom you gave to me handed it to me and I ate it.\"  Finally in the Old Testament we learn that Moses stated in his law that \"In the testimony of two or three witnesses one may find the truth.\" ^1 [Paucapalea, *summa*, taken from Pennington]\n\n\n^1 *Placitandi forma in paradiso primum videtur inventa, dum prothoplastus de inobedientiae crimine ibidem a domino interrogatus criminis relatione sive remotione usus culpam in coniugem removisse autumat dicens,* 'mulier, quam dedisti, dedit mihi et comedi' (Genesis 3.12).  *Deinde in veteri lege nobis tradita, dum Moyses in lege sua ait:* 'In ore duorum vel trium testium stabit omne verbum'  (Deut. 19.15).\" \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis", "http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/Law508/BulgarusDeArbitris.htm", "http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/PenningtonRomanLawLateranII.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "1quad9", "title": "How were the Scandinavian immigrants who migrated to the mid-west perceived by others?", "selftext": "Were there any prejudices towards them, or cruel stereotypes that some had towards the Irish? Also, are there any good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out? Thanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1quad9/how_were_the_scandinavian_immigrants_who_migrated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdgmstb", "cdgo907", "cdgojia", "cdgox6a", "cdgpiho", "cdgq32i", "cdgqaj9", "cdgqjz0", "cdgrflr", "cdgrow6", "cdgtyl2", "cdgw984", "cdh0hwv"], "score": [69, 8, 3, 16, 8, 3, 8, 42, 3, 27, 6, 2, 3], "text": [" >  *good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out?*\n\nOh god, yes. \n\nCheck out the \"Utvandrarna\" book series by Vilhelm Moberg. It's the story of a Swedish 19th century family who moves from Sm\u00e5land to Minnesota and the hardships they endure both as emigrants fleeing a land wrecked in starvation, over the harsh atlantic voyage to settlers in an unforgiving new world. I can't make any claims to historical accuracy, but I'm sure there are people with that knowledge in this subreddit.\n\nThis book was made into a movie 1971 under the same name, and it's definitely worth checking out! I've seen it once before in school, and despite the *sv\u00e5rmod* I found it very interesting and insightful.", "Here's a scholarly work I'm aware of but have not read: \n\nMichel S. Beaulieu, Ronald N. Harpelle  &  Jaimi Penney (editors). *LABOURING FINNS -Transnational Politics in Finland, Canada, and the United States*. _URL_0_;\n\nChapter six by Paul Lubotina (who is a full-time temp. at my university) looks like it might be of some interest, albeit a subset of the Finnish immigrant population.", "\"Also, are there any good books/movies/tv series about Scandinavian immigration that I should check out? \"\n\nYes! Not a historian but *The Boat of Longing* by O.E. Rolvaag fits this description, as do his other works. It's one of the most beautiful novels I have read, but it is extremely sad. It really makes you realize how alienating long journeys were to people before mass communication and air travel and so forth. ", "Before the Scandinavian emigration to northern part of the Midwest America, there was a (primarily) Swedish expedition to the Delaware Valley. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nTheir first fort was at the location of present Wilmington, Delaware (1630's)", "Follow on question to the OP's: how accurate was the portrayal of Scandinavians in the HBO series Deadwood? They were labeled \"square-heads\" and seemed to be pretty isolated and unassimilated (so much so that a family was slaughtered when they left the town)", "Not a primary source, but [Our Only May Amelia](_URL_0_) is based on actual diaries about a Finnish settlement in 1899 Washington.", "Not exactly about the immigrants themselves, but 2nd and 3rd generation Scandinavians in the midwest. The Rabbit series, by John Updike, gives an amazing sense of the northern spirit in mid-west America. It is by no means a deep scholarly study into OP's question, barely mentions the theme at all. But with it's deep Lutheran undertones combined with new-world sensibilities, the books, for me, were just a very involving, touching and extremely funny look at what the Scandinavian immigrants had produced in America. And by an American master.\nJust read the first few pages of Rabbit, Run.  His description of a typical Scandinavian infuenced mid-west town. Amazing writer. Well that's what it meant to me anyways.\n\nE: Whoops, The Angstroms were Pennsylvanians, of course, not in the mid-west. That was bad. But I still think OP's question would be helped by reading the series.", "The Swedish news site _URL_0_ posted an article about the subject a couple months ago:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nTL;DR in which i cleaned up the grammar a bit:\n\n\"Swedes are stupid, smell bad and can not be spoken to. They live in the slums of Swede Hollow and standing at the bottom of the American social ladder.\"\n\n\"The valley was from the 1880s, known as Swede Hollow, one of the city's worst slums, and home to at least a thousand people in dilapidated sheds, built outside any urban plans. Most of them were immigrants from Sweden. But the ones who ended up in Swede Hollow seems also to have fallen out of history itself.\"\n\n\"Moberg emigrants traveled back in the 1850s - but most of the 1.3 million Swedes emigrated left Sweden much later, with a peak around the turn of the century. And a remarkable number of them end up in the cities\"\n\nIt was so apathetic \"\"Even the dogs won't bark here.\"\n\n\"He also notes how the Swede Hollow residents have to pay one and a half dollars a month to pitch his shed at the site, but otherwise lacks all rights and anytime can be evicted. Several families share each house, which measures perhaps twelve square meters. The heavily soiled Phalen Creek that runs through the valley is a constant source of concern, they were emptying all their waste there, including from the loos. At the other newspaper articles from the period concerned authorities to the risk of a cholera outbreak and calls Swede Hollow \"a miniature of the primitive Sweden.\"\"\n\n\"- Swedes, especially women, were later reputed to be skilled workers. But then they arrived the were perceived as \"the dumb swede\", \"stupid / dumb Swede\" - which was because they had a hard time learning English. In that period Swedes were not quite as \"white\" in the American sense of Anglo-Saxon and Germans - then came a wave of Slavic immigration, and then the Swedes became 'whiter'.\"\n\n\"he quotes woodcutter Horace Glenn, who in 1901 writes home and laments:\n\n\"Here we are more than fifteen white men to sixty Swedes, but we keep them short and they know who's boss ... it's just in the evenings I have to have something to do with the beastly beings are called Swedes ... to go behind a number of Swedes are nothing for a man with a highly developed sense of smell., the stench can only come from a long line of unwashed ancestors. \"\"\n\n\"The Swedish immigrant stock phased into the same hierarchy as other newcomers - the last to arrive was always \"backward\", sounded and smelled weird, ate weird things. Then came a new group into the bottom, the former \"primitive\" step up and became more American. After the Swedes Italians arrived to Swede Hollow, and left many more traces in writing and pictures. Later, a group of Poles. The last inhabitants of the \"Den\" was a group of Mexican families, who were evicted in 1956 after which they burnt their house. The valley was a nuisance. Now it is a park with no remains of human habitation.\"", "I really don't know how relevant this is but I am currently reading *[The Plague of Doves](_URL_0_)*, It has references within it as to how the Native Americans perceived the Scandinavian and German settlers of the area. It is fiction but you still might want to check it out! ", "One interesting view on American's ideas about Scandinavian immigrants is opinions on servants.  Generally, American employers favored Scandinavians as servants.  The book *Peasant Maids, City Women* cites Katzman's book *Seven Days a Week*: \"A 1910 study of employer's preferences shows that American-born domestics were the first choice but next in order were Scandinavians.  Swedish housemaids were especially popular as live-in servants; they had a reputation for being honest, diligent, hardworking, willing to learn, and unlikely to complain.\"  (Due to cultural factors, Scandinavian immigrant women were also much more willing to go into household service than other ethnicities, except the Irish.)\n\n*Peasant Maids, City Women* also cites the bizarrely popular slapstick films starring \"Sweedie, the 'silly Swedish maid\".  Wallace Beery played the role in drag.  \"'Sweedie' was a caricature of the hardworking Swedish domestic who was naive enough to be exploited.  Sweedie behaved like a man, and she was dumb: she retained her Swedish culture totally, including working extremely hard (when it was no longer necessary).\"  \n\nI'll end with a some quotes from *The Art of Entertaining* by Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood, 1891.  I think this is obviously highly filtered through Sherwood's own opinions, but it's not out of line with what I've researched other places.  After running through the French (wonderful, but expensive), the Irish (children love them), and the Germans ( \"In Chicago, the ladies speak highly of the German servants, if they do not happen to be Nihilists, which is a dreadful possibility\"), she writes:\n\n\"The Swedes are more reliable up to a certain point ; they are never stupid, they are rather fantastic, and very eccentric. They are also full of poetry, and indulge in sublime longings. ... They have a great \ntalent for arguing with gentleness and courtesy, and of protesting with politeness, and they learn our language with singular ease. I once had a Swedish maid who argued me out of my desire to have the dining-room swept, in better language than I could use myself. One \nmust, in hiring servants, take into account all these national characteristics. The Swedes are full of talent, they can do your work if they wish to, but ten chances to one they do not wish to. \n\nGustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. were two types of Swedish character. The Swedes of to-day, like them, are full of dignity and lofty aspiration ; they love brilliant display ; they have audacious and adventurous spirits ; one can imagine them marching to victory ; but all this makes them, in this country, \" too smart \" to be servants. ... \nThey have every qualification for service excepting this : they will not obey, \u2014 they are captains. \n\nThe Norwegians are very different. We must again remember that at home they are poor, frugal, religious, and capable of all sacrifice ; they will work patiently here for seven years in order to go back to Norway, \nto that poetical land, whose beauty is so unspeakable. These girls who come from the herds, who have spent the summer on the plains in a small hut and alone, making butter and cheese, are strong, patient, hand- some, fresh creatures, with voices as sweet as lutes, and most obedient and good, \u2014 their thoughts ever of father and mother and home. Would there were more of them. If they were a little less awkward in an American house they would be perfect. \n\nAs for the men, they are the best farm-laborers in the world. They have a high, noble, patient courage, a very slow mind, and are fond of argument. The Norwegian is the Scotchman of Scandinavia, as the Swede is the Irishman. There are no better adopted citizens than the \nNorwegians, but they live here only to go back to Norway when they have made enough. Deeply religious, they are neither narrow nor ignoble. They would be perfect servants if well trained. \n\nThe Danes are not so simple ; they are a mercantile people, and are desperately fond of bargaining. They are also, however, most interesting. Their taste for art is vastly more developed than that of either the Swedes or the Norwegians. A Danish parlour-maid will arrange the bric-a-brac and stand and look at it. To go higher in their home history, they are making great painters. As servants they are hardly known enough amongst us to be criticised ; those I have seen have been neat, faithful, and far more obedient than their cleverer Swedish sisters. \n\nCould I have my choice for servants about a country house they should be Norwegians, in a city house, French.\"", "_URL_0_ has the full [*A history of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota*](http://_URL_0_/stream/historyofswedish01stra/historyofswedish01stra_djvu.txt) online. It's from 1910, which is, IIRC, within a year or two of my great-grandparents came over from Sweden to Minneapolis. I don't recall any of my relatives talking about being treated poorly after coming over, but maybe that's because they moved to a neighborhood that was also largely populated by Swedish immigrants.", "There is also *O Pioneers!* by Willa Cather. It is the story of a family of Swedish immigrants. At the time it was hailed as a realistic portrayal of real life.\n", "My cousin, Svarre M\u00f8rkhagen, is in the process of writing a non-fiction book series about the Norwegian immigration to America. I haven't been able to finish it because it is only in Norwegian, but from what he has told me it talks a lot about the journey and the peoples lives once they got to America. Here is a link to a site that talk about the book: Dr\u00f8mmen om Amerika. \n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/cn_uutiset/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1326973654&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&amp"], [], ["http://www.colonialswedes.org/History/History.html"], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Only-Amelia-Harper-Trophy-Books/dp/0064408566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384732642&sr=8-1&keywords=our+only+may+amelia"], [], ["DN.se", "http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=sv&sl=sv&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fkultur-noje%2Fvalkommen-till-swede-hollow-en-svensk-slum%2F"], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Plague-Doves-Novel-P-S/dp/0060515139"], [], ["archive.org", "http://archive.org/stream/historyofswedish01stra/historyofswedish01stra_djvu.txt"], [], ["http://www.gyldendal.no/Fakta-og-dokumentar/Historie/Droemmen-om-Amerika"]]}
{"q_id": "33ab9y", "title": "Were any \"southern aristocrat\" families ever regarded with any legitimate aristocratic privileges in dealing with or visiting Europe? Did their youth go on Grand Tours or were their patriarchs ever honored at receptions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33ab9y/were_any_southern_aristocrat_families_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqjbklw"], "score": [52], "text": ["Americans, both northern and southern, went on a form of the Grand Tour in the 18th C, though in [Being American in Europe, 1750-1860](_URL_0_), Daniel Kilbride points out that Americans valued its opportunity for practical education as much, if not more, than sentimental education.\n\nMoving into the Gilded Age, the more traditional Grand Tour figured largely in the lives of the new American super wealthy. I can't think of a good secondary source offhand, but the rich American in Europe is, eg, a very common theme in the novels of Henry James."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=kItfmWqYx1kC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=grand+tour+american+aristocrats&source=bl&ots=AVyt7pcvE1&sig=o8e43oVTF6otn3XkEy3Mz9cM0EQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6sg1Vb_BIYXbsATgqYHoBA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=grand%20tour%20american%20aristocrats&f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "26e7kr", "title": "Is there any way to figure out how many British troops have been killed in combat over the entire span of the British Empire?", "selftext": "In my history class, I've noticed that most of the wars fought that we study, especially around the age of colonialism, Britain seemed to have a hand in. It seems like their total military casualties would be astronomically high. They fought all over the place, from Opium Wars, to territorial wars in Africa, to both World Wars. I'm just curious to see if I can get a rough estimate on how many troops they have lost through such an expansive military existence.\n\n\n\nI realize that it is going to be very hard to get number, because they have  been around so long, so sorry if this is a dumb question. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26e7kr/is_there_any_way_to_figure_out_how_many_british/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chqrmpt"], "score": [2], "text": ["During the 18th Century Britain was hard-pushed to find and army of more than 30,000 fully equipped soldiers and was constantly making up losses from militia regiments, this grew larger in later years due to the Industrial Revolution. \n\nAs far as casualties from fighting are concerned, many more were actually caused by disease before the late 19th Century, than by wounds. In 1796, in the West Indies, about 14,000 men were killed, almost all by yellow fever, dysentery and malaria\n\n\" It has been calculated that 43,750 white British troops died in the West Indies between 1793 and 1801, just over half of those who had been sent, to which must be added between 19,000 and 24,000 men of the navy and transports\"  The Command of the Ocean by N. A. M.  Rodger.\n\n\nAs far as the 20th Century is concerned, without the British Commonwealth, there is no way Britain could have carried on with WW1 or 2 after the first year or so. She did not have the manpower necessary, so casualties from Commonwealth countries must be factored in, including the 18th/19th Century wars in India where local troops were used a lot."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "351scc", "title": "How long have people fried food?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/351scc/how_long_have_people_fried_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr0tlad", "cr1w5qz"], "score": [5, 2], "text": ["Pan fried or deep fried? How do we count fatty meats that render heavily and fry themselves over dry heat?", "Good question!  I suspect that people had been making various fried foods for thousands of years -- as long as there's been cooking fat and a metal or ceramic vessel to retain the heat and fluids. \n\nMore source-ably (is that a word?), there are the roman *globus*, which was a kind of fritter described by Cato in his *De Agri Cultura* in the 2nd century BC.  The *globos* is described as being made of cheese and spelt dough, and cooked in lard in a hot copper vessel.  Here's a translation: \n\n > Recipe for globi: Mix the cheese and spelt in the same way [described above], sufficient to make the number desired. Pour lard into a hot copper vessel, and fry one or two at a time, turning them frequently with two rods, and remove when done. Spread with honey, sprinkle with poppy-seed, and serve.  \n\nSo I have here a primary source with a recipe for a sort of sweet fried-dough-and-cheese pastry from around 2,200 years ago."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1bf7tw", "title": "Can the Subaltern Speak?", "selftext": "Gayatri Spivak has postulated that Western scholars are unable to realistically present histories of the subaltern *Other*. She argues that, despite the claims of Western historians, the hegemonic presence of cultural, socio-ideological, and economic norms in the West make it impossible for members of the \"oppressor\" group to truly speak for the subaltern - this is especially true in examinations of the Third World, for instance. Further, Spivak argues that the mores of Western academia place less value on the work of scholars from \"underdeveloped\" regions; we often take them to task for \"underdeveloped access to sources,\" among other things - thus, we unintentionally silence many attempts of the subaltern to find a voice.\n\nMy question to the historians: how do you deal with the gulf of difference between yourselves and the subaltern subjects with which you deal? This need not only be considered in terms of geography and ethnicity, but also temporally, in terms of class, and so on. What do you think? Can the subaltern speak? And, to the Western historians here, is it possible for you speak for them? I'd love to get some non-Western perspectives as well. \n\nThank you. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bf7tw/can_the_subaltern_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c96d0ts", "c96d3gx", "c96es48", "c96fpzi", "c96fx91", "c96m88u", "c96vf9p"], "score": [19, 52, 13, 12, 9, 11, 3], "text": ["this is such a monster of a question. Coming from Sinology, I can not really claim to be studying a subaltern. However, I have seen the problems Spivak talks about in full flower from some in the field and nearly all outside of it, particularly european/american-ists.  \nIn China, to make matters even more complicated, we have an added element - a deep, long and indigenous historiographical tradition of significant rigor.    \nBut let me look at the OP question, rather than get bogged down in china, but with lessons from Sinology.  \nFirst - we must not use our theoretical structures to describe the subaltern, or any non-western 'altern' for that matter. My belief is that we (euro-americans) *can* look at subalterns and write about them if we follow that simple dictum. But, we are stuck with our language, and our language is teeming with euro-centric references and paradigms. Also, historians, anthropologists, etc use theory, particularly post-modern continental theory to explain phenomena that are very difficult to explain otherwise, making it even harder to get to an honest assessment of the subaltern.  \nMy feeling is that we have to go through a sort of forced ignorance training. There were times in my MA program in which I felt lucky that I had a BM in Music rather than a BA. I was ignorant of a whole world of western-centered history theory that would have been useless in looking clearly at China.   \nThat's all I can muster on this right now. But I am eager to hear what some legit subaltern scholars have to say. ", "Would it be possible to summarize this question in such a way that someone unfamiliar with the terminology being used could understand it? I'm having one of those \"I understand some of these words\" moments.", "I don't want to speak too much to summarize its contents, because frankly I had an incredibly hard time understanding what he was saying some of the time, but [**Provincializing Europe: Post Colonial Thought and Historical Difference**](_URL_0_) by Dipesh Chakrabarty is an attempt to do exactly that, at least for Indian history.  It has its own problems, Chakrabarty being a part of an upper crust of Indian society and educated in Western thought.  I participated in a workshop on just the introduction and Chapter 1 as they relate to telling Japan's history - not subaltern but still \"other.\"\n\nOne of the things I most remember from the workshop was his ideas on History I and History II.  He called how Western historians tend to view history (mainly from the Marxist view) History I, focusing on capital and labor, etc.  History II he considered as lived experience, an example he included was workers sacrificing a goat before going to do their work.  Not rational, as we see it, and almost irrelevant, as we see it, but important to the subaltern.\n\nComing from my background, I seemed to have a unique perspective in this workshop in that I didn't see this divide as mutually exclusive or economic history vs. social history vs. anthropology.  As a Japan \"medievalist\", Marxist theory in general doesn't apply for me in terms of class and labor based history (there are *some* economic/material theories that arguably do, but that's dissertation material).  This is a decision I've came to independently, however, and I've a mix of historians who base everything on Marxist theory and those who cautiously reject it.  Looking at the documents and materials objectively, it's very frustrating to have to give a nod to all of the past historians who really got things wrong, and/or had no clue what \"Marxism\" they were referring to in their writings (nobody likes to define what they're arguing for, it's annoying).  \n\nI don't limit myself to institutional history (religion, the state, etc.) but a mixture of what the institutions were saying should happen and what people actually did.  This is one of the schools of Japanese \"medievalists\" that's been around in the US and Japan for a few decades.  So in a way I guess I've rejected History I altogether, but at the same time I don't totally focus on History II for Japan.  For Africa, I was more interested in History II, and so was my professor, so I focused more on that.  But there's still the issue of \"How does one make History II (or \"other\" history) accessible to Euro-centric Western scholars?\"  To narrate Japanese history, I do have to compare it to European history and use terms like \"medieval\", \"pre-modern\", \"early modern,\" etc., which are problematic words.  Even the native Japanese periodization, \"Ancient\", \"Middle\", \"Early Modern,\" and \"Recent\" is Western-derived and problematic.  I've been told to suck it up and use the words other people understand while trying to correct the perception of those words.\n\nOne source that came up in that workshop that I've yet to look up is Heidegger.  My note says \"Authenticity vs. Modernity\", and I found a book with a similar title and several essays explaining Heidegger's view on \"authenticity,\" but maybe someone else has the exact title.  I apparently didn't write it down correctly.  Either way it sounds like an interesting source to look at for a view on this issue.\n\nSo that was pretty round-about, but I hope it was fairly coherent and gave you some thoughts at least.  Definitely, if you have a lot of time, a lot of coffee, an empty notebook, and preferably a group of people to debate interpretations with, I recommend reading through Chakrabarty.  A lot of food for thought in there.", "I'm not sure archaeologists have this problem to the same extent as traditional text-based historians. In burial archaeology there is a selection bias on the affluent, but particularly settlement archaeology is commonly regarded as surprisingly egalitarian. More generally, material culture is in my experience rather resilient, so even the introduction of foreign conquerors leads to a mix of cultural elements, rather than complete direct dominance of the material culture of the dominant group (unless complete extermination or population replacement takes place). In this respect, the problem is, in my opinion, turned on it's head in prehistory, with some people criticising the notion of any form of 'elite' at all; (political) dominance of one group over another is something that needs to be demonstrated, rather than assumed, in prehistory.", " > And, to the Western historians here, is it possible for you speak for them? I'd love to get some non-Western perspectives as well.\n\nI think this adress a huge problems in modern human science, for instance a journalist argued that as most psychological studies on the human minds are done in the US (or the western world in general), the frame rate for psychological diagnosis is \"westerned\" yet applied to every other human being, thus \"globalizing\" westerns problems to other cultures. I don't know how prominent this is in History but in law this is exactly what we have, every \"native laws\" were wiped out on the altar of \"modernity\" which equaled to strict westernazition in most country. And to an extent that is just a shame.", "Oh man, this is a *great* question. As someone who is particularly interested in social history, one of the main challenges we face is being able to answer questions about the slaves and subjugated classes of Rome. As I see it, the problem within my time period has become compounded because for so long nobody really cared about what the subaltern subjects had left for us to draw conclusions from - the Great Men view of history held fast for so long and now that we're broadening our perspectives on what is and isn't worth studying, we find that the detective work social historians interested in the subaltern perspectives on Roman life is a lot more fiddly and elaborate than those who are interested in, say, the life and deeds of Augustus. \n\nThat being said - I'm amazed at what historians have been able to piece together from epigraphy, papyrus caches, etc. to be able to get a fresh perspective on slave and noncitizen life in Rome. And it's pretty fascinating. Even if they're not speaking for themselves as much as we might like, we're getting echoes, and the echoes we're getting are really worth listening to.", "The problem I've often found when dealing with social classes that did not, on the whole, have a voice is that opinions tend to be more extreme than mainstream if they are recorded at all. During the English Reformation, the Puritans and Recusant Catholics were both far more vocal than any of the groups whose religious beliefs fell somewhere in between these outliers - We have a fairly large number of sources and accounts about these extreme opinion groups, whether they be criminal, personal, or administrative (records of Puritan 'Classes', for example), and far fewer records about their moderate counterparts - for example, perhaps the most significant source for examining the lives of ordinary worshippers is the parish record, which tends to be an accounting sheet for the most part - and that disparity of information makes getting a balanced opinion of a subaltern societal group rather difficult, I feel.\n\nThe thing is, when a collective social group has a limited voice in history, it often feels as if those few people, whose drive or passion is great enough that they are written about or write about themselves, have their presence amplified through history. My worry when trying to understand the lives of people, particularly those who were - on the whole - illiterate, is that it's far harder to get a balanced opinion about the lives of the many when they're so often represented by the thoughts of a few radicals. That disparity of experience is why historians like Dickens were able to be so wrong about the extent of the Protestant reformation (which he thought to be almost all-encompassing in British society by 1535, a fact that was certainly not the case) - he studied the over-optimistic writings of Protestants and the fearmongering of Catholics, and from them drew conclusions about a larger majority of people that simply was not the case."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.amazon.com/Provincializing-Europe-Postcolonial-Historical-Difference/dp/0691130019"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1qwlff", "title": "Did audiences in medieval England or Ancient Greece quote popular playwrites the same way we today quote popular movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qwlff/did_audiences_in_medieval_england_or_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdher2h", "cdhnwpf"], "score": [50, 7], "text": ["Certainly.  A great line delivered with honesty and clever timing can leave a potent emotional memory in the viewer and Western playwrights have been quoting each other and their predecessors since the beginning of the art form.  While it can be difficult to find direct evidence of which particular lines were heavily quoted by specific audience members, all playwrights start off as fans of the stage and in many cases we *do* know what *they* were quoting.\n\nIn the [Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World](_URL_0_) the late professor of poetry, Peter Levi, notes that many of the existing play fragments of the Classical Greek playwright Aeschylus (525 - 456 BC) have been discovered not in Greece, but on bits of papyrus from Egypt.  That these plays were so popular that they were carried across national boundaries in ancient times suggests that there could have been passages being quoted on the streets, around the dinner tables, and on the stage.\n\nIt's hard to have this discussion without also mentioning Shakespeare, possibly the most widely quoted writer of all time.  The Bard was notorious for quoting (Ovid in *A Midsummer Nights Dream*), alluding to (Homer in *Troilus and Cressida*), or outright plagiarizing [(Plutarch in *Julius Caesar*)](_URL_1_) other popular authors, poets and playwrights.  In turn, Shakespeare's own work has been quoted by every single generation of actors and writers that followed him.\n\nIn short, the impulse to quote a good line from a play, song, film, or poem seems to have been a part of the human experience for as long as these respective art forms have existed.", "To say that it seems to have been pretty common is something of an understatement. I'm not particularly well-versed in English history, but certainly at Athens during the Classical Period the work of both tragic and comic poets was highly valued. Greek culture during this period was still highly oral and memory-based, since books were expensive and the influence of the oral tradition still pervaded the literary culture. Every educated man was expected to know by heart certain passages or works and just as it was an embarrassment not to know the important parts of, say, the *Iliad* from memory it was a mark of great learning to be able to recite lesser-known works. This attitude is particularly apparent when we look at Aristophanes or late Archaic and Classical sympotic poets. In Aristophanes well-known passages from various tragic poets and Homer are being *constantly* quoted and often twisted for humorous effect (which also showcased the skill of the comic poet). Actually, many of Aristophanes' best jokes are jabs at famous poetic passages--in fact, the majority of the jokes in the *Frogs* are of this nature. Sympotic references also frequently allude to famous passages. A feature of the symposium was a series of showcases of the individual skill at performance of the symposiasts, and one of the famous games was to either quote well-known passages or to play at \"capping,\" where speeches or lines of original poetry were delivered around the room, each speaker building on and trying to outdo his predecessor. The ability to reference or quote famous passages appears quite often in these contexts as a mark of an accomplished and educated man. \n\nNor are these attitudes restricted to Athens. During the Peloponnesian War a large portion of the Athenian troops captured in the rearguard Sicilian Expedition were spared (despite the fact that the rearguard's commander, Demosthenes, was executed against orders for causing the Syracusan troops so much trouble and holding them back--despite the fact that his forces were totally surrounded--for several days) because they were able to recite Euripides from memory. Speaking of Euripides in this context, at the end of his life Euripides left Athens to go to the Macedonian court where his work was becoming known and adored, and where his ability to recite his work from memory would have been highly prized.\n\nNow, \"Ancient Greece\" is a pretty big stretch of time, but this attitude still holds true to some extent. During the Hellenistic Period the rise of book culture meant that the necessity to actually know these works from memory declined, but interestingly because of this the need to be familiar with more works, including arcane and poorly-known ones, increased. In particular this was an attitude that increased among intellectuals during the Roman Period, so that by the so-called Second Sophistic during the 2nd Century, A.D., when we find a whole bunch of Romanized Greek authors writing enormous bodies of work essentially lusting after the glory days of Greece it becomes paramount to be able to quote lengthy passages of pretty poorly-known works. This fits in with the way that these scholars often write lengthy works about seemingly inconsequential subjects (like Oppian, who writes an entire epic poem about *fish*), because by showing off their knowledge of the Classical attitudes to such subjects they can showcase their own familiarity with every aspect of the material."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=7fY2eCEFkKgC&pg=PA177&dq=greek+drama+levi&hl=en&sa=X&ei=InWKUumeGsn62gWDnoH4DA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=greek%20drama%20levi&f=false", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gcvx1/which_is_shakespeares_most_historically_accurate/caj3ec4?context=3"], []]}
{"q_id": "eojfnc", "title": "It wasn't until 50 years after cans were used and sealed to store food, that can openers were invented, January 5th, 1858. What did people use to open cans before it was invented?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eojfnc/it_wasnt_until_50_years_after_cans_were_used_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fedalx3"], "score": [115], "text": ["The first tin cans held quite a lot more food than our cans nowadays, they were really a solution for feeding larger groups of people such as ships' crews or military units, or perhaps for the cook of a house with a large kitchen who wanted bulk ingredients.\n\nEarly cans such as those used for salmon by the Dutch navy in the late 18th century came with instructions that a \"hammer and chisel\" was to be used to separate the top of the can. As you might imagine this sort of effort was more than one might expect for a tin of something-on-toast and so canned food as a the convenience that we're familiar with didn't really catch on. The French solution of boiling foods inside glass jars was easier to operate and therefore more popular although clearly more costly.\n\nThe can skins themselves were also much thicker, the invention of the can opener that you mention comes at a time when can skins were becoming much finer - the can opener would barely have worked on most earlier, thicker tins.\n\nQuick answer: early cans were avoided or opened using brute force, they were mostly used for bulk storage and weren't a practical solution for the general public.\n\n*Sources:*\n\n*An introduction to the tin can, Historical Archaeology Vol 15 Issue 1, Busch J, 1981*\n\n*Tin can archaeology, Historical Archaeology Vol 8, Ascher M, 1974*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24i7j1", "title": "What do we know about the psychological well-being of public executioners?", "selftext": "What sort of person becomes a public executioner? Did the role attract psychopaths? Did it make psychopaths?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24i7j1/what_do_we_know_about_the_psychological_wellbeing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch7ok64", "ch7pjr3", "ch7rm2g"], "score": [7, 19, 3], "text": ["Because professional executioners still exist, it may be a good question for /r/askpsychology/ or even /r/askscience , potentially. I've read a couple of studies on this topic, all based on pretty recent evaluations.", "In early American, a sheriff or constable or other community members would serve as executioners. There weren't enough executions to require a full-time executioner. In England it was a hereditary position. I only know of two first person accounts by executioners during the early modern period; one is English and it's an apology written by \"John Catch\" (a probable pseudonym as many English executioners are referred to as John Catch in literature). There's also a journal by a German executioner that details his torture and killing techniques. It's gruesome and one of a kind. I'm on my phone but I'll post a link if I find it when I get to my computer. The German is a methodical and cold killer. \n\nEdit: The German Executioner is Franz Schmidt. Here's a link to more info:\n_URL_0_", "It might interest you to read about Vassily Blohkin, a Soviet executioner that killed thousands of people by his own hand. He was handpicked by Stalin, most likely for his cold demeanor and complete lack of remorse. _URL_0_\n\nThere's also an interview with the official Saudi beheader somewhere in youtube."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.americanacademy.de/home/program/past/gods-executioner-meister-franz-schmidt-nuremberg-ca1555-1634"], ["http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/vasili-blokhin-historys-prolific-executioner/"]]}
{"q_id": "1hehjq", "title": "Downton Abbey: Breakfast Habits of the Married vs Unmarried Women", "selftext": "In the TV series Downton Abbey, upper class unmarried women are shown as being required to breakfast in common, whereas married women apparently exercise the prerogative to breakfast in bed.  There are quite of few articles on the internet confirming the historicity of the married women's prerogative, but these articles do not explain its genesis.  Does anyone know the reason for this prerogative? (I assumed that it was to promote interaction of unmarried women with bachelors, but perhaps that is too simplistic.) EDIT: Typo, and clarity.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hehjq/downton_abbey_breakfast_habits_of_the_married_vs/", "answers": {"a_id": ["catpqef"], "score": [49], "text": ["Is it possible that this is more of a narrative need than a historical representation?  If I recall correctly one of the more influential/interesting maids is the chief attendant to the main lady of the house.  It might have more to do with the writer's desire to have the married women interact (and have influential conversation with!) their primary attendant maid in a private setting than anything else.\n\nWhat are the other articles on the internet about this?  It might be better to start broadly instead of focusing heavily on Downton Abbey which--as with all television shows--is subject to a number of narrative demands and needs which may or may not correspond with history."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5qc0co", "title": "John Quincy Adams became President 1 year before his father's death. What were John Adam's (or other Founding Fathers') views on his son becoming President given his opinions on the Presidency?", "selftext": "JQA became President on March 4, 1825, and John Adams died on July 4, 1826. John Adams was often accused of advocating for monarchy, saying that \"hereditary monarchy or aristocracy [are the] only institutions that can possibly preserve the laws and liberties of the people.\" Another time he was accused of trying to become King and was \"grooming John Quincy as heir to the throne\". Given these accusations, when his son did in fact become President, how did he react to this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qc0co/john_quincy_adams_became_president_1_year_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcyacga"], "score": [21], "text": ["I would also like to ask: Did the way in which JQA was elected (through the so called \"corrupt bargain\" with Henry Clay, and without an electoral or popular vote majority ~~n~~or even plurality) affect JA's viewpoint? How did he react to the election in particular? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4bjbcq", "title": "Is it true Churchill offered Dev Northern Ireland if Ireland would join WW2?", "selftext": "I remember hearing that sometime in WW2 that the UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill made an offer to Irish Taoiseach (= Prime Minister) \u00c9amon de Valera that the UK would give Northern Ireland to Ireland in exchange for Ireland joining the war on the allies side. And that de Valera turned it down, because of fears that the large Protestant population there would reduce the electoral chances of his own FF party.\n\nIs this true? (a) Did Chuchill offer Dev the North? (b) Did he turn it down for electoral reasons?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bjbcq/is_it_true_churchill_offered_dev_northern_ireland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d19tzsi", "d1aluri"], "score": [92, 2], "text": ["This is true but disingenuous. De Valera rejected the offer because he knew it wasn't Churchill's offer to make: as Prime Minister Churchill couldn't unilaterally kick Northern Ireland out of the UK against the (dominant) wishes of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. It was reasonable to expect that the wartime offer would be withdrawn in peacetime due to the Protestants of Northern Ireland's overwhelming rejection of joining Ireland and the dominance of Protestants in 1940s Northern Ireland.", " > Did he turn it down for electoral reasons?\n\nI'm not sure what you are asking here.  Was Dev reluctant to bring in NI? Hardly - Dev ran for the NI elections as Sinn F\u00e9in member in the 1921 NI elections after the [Westminster] Government of Ireland Act had partitioned the country.  \n\nHe walked out of the D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann chamber in protest at the passage of the Treaty in 1922 and was involved in the Irish Civil War hoping to bring about a Republican United Ireland.  Having failed he entered the D\u00e1il with Fianna F\u00e1il in 1927 but in 1933 he again ran for election in NI and was elected to Stormont for the constituency of South Down.  He held the seat until 1938 but refused to actually take his seat at Stormont as he was making the point that South Down belonged to D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann in a united Ireland.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "19m6nt", "title": "How well documented does a historical figure have to be for it to be consensus that they existed/are there any heated debates in the historian community as to whether X person existed or not?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19m6nt/how_well_documented_does_a_historical_figure_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ph98p", "c8php90"], "score": [6, 15], "text": ["There have been a major discussion for about a century whether Jesus were a historical person or a purely fictional/mythical figure. The debate seem to be largely over though, with the prevailing consensus being that he was a historical figure, although many of the legend surrounding him are unreliable.\n\nIt is not because we have particularly strong evidence regarding his existence. There are no primary sources or first-hand accounts. The gospels are the only sources of any importance, and they are second hand, written many years after the events, highly biased and not independent. And some parts (e.g. the birth legends) are clearly fiction/myth.\n\nStill, the existence of a historical Jesus is the better explanation for much of the content in the gospels. The best evidence is the existence of internal contradictions in the Gospels, where the narrative contradict the bias of the author. For example, Jesus were crucified (a roman form of execution), while the evangelists goes to great length to frame it so that it was really the Jews that wanted to kill Jesus and the Romans really didn't want to, but were pressured to by the Jews. If the gospels were fictions, they could just have let the Jews kill him in the first place, since it would fit their intentions better. The framing of the gospels much more points to an inconvenient but undeniable fact (Jesus were crucified by the Romans), which the evangelists had to spin.", "The simple answer is:  historians assume that someone mentioned as a real person - even in only *one* source - is a real person, unless there's some context to suggest that the person or story is unreliable or fictional (for instance, if the writer is telling some story with an obvious moral point, he may well be creating a character to illustrate that point rather than recounting a true event).  Hyper-skepticism becomes wearying over time.  The more distant the writer is from the context of his story, though, especially as history shades into mythology, the more doubt can be cast on the existence of the individuals involved.  If Tacitus mentions some Roman citizen in passing, for instance, the assumption is that said citizen was a real person.  When Livy writes of the legendary kings of Rome, some seven hundred years before his day, things become messier, and while most historians assume that Romulus, Numa, et al, are mythical figures, [there is a certain amount of controversy](_URL_0_). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://archive.archaeology.org/0707/abstracts/rome.html"]]}
{"q_id": "58sknu", "title": "Could the economic system of Inca Empire be considered as Socialist?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/58sknu/could_the_economic_system_of_inca_empire_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d93asvr"], "score": [16], "text": ["I don't think so.\n\nAccording to the World Socialist Movement, socialist societies must utilize a system of common ownership in the place of private property. Additionally, the production of resources and labor must belong communally to the society as a whole with each member drawing equally but freely from the communally produced goods. This communal distribution must be democratically controlled as opposed to owned by an individual or group. Because members withdraw and deposit to the communal surplus equally, members of a socialist society own their own labor and production. But this is not the case with the Inca as the elites controlled the means of productions and distribution.\n\nThe Inca state and elites garnered their wealth by levying taxes. Villages and towns across the empire were expected to pay tribute to the state. In fact, all subjects of the Inca Empire paid tribute to the state with the notable exception of the Inca elite. Conquered ethnic groups, lower caste Inca, and other marginalized peoples supported the distribution networks with tribute, but were not permitted to withdraw the same amount of goods as their rulers. The elites not only controlled the redistribution networks but also parasitized the system disproportionately.\n\nAlso social castes don't really jive with socialism, and class hierarchies existed in all facets of Inca society. And socialist states don't usually conquer civilizations around them.\n\nSo IMO the Inca were not socialist. They were something unique.\n\nsources:\n\nBauer, Brian S. and R. Alan Covey. \u201cProcesses of State Formation in the Inca Heartlands (Cuzco, Peru).\u201d American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002): 846-864. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_5_.\n\n \n\n\n \n\nHovde, Brynjolf J. \u201cSocialistic Theories of Imperialism Prior to the Great War.\u201d Journal of Political Economy 36, no. 5 (1928): 569-591. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_3_.\n\n \n\nLawrence, Pieter. \u201cWhat Socialism Means.\u201d The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Last modified April, 2005. _URL_0_.\n\n \n \n\nMurdock, George Peter. \u201cThe Organization of Inca Society.\u201d The Scientific Monthly 38, no. 3 (1934): 231-239. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_1_.\n\n \n\nRostworowski, Maria. \u201cThe Incas.\u201d In The Inca World: The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru A.D. 1000-1534. Edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli, 143-188. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.\n\n \n \n\n\u201cWhat is Socialism?\u201d World Socialism Movement. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_2_.\n\n \n \n\nZuidema, R. T. \u201cHierarchy and Space in Incaic Social Organization.\u201d Ethnohistory 30, no. 2 (1983): 49-75. Accessed November 23, 2015. _URL_4_."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1208-april-2005/what-socialism-means", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/15641", "http://www.worldsocialism.org/english/what-socialism", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/1822385", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/481241", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/3567261"]]}
{"q_id": "6ayttk", "title": "When did \"big balls\" start being associated with courage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ayttk/when_did_big_balls_start_being_associated_with/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhj7wr4"], "score": [18], "text": ["It seems to be quite an ancient association, the one between genital size and courage. Here's one of my favorite passages from the I Kings 12. Context: Solomon died, and his son Rehoboam has taken over. The Northern Tribes in particular want the new king to lighten the load of corv\u00e9e labor (think tax paid in labor) that Solomon used to build his great works. \n\n > 12 Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. 2 When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from[a] Egypt. 3 And they sent and called him; and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, 4 \u201cYour father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.\u201d 5 He said to them, \u201cGo away for three days, then come again to me.\u201d So the people went away.\n\n > 6 Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, \u201cHow do you advise me to answer this people?\u201d 7 They answered him, \u201cIf you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.\u201d 8 But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him, and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. 9 He said to them, \u201cWhat do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, \u2018Lighten the yoke that your father put on us\u2019?\u201d 10 The young men who had grown up with him said to him, \u201cThus you should say to this people who spoke to you, \u2018Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us\u2019; thus **you should say to them, \u2018My little finger is thicker than my father\u2019s loins. 11 Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.\u2019\u201d**\n\n > 12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, \u201cCome to me again the third day.\u201d 13 The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him 14 and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, \u201cMy father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.\u201d 15 So the king did not listen to the people, because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.\n\nTwo fun things: first, spoiler, Jeroboam splits, the United Monarchy period of Israelite history ends, and Jeroboam and Rehoboam go on to lead the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and Southern Kingdom (Judah), respectively. \n\nSecond, notice that they only discuss the thickness of loins among the \"young men\", and Rehoboam doesn't actually say that part to Jeroboam's face. He just repeats the other, less obscene part. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "bg601v", "title": "In 1757, British admiral John Byng was executed for 'failing to do his utmost' - What effect did his execution have on the aggressiveness of British naval commanders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bg601v/in_1757_british_admiral_john_byng_was_executed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eling4x"], "score": [132], "text": ["Adapted from [a couple](_URL_0_) of [previous answers](_URL_1_): \n\nByng's execution had a profound effect on the Navy of the mid-1700s. For one thing, it taught admirals (and other officers) that no matter how good their political friends, they could not escape the consequences of failing to act, and could not be perceived to be shy of offering battle. If there were plenty of things that could go wrong when attacking the enemy, on the other hand it would be a fatal error not to attack. The culture of determination in the face of adversity that the British navy cultivated over time certainly owes *something* to the example of Byng, though how much it owes to that is hard to quantify; it was reinforced throughout the decades by continued success in the face of even superior forces. Over time, the British assumed that they would attack whenever they saw the enemy, while the French and Spanish (and other foreign fleets) expected to be attacked and more than half expected to lose. \n\n\n >  A bit of an additional question; were British fleet commanders and captains more aggressive and 'daring' than their French and Spanish counterparts in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars? \n\nYes, I think that they probably were, for three reasons: \n\n* Their fighting instructions mandated extreme exertion to \"take, sink, burn or destroy\" enemy ships without regard to the cost to their own safety, with some caveats about hazarding the fleet for little reward. In the Battle of Minorca (1756) British admiral John Byng and his captains were extremely cautious in engaging the French fleet, regardless of the fact that they had been ordered to break through it to relieve the British garrison at Minorca (a strategic point in the Mediterranean). After the battle ended inconclusively, with light damage to the British fleet, the captains held a council of war and voted to retreat to Gibraltar. \n\nThe desultory battle and the fall of Minorca was a national scandal; the Admiralty court-martialed Byng and shot him on his own quarterdeck. (This is the origin of Voltaire's quip in *Candide*, *Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres* -- \n\"in this country, it is wise to shoot an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.\"). Jokes aside, captains were expressly rewarded for being aggressive, even to the point where disobeying orders was ignored or sanctioned if that resulted in the capture or destruction of enemy ships. \n\n* The admiralty offered prize money to captains who captured ships, as well as head-money for prisoners and some other forms of compensation for service. Captains were entitled to three-eighths of the total value of a prize, unless the captains were under a local admiral's orders, in which case he was entitled to a third of the captain's share (one-eighth the total value). This lead to some unseemly chasing after prizes, but it rewarded capturing enemy commerce as well as enemy men-of-war. \n\n* Most importantly, the doctrine of the British navy focused on destroying the enemy's fleet as the ultimate goal of naval warfare. Convoy duty, transport duty and even commerce-raiding were subordinate to this, and seen as dull but necessary parts of the business; even blockade duty was monotonous to the extreme but held the possibility of a decisive fleet action at some point. In contrast, the French and Spanish fleets were seen as an auxiliary or subordinate arm of their larger military, and their ships were more often thought of as basically escorts to move troops around."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tynsx/how_much_of_an_effect_did_john_byngs_execution/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ebdk5/how_did_nelsons_tactics_work_at_trafalgar/ctdxbmw/"]]}
{"q_id": "9i0h0v", "title": "How common were large wild animals (like bears, wisents, wolves, lions) in medieval Europe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9i0h0v/how_common_were_large_wild_animals_like_bears/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6gx26k"], "score": [6], "text": ["What the F is a wisent? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3wsw9h", "title": "Rise of Great Powers AMA Part Un - Western Europe", "selftext": "With the end of the Thirty Years War, Europe was ready to rise out of the ashes of confessional based conflict. While the this war wasn\u2019t purely or primarily focused on confessional beliefs, the the world before it was certainly different than that of after. In this new and long 18th century, we see the rise of Dynastic politics and warfare.\n \nThis time period also sees multiple revolutions; the seeds of the industrial revolution is planted in Britain while the seeds of philosophical revolution are planted in Spain under Spinoza and picked up by others with the Enlightenment. There is a revolution of governance, with the strengthening of the State throughout most of Europe, a rise of Enlightened Despots that shaped their kingdoms and the nations to come.\n \nFinally, with the change in government and leaders, we have a change in fashion. Courts become centralized and draw power from this centralization but culture also grows from this. We have the rise of famous courts like Sanssouchi or the ever famous Versailles. Culture becomes more focused and wide spread from single points.\n \nWhile the West has a long history with multiple currents that shape it to the way it is now, these hundred and fifty one years are highly influential and set up contemporary Europe.\n \n**Le Dramatis Personae**\n \n/u/hazelnutcream \u2018s focus is on British Imperial governance at the close of the Seven Years\u2019 War with a focus on the origins of the American Revolution. They also have a particular interest in the place of Britain\u2019s other kingdoms, Scotland  &  Ireland, and their place within the British Empire.\n \n/u/Itsalrightwithme is focused on Early Modern Europe but with a focus on the Habsburg realms, for today that will be Spain and the Spanish/Austrian Netherlands. He will be happy to answer questions on how Habsburg Spain and it\u2019s successor, Bourbon Spain, reacted to the challenges of the 17th and 18th centuries. *n.b.* He does not live in the Low Countries.\n \n/u/ColeVintage studies the trade and construction of fashionable consumer goods and how they affected both political movements and their daily life.\n \n/u/alexistheman will be answering questions on His Majesty\u2019s Britannic Royal Government.\n \n/u/elos_ will be speaking about the Spanish and French New World, the genocide of native people\u2019s, and the evils of Colonialism. He may help with mainland France.\n \n/u/Bakuraptor expresses his sincerest regrets that he will not be able to attend as he is traveling.\n \nFinally, /u/DonaldFDraper will express his love for France, particularly the Second Worst part of French history, the *ancien regime*.\n \nAsk your questions! And we will try our best!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wsw9h/rise_of_great_powers_ama_part_un_western_europe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxyt4di", "cxyy2xi", "cxyylta", "cxz1dma", "cxz2vny", "cxz5ro9", "cxzkjw3", "cy06fln"], "score": [10, 7, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2], "text": ["Thanks for doing this AMA guys!\n\n1. I have seen the term \u201cfiscal-military state\u201d often used to describe the state-structure of the European powers during this period, specifically Britain during the early 1700s. What precisely is meant by this term? Do the state-structures of this period conform to such a definition?\n\n2. To what extent, if at all, did Louis XIV attempt to standardize the patchwork of local administrations that characterized the *ancien regime*, especially given his centralization of royal power at Versailles? \n", "At the end of the 18th century, Gustav III was king of Sweden, and it's generally said that he lived in the wrong times. Had he lived 60-70 years earlier, he'd have been perfect for the task. As it was, in the times of the French revolution where the people demanded more rights and more power, he went the opposite direction and tried to rule as an absolute monarch. Needless to say, it didn't end well for the king.\n\nHow common was this approach in the rest of Europe? Do we see the same tendency of trying to force power back to the kingship or do they relent in favour of the mob?", "What role did the possession--or lack--of an overseas colonial empire play in the construction of nationalism and national identity among European countries in this era?", "For /u/ColeVintage\n\nHow easy was access to silk to the lower nobility and the middle class? Did this affect fashion trends for these groups?", "I've heard the Charles V tried to protect the rights and wellbeing of the natives in his colonial empire but couldn't really enforce it so he just gave up. To what extent is this true?", "How did medieval and early modern rulers keep their generals in check? Rome and China were famously plagued by rebellious generals. The modern era has seen a resurgence of coup d'etats starting with Cromwell and Napoleon and continuing to the present day. In the intervening eras, however, military coup d'etats seem to have been seldom attempted and rarely successful. How did the European monarchs fare so much better than their Roman predecessors?", "Geoffrey Parker theorizes that the growth of naval and colonial warfare in the 17th and 18th centuries was the result of the continental military revolution, where improvements in siege warfare made decisive battlefield victory elusive, if not impossible.  Do your readings of Early Modern history support the idea of decisive victory in naval and colonial theaters, compared to indecision on the continent?", "What happened to \"the war feeding itself\" as a doctrine (if such a word isn't anachronistic) after the Thirty Years War? Was the practice continued by any factions in future wars, such as the rest of the Franco-Spanish war?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "31smg4", "title": "Who were the first modern Gynecologists? What was their motivation to work in the field? How were they perceived by other doctors and by the public in general?", "selftext": "I'm assuming they were men.  Gynecology deals with very personal parts of women.  How did male doctors come to be responsible for women's health?  Were there jokes about gynecologists being perverts in the early days or was it perceived as a serious attempt by doctors to improve the lives of women?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31smg4/who_were_the_first_modern_gynecologists_what_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq51nw6"], "score": [11], "text": ["I unfortunately can't speak to the societal aspects of your question, but I would like to point out that gynecology at some level has existed since at least classical times, as evidenced by [this speculum](_URL_1_) and other similar instruments found at Pompeii and elsewhere.  To ask who the first modern gynecologists were is to assume that at some point in the modern era the specialty was rediscovered, as opposed to constant practice in some form since at least the ancient Greeks, if not earlier.  \n\nMen certainly dominated the classical medical practitioner milieu, but it seems clear that women were involved in medicine among both the Greeks and Romans.  Period artwork usually depicts women functioning as midwives for childbirth and it is not a great leap to assume that women would handle not just childbirth but all womanly medical issues.  I'm not aware of much art depicting routine exams that would confirm that supposition though admittedly it is not my specialty.  [This](_URL_0_) lamp sherd seems to depict something along those lines but it is difficult to determine whether it is a male or female performing the procedure on what is clearly a very ill woman."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.laht.com/literature/vaginalexamlamp.jpg", "http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/hist-images/romansurgical/vaginalSpeculum1a_e.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "2yfdc5", "title": "What mathematical symbols (ie + and -) were used in the Roman Republic and Empire? Did they change?", "selftext": "Title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yfdc5/what_mathematical_symbols_ie_and_were_used_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp9abhj"], "score": [21], "text": ["There were no standardized symbols for addition and subtraction until long after the Empire. The symbols we use now date from after the 15th century.\n\nFor the most part, computations (even quite complicated ones) would be written out in words. For an example of this, you can look at Frontinus' (1st century AD) [De aquis](_URL_3_) (recent translation [here](_URL_4_)), where he discusses the water supply system in Rome in detail. Frontinus' surprisingly intricate calculations have been discussed at length by many authors (see the references below). \n\nOf course, many of the famous Latin works we have are presumably somewhat polished, and present mostly final results, without detailing the computations that lead to them. Unfortunately, we do not have many primary sources explaining how the Greeks or Romans performed computations. Most of what we believe is based on guesswork from examining authors such as Frontinus or Diophantus. The classical reference for this is Friedlein's *[Zahlzeichen und das Elementare Rechnen der Griechen und Roemer](_URL_0_)* (Numerals and elementary arithmetic of the Greeks and Romans). You can look at the bibliography in [this article](_URL_1_) by Maher and Makowski for a more up-to-date overview of this question, and a detailed discussion of Frontinus' computations. We do know that the Romans used abaci, which, if operated expertly, can certainly rival computation with pen, paper, and modern notation, and learned multiplication tables.\n\nEven in the few examples of more informal computations we have, (Serafina Cuomo gives examples from Greek papyri of the Roman period in her book *Ancient Mathematics*), computations were generally written out in words. In [A History of Mathematical Notations](_URL_2_), Cajori examines the example of Diophantus (who lived in Alexandria under the Empire). He did have his own notation for subtraction (an inverted trident or \"psi\"), but he would just put numbers next to each other to signify addition. This notation was not widespread, and did not remain in use after Diophantus. Cajori also mentions \"sporadic\" use of a slash (/) to indicate addition in Greek papyri of the period. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://archive.org/details/diezahlzeichenun00frie", "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1215513?sid=21106063920573&uid=70&uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=3739696&uid=2129&uid=4", "https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/De_Aquis/text*.html", "http://www.uvm.edu/~rrodgers/Frontinus.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3bn19c", "title": "Would Medieval English  &  Irish People be Aware of the Mythology of GrecoRoman Societies?", "selftext": "I know this is a *super* specific question so apologies and I understand if this is downvoted. \n\nI was having my own version of shower thought and wondered specifically if Irish people living during the Viking Era were aware of parallels in Celtic and Greek mythology. It went on from there. \n\nI was wondering if scholars (those lucky few with access to books) and those they educated would be aware of Greek and Roman myths and mythological figures such as Venus? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bn19c/would_medieval_english_irish_people_be_aware_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csqshti"], "score": [2], "text": ["In the Middle Ages, a scholar should be aware of The Matter of Britain, The Matter of France, and The Mattter of Rome. That is, Arthurian legends, the tales of the epic cycles, and Greek mythology as filtered thru Roman (including epics like the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneiad). In the early medieval, it was assumed anyone in northern Europe who knew Greek was Irish! It remained  an arcane language until the Renaissance."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8wk9d3", "title": "In 1651, Knights Hospitaller have acquired four islands in the Carribean, controlling them until 1665. How did Hospitallers manage to establish colonies in the New World? What was their long-term plan for Carribean holdings?", "selftext": "The islands in question are Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts), Saint Martin, Saint Barth\u00e9lemy, and Saint Croix.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8wk9d3/in_1651_knights_hospitaller_have_acquired_four/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1w8wjn"], "score": [65], "text": ["I asked this question 2 weeks ago and received an excellent answer from u/rhodis \n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s9cs5/what_were_the_knights_hospitaller_hoping_to/"]]}
{"q_id": "fio2ce", "title": "Would rowboats actually be towed behind Napoleonic era ships as shown in \u2018Master and Commander\u2019 and if so why?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fio2ce/would_rowboats_actually_be_towed_behind/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fkjhskq"], "score": [60], "text": ["I hope I can go some way to answering this to AskHistorians standards, though out and about so cannot state sources specifically I'm afraid.\n\nThe answer to whether they did do this is yes.  A few reasons why:\n\nEven a relatively small man o' war like the one in this book/film would have had 3 or 4 boats on board of various sizes - these vessels were vitally important for everything from inshore work, transport, messaging, ship inspection, and more. Removing them from your ship was to mitigate a lot of risk of them being destroyed/damaged and therefore maintain the effectiveness of your ship.\n\nIn the Napoleonic era these boats generally had to be dropped in the water by tackle attached to yard arms  on the main and mizzen (rear-most) masts - not something you'd want to do mid-battle. If you do need them through the action, best to have them afloat and ready to go.\n\nRemoving them from your ship of war also had the twin advantages of clearing your decks of clutter, giving the crew more space for their tasks; and also removing a few significant sources of flying timber and splinters.\nThis latter point cannot be overstated; splinter injuries were common and rather dangerous in this era where infection was so often the killer rather than the battle wound itself. This is part of the reason why oak was preferred to the much more readily available teak in shipbuilding - teak splintering was thought to be much more likely to cause infection. I don't know if this is borne out by scientific evidence, however.\n\nAll of these reasons (there may well be more I am unaware of, would be keen to hear them!) usually outweighed any disadvantages conveyed like extra drag in the water or reduced maneuverability. In a different battle scenario - a chase, for example - these speed and agility-based factors would of course become considerably more significant.\n\nTLDR: Yes this would happen when beating to quarters; for the sake of safety of the crew, safety of the boats, deckspace and ensuring prompt availability of those boats during action."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1rw5gz", "title": "How long have bolts/nuts and screws existed? Do we know who invented them, or what culture they arose from?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rw5gz/how_long_have_boltsnuts_and_screws_existed_do_we/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdrlrys"], "score": [31], "text": ["Although I don't know who definitively invented them (although I suspect it was the ancient Greeks), I can tell you that they existed at least as early as Imperial Rome and Byzantium. In military sections of works such as *De Ceremoniis Aulae Byzantinae* (10th Century AD), logistical lists and descriptions mention screws and nuts/bolts being used for siege equipment and ship construction. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "129lq1", "title": "Were there any major events (tragedies, incidents, downfalls) in history that were caused mainly by people being in denial (or just complacent)?", "selftext": "About the reality of their situation.) I see this happening in the future with issues such as climate change, but what has already happened because of this? I am quite interested in the fallacies and faults of humans and this seems to be one of the more tragic yet preventable.  \n  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/129lq1/were_there_any_major_events_tragedies_incidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6tab3r", "c6tal01", "c6tazxm", "c6tb5di", "c6tb8s0", "c6tbbeu", "c6tbcww", "c6tbo95", "c6tbp84", "c6tbyqb", "c6tc359", "c6tcd9v", "c6tcdmx", "c6tcko1", "c6tclwq", "c6tdaal", "c6tdb4k", "c6te7b0", "c6tenar", "c6tenkg", "c6tfehy", "c6thmlt"], "score": [34, 77, 19, 54, 17, 11, 44, 67, 12, 97, 23, 3, 47, 21, 16, 8, 16, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3], "text": ["World War Two?\n\nThe Allies did not act against Hitler, allowing him to violate most of the terms of the Treaty Of Versailles, even having Chamberlain meet him and secure 'Peace in [their] time' before the war.", "With regard to avoidable tragedy, mention should be made of the Xhosa who, in a misguided effort to get rid of the white people, killed all their own livestock, including chickens. Most of them then starved to death leaving the way open for the dreaded whites. ", "A great question. I suggest The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman. I think if she were alive today, she would include climate change. It is an excellent, highly readable book.", "The Soviet leadership dismissed early reports that the Germans had began to invade in 1941. They were very poorly prepared for the invasion and suffered very heavy losses in the early days of Barbarossa. As a result the Nazis got very close to Moscow.", "IMHO, quite a lot of monarchs fall into this;\n\n1) Shah of Iran before the Islamic Revolution. \n\n2) The King of Kashmir at the time of India-Pakistan partition. Lot has been written about his non-nonchalance and excessive vices by mid 1940s. I remember reading that he was hardly conscious to the last day of signing the state off to India.  It would not be too far fetched to say that at least some of the current problems of Kashmir can be attributed to his (in)actions at the time.\n\n3) Can't remember more but stories of out of touch monarch feel to common to not have many more such examples.", "An example would be how Hitler imposed the plan for the Battle of the Bulge against some of his best marshals' advice (Model and von Rundstedt) and then refused to believe reports that indicated, even early in the offensive, that things weren't going as expected. He even started planning for even more ambitious goals after a few days, even though the offensive was doomed from the start because of a lack of ressources and the prevalence of allied air power (which wasn't very active due to weather, which partly explained the advance of german troops and may have given Hitler false hopes).\n\nThis led to the destruction of german offensive capabilities, the commitment of the last of their reserves and the invasion of Germany from the West.", "It is said that once the royal family of France were transferred from Versailles to Tuileries during the Revolution, Louis XVI entered a deep depressive state where he did nothing but sit and mope around, leaving the politically untrained Marie-Antoinette to deal with the important Revolutionary matters. While her political manoeuvres were admirable, it wasn't enough to negotiate their safety. ", "Would the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster be considered one? NASA managers that ignored repeated warnings from their engineers lead to the allowing of a shuttle launch with O-ring failures.  ", "The complete failure of Aman to predict the Yom Kippur War has always astounded me. It was as if everyone BUT Aman (and the US) knew that war was right around the corner. It is probably one of the biggest failures in threat assesment of all time. ", "The [Great Chinese Famine](_URL_0_) of 1958 to 1961 happened due to not complacency, but outright denial, in so far as saying food was bountiful.\n\nBasically this was due to Mao's Great leap Forward and the 4 No's campaign,  firstly you had the 4 No's campaign, it was a massive campaign to wipe out pests, rats, flies, mosquito's and importantly sparrows. The campaign to wipe out sparrows was so ridiculously effective it allowed the growth of crop eating insects massively, add to that the fact that peasantry were out fulfilling Mao's plans rather than focusing on farming and the fact there was fairly poor weather and a drought over most of China. \n\nNow here's the denial. Local leaders and party members (responsible for grain numbers etc) actually increased the amount of crops, to try to reach the Great Leap Forwards goals, it was estimated that crop production fell by roughly 60 million tonnes, from 200 million tonnes to 143 million tonnes in 2 years. Western estimates give figures as high as 40 million estimated deaths, the lowest possible figures put it at about 17 million and up to 45 million. \n\nTL;DR, Great Leap Forward in China caused a famine killing roughly 30-40 million people, to Mao and the Party crop intake went up", "Textbook case: the [Union Carbide Bhopal Disaster](_URL_0_).", "Ive read that a cause of the escalation of the civil war was due to Northerner's and newly elected republican's failure to actually take the secession threats of the south seriously. Their rationale was that the south would always cry secession whenever they felt they couldn't get their way. Many in the north felt that the assemblies meeting to secede from the union were just a ruse,and believed wrongly that it could just be compromised away like it had in the past and that the south would just see the folly of their ways and come back to the union.", "[Easter Island](_URL_0_) became uninhabitable because the inhabitants used all the trees to build giant head statues. With no wood, they couldn't build boats to fish, and the lack of trees made the ground barren. \n\nThe people apparently believed that the heads would please the gods, so they wouldn't starve despite destroying their environment. There is a great book called Collapse by Jared Diamond that explains it in more detail. ", "Saddam Hussein and Khaddafi (spell it as you wish) are dead because they were in denial about the power of their enemies.  \nThey were in denial because they'd set up a system in which - if you told them the truth - you'd lose your job or your life.\nAlas, the democracy I live in (USA) is like that - if you tell voters the truth (like, we can't keep borrowing forever, or global warming will mean worse things than using air conditioners a lot) then you WILL lose your job.  \nSUM: Dictatorships cannot HEAR the truths.  Democracy's leaders cannot TELL the truths.", "Jared Diamond, who has studied collapses, thinks one of the major causes is that elites are insulated from the direct consequences of their decision-making (often continue to be rewarded), so they have no incentive to change.\n\nFor future people who look back upon this time, the prime candidates (to me) are (in no particular order) overpopulation, peak cheap oil, natural resource depletion, aquifer depletion, topsoil depletion, fish stocks collapse, climate change, and continued wishful thinking regarding some technological/scientific breakthrough for cheap energy or dramatically increased food production. I feel that the writing is already on the wall.\n\n", "9/11\n\nThe U.S. had troves of information on him, and he had even been directly named in FBI reports as someone of extreme concern. They had names of hijackers already, as well as a timeframe down to the month of when something was most likely going to happen.\n\n", "I don't think anything in the past compares to man-made global warming, especially when combined with other potential disasters that loom in the future.  The Industrial Revolution has changed everything, for better or for worse.\n\nWhile denial and complacence and idiocy can affect history in the short run, hastening disaster and slowing progress, in the past it was questionable whether it affected history in the long run.  For example, Mao single-handedly delayed China's entry into the global economy for several decades, and for a while it seemed as if Japan had leapfrogged China in the race for development.  But then Mao died, his successors adapted, and now China is quickly catching up with everyone, and looks likely to surpass the U.S. in the future.  Development was delayed, but not permanently.\n\nHowever, in the future the stakes are higher and it will be much harder to overcome the destruction man can cause.  So, for example, in the past some peoples may have been slow to react in crises, but the earth recovered and so did the human race.  But in the future, some combination of man-made climate change, overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, nuclear war, famine, and epidemics could wipe out the human race, or at least set it back thousands of years.  \n\nAs a human race, we have never been in this situation before.  We have never risen so far, nor had so much to lose.  We have never been so interdependent, and so vulnerable to the decisions of other people in other countries, not just next door but all around the globe.  What we need is worldwide organization, an effective world government, but it may already be too late.  \n\nIn the absence of world government or cooperation at an unprecedented level, our best hope may be that technology continues to improve at an exponential rate and allows us slow, reverse, or adapt to man-made climate change and overpopulation; find new resources and food sources; and prevent nuclear war and epidemics.  But it is scary to contemplate the stakes involved.  As the human race has risen to unprecedented heights, it has so much more to lose, and no one really knows whether it can avoid or even survive global disaster.\n\nFor more on this, I recommend Ian Morris's book Why the West Rules -- for Now.", "Seems like the sinking of the Titanic is a pretty classic case. ", "The Battle of the Little Bighorn seems to be a good example.\n\nCuster was certainly overconfident; he refused a battery of Gatling guns, he refused an additional battalion of 2nd Cavalry, he divided his forces in three different columns, he ignored the warnings of his scouts\n\nHis main worry was that Indian forces would scatter, denying him the possibility of a single field battle to end the campaign.\n\nHe did get his battle ...", "Most of 'em I'd imagine.\n\nIn my area of specialty, Japan had a series of famines coupled with a massive economic crisis in the late Tokugawa era, was was basically the result of the ruling class not caring about much of anything beyond their own parties and petty squabbles.  \n\nEven without the arrival of Perry to trigger the Meiji Restoration, Japan would likely have had some sort of political upheval that replaced the Tokugawa Bakufu.\n\nIn China most dynasties tended to fall largely because the Emperor and his cronies stopped paying attention to governing and let things fall to pieces.  The Grand Canal is what connects Beijing to the richer farmland of the south, no Grand Canal means widespread famine in Beijing and the north.  One of the most common ways you could tell a Dynasty was on it's way out was when reports started of the Grand Canal silting up and becoming non-navigable.\n\nIIRC the Aksumite Empire fell apart basically due to overworking the soil on the Ethiopian lowlands.  To be fair, there wasn't a lot they knew back then on how to repair overworked soil, but they knew for decades it was happening.  ", "Pompey. To be fair nobody really knew what was going on until it was too late. Most people stayed in the city when the tremors began. When the ash started falling some tried to leave but many just hid indoors. ", "Very much so, quite recently even. Muammar Gadaffi was absolutely convinced that the uprising in Libya was an incident. He overestimated his own popularity, and therefore kept trying to suppress the uprising. He never realized the magnitude of the amount of people that were sick of his rule."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4vhezq", "title": "Did the peasants of Medieval Europe view their lords as oppressors, proctectors, or something in between?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vhezq/did_the_peasants_of_medieval_europe_view_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ypxrt"], "score": [83], "text": ["*My answer concerns the later Middle Ages. Hopefully one of our early medieval experts will be along to discuss Chris Wickham's thesis about peasant life in the earlier period.*\n\nThis is kind of an impossible question to answer because, as Paul Freedman points out, we have *no* unfiltered peasant voices from medieval Europe. Archaeologists have uncovered massive amounts of material evidence, but anything textual is filtered, selected, and pre-interpreted by the upper classes. Steven Justice has argued that six little texts (in the form of letters, although he thinks that at least one was originally a sermon) that survive in two late medieval English chronicles represent the *viewpoint* of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, but notes that the \"peasant\" part of the title is to some extent a misnomer. \n\nFor the most part, we have court testimony. This can include peasants suing other peasants. More relevant to this question, it includes a LOT of peasants protesting oppressive conditions. Thomas Bisson is probably the scholar who has pushed this line of inquiry the farthest, stressing the frequency with which the word *tyrannus* appears all over eleventh and twelfth century sources in particular. In Catalonia, destruction and seizure of peasant property was *how* knights built themselves into lords. Lords in Germany (and almost certainly elsewhere) oppressed their own peasants, restricting access to hunting, foresting, and fishing areas.\n\nIn the sources, we see two patterns: peasants protesting their own lords' oppression, and peasants protesting their lords' failure to protect them from marauding *other* lords. Peasant communities were frequent victims in the crossfire (literally fire; arson was a big concern) of princes jockeying for land and power.\n\nSo with the words tyrant and tyranny flying around the sources; peasants summoning up their courage to argue their case before their lords; even Church councils censuring *their own prelates* for being naughty ecclesiastical lords (usually the Church just censures the laity), surely we must accept that medieval peasants saw their lords as a collective terror!\n\nExcept...this is where the source bias comes in. Peasant *protests* are recorded in the sources because they were formal petitions. There will be no record of \"thank you notes\" from grateful peasants, given their illiteracy and the cost of hiring a scribe plus obtaining writing materials, plus the unlikelihood that preservation of such letters would have enhanced the status of the receiver. What we *do* see, in the late Middle Ages, are attempts on the parts of lords and kings to mitigate the effects of famine--not only for their own economic gain, but also for the protection of their peasants. During the 1315-22 Great Famine, for example, English nobles tried to implement price fixing on grain crops, even though it might have benefited themselves to sell what yield they could at high prices.\n\nThe late Middle Ages were rocked by a series of peasant uprisings for sure--the 1381 PR, the Jacquerie in France, the Shepherds' Crusade (which David Nirenberg argues is frustration at lords turned onto outsiders). The interesting thing with a lot of these, though, is that peasant demands tended to be linked to very specific measures: a new poll tax perceived as unfair, the fixation of wages for day labor at levels the rebels considered ridiculously low and old-fashioned, new restrictions on water rights. Do these revolts represent a generally bad situation that occasionally got *really* bad? Or a tolerable world where sometimes lords pushed too hard?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5f08d7", "title": "Why are the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century U.S. stereotypically associated with running a laundry business?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5f08d7/why_are_the_chinese_immigrants_in_the_19th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daghu59"], "score": [28], "text": ["Hi OP, this is a great question, please have gold. \n\nAs a follow-up question\u2026 I live in San Francisco, CA, and I\u2019ve always been told that the Chinatown here was founded by the Chinese immigrants in the second half of the 19th century mostly running laundry businesses, building the railroad, and working as prostitutes. \n\nTo what extent is this true, and where could I read more about this? If this is true, were these occupations specific to San Francisco, or were they similar in other cities?\n\nEdit - typos."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "571gl1", "title": "Where there ever sightings or legends of Sasquatch or Sasquatch-like creatures during the American Revolution?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/571gl1/where_there_ever_sightings_or_legends_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8orz2k", "d8q1h50"], "score": [8, 5], "text": ["Related question: are questions like this, specifically about legend and folklore, appropriate for this sub? I'm certainly interested, just wondering if it falls within the expertise of our excellent mods and volunteer historians. ", "If by \"sasquatch or sasquatch-like creatures\" you mean reports of large, hairy, ape-like hominids, then certainly not; the earliest reports that have been co-opted into the sasquatch mythos date to the early 19th century, the term \"sasquatch\" did not come into use until the 1920s (when it was coined by a Canadian newspaperman named JW Burns), and \"Bigfoot\" not until the late 1950s.\n\nThat is not to say that there weren't reports of \"things in the forest\" that antedate 1800. Before that time, however, they were not considered to be animals. There was, instead, a longstanding tradition relating to the \"wild man of the woods,\" an essentially literary trope consisting of stories of hermits and outcasts. Such stories can be traced back a long way. Gerald of Wales, writing in the 1190s, describes Merlin in this manner; he had gone mad during a battle and \"fled into the forest where he passed the remainder of his life as a wild man of the woods.\" This did not mean that the \"wild man\" was not human, nor that he necessarily had no contact with human society; Merlin was still able to acquire a reputation as a powerful magician and prophet. But it's possible to suggest that the \"wild man\" trope fills a roughly similar space in folklore to sasquatch. Neil Thomas, in his \"The Celtic wild man tradition and Geoffrey of Monmouth's *Vita Merlini* (*Arthuriana* 10, 2000), argues that \"it is evident that the figure of the Wild Man has arisen spontaneously in a number of cultures of a far greater antiquity than that of the Celtic lands of the post-Roman period,\" and he points to parallels dating as far back as the *Epic of Gilgamesh*.\n\nA major problem in regard to early sasquatch/bigfoot reports is the uncritical appropriation by cryptozoologists of any and all fragments of legend or tradition that could plausibly (and often only implausibly) be regarded as distorted reports of \"real animals\". A good example which relates to your query is the \"windigo\" or \"wendigo\" of Canadian First Nation folklore. The windigo features in a highly-complex set of myths and cautionary tales, often appearing as an insatiable supernatural creature associated with dearth and cannibalism (I wrote a little about an early windigo cannibalism story, dating to 1741 and originating in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, [here](_URL_0_).) Because he is assumed to have once been human, and lurks in the deep woods, many of these tales feature traits that could be and have been stripped of their original contexts and co-opted in this way.\n\nChad Arment's *The Historical Bigfoot* (2006), a comprehensive but not critical compilation of reports, is a good place to start if you are interested in early North American sasquatch-style reports. The earliest cases he has gathered all feature \"wild men\" or \"yahoos\" (a term meaning, essentially, uncouth subhuman, popularised by *Gulliver's Travels*), progressing to \"gorillas\" later in the 19th century. There is an extensive literature on the windigo which places this group of stories in a series of more useful contexts than the cryptozoological one; see for example Robert A. Brightman's [\"The windigo in the material world,\"](_URL_1_) *Ethnohistory* 35 (1988) and  DH Turner's \"Windigo mythology and the analysis of Cree social structure,\" *Anthropologica* NS19 (1977).\n\nIncidentally, when Burns coined the term \"sasquatch,\" he did so by taking a word from the Coast Salish language group of British Columbia, normally given as \"s\u00e9squac,\" which means \"wild man.\"\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/06/25/ghosts-witches-vampires-fairies-and-the-law-of-murder/", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/482140?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"]]}
{"q_id": "8s0fm5", "title": "How brutal was French colonial rule in Indochina? Was it as bad as say, the British Raj?", "selftext": "I asked this a while back but got no response. Time for try number 2! I'm interested in the daily lives of the general populace, and what the general social or legal atmosphere of the colonial society was like.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s0fm5/how_brutal_was_french_colonial_rule_in_indochina/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0wktge"], "score": [38], "text": ["Hello, I wrote a small essay for my Vietnam-US history class that went over French Indochina. I hope this can help you.\n\n\n\nThe French colonization of Vietnam (which was part of French Indochina) was part of a larger trend of western countries in an age of imperialism. Holding colonies in a place such as Asia or Africa was a sign of success and power amongst European powers. It was also argued that there was a need to civilize people who were deemed primitive, or did not meet European standards. This was typically called the white man\u2019s burden, as it was up to civilized white people to \u201cmodernize\u201d these various people and cultures. For the French, they had their own version of this, which was called *mission civilisatrice*, or civilizing mission. \n\n\n\nThe impression was given that imperialist powers such as the French colonized parts of Southeast Asia and Africa in order to spread and further \u201ccivilization\u201d. While one of the reasons was to indeed spread their own values over indigenous peoples, this was not the main purpose. The main purpose of the French in places such as Indochina was to economically exploit its land and people through the extraction of natural materials and resources, and reap large profits from it.\n\n\n\n\nThere was a need for economies to expand in places such as Europe, and one of the ways for an economy to easily expand was to take over other places, and use their resources for the other country\u2019s gain. This was readily enacted in places such as French Indochina. The French colonial bureaucracy initially gained revenue through the heavy taxation system imposed upon the Vietnamese people. The French also soon gained almost state monopolies on household staples such as salt, rice, and rice alcohol, and made it compulsory for each household to buy these goods. This revenue gave the French bureaucracy in Vietnam a foothold, and encouraged further exploitation by French capitalists. \n\n\n\n\nFrench authorities later moved on to diversifying the Indochinese economy towards other various goods. Some of these goods were household items such as rice, pepper, coffee, and tea. Others were resources and materials that were needed by European powers or had high prices on the global market, such as rubber, tin, zinc, and coal. Through irrigation works and infrastructure development by the French and Vietnamese (partially through corv\u00e9e, which was basically unpaid labor), the amount of land that was being opened up to farming for goods such as rice greatly rose. However, these lands were not distributed collectively to people such as Vietnamese peasants. These lands were sometimes sold to French colonists and Vietnamese collaborators at exceptionally low prices, or would otherwise go towards the highest bidder. \n\n\n\n\nThe French, with the help of local leaders and officials who collaborated, displaced millions of Vietnamese people from the land that they owned, either through legal or illegal means. If one was unable to pay the heavy taxes imposed, for example, then their land would be forfeited to the government or creditors. Through bureaucratic means, the land could be easily taken. However, land could also be taken through means such as of intimidation, by corrupt leaders who were backed by the French. Ultimately, there were various ways that most Vietnamese people lost their land, and were forced to become peasant farmers that toiled on plantations or on small land holdings.\n\n\n\n \nThe French, of course, were simply unable to fully control and colonize Vietnam without help. Since France never had a large amount of soldiers or administrators in Indochina, the French depended upon a small amount of local village leaders and mandarins to control not only the cities, but the countryside. These Vietnamese collaborators were despised by their own people, as these people legitimized and supported the French bureaucracy that was exploiting their country. By currying favor with the French and readily adopting their culture by doing things such as switching to Catholicism, they gained and held lucrative positions in the bureaucracy or being associated with it. \n\n\n\n\nCollaboration with the French was done out of self-interest (strengthening one\u2019s social position or their family\u2019s, or simply for profit) or because they saw the French as benevolent people that would help Vietnam. By giving some pro-French Vietnamese people positions of power that could also be easily controlled, the French (mostly) gained social and institutional legitimacy in their colonization of Indochina, and would show off the collaborators as an example that the purported French goal of mission civilisatrice was a success. Some of these collaborators or their families were given education at French institutions in Hanoi or even Paris, where they were taught the values and supremacy of French culture and traditions. Bao Dai, one of the final emperors of Vietnam, was himself educated at elite French schools and institutions, and helped the French control Annam, a province of Indochina. The effort of Vietnamese collaborators led to sharp polarization between the peasant class and the wealthy landowning elite during the occupation, and long after.\n\n\n\n\nOver time, Vietnamese culture started to become uprooted. Places of education taught French, and businesses of significance conducted trade in this language. Traditional Vietnamese temples or monuments that had historical value would be razed, with the buildings replacing them being styled after French architecture. Places were extensively given French names. If one wanted to enter the government, converting to Catholicism was preferable over Buddhism, which constituted a majority of the country. Not only was there economic exploitation, but cultural values were being eroded, and replaced with French ones almost overnight.\n\n\n\n\nTaxes under the French bureaucracy were heavy and extensive. Not only were common goods taxed, but there was also a tax on wages paid, a voting tax, stamp taxes, etc. If Vietnamese peasants were unable to pay these various taxes (and they typically were unable to), wealthy village landowners or creditors would give them loans at usurious interest rates. The goal of this was to either gain whatever the peasant held in terms of property, to put them into perpetual debt, or both. If unable to pay colonial taxes, peasants were made to sell precious goods such as family heirlooms, their land, or even had to sell off their children for labor. Even with these things being done, peasants were exploited by the Vietnamese collaborators and the French, with frequent physical punishment such as beatings, and jail time. \n\n\n\n\nI apologize for the lack of professional citations, but I obtained this information from Ngo Vinh Long\u2019s book, *Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6sxvcb", "title": "What were bards really like?", "selftext": "I'm going to play as a bard class in a Dungeons  &  Dragons game, mostly to be a fun/musical supporter for the rest of the party. But now I'm really curious about what bards were actually like in history. Were they mostly poetry writers? Or did they perform live for crowds? How did one become a bard? Those kinds of questions.\n\n\nThanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6sxvcb/what_were_bards_really_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dlgqtq8"], "score": [50], "text": ["I can't tell you much about the medieval bards in continental and British Europe, but in the norse and viking societies, the bard was a important figure. \n\nIn Scandinavia (and by extension Iceland, Orkneys, Faroes and parts of Britain) the bards were called \"skald\". The original etymology is unknown, but later it became synonomous with poet.\n\nThese skalds were poets for hire. Mostly for lords and kings, to whom they sang the \"history\" of this person in a verse. It's important to note that this was not written down, and were carried on in oral tradition until the 11^th century, where Christianity brought the latin alphabet.\n\nBecause of the aforementioned, we have little left of what is assumed to be a plethora of different *kvad* (songs) and know only of a handful of skalds. The most famous one is \"Snorri\" (Snorre Sturlason) whose *kvad* **heimskringla** is known as the most important piece of literature in Norway (apart from the constitution, of course). However, he wrote his *kvad* in about 1220, and his motives were the viking age. His works are therefore influenced by the christianized society. However, it is still viewed as one of the most important literary sources of viking society, together with [*M\u00f6\u00f0ruvallab\u00f3k*}(_URL_2_). \n\n[The poetic Edda](_URL_1_) whose author is unknown, is one of the most important sources of religious literature, although this is also written after christianity came to Iceland. \n\nSources (sorry, all in norse or Norwegian due to me being away from a library right now)\n\nKnut Helle, St\u00e5le Dyrvik, Edgar Hovland og Tore Gr\u00f8nlie: *Grunnbok i Norges historie. Fra vikingtid til v\u00e5re dager.*\n\nSverre Bagge *Europa tar form : \u00e5r 300 til 1300*\n\nOdd Einar Haugen *Norr\u00f8n grammatikk i hovuddrag*\n\n_URL_0_ (a collection of texts and sources from all of the nordic areas, mostly pertaining to skalds and their kvad)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Forside", "http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Eddukv%C3%A6%C3%B0i", "https://handrit.is/is/manuscript/view/AM02-0132"]]}
{"q_id": "6a5cm8", "title": "Cato the Elder defended traditional Roman values against the influence of Greek culture. What were these values?", "selftext": "I heard this on Mike Duncan's history of Rome podcast, so I don't know how accurate it is, but my image of Rome is very much mixed in with its Hellenistic influence. What did the Romans in the Republic consider traditional values and how did they contrast with the Greeks? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6a5cm8/cato_the_elder_defended_traditional_roman_values/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhcnf85"], "score": [20], "text": ["Cato the Elder was living in a time when many of his contemporaries were succumbing to the appeal of more hellenistic values. The most notable example of this is Scipio Africanus (the Elder); the honours and wealth which he'd earnt after his victory vs Carthage at Zama in 202BC were a strong incentive for other Romans to strive to do the same. The Scipio family was seen by Cato as a rival in their love of Greek culture, philhellenism. The influence Polybius had on the family after he was taken to Rome is an interesting topic, but I'm going off on a bit of a tangent.\n\nIn a nutshell, 'Greek values' were typically characterised by a love of luxury and excess. This was what Cato despised most of all; being a very conservative man, he believed that luxury and excess, imported from Greece to Rome via philhellenes such as Scipio, were a corrupting force in the Republic. The triumph is a strong example of a Roman tradition which became 'increasingly \"hellenized\"' throughout the period, and shows quite well the kind of perceived Greek values which Cato was opposed to. The triumph of Flamininus, as Livy tells us, lasted three days and showcased 'three thousand seven hundred and fourteen pounds of gold' (which may be hyperbole, but it can still be gathered that there was a lot of gold). Cato instead chose to stick with his Roman traditions, in that he aimed to be as limited as possible in his relationship to the material world. Furthermore, allowing novus homo (men who had gained a position of political influence and significance in Rome without having had any important heritage) to become more common would water down the aristocracy and consequently move power further from the hands of a few.\n\nAs well as this, I'm tempted to summarise his political views on the Greeks by saying that he was opposed to the diplomatic approach when it came to foreign policy. There's his classic 'Carthage must be destroyed' quote which most know about, which clearly shows he favoured a militaristic approach in order to exhibit Roman dominance. Earlier on in 184BC though, the year of his censorship, came the decision to act in response to the revolt of Sparta against the Achaean League (which had occurred 5 years previously). It's undeniable Cato had at least some influence on the Senate's decision, first because of the drastic policy change, and secondly because of the powers of the censor which (simply put) allowed him to pick and choose who sat in the Senate. Rome's intended approach to Greece in the second century BC seems to have been one of care, in that there appears to have been an effort to keep an eye on Greek public opinion throughout the course of Roman expansion in Greece. Cato, however, was untrusting and xenophobic, and therefore treated the Greeks like he treated the Carthaginians. \n\n(According to Plutarch, Cato believed that Greek doctors were forming a conspiracy, by which they would integrate themselves within Roman society and slowly kill off everyone with their medicine. I don't know how true that is, but it certainly captures Cato's general attitude towards the Greeks).\n\nSources:\n\nThis is just off the top of my head, had an exam on it a week ago. In any case, some good books on the subject are:\n\nSpecifically relevant:\n\n-Alan Wardman, Rome's Debt to Greece\n-Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder\n-Polybius, The Histories\n-Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph\n-Livy, The History of Rome (XXXIV.52 details Flamininus' triumph)\n\nGeneral Coverage of the Period and Cato:\n\n-Crawford, The Roman Republic\n-H.H. Scullard, History of the Roman World 753-146BC\n\nTL;DR: \nGreek values (to Cato) = luxury, excess, (implicitly) democracy, conspiratorial doctors.\nRoman values = humility/honour and virtue, maintaining the aristocracy.\n\nEdit 1: added Polybius to sources. He's a really good read and helpful in understanding the relationship Romans such as Scipio had with the Greek world.\n\nEdit 2: added info on the triumph from Livy and Mary Beard, to exemplify the hellenisation of Roman traditions and Cato's objection to this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "22o24j", "title": "How much truth is there in the statement that \"Only 15%-20% of actually soldiers fired their weapons in WW2?\"", "selftext": "I was in a psychology class today and my professor made this claim and I was curious as to how factual it was from a historical standpoint. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22o24j/how_much_truth_is_there_in_the_statement_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgoq924", "cgoq9oi", "cgoqevd"], "score": [6, 35, 183], "text": ["Probably referring to S. L. A. Marshall's findings, reported in Men Against Fire and other places:\n\n > The thing is simply this, that out of an average 100 men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, only 15 men on average would take any part with the weapons.  This was true whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three...In the most aggressive infantry companies, under the most intense local pressure, the figure rarely rose above 25% of total strength from the opening to the close of an action.\n\nAnd\n\n > It is therefore reasonable to believe that the average and healthy individual--the man who can endure the mental and physical stresses of combat--still has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility...At the vital point he becomes a conscientious objector...\n\nMarshall's conclusions have not gone unchallenged, and are still discussed today.  [Apparently his methods were not very rigorous or scientific](_URL_0_), and there's lots of reasons for a soldier to not fire his weapon, even in a close engagement with the enemy.  (Do keep in mind that the weapons of the time were powerful enough to make even a fleeting and momentary glimpse of the enemy a good opportunity for a kill.  These weren't firing lines 100 yards apart.  Even an earnest killer might not have abundant opportunities of actually shooting someone.)\n\nStill, after WWII they led to innovations in training to increase rate of fire.", "This claim comes from 'Man Against Fire' by S.L.A. Marshall, who was a US Army historian for WW2. He's fairly controversial, as is the book, and the 15%-20% figure comes from his book, although it's misquoted.\n\nFor one, he's basing it off interviews he did, which isn't exactly a good piece of evidence. Also, it's more specific then is stated. Only 15-20% of *American riflemen* fired their *personal* weapons *at an exposed enemy soldier*. This makes the statistic a lot more understandable, because it excludes crew-served weapons (machine guns), and key weapons (flamethrowers).\n\nWhile his numbers were initially accepted and frequently quoted, they've been called into question several times. One of the larger things I've seen pointed out in rebuttals of his statistics is that it fails to distinguish between soldiers who *can* fire, and shoulders who *should* fire. A medic has a sidearm. Should he be firing at an exposed soldier, or should he be doing his normal duties? What about squad leaders, more focused on directing the battle then taking shots themselves?\n\n[This](_URL_0_) is an excellent breakdown of why his methods were called into question, and includes an interview by the man who accompanied him through his interviews in the Korean war (which came up with a 50% fire rate). Some sample issues with his work include that he didn't interview casualties, only unharmed men who were still ready for action, that he didn't take into account things like weapons jamming, and that his numbers were based more on guesses then anything else. It wasn't a proper survey even, but instead a group discussion he'd pull information out of.\n\nSimply put... it's just not very good history. It's hard to get a proper number for how many soldiers fired their guns, but the 15-20% is more or less impossible to back up, and completely ignores several significant factors.", "That claim is based on the books \"On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society\", by David Grossman; and \"Men against Fire\", by SLA Marshall.\n\nI'll get my bias out here - I think this idea is crap, and the basic reason is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is no evidence to support that claim.\n\nMarshall's work, wherein he makes the claim that 75% of soldiers do not fire on the enemy, was based on post-combat interviews with soldiers, but no record of any questions about the ratio of fire exists.\n\nIn fact, the only record of his interviews at all (besides his books), makes mention of soldiers firing weapons, but nothing whatsoever that could support a hard number of how many men fired or did not fire.\n\nThere is no evidence of statistical analysis based on his interviews, no records of questions about whether soldiers fired or not, no questions about ammunition consumption. There is no evidence from quartermasters about ammunition consumption, barrel wear, or any other secondary evidence.\n\nSo this number is one that Marshall may have arrived at honestly, but there is simply no evidence to support it.\n\nIf you're interested, Robert Engen wrote a very incisive article on the subject in the Canadian Military Journal, and wrote his Masters thesis on the subject.\n\nEngen found (and has the evidence to prove) that - for Canadians, at the very least - did not have this problem. Based on primary sources (written post-combat interviews with Canadian officers), he found *exactly the opposite* of what Marshall and Grossman claim.\n\nCanadian officers found that their forces fire was very effective, and, if anything, their men fired *too much*!\n\nSo - there's no evidence to support this claim, and there is primary source evidence that it is BS.\n\nIf you'd like to read Engen's article in the CMJ or his thesis, here they are:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nIn the interest of (a little) balance, Grossman makes a (in my opinion very feeble) defense of his work and Marshall's in the CMJ as well:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/03autumn/chambers.pdf"], ["http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/03autumn/chambers.pdf"], ["http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/18-grossman-eng.asp", "http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp", "http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/1081/1/Engen_Robert_C_200803_MA.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4l6lcl", "title": "In medieval Europe, did universities have the equivalent of majors?", "selftext": "I'm a European student studying at university in, lets say, the 13th century. How are my studies organized? Was there a concept of a \"major\" or is that an entirely modern concept? If the concept of majors existed, what were my choices? I've heard a little about the concept of the trivium, but what if I wanted to major in something like political science or sociology? Did they have something analogous to these concepts back then?\n\nThanks! Sorry if this question has been answered before, [I found these](_URL_0_) but I can't find anything about what \"majors\" existed outside the trivium.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l6lcl/in_medieval_europe_did_universities_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3ktsoc"], "score": [14], "text": ["You found the earlier discussions of  medieval universities, kraetos. Let me humbly direct your focus to [this discussion I commented on several years back that discusses \"majors\"](_URL_0_) among other aspects of uni life. In a nutshell, there were things somewhat like \"majors\" in the subjects of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) in the developed years of the medieval uni."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/dailylife#wiki_life_at_university"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eh8bf/how_exactly_would_one_a_enter_and_b_attain_a/"]]}
{"q_id": "emn3h6", "title": "Why didn't the Achaemenid Persian armies use the Constantinople area of modern Turkey instead of the Dardanelles to cross to Europe in 480 or 490 BC when invading? It seems like a much easier crossing looking at maps..", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/emn3h6/why_didnt_the_achaemenid_persian_armies_use_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fe8vbnb"], "score": [5], "text": ["You pose a reasonable, if ultimately unanswerable, question here. (I am going to skip past Darius' campaign of 480 that ended at Marathon because that was a naval expedition that did not cross the Bosporus.) Xerxes' expedition was not the first Persian campaign into Europe and Herodotus reports that when Darius launched his campaign against the Scythians (the date is disputed, perhaps 514/513 BCE), his forces bridged the Hellespont near Chalcedon (4.85), precisely in the area you are talking about.  \n\n\nThe Persians had also maintained a presence in the Balkans in the intervening years, so the strategic planners of Xerxes' invasion a generation would have been aware that they could build a bridge further north. So why not do that? For one, the location they chose may have been equally, if not better suited for staging and then crossing with a larger army (remember that the invasion of 480 was significantly larger than those that came before). Herodotus specifically says that one of the attractive features of this spot was a broad headland on the European side where they chose to cross. Further, it may be that they chose to take the shortest route all things being equal, perhaps with an eye toward the logistical challenge of keeping the army supplied. When Darius took his expedition to Europe he was taking his army north into Scythia, so his bridge crossed in the north. On his return trip, Darius marched his army to the Chersonese near Sestus (i.e. near this same headland) and crossed with his ships (Herodotus 4.143). Similarly, when Alexander the Great crossed directly into the Troad en route to his invasion of Persia, he likewise used this area on the Chersonese rather than going further north (Arrian 1.11, Diodorus Siculus 17.17, cf. Donald Engels, *Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army*).\n\nIn sum, we are not given much to work with about why they chose to cross at a particular spot. We don't know, for instance, how much the different currents through the Dardanelles contributed to the decision (maybe) or whether Xerxes was concerned about possible opposition from the Byzantines (probably not, but possible), but if the location further to the north was enough easier to justify going further out of the way then they likely would have done so since they had  made crossings at both locations already in the past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6ntijy", "title": "Why do rum and ale seem to be the most common alcoholic beverages in history, while vodka is never really mentioned?", "selftext": "Thought of this after watching Game of Thrones last night. While it is fiction, the show and many other movies that are set in older times never really mention vodka. Was it simply not that common, or just more of a Soviet product at the time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ntijy/why_do_rum_and_ale_seem_to_be_the_most_common/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dkc53ai"], "score": [75], "text": ["Ale was historically popular because it's source material (brasic grain) was extremely common.   \n\nDistillation is a relatively recent invention.  We don't really see it taking off until the late middle ages.  \"Vodka\" really is just distilled alcohol that has not been given much additional flavor via barrel aging (whisky/brandy) or infusion of herbs (gin).  If you try say something like \"bourbon\" before the barrel aging process you might be surprised how \"vodka\" like it is.  Its just a pure mostly flavorless and colorless liquid.  This type of beverage existed in the middle ages but it was used mostly as medicine.  When distilled for normal consumption, alcoholic beverages were transported in wood barrels and this added flavor and color in and of itself and wouldnt qualify as what we would know as \"vodka\" as a result.\n\nRum naturally has a bit of a distinctive flavor due to not all of the sugar cane impurities being removed but as soon as it is put in barrels and transported it also gains flavor/color and becomes non-vodka like.  It was popular because wealthy europeans owned extensive slave-based plantations in the caribbean starting in the early modern time period where it was very inexpensive to grow sugarcane so there was extensive source material.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7qsim3", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: People were so convinced that Joan of Arc had miraculously survived the flames that multiple women in 15th cent. France successfully impersonated her for a time. How did people in your era use disguises?", "selftext": "**Next time:** the backup singers and background dancers of history", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7qsim3/tuesday_trivia_people_were_so_convinced_that_joan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsrk7x9", "dsrl70r", "dsroqp3", "dsry48g", "dss2rpl", "dss3i6a", "dss8ai8", "dssgkue"], "score": [70, 39, 19, 23, 10, 15, 13, 10], "text": ["I think its safe to say that I'm not a fan of using the sagas as historical documents meant to accurately portray the lives, beliefs, and actions of the figures, mythological or otherwise, that they depict. \n\nBut even I have a heart underneath all these layers of cynicism.  The saga detailing the life of Harald Sigurdsson (Hardrade) has got some really great stuff in it.  This isn't necessarily a false mustache and thick rimmed glasses kind of disguise, but I think it qualifies.\n\nDuring his campaigns in Sicily in the service of the Varangian guard, Harald is tasked with taking a string of fortresses, each is naturally more impressive than the last.  The fourth such castle is impenetrable to any sort of attack.  His previous methods of attack, attaching burning straws to birds to burn the grain stores, and tunneling under the walls, are useless.  Worst of all, Harald falls deathly ill.  He set his tent a little farther away, and his underlings had to come farther to receive orders.  The fortress sent out spies to discover what the matter was.  They discovered that Harald had fallen deathly ill and was on death's door.  He wished to be buried in the castle's church, and the garrison agreed to this request, knowing that it would bring rich gifts in the future to have such a great man buried there.  \n\nHis men prepared a great coffin and gave it over to the castle's priests, once inside the gates, his men barred the gate open and drew their weapons and held the gates open, the rest of the Varangians then poured into the city and did what vikings did best.\n \n\n\nThis was even the basis for the finale to one of the season finales on History Channel's *Vikings*\n_URL_0_", "Written in 1841, just about anything from Milligan's \"History of Dueling\" should be taken with a grain of salt - certainly he never met an anecdote he didn't like - but he does have one little story of a duelist in disguise that would fit here, and given that it was, by his claim, related in a newspaper less than 10 years earlier, perhaps it is less suspect than some of his other tales anyways, at least in the broad strokes.\n\nA young Polish widow, the Countess 'Lodoiska R.' was being successfully courted by the German Baron Trautmansdorf. Another suitor, Baron de Ropp was none too pleased by the attentions enjoyed his rival, and circulated an offensive poem about Trautmansdorf, who sent de Ropp a challenge when word reached him of this. The two met for a duel, but, for reasons Milligan doesn't deign to explain, de Ropp didn't fight, and instead had a champion take his place, who made short work of Trautmansdorf. His second, so offended by de Ropp's behavior, immediately called him out as a coward, and insisted on their own duel, which de Ropp now took upon himself, with equal success. Only, after striking the mortal blow, he realized his opponent had been the Countess, disguised as a man so as to accompany her lover to the field of combat. Supposedly, now overcome with what he had wrought, de Ropp joined the fallen pair by falling upon his own sword.\n\nA little less melodramatic, but much better attested, would be the life of James Miranda Stuart Barry, a British Army surgeon, who was better known in *her* youth as Margaret Ann Bulkley. Margaret took on the persona of James in her youth, and lived her entire public life as a man, the secret only being revealed with death. As Barry, Margaret was forced into a challenge of Captain Josias Cloete after an argument while stationed in the Cape Colony in 1819. In their meeting, Cloete was struck with a glancing shot to his temple, which did little actual damage being deflected by the stiff brim of his shako. 'Barry' was also struck, in the upper thigh, and was forced to decline treatment on the field and instead do so herself in private, as it was close enough to perhaps betray her true identity.", "In the pulps, the most common disguise was a pseudonym, so that H. P. Lovecraft might appear as Lewis Theobold, Jr., or Robert E. Howard as Patrick Ervin - and beyond that, male writers might appear as female, or vice versa. My favorite story from my field of interest, however, involves no great disguise, but one which served its purpose to great effect:\n\n >  I\u2019ve been going through Fredericksburg, off and on, for many years, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s changed a bit. My friend, Tyson, and I found just about all the different kinds of liquor a man could think about, and I\u2019ll admit my mouth watered and I cursed the poverty which kept me from indulging my epicurean tendencies. It looked like almost every other joint was a beer bar or a package house. As usual, we aroused no enthusiasm in the citizens; even when they took our money they did it with a suspicious, almost sullen air \u2014 most of them, that is; some were cordial enough \u2014 with which they favor most outlanders. I can understand their viewpoint, in way, for of all the white races represented in Texas, the Anglo-Americans of old pioneer stock are by far the most turbulent and belligerent. Not that we gave a damn; we started sampling the terrific beer they sell there, with our steak dinner, and what with that and some remarkably good whiskey, by the time we were ready to start north again, some hours later, we were totally indifferent to racial differences and prejudices. In fact, I seem to remember, when we stopped at a beer joint a few miles out for another drink, of using my scanty knowledge of German to convince the barman that I was a Prussian, and I must have succeeded, somehow, for he immediately thawed out and deluged me with a flood of conversation, directed mainly at the Mexican brewers who bring down the price of beer, and the three of us had an enjoyable time guzzling Texas Pride and cussing the corporations. I don\u2019t know when I ever had a more hilarious souse. \n\n- Robert E. Howard to August Derleth, 15 Apr 1936, *Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard &  3.433-434", "(1/2)\n\nA lot of pirates used deception to lure their victims. Most notably this was done by falsely flying the colors of friendly nations to get ships to approach before raising a black flag or \u201cJolly Roger\u201d at close range to signal that they were pirates and intimidate the ships into surrendering. \n\nOne pirate who used some more elaborate and personal deceptions was Howell Davis. Trickery and deception was a recurring theme throughout his brief pirate career. He seems to have been quite clever and charming, and he was able to successfully convince several colonial governors that he was not a pirate by impersonating lawful merchants and privateers. By doing this he was even able to capture the governor of an English fort after being invited to dinner and force him to give him lots of money. However, eventually one of Davis\u2019 impersonations was discovered and he met a violent death. \n\nAfter spending three months in jail in Barbados for conspiring to steal the cargo of a merchant ship he had been captain of, in about October 1718 Davis fled to Nassau in the Bahamas where he wouldn\u2019t be recognized and quickly joined another trading voyage as a common seaman. Since until earlier that year before the British government retook control, Nassau had been an infamous pirate haven, most of the rest of the crew on this voyage were former pirates who had accepted a royal pardon and Davis quickly conspired with them to mutiny and seize the ship. After doing this, Davis was elected captain and they resolved to go pirating.\n\nAfter capturing a few ships at sea, Davis came to the island of St. Nicholas in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese governor took him for a lawful English privateer allied with Portugal and Davis and his crew stayed on the island for about five weeks where they were apparently treated lavishly. From *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724:\n\n >  \u2026the Portuguese inhabiting there, took him for an English Privateer, and Davis going ashore, they both treated him very civilly, and also traded with him. Here he remained five Weeks, in which Time, he and half his Crew, for their Pleasure, took a Journey to the chief Town of the Island, which was 19 Miles up the Country: Davis making a good Appearance, was caressed by the Governor and the Inhabitants, and no Diversion was wanting which the Portuguese could shew, or Money could purchase; after about a Week\u2019s Stay, he came back to the Ship, and the rest of the Crew went to take their Pleasure up the Town, in their Turn. \n\nSo friendly was their reception here that five of the pirates even chose to stay behind with local women. After this, they set sail again and plundered more ships around the Cape Verde Islands, but eventually had to stop to replenish their supplies of water. The island they chose was St. Jago, but the Portuguese governor of this island was more skeptical and distrusting of Davis and openly said that he suspected him to be a pirate. \n\nTaken aback by this quite different reception than he had previously received, \u201cDavis seemed mightily affronted, standing much upon his Honour, replying to the Governor, he scorn\u2019d his Words; however, as soon as [the governor\u2019s] Back was turned, for fear of Accidents, [Davis] got on board again as fast as he could.\u201d Back on the ship, Davis proposed to his crew that they surprise the Portuguese fort that night and capture it. They accomplished this with the loss of three men, but many of the soldiers from the fort barricaded themselves in the governor\u2019s house and held the pirates off until morning despite grenades being thrown in. When more soldiers came, the pirates retreated back to their ships after sabotaging the fort\u2019s guns. The author of *A General History* wrote that \u201cby this Enterprise they did a great Deal of Mischief to the Portuguese, and but very little Good to themselves.\u201d \n\nDespite this lack of real success, Davis next proposed an even more ambitious scheme to his crew. He proposed that they sail to the English fort of Gambia on the west coast of Africa where he knew a large amount of money was kept. Although the fort was much too well defended for one ship to take by outright force, Davis devised an elaborate scheme.  \n\nAs they approached the fort, Davis ordered most of his crew to hide themselves below decks so that they appeared to be a regular trading vessel (which usually didn\u2019t have as many crew). He then sailed under the fort this way without suspicion before going ashore with nine men dressed as sailors and merchants: \n\n >  \u2026having ordered out the Boat, he commanded six Men in her, in old ordinary Jackets, while he himself, with the Master and Doctor, dressed themselves like Gentlemen; his Design being, that the Men should look like common Sailors, and they like Merchants. In rowing ashore he gave his men instructions what to say, in Case any Questions should be asked them. (*A General History*) \n\nAt the landing place, they were \u201creceived by a File of Musqueteers, and conducted into the Fort, where the Governor accosting them civilly, ask\u2019d them who they were, and whence they came?\u201d They replied that they were English merchants come to trade for gum and elephant teeth on the coast, but that had been chased by two French men-of-war and therefore had to take refuge here. The governor was happy to give them refuge and trade with them, and apparently impressed by Davis\u2019 manners he invited him and his officers to dine with him that evening. Two of Davis\u2019 men then stayed with the governor while Davis then excused himself to check on his ship. However, like an expert criminal, Davis had been taking meticulous note of his surroundings: \n\n >  While he was in the Fort, his Eyes were very busy in observing how Things lay; he took Notice there was a Sentry at the Entrance, and a Guard-House just by it, where the Soldiers upon Duty commonly waited, their Arms standing in a Corner, in a Heap; he saw also a great many small Arms in the Governor\u2019s Hall\u2026 \n\nWhen he returned to his ship, he told the men that when they saw the flag of the fort lowered, that was the signal that the fort was secured and for 20 of them to come ashore armed. He then brought two men with concealed pistols back in the boat with him to distract the guards and secure the guardhouse when he gave a signal. While preparing a bowl of punch before dinner, Davis and his officers suddenly drew their pistols: \n\n >  Davis on a sudden drew out a Pistol, clapt it to the Governor\u2019s Breast, telling him, he must surrender the Fort and all the Riches in it, or he was a dead Man. The Governor being no Ways prepared for such an Attack, promised to be very passive, and do all they desired, therefore they shut the Door, took down all the Arms that hung in the Hall, and loaded them. \n\nNext Davis fired his pistol through the window which was the agreed signal for the pirates in the guardhouse, and they took the surprised soldiers prisoner with cocked pistols and locked them in the guardhouse after taking out all the arms. At the same time, Davis lowered the flag over the fort and 20 armed pirates rowed ashore and took control of the fort with virtually no resistance and without anyone killed on either side. With the entire fort and garrison under their control, the pirates celebrated and began looting and even convinced some of the captured soldiers to join them. They didn\u2019t find nearly as much as they expected since a lot of money had recently been sent away, but they still got 2,000 pounds in gold which would be equivalent to something like $400,000 today. ", "Definitely the most famous pirate to use impersonation and disguise was Mary Read who dressed as a man throughout her life. \n\nAccording to *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724, Mary Read was born out of wedlock in England to a woman whose husband had gone missing at sea. This woman already had a son by her husband, but he died at a year old which was when Mary Read was born. Read's mother hid this from her husband's family and began dressing Mary Read up as a boy in place of her dead son in order to get money from her husband's mother. \n\nEventually the grandmother died and they stopped getting money, and by the time Read was thirteen she was apprenticed as a maid, but \"Here she did not last long, for growing bold and strong, and having also a roving Mind, she enter'd herself onboard a Man of War.\" This must have been during the Spanish War of Succession (1702-1714), and she apparently then served as a foot soldier in Flanders and then in a regiment of horse and \"behaved herself so well in several Engagements, that she got the Esteem of all her Officers.\" The only source that I know of for this part of her life is the aforementioned book whose reliability is sometimes questionable, but I know some women have served in other wars dressed as men and Mary Read seems to have convincingly passed herself off as a man with and fought daringly later, so I don't think it's unreasonable that this happened. \n\nEventually she was discovered and married one of the soldiers from her company, and they opened up an inn in Flanders. However, soon her husband died and the war ended which brought the soldiers back home and caused her business to fail. Then she joined the army again, but soon decided to sail on a Dutch ship for the West Indies. During the voyage the ship was taken by pirates who apparently made her join their crew since she was the only English\"man\" aboard--still without discovering her sex. Soon after, in about 1718, these same pirates all accepted a royal pardon for piracy that was being offered at the time and settled down. Mary Read wasn't able to find another way of making a living, so she soon went to Nassau in the Bahamas and joined as a privateer against the Spanish. \n\nHowever, most of the privateer crew were former pirates and they soon mutinied to become outright pirates again. Read joined them and the author of *A General History* writes:\n\n >  It is true, she often declared, that the Life of a Pyrate was what she always abhor'd, and went into it only upon Compulsion, both this Time, and before, intending to quit it, whenever a fair Opportunity should offer it self; yet forced Men, and had sail'd with her, deposed upon Oath, that in Times of Action, no Person amongst them was more resolute, than she and Anne Bonny; and particularly at the time they were attack'd and taken, when they came to close Quarters, none kept the Deck except Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more upon which, she, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more; come up and fight like Men, and finding they did not stir, fired her Arms down the Hold amongst them, killing one, and wounding others. \n\nShe soon fell in with the pirate John \"Calico Jack\" Rackham and his mistress Anne Bonny (who never disguised herself as a man but did apparently fight) and there is a convoluted story about how she befriended another man on the ship who had been forced to join the pirates and then defended him in a duel by killing his opponent after secretly revealing she was a woman, which may or may not be true. At any rate, she did apparently have a lover on the ship and everyone onboard must have known she was a woman by that point. When the pirates were eventually captured in October 1720 off the coast of Jamaica, it was only her, Anne Bonny and one man (perhaps Mary Read's lover) who defended it while the rest of the pirates were too drunk below decks to even put up a fight. \n\nAt the trial, all of the pirates were hung in November 1720 except for Mary Read and Anne Bonny who mysteriously both fell pregnant and \"pleaded their bellies.\" Mary Read soon died of fever in prison while Anne Bonny disappeared. \n\n**Sources:**\n\n*A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* published in 1724/26 by Charles Johnson/Daniel Defoe/Nathaniel Mist (Charles Johnson is a pseudonym long thought to have been Defore, but Mist is the most likely author)\n\n*Pirates: Terror on the high seas from the Caribbean to the South China seas* edited by David Cordingly", "Late medieval literature is rife with disguises, but less generally appreciated (and perhaps of more interest from a historical perspective) is the fact that some scribes and book owners had cause to disguise the manuscripts themselves.\n\nGeorge Bannatyne (1545-1608) was an Edinburgh merchant who left us the so called \u201cBannatyne Manuscript\u201d (NLS, Adv. MS 1.1.6), a trove of Older Scots literature (some of it uniquely attested) including works by Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Richard Holland and Alexander Scott. Unlike the majority of surviving verse compilations of the era, Bannatyne inserts quite a good deal of his own material into the manuscript and gives a compelling story of the circumstances of his compilation. Edinburgh was hit by plague in 1568 and Bannatyne decamped to the countryside, like Boccaccio\u2019s group of tale-tellers, in order to escape the worst of it. While there, to wile away the months, he collected his material and copied the manuscript as it survives.\n\nExcept that he didn\u2019t. The manuscript is divided into five parts, and the content of each is introduced by Bannatyne\u2019s own (truly abysmal) poetry. The poems that introduce parts four and five bear the dates 1568 \u2013 but the 8 has been written over 5 and 6 respectively. Bannatyne doesn\u2019t do a bad job of it, and given that modern study of the manuscript really began with Walter Scott in the early nineteenth century, his little deception has only fairly recently been discovered \u2013 I believe it was first noticed by Alasdair MacDonald in 1986. It\u2019s possible that parts one through three really were copied in 1568, but that need not be true. The book as a whole is clearly the endeavour of several years.\n\nSo why disguise it? We don\u2019t know for sure of course, but some scholars have speculated that the book was being prepared as a draft copy for print publication. Bannatyne certainly lavishes far more attention on the explanation of the manuscript\u2019s organisation than he would have needed to if it was for private use, and printing had really taken off in Scotland after a late start. The narrative neatness of the plague story is compelling and it already had literary cachet. If it was intended for print, however, it probably never made it \u2013 no copies survive.\n\nWhile I\u2019m on disguised dates in books, one more springs to mind. Oxford, BodL MS Fairfax 2 is an immense copy of the late version of Wycliffite Bible. The versions of the Wycliffite Bible were translated in the late fourteenth century, and the hand of the manuscript is unmistakably from the early fifteenth, and yet a date in the scribal hand (f. 385r) reads \u201cm.ccc  &  iiij\u2019 (1308). The prosaic suggestion of A. G. Watson (*Catalogue of Dated and Dateable Manuscripts c.435\u20131600 in Oxford Libraries* (1984), vol. I, no. 485), who consulted the manuscript under ultraviolet light, is that the scribe meant to write 1408 but was one \u201cc\u201d short, so erased and moved the \u201c & \u201d but then forgot to add a fourth \u201cc\u201d.\n\nThis seems a little contrived to me, however, and I favour the alternative suggestion of Mary Dove (*The First English Bible* (2007), p39, also considered by Elizabeth Solopova, *Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries* (2017), p146). Dove suggests that in the wake of Archbishop Arundel\u2019s *Constitutions* of 1407\u20139, which made ownership of an English Bible from after the time of Wyclif punishable with death by burning (although the Church does not seem to have exercised this right), a later book owner or reader carefully erased the scribe\u2019s fourth \u201cc\u201d to disguise it as a perfectly legal book supposedly \u2013 impossibly! \u2013 copied in 1308. There certainly is an erasure in the manuscript which might account for both Watson\u2019s and Dove\u2019s explanations, but I find Dove\u2019s to be both more straightforward and (although this has no bearing on historical fact) more narratively compelling.\n\nBonus round (I\u2019m on a roll): The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS, Adv. MS 19.2.1) is a collection of English verse produced in London in the 1330s. It was once quite heavily illuminated but \u2013 as is tradition \u2013 some scrapbooking antiquary, enterprising merchant or unpardonable vandal has snipped the pictures out. Of those that remain, one image has at some point been quite differently destroyed... for the purpose of disguise? A column of the text of *\u00dee Wenche \u00feat Loved \u00fee King* has been scraped and smudged out and the remainder on the next leaf has been cut out entirely. The header image survives but has been partially and ineptly scraped off. In spite of the efforts of our censor, the content of the image remains amusingly clear: we are left with the ghostly silhouette of [two figures on a bed](_URL_0_).\n", "Generally, pop musicians often have to carefully balance the impulse to simply play music with their friends because it\u2019s fun and maybe they can make money with a few different competing motivations: most notably, people under contract to a record company usually find that the record company may not look happily upon them using their skills to enrich other record companies.\n\nAs a result, The Beatles - on EMI/Parlophone - simply didn\u2019t give Eric Clapton any credit for his guitar solo on \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019. However, when George Harrison returned the favour by playing on [Cream\u2019s 1969 track \u2018Badge\u2019](_URL_6_) - released on Polydor - he was credited as 'L\u2019Angelo Misterioso'. Similarly, when Paul McCartney produced a [1968 track for the Bonzo Dog Band, \u2018I\u2019m The Urban Spaceman\u2019](_URL_4_), he did it under the name *Apollo C. Vermouth* (perhaps appropriately, Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Band would later write the music for the Beatles parody mockumentary film *The Rutles*, in which his songs - [like the incredibly accurate 'Hold My Hand'](_URL_2_) - were instead claimed to be written by Stig Nasty and Dirk McQuigley). Speaking of which, [Elton John\u2019s 1974 cover of The Beatles\u2019 \u2018Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds\u2019](_URL_5_) apparently features one \u2018Dr. Winston O\u2019Boogie\u2019 on 'reggae guitars' - this was of course a pseudonym for John Winston Lennon. And Nilsson\u2019s 1972 album *Son Of Schmilsson* features one Richie Snare - i.e., Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr - on several tracks on drums [including 'Spaceman'](_URL_8_) (along with slide guitar on another track by one George Harrysong).\n\nElsewhere, the house backing band for Motown Records - dubbed The Funk Brothers, and prominently featured in [the 2002 documentary *Standing In The Shadows Of Motown](_URL_1_)* - weren\u2019t credited on Motown releases at all, and the likes of Paul McCartney wondered who exactly was playing those amazing bass lines he was trying to imitate. Given the enormous success of Motown in the 1960s, and their regular use of the same backing band, it's likely that the Funk Brothers played on more hits in the 20th century than anybody else in the business apart from perhaps the L.A.-based group now called The Wrecking Crew. And nobody knew their names until 1970.\n\nIt was 1970 when Marvin Gaye insisted on crediting his backing musicians on his epochal 1970 album *What\u2019s Going On*, perhaps the first Motown Concept Album, that the general public could put a name to the bass lines (James Jamerson). Anyway, the Funk Brothers were on a salary and were breaching their employment contract by playing on music by other record companies. Nonetheless that band\u2019s peerless ability to create danceable pop music backing tracks that just popped out of the speakers made them hot property amongst record producers in the know who desperately wanted hits, and Motown owner Berry Gordy would have been dumb to sack his golden geese, so perhaps he turned a blind eye as long as it wasn't too egregrious a breach of contract. \n\nAs a result, there are several examples of the nucleus of the Funk Brothers playing on records that were not released on Motown. Famously, the record producer at the Chicago-based Brunswick Records would bus in the Funk Brothers on weekends to do some recording at double their usual rate. This means that [Jackie Wilson\u2019s Brunswick Records hit 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher\u2019](_URL_10_) not only *sounds* like it has Funk Brothers on it - it does. Other examples of the Funk Brothers lending a hand to outside record labels away from Berry Gordy\u2019s prying eyes include hits like [Fontella Bass\u2019s \u2018Rescue Me\u2019](_URL_11_) (on Chess Records\u2019 pop label Checker) and [John Lee Hooker\u2019s \u2018Boom Boom\u2019](_URL_7_) (on Vee Jay). Perhaps the most egregious example of Motown people in disguise escaping from Gordy\u2019s clutches is [Freda Payne\u2019s \u2018Band Of Gold\u2019](_URL_3_), on Invictus Records. The song was written by R. Dunbar  &  E. Wayne, according to the label; however in reality the song was written by the former (enormously successful) Motown songwriting team Holland/Dozier/Holland, who\u2019d quit Motown a couple of years previously to start their own record label but who were still legally under contract. And who obviously knew the Funk Brothers well enough to sneak them into a session away from Berry Gordy\u2019s prying eyes.\n\nSpeaking of John Lee Hooker, after the initial success of his [\u2018Boogie Chillen\u2019 on Modern Records in 1948](_URL_0_), Hooker circa 1951-1953 began rob record for several different record labels under pseudonyms, unconcerned with copyright or contracts and happy to receive money from different record labels. \u2018Minor\u2019 record labels like Modern typically, at this point, made a lump sum payment to the likes of bluesmen and then kept any profit. This didn\u2019t really encourage loyalty, and when Hooker discovered that other record labels were happy to record him, he would make up some variant on his usual blues form and record it under a different name; in the early 1950s, Hooker recorded songs like \u2018Gotta Boogie\u2019, \u2018Love To Boogie\u2019 and \u2018New Boogie Chillen\u2019 that were all basically \u2018Boogie Chillen\u2019 reprises. This made it look to some observers that John Lee Hooker-style blues were a big trend; however, the trend was basically just Hooker recording under pseudonyms like John Lee Cooker, Delta Slim, and Birmingham Sam And His Magic Guitar. \n\nIn the late 1980s, the Traveling Wilburys - a band with some sense of history and a bunch of famous people on different record labels - premised the band on the idea that they\u2019d be playing in disguise, under pseudonyms; certainly each of the band members were on different record labels (in the late 1980s, Orbison being on Virgin, Dylan being on Columbia, Petty being on MCA, Jeff Lynne being on Epic, and George Harrison's self-owned record label being distributed by Warner). So, for example, George Harrison - the former L\u2019Angelo Misterioso - became Nelson Wilbury in the Traveling Wilburys, while Bob Dylan (who\u2019d recorded under the name Blind Boy Grunt in the early 1960s to evade record company scrutiny) became Lucky Wilbury. Mind you, all of the Wilburys on ['Handle With Care'](_URL_9_) had record company approval to appear in the band, because it was a golden promotional opportunity, and because it only takes one look at the music video for even half-hearted music fans to go \"holy shit, that's George Harrison, and that's Roy Orbison!\"; the Wilbury aliases were more of a fond remembrance of the old days than a contractual demand.", "Among the most distinguishing features of the Taiping rebels was their long hair, a rejection of the shaved forehead that symbolised obedience to the Manchus. This led to immense problems when trying to identify people who had clearly recently changed hairstyles (a suspiciously pale forehead could tell as much as unusually short forehead hair), and stories abound of merchants growing their hair out to trade with the Taiping and then tanning their newly-shaven scalps to trade with the Imperials. Apparently, it became common practice for civilian men in the warzones to have a proper queue ready hidden in their hats so that the rest could be shaved off quickly in the event of Imperial recapture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2fm7Unf9r8"], [], [], [], [], ["https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56fbf95bd210b88a1494cfb4/t/56fea424e707ebbebaf74dc8/1459529026818/?format=500w"], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4pp02_GN9A", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqQBh2Ra_o", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qf8y7v0WIE", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxiMb0rITA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVr2hbE6aW0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZ6J6fjw9w", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSpW6MePb10", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7xOZVBAWtw", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4s1KVJaVA", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIy6X4VTWpk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BeGDZewHs"], []]}
{"q_id": "4ap0dn", "title": "When did navies begin to phase out sailing-only ships in favor of steam powered or hybrid ships? What were some of the final sail-powered-only ships to be built and used in a naval role?", "selftext": "I was reading about the Star of India, built in 1863, and that prompted me to wonder this. To my understanding 1863 seems to be quite a late year for an exclusively sailing vessel to be built. Obviously enthusiasts today still sail sailing ships, but the Star of India wasn't an enthusiast's ship.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ap0dn/when_did_navies_begin_to_phase_out_sailingonly/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d12k66q", "d12pop6", "d12w8ve"], "score": [13, 11, 5], "text": ["Purely saildriven ships were still in use until the early 20. century. Most of them were used for relatively low value bulkgoods (often but not always!) because sailing ships still had some advantages over coal driven ships, which required expensive machinery and a reliable supply of coal. The large teaclippers and later the Windjammers, made possible by introducing iron/steelhulls, are excelent and widespread examples for mid/late 19th century sailships which, at their time, were economicaly viable. Once steam engines became more refined the large sailships slowly fell out of use but by then we are well into the 20th century.\n\nI currently don't have any exhaustive literature about late 19th century ocean going sailing vessels (perhaps the last chapters of Chapelles The Search for Speed Under Sail, 1700-1855 would qualify) but on a small scale the same development can be seen in the area of inland navigation. Here Fontenoy's The Sloops of the Hudson River provides an excelent example for the challenges but also the economic niches that came with the use of sail driven ships/boats.", "Hi there, I've written a few answers on this in the past that may be of interest to you: \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTo quote a bit from those answers: \n\n > The first oceangoing ironclad vessel was the French La Gloire, whose keel was laid in 1858. It was essentially a frigate with iron plates bolted to its timbers above the waterline. The British navy responded with HMS Warrior, launched in 1860. Warrior was an oceangoing ironclad that was both full-rigged for sail and equipped with a steam engine, which made her the precursor of many hybrid sail/steam ironclads. \n\n > Some combination of La Gloire and Warrior were the likely inspiration for the Confederate conversion of USS Merrimack into CSS Virginia, which had one day of glory when it sank USS Cumberland, burned USS Congress, and drove two other ships aground. The Virginia's design  was substantially different from earlier ironclads in that the hull above the waterline was reconstructed and it depended entirely on steam power.\n\n > The Monitor was created as a design  specifically meant to counter Merrimack/Virginia, and it was unique in having a revolving turret, which meant that it did not have to maneuver to bring its guns to bear. It was not, however, meant to be an oceangoing ship (nor was Virginia) and in fact it sank under tow off Cape Hatteras.\n\nand from another answer: \n\n >  The 1880s were an interesting time in ship design, because the traditional divisions of sailors were changing to accommodate the advent of steam propulsion. Most of my comments will apply to the British and American navies, since it's what I'm most interested in.\n >  Navies had since time immemorial been powered by sail, and many early steam vessels also had masts and a full sail rig .\n >  This should not be confused by the mast or masts on a modern ship , which are used mostly for signaling or as sensor platforms. Ironclad masts were used as a primary or secondary power source, as well as a place for sail drill. This was in many ways a logical design evolution, when capital ships were converted  to add steam power, though it looks odd to modern eyes.\n\n >  In any case, the addition of engines meant the addition of engineers, which meant a change in the traditional rank structure of navies and their internal organization. Initially, officers resisted the addition of engines and dirty coal to their ships, even as it was widely recognized that coal and steam power were the future of navies.\n\n >  (Apologies for the enormous image link , but Turner's \"The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up\" is highly symbolic of this understanding.)\n\n >  Anyhow, the addition of engineers to the traditional structure was a source of tension in many naives. Conservative elements in the British and American navies assigned engineers initially to the ranks of warrant officers, and only reluctantly added them to the ranks of actual commissioned officers. Conversely, up-and-coming officers of a technical bent saw engineering as a growth field, which led to a great deal of tension among younger and older officers.\n\n >  In terms of internal organization, by the end of the Napoleonic wars the British and American navies had adopted a divisional system, in which an officer was assigned to a set of men on the ship, so that even in a very large ship each man was assured of being known to his own officer. The men were further divided by stations on \"watch\" by their skills, with the most prestigious jobs for a seaman being work aloft (although there were many other specialized jobs having to do with all stages of running a ship). The change in propulsion attacked directly the boatswain's department, as being in charge of the sails and rigging, and also the self-identity of the Navy. Officers wondered how men would be trained without constant work on the masts and sails, and reactionary elements in the British navy continued to present papers and arguments in favor of sails though the 1890s (sails were officially abolished from new construction in 1887).\n\n >  In terms of the actual jobs done, sailors tended to do many traditional jobs: scrub decks and fittings, exercise with the guns, hoist in and out boats, re-stock the ship with provisions, take care of compartments, tackle, sails, flags, etc.; but the new jobs done were coaling, maintaining the ship's machinery, and understanding the complicated mechanical changes brought about by boilers and engines and steam power. The men would be organized into divisions under a particular officer, with warrant officers supervising individual work spaces and/or groups of men, who stood regular watches.\n\n >  Some sources on the transition that are interesting reads:\n\n >  Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy\n\n >  The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command", "I think the question really needs to clarify whether you're asking about military or civilian use of sail. The Star of India was by no means a \"late\" sailing ship in 1863. Both the Balclutha (1886) and the C.A. Thayer (1895) are sailing ships that enjoyed long careers hauling cargo and passengers.\n\nThese ships were still very economical well into the 20th century largely because the labor required to run them was quite small compared to warships. [The Balclutha](_URL_0_) sailed on its maiden voyage with a crew of 26 compared to the hundreds that would crew on a warship (to man the guns, fight the ship, etc.), so a voyage that took longer via sail would still be more profitable than the fuel to power a faster boat. The primary cargo carried was (originally) California grain to the UK and coal on the return. Because these goods were relatively non-perishable, there wasn't the emphasis on speed versus the overall profitability of each voyage regardless of the length. (Sidenote: sail on the Pacific coast lasted longer than in other areas because there was no good source of coal; the early development of oil drilling in California also led to earlier adoption of oil powered steamships as well).\n\nThe [C.A. Thayer](_URL_1_) was primarily a coastal vessel, sailing up and down the Pacific Coast of the US hauling lumber. Again, non-perishable cargo where speed mattered less than cost of operation.\n\nLater in their careers, both ships operated well into the 1920s supporting the salmon fishing and canning trade in Alaska, hauling labor and fishermen up and canned salmon down. \n\nSailing ships were also in use well into the 20th century on inland waterways. [The Alma](_URL_3_) plied the inland waterway from Sacramento area to the main ports of the San Francisco Bay hauling cargo under sail until it was converted to a pulled barge once oil became more common in the 1910s.\n\nThere's no question that steam overcame sail much earlier in military ships, both for the consistency of travel and maneuvering regardless of the wind and for the labor savings of having more men available to man the guns instead of shifting sails in battle (plus the fact that the purpose of those ships was to sink enemy ships and not get sunk, a very different economic model!). But for commercial vessels, the economics of sail lasted far longer.\n\nBy the way, if you're ever visiting San Francisco, all three of those ships are on display (along with the 1907 oil powered, ocean-going steam tug [Hercules](_URL_2_) and several other vessels) at the [San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park](_URL_4_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28yrxj/did_the_unions_monitor_have_a_unique_design_for_a/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gv83n/what_sort_of_jobs_did_the_crew_do_on_an/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jso46/how_did_the_transition_from_wooden_ships_to/"], ["http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/balclutha-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/ca-thayer-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/hercules.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/alma-history.htm", "http://www.nps.gov/safr/index.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "342anh", "title": "In the film Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz recalls and encounter where his unit gave vaccines to the local Vietnamese children, only to later discover that the Viet Cong removed the inoculated arms. Is this story based in fact?", "selftext": "Kurtz uses this example to show that the Vietnamese were so dedicated to their cause that they would mutilate children. Did violence at this scale ever happen? And was is used to prove an example to the Americans? Also, what was the extent of violence between the Viet Cong and the NVA against Vietnamese civilians?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/342anh/in_the_film_apocalypse_now_colonel_kurtz_recalls/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqqmruf"], "score": [72], "text": ["The story itself is fictional, like very much else in *Apocalypse Now*. There has been some speculation that the story was inspired by atrocities occurring in the Congo Free State under King Leopold II, in which the book *Heart of Darkness* (which the film is based on) takes place. However, it's not entirely false in as much as it contains two elements of truth: \n\n1. Special Forces units, throughout their commitment in South Vietnam, did provide medical care for South Vietnamese civilians. \n\n2. There was selective violence used by the VC/NVA towards South Vietnamese civilians who supported the South Vietnamese government.\n\nIn guerrilla warfare, controlling the population and gaining their support is vital for the survival of the insurgency. It would be incorrect to claim that the VC *never* used terror to control villages or that the VC *only* used terror to control villages. \n\nIn some cases, the VC won the population over by making them politically aware, rallying them in political meetings and providing them with assistance beneficial to their village, like helping with the harvest for those whose sons had been conscripted by the ARVN. Violence and destruction caused by American, ARVN or other 'Free World' forces could also turn villages towards the VC. Some of this destruction could be provoked by the VC, using the motivation that by provoking them to attack an unarmed village then that would give them a propaganda coup and use that to show (and to radicalize the population) that the allies did not have a morally superior cause. To quote another South Vietnamese civilian: \"The guerrillas always fired one or two shots to provoke the GVN, which brought bombers and artillery on the village, and then ran away letting the people bear the consequences.\"\n\nBut this wasn't always the case. Sometimes, it came down to fear and control through it. For example, targeted assassinations against individuals supporting or working for the South Vietnamese government could easily make a point and make other individuals fearful of speaking out against the VC or speak out in support of the South Vietnamese government. To quote a VC private in the Long An province: \"It was the policy of the Front [*Front National pour la Lib\u00e9ration du Sud Vi\u00eat Nam*] to destroy all Government organizations, and to destroy those who did not want to resign. They killed this man to make an example for others.\"\n\nInterestingly enough, the use of terror tactics and violence against civilians was actually part of published VC doctrine; first being published in July 1969 as part of the the COSVN Resolution Number 9. Another oddity in the context of the Vietnam War is that the most infamous case of a VC atrocity did not take place in rural South Vietnam but in urban Hu\u00e9 during the T\u00eat offensive. The Hu\u00e9 massacre, in which more than a 1000 individuals were killed, was like the previously mentioned assassinations targeting those loyal to the South Vietnamese government: Police officers and soldiers, but also individuals who held administrative posts. It is still difficult to get clear answers about what really did go down in Hu\u00e9 and the numbers killed are still in dispute. Nonetheless, the fact that a massacre did occur is established but it is worth considering that just like larger American atrocities, it was the exception rather than the norm."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3feqhe", "title": "Was there ever a \"drop-out\" rate for roman legionaries who were unable to perform up to the physical standards of the Roman army?", "selftext": "I'm talking specifically about the Post-marian army ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3feqhe/was_there_ever_a_dropout_rate_for_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cto38ed"], "score": [59], "text": ["During both the Principate and Late Antiquity, soldiers who were unable to perform military duties because of wounds or disease were invalided out of the army. They received a form of honorable discharge, as well as a \u201cseverance package\u201d, though these benefits were usually less than if they had served their full term of service. \n\nHowever, based on the phrasing of your question, it seems like you\u2019re more interested in the experience of soldiers who, despite being in perfect health, couldn\u2019t quite handle the army\u2019s demanding physical environment, a bit like Private Pyle from *Full Metal Jacket*. To be quite honest, I have not seen any reference, either in ancient or modern references, to recruits \"washing out\" of military training.  While I invite other experts to comment (paging /u/Celebreth), it is likely that instances of washing out did not occur with any regularity. Desertions certainly did occur (and scholars debate whether or not the levels of desertion increased during Late Antiquity), yet it is important to distinguish between men who actively sought to leave military service (desertion) and those whom the army deemed not up to standards (washing out). \n\nMost recruits, both during the Principate and Late Antiquity, came from rural, agricultural backgrounds. Although recruits certainly were drawn from cities, by and large, the majority of recruits were rural, coming from poorer and more rural areas of the Empire. These men were already conditioned to lives of grueling physical exertion (pre-modern agriculture being extremely labor-intensive). Military life and training was thus not that much different, in terms of levels of physical activity, than their pre-military lives. Indeed, with it\u2019s regular meals, excellent medical care, and pay (even if low), military service offered many attractions. Additionally, the army often engaged in \u201ctargeted recruitment\u201d (for a variety of reasons) from non-Roman peoples (\u201cbarbarians\u201d). These groups were targeted in part because of strong martial cultures deemed conducive to producing quality recruits. These recruits were even less susceptible to handling army life, especially when considering they also came exclusively from rural backgrounds. With this in mind, it is highly unlikely that recruits would have found the army\u2019s physical standards too demanding. While certainly intense, military life and training was not that much more demanding than rural, agricultural life, and offered many tangible benefits. It is therefore unlikely that recruits were unable to handle military life. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ssq6i", "title": "Was Dido of Carthage a real historical figure and actual Queen of Carthage?", "selftext": "Really curious about this. Some of her stories seem really bizarre (oxhide... really?), and she feels like a legend more than an actual historical figure. What does r/askhistorians think?\n\n\nAlso, since a lot of the information about her comes from the Romans, what kind of bias is there against her and Carthage in general? If she indeed ruled Carthage, is there any significance in this, being a female ruler of the ancient period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ssq6i/was_dido_of_carthage_a_real_historical_figure_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce0w7kr"], "score": [62], "text": ["Dido is not real. She is the Carthaginians founders myth, their equivalent to Remus and Romulus. She supposedly left Tyre after her father left his wealth to her and her brother Pygmalion and he ruthlessly seized power and cut her out. The actual founding of Carthage was a lot less romantic and more practical, it was built as a trading outpost at the crossroads of two Phoenician trade networks, a north south one between Africa and Italy and Greece, and an east west one linking Tyre to the Silver mines of Spain. Records have been pretty exhaustively researched, there was a Dido of Tyre who was eligible to have been the dido of the myth but she lived nearly 300 years before the earliest development in Carthage from the archaeological record. \n\n The book I have read most recently that gives an overview of the founding of Carthage is Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles. It's a good read if you want a basic history of the founding of Carthage and their long and ultimately disastrous struggle with Rome."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3hyj0j", "title": "We all know about Hitler's ambitious \"world capital Germania\" vision of Berlin, but did he actually have any urban planning?", "selftext": "What did he actually manage to do to Berlin's poor district? Did he ever evict the urban poor? Did he convert slum area to industrial complex or capitalist enterprise and enforce the conversion with violence like how business and politics intertwining usually do in third world countries? (see Philippines and Indonesia for example)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hyj0j/we_all_know_about_hitlers_ambitious_world_capital/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucjqia"], "score": [4], "text": ["A question I can actually answer!  The best source for this is the book Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer, if you haven't gotten a chance to read the book it's a marvelous look at the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy.  Speer goes into great detail about the new capital and the break between Hitler's vision and reality.\n\nLong story short (if one is to take Speer at his word) there were no formal plans for the new city besides pure aesthetics.  Speer goes into detail in his account of the main Boulevard for instance, about how creating it in the visual manner Hitler wanted would basically create an unwalkable concrete city with no pedestrian life.  Even with the supreme power the Nazis held in Germany early feelers to establish the zoning blocks ran into problems with local officials, businesses, and ministries as they vied for space as to who would have frontage access in the capital.  Rerouting the public transit alone became an ordeal for Speer to coordinate, much less the massive shift of roadways and traffic routes which would be necessary to accommodate the construction.  In short, even with Hitler's control there were so many intersecting layers of interest in the new capital that it wasn't just a matter of giving orders and receiving compliance.  \n\nNone of this was of any concern to the Fuehrer, however.  He was much more focused on his legacy and left the details to men he trusted.  This meant he spent his time envisioning monuments and great works, the idea being that even after the Reich fell people in the future would still gaze upon those structures with wonder.  That his vision was impractical for a living city didn't bother him in the least, that was for everyone else to figure out.\n\nThere were attempts to create worker housing and public spaces in Nazi Germany, but this was under Speer's direction in order to improve living conditions of the average citizen.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1f380k", "title": "New look", "selftext": "As you've probably already noticed unless you're browsing on a mobile device, we've just switched on a new custom style for the subreddit. It's been in the works for a while, and we hope the new look will both be an improvement aesthetically and gently reinforce the high standard we all love in this sub.\n\nIt has been tested extensively, but I'll be very surprised if there aren't a fair number of bugs that have slipped through the cracks. If something looks wrong for you, please either leave a comment in this thread or [message me](_URL_0_) (/u/brigantus). Including a screenshot would be very helpful. Any other feedback \u2013 good or bad \u2013 is welcome too.\n\nHope you like it!\n\nEdit: I made a slight change to the comment formatting so nesting is less garish.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f380k/new_look/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca6d7qi", "ca6d99n", "ca6dc5a", "ca6ddgl", "ca6ddyc", "ca6derw", "ca6dftj", "ca6dgfs", "ca6dhwr", "ca6dmfz", "ca6dngp", "ca6dnj6", "ca6dpsc", "ca6dske", "ca6dvki", "ca6dzqe", "ca6e02k", "ca6e3wr", "ca6e6hq", "ca6e9vk", "ca6eehn", "ca6eiwi", "ca6ejfs", "ca6ete7", "ca6ewxc", "ca6fcb1", "ca6fdnn", "ca6fvvu", "ca6fzal", "ca6hi2u", "ca6hmqd", "ca6hpin", "ca6i1iv", "ca6i1qm", "ca6im1f", "ca6ixjv", "ca6nevg", "ca6nl9d"], "score": [102, 2, 35, 4, 2, 2, 3, 17, 7, 3, 9, 30, 3, 64, 16, 5, 3, 7, 8, 8, 26, 2, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 3, 2], "text": ["Allow me to be the first to congratulate /u/brigantus on the fruits of his hard labour. ", "Nice! Although it looks like all of the flair colors got re-shuffled.", "The new look is really neat! Simple and also highlights things that newcomers often miss. Very well done.\n\nMy one complaint would be that the font color on the posts are too bright. Could the contrast increase? It does not have to be black but as it is right now I feel like I'm straining my eyes and it could be a few steps darker.\n\nEdit: It's been updated. Working really well. I.E. I don't even think about how the text looks, it just reads itself. Thanks for listening to us!", "Looks good! Some of the flair needs touched up though, seems the both /u/estherke and /u/snickeringshadow 's flair is hard to distinguish.\n\nEDIT: Seems to be all flair?", "This is nice! Well done. But no custom reddit alien? ", "Really liking the new look! Clear and simple with a good use of colour.\n\nedit: the flairs seem to all the same colour.", "I thought there was something wrong with my computer set. I attempted to adjust the picture. I forgot that you are controlling transmission. ", "This is beautiful, /u/brigantus!\n\nI feel like the text in the comment will improve the quality of answers!  No matter how prominently displayed the \"New to /r/AskHistorians?  Please read our subreddit rules before posting\" was (it's now on the side), a lot of people would comment before reading the rules.  I hope this makes the mods' jobs easier!\n\n~~One minor aesthetic question: is there a way to change the color of the unsubscribe button?  I feel like it's clashing with the orangred.~~ *Edit*: The \"New to /r/AskHistorians?  Please read our subreddit rules before posting\" is now grey so there is no clashing.\n\nOne other minor practical question: is there a way to make the \"our list of popular questions more prominent\"?  Or closer to \"Ask a question\" (love the pop up box there, by the way)?", "It's very bright - I like the Windows 8 style though. The flairs obviously need some fixing too, and I REALLY love the rules being posted in the chatbox. That and the rules being highlighted when you mouse over the \"ask a question\" button :D\n\nWe need a new snoo though. Hmmmmmm.", "Like everyone said, it's too bright. I mean, the main portion is just white like the rest of reddit but somehow the other colours make the white look painfully brighter.", "Ehh... looks like Windows 8...", "I like it. The colors are vibrant and the interface is very clean. Great job mods! I did notice my flair isn't blue, but I assume you guys haven't set the colors on individual users yet.\n\nAlso, I think you should use [Emperor Snoostinian](_URL_0_) as our mascot *hint* *hint* :)\n\n", "Whoa... nice work, I've got to say.  Especially the message on the comment section--hopefully that'll be a reminder to all before commenting.\n\nedit: on the list of flaired users, there is a broken link under the section \"History of Art\"", "I don't like change.  Wah.\n\nIt looks too professional, like an /r/askscience laboratory.  Rather than the dingy bare-knuckle boxing pit that I've come to appreciate /r/askhistorians as.", "The orange blue colour scheme is rather striking and the rule reminder in the comment box was a nice touch.\n\nThe moderator box doesn't show their flair beside the usernames. Was that done on purpose?", "The text in the post box is fantastic.\n\nI think the Flair descriptions would look much better in alphabetical order and one on each line, aligned to the left.\n\nAlso, I miss the outline of posts and the shading of every other reply.\n", "Good stuff.  Thank you for not significantly changing the look or, more importantly, size of the top subreddit bar (the one with All, Random, Friends, etc).  That's the only thing that really annoys me with custom subreddit styles.", "I think the font used for post titles is too big.  It doesn't leave enough room for posts when viewing the front page.", "The font size for the subreddit title and thread titles is too big, and there are huge gutters between each comment and around the thread titles (the orange box on this thread for instance). This creates large empty white spaces which come across as \"too bright\", and spacing out the useful content makes it look like there's actually less of it -- it's about half as many comments or threads per screenful.\n\nOh and the reminder about the rules reappears overlaid on the textbox when the textbox isn't focused, even when there's text here", "This looks freaking awesome, brigantus. You've worked so hard on this! Great job.", "The good: I like that it looks professional, clean, and bright. It has a \"take this serious\" vibe to it, which is appropriate to the subreddit. Bravo.\n\nThe less-good: I never loved the reddit caveman guy (or whatever he was supposed to be), but the current header is just completely generic. Surely we can do something that says \"AskHistorians\" more than just text of it. Some kind of tasteful montage that says \"we do a lot of different areas of history\" seems plausible. One rather silly idea that might look good if someone talented played with it: alien reddit guy Photoshopped into different historical images. [Dewey Defeats Reddit](_URL_0_)? (Sorry, I know that is somewhat crudely done, and too US-centric, probably!)", "I like it. It's sleek, clean, and pretty simple. And I'm glad that AskHistorians finally has its own look.", "I think this is the best subreddit design I\u2019ve stumbled upon (together with /r/minimalism). Good job, guys.", "Reminds me of Windows 8.", "I don't like the suddenly massive titles and big square boxes, so I'll probably stick to disabling the style.  The orange reminds me of circlebroke, which I don't think is a good connection to make, but eh.  It's not as though these changes are forced on me.", "I see that my flair is colored for \"Asian History\".  Wouldn't it fit better into \"Middle Eastern History\" or even \"History of Ideas\"?  It doesn't fit neatly into a category, but I don't quite see how it fits into Asian History.", "It looks too much like Facebook.", "Amazing new look. Love it :) \nDo you dev for Windows phone ?", "I would appreciate if the background were a bit darker. Something like what /r/PropagandaPosters/ has would be just about ideal between contrast and not destroying my poor eyes with a harsh white. A few more dividing lines would be nice, too, for breaking up the page.\n\nFinally, I'm not sure whether this is a RES or a theme bug, but the transparent spiel text that shows up in the text box (presumably it's only supposed to be there before you type anything in) reappears once you go out of focus with the text box, [over whatever you've written in.](_URL_0_)", "The 'Apply for flair' link in the sidebar doesn't point to the newest Panel of Historians post.", "One other issue: the \"behind-the-box note\" that shows up prior to adding text into the comment box is kind of neat, but it is very strange that it appears again if the box loses focus (at least, it does on Chrome). Occasionally one does click outside the box and it strangely overlays. Without looking at the code I'm not sure how it is done, but surely there is some way to use Javascript to make sure that text is set to not display as long as there is text inside the textarea.", "IMHO, Grey-on-white is never really a good idea. If you want to reduce eye strain, black on light grey is a much better option, since it reduces the overall amount of white light.", "The AskHistorians logo on top looks and works simply beautifully. Great work.", "It looks too corporate I think. The font, the colours don't have a community vibe to it. It's also really hard on my eyes. Not trying to be a negative Nelly - just my honest feedback.", "I like it. Though maybe the \"Frequently Asked Questions\" section should be closer to the \"Ask a Question\" Button?", "Many great changes, I like the look! Just curious - each flair looks clickable, but nothing comes up. Are you planning on making each one link to a list of individuals who are flaired in that region/topic?\n\nOh, wait, I just clicked on the \"flaired users\" link, that page is awesome. If each topic was linked to each heading on that page it'd be perfect - just as easy to navigate as our frequently asked questions page.\n\nGreat work /u/brigantus! I'll keep an eye out for bugs, and let you know if I think of any other ideas that I bet would at least interest you.\n\nAnd one last thing regarding the new flair colors: [GOLD TEAM RULES](_URL_0_)", "This is an excellent update! Thanks so much /u/brigantus! \n\nMy one suggestion would be to make the delineation between top-level posts a little bit more distinct. When there are sub-comments it makes it easier to read because of their nested rectangles, but if there is more than one top-level comment in a row that doesn't have sub-comments there isn't much in the way of visual cues to delineate them. \n\nIt also makes it harder to tell which top-level a particular sub-comment belongs to when they start to span more than my monitor can see. ", "Good, that old logo was god awful."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=brigantus"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/fkRC4.png?1"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://imgur.com/GhDuCAp"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/kL1XlcT.png"], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWrncgglK0E"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1zgv1r", "title": "How did anyone assault a star fort? Are there any of examples of successful assaults?", "selftext": "Looking at the Wikipedia page for star forts, I see a lot of information about how effective the design was, that it repulsed attacks and withstood cannon fire, that whole cities incorporated the design at tremendous expense, and so on.  It all makes the design look highly impressive and durable (at least, as wikipedia notes, until the invention of the exploding shell).\n\nBy contrast, medieval fortifications of comparable grandeur seem to have been taken by assault occasionally.  There is a consistent theme to their assault in media portrayals: attackers could use siege towers and ladders to get on top of the walls, would tunnel underneath them, would destroy them with artillery, or would batter down the gates.  None of that seems to be easily possible with star forts.\n\nSo did anyone manage to successfully assault one?  What was the general protocol for taking a fortified city?  Was this just starving people out, as one might expect, or was it possible for a significantly sized army to successfully overwhelm a fortress?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zgv1r/how_did_anyone_assault_a_star_fort_are_there_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cftn7xd", "cftz78r"], "score": [82, 2], "text": ["Attacking a star fort or similar fortification was a science in of itself, with very precise measurements and timings based on the size of the city, etc.\n\nThe basic devices for attacking were the sap and the parallel.  A parallel is a long trench that runs parallel to the wall being besieged.  A sap is a very thin zig-zag trench that advances towards the wall for a certain distance to allow the construction of an additional parallel closer to the wall.  Heavy guns on each parallel cover the construction of the next one.  When the parallels had been brought close enough to the fortification, the defenders would be stormed or battered into submission by heavy guns.\n\nOffensive earthworks were generally impervious to gunfire from the city under siege.  These tactics were effective because the saps were so narrow that defensive gunfire could not reliably interfere with their construction, which allowed men and material to approach the walls in safety.\n\nThat said it was still possible for the defenders to over-power parallels close to the wall- it depended on the resources available to both sides.\n\nAttackers might also use mine galleries- digging under defensive positions with tunnels and planting vast quantities of explosives to blow up walls from underneath.\n\nA great example of all of these things is the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War which saw all of these tactics and many others carried out over the course of a two-year siege.  The defenders, lead by General Todleben, even dug counter-saps and created counter-works of their own during the siege.\n\nAll my information comes from Alexander Kinglake's Account of the War in the Crimea. ", "I have a question as well, but more of a general siege warfare kind of question.\n\nHow did a besieging army cross a moat, and how would they bring down the doors? As well, before the advent of effective cannon artilery, were catapults and trebuche's ever used to actually bring down the walls?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "15p2bm", "title": "Why do judges bang a gavel?", "selftext": "A quick google search tells a lot about what they are used for but nothing on the history other than to say \"traditionally\". How far back does that tradition go and how did it come about? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15p2bm/why_do_judges_bang_a_gavel/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7ohw2u", "c7oia82", "c7ok50v", "c7okxo9", "c7oqrtr"], "score": [85, 15, 21, 7, 8], "text": ["As a lawyer, I can tell you that I have never seen a judge bang a gavel once.  They don't bang gavels; actors pretending to be judges bang gavels.", "At the Republican and Democratic national conventions last fall they officially \"gaveled in\" the conventions, and then brought them to a close with a gavel as well. So, it may not be restricted to judges so much as it is being used in order to designate the official opening of some specific types of proceedings. Knowing that might help in any attempt to determine the origins. ", "I can only speculate whether there is a direct genealogy throughout the past, but in ancient Germanic Thing meetings, people banged their spears against their shields to indicate support for a motion. I've found a couple of references on google to medieval practices, which you must have found yourself as well, but I now wonder whether this was also a Roman thing.", "English and Welsh judges have never used Gavels in criminal courts.  \n\n_URL_0_\n\nI assume that they were purloined from auction rooms by producers of Court room dramas simply because they provide an element of punctuation to a scene. ", "This is well outside my area (the question whether it was used by the Romans dragged me in: the answer is no).\n\nI did come across [this](_URL_0_) which ordinarily I wouldn't consider a reputable citation, but there seems to be a dearth of information elsewhere. It does however quote a response from the Practising Law Institute which seems to have some credibility.\n\nI am, however, suspicious that this seems to pin the usage on the Masons - in my limited experience they seem to be the go-to explanation for many obscure practices. But it may be accurate, I cannot judge.\n\nI will also add to the choir and say that they are not used in Australian courts. To quote Michael Kirby, one of our most eminent jurists and a former High Court judge:\n\n\u201cI had lots of quite emotional situations, but I never, never felt any need for a gavel\u2026 it\u2019s ridiculous. Why do you need to be hammering away on the bench? A few kindly or strong words, a few frosty glares, and the whole place falls into the right situation.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/court-traditions"], ["http://www.gavelstore.com/history.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3ksfpi", "title": "What happened to a squire after their knight died or was killed?", "selftext": "Say a knight died in a battle or personal combat, what happened to their squire.Were they treated as enemies by the opposing force?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ksfpi/what_happened_to_a_squire_after_their_knight_died/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv0fsux"], "score": [93], "text": ["Squires, a term which has taken on a very singular connotation (ie. a knight's understudy) in modern times had a wider one in the Middle Ages (going variously by *armiger*, *scutiger*, *scutarius*, or *scutifer* in Latin sources and as *escuier* or *vaslet* in Old and Anglo-Norman French), but then so did knight (Lat. *militus* or Fr. *chevalier*). When the role began it was a primarily servile one, with *armigeri* included among the servile staff expected to be part of a magnates household (for example the so-called 'Laws of Edward the Confessor', c.1136). They were, as the name implies, related to shields and armour but there was it appears little status in the title itself. There was no necessity for a squire to be advanced to the status of knight, even in the thirteenth-century and might remain squires for the entirety of their lives.\n\nHowever, while it is unsurprising that these unromantic roots of the trade have been largely forgotten, it muddies the waters somewhat as the term was also then turned on the aristocratic *iuvenes* (youths) who would serve with lords while learning their military trade during the twelfth-century. They included chivalric luminaries such as William Marshal (who spent eight years as a squire - *eskuers* - under William de Tancarville) and were considered a distinct noble group through their lineage. By the late twelfth-century this usage of squire was becoming the dominant one and their role and position was not restricted to service or training in arms, to quote from a late twelfth-century *ensenhamen* (a type of conduct literature):\n\n >  It is good to have *escudiers* bound to your service. Have two who are charming, good looking, discreet and accomplished. Whatever might be those of others, yours should be becoming, courtly, educated and well spoken. Such fellows have their uses in that they will gain you a good reputation. If you send them anywhere, one could not be ridiculed on their account, for it is said about such servants, \"You can tell the lord by his household\"'.\n\n >  Quoted in David Crouch, *The English Aristocracy: 1070-1272, A Social Transformation*, (New Haven and London, 2010), 57.\n\nBut the social status of the squire took somewhat differing paths in England and France over the next century. While the title acquired practical noble aspects in both societies the English remained firmly against the acquisition of armorial (ie. taking up heraldic arms) well into the thirteenth-century - see Edward I forbidding such practice in 1292 - the French squires had been doing so 'unapologetically' since the 1250s. The French squirey were acquiring noble status in a manner very different to that of England. While the term might not have possess the same status, there were squires in both England and France who bore heraldic and military arms, held land, and acted as soldiers beyond their periods of tutelage in the households of knights or magnates. Indeed, the titles of *armiger* and *esquiers* become associated in the fourteenth-century with another catch-all and debated terms: men-at-arms. This group was doing the same martial job of a knight without much of the associated expense (both ceremonial and bureaucratic) that were associated with the title 'knight'. This is not to say that they did not aspire to, or retain much of inherent characteristics, of the warrior aristocracy from which they emerged in the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries but that the term and conception of the knight and squire as tutor and tutee is difficult to sustain much beyond the early thirteenth-century. The issue is further muddied, as recent research has demonstrated that the synonymity of esquire and men-at-arms declined as militarily active knights declined too (this is in the fifteenth-century). But that is another issue for another day.\n\nTo provide a loose chronological timeline (from England): from the eleventh-century it was likely that a squire would not be entitled to the emerging culture of ransom, and if captured would likely be treated as any other servile member of staff. In the late twelfth-century they might be offered some respite as sons or youths associated with aristocratic families. In the thirteenth-century this was still true and squires would begin to abrogate this status through taking up of heraldic arms. In the fourteenth- and fifteenth-centuries the status of the squire was essentially synonymous with that of men-at-arms and the role synonymous with the archetypal image of the knight. After this point, squires undertook a more distinct rarified social role and probably a more important role in the military structure of England.\n\n\nSo why is the noble status of squires important with regard to their treatment after the death of the knight or lord they served? Firstly, it somewhat breaks the image of the squire as purely in service to the knight and somewhat outside of the conflicts in which their lord partook. But even the idealised child-squires would be expected to fight: 'let the boy earn his spurs', as Edward III was to famously say of his own sixteen year old son, Edward the Black Prince, at the Battle of Crecy in 1346. Secondly, because it meant that they were subject to the somewhat ephemeral 'law of arms'. The long uncodified conduct between aristocratic and noble warriors which governed many aspects of their relationships both on and off the battlefield. A noble squire, as opposed to the servile, would expect the right to submit and then be, circumstances permitting, offered ransom and a reasonable degree of comfort during their imprisonment. They were young aristocrats even if they were not always defined as nobles and, if they did not have a particular value as hostages, they would likely be given the liberty to return to their homes and raise the ransoms required.\n\nHowever, the issue of circumstance rears its ugly head. The practical niceties which ideally governed relations between the chivalric classes, to which squires through their nobility could claim membership, could not always be implemented. The increasingly brutal nature of warfare in during the Hundred Years War where, for example, the French crown repeatedly fought beneath the Oriflamme (signalling no quarter would be given), or where concerns regarding reinforcements might lead to the near wholesale slaughter of prisoners irrespective of rank (such as Agincourt, 1415); coupled with the increasingly politicised nature of the conflict which meant that capture might lead to execution for treason meant this was an increasingly dangerous period for aristocratic warfare. Finally, the cost of the ransoming might be so onerous that it could ruin an established knight or lord, who had a higher value placed upon their lives, but that a squire might not merit the same treatment for purely pragmatic reasons.\n\n\nThe ideal of ransoming which the noble status of squires permitted them access to was difficult to maintain not only during the Hundred Years War, but also in many other conflicts for purely pragmatic reasons. Their status and treatment was often dependent on the political and social connections they had (especially their lineage) but as such, they were like many counts, barons, earls, and even kings subject to the mercy of the person who caught them, the ability to raise a ransom, and, in later periods, the chain-of-command which might order their execution despite their surrender into the protection of a peer or social superior. They might return home with onerous payments, or be executed and buried in the grounds of a nearby church. If they had great political value they might be kept as a hostage against their kith and kin's behaviour, or they might be executed for treason depending on the nature of the conflict.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2b4ifz", "title": "Richard Winters, of the 101st Airborne, is now perhaps the best-known US front line combat leader of WW2, in the public eye at least. How exceptional was he, and how remarkable were his leadership achievements?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b4ifz/richard_winters_of_the_101st_airborne_is_now/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj1wnqb", "cj22x91", "cj23v2c"], "score": [4, 65, 6], "text": ["Here's a previous thread on him\n\n_URL_0_", "Pretty much the only reason you've ever heard of him is because Stephen Ambrose chose him and his unit as the topic for one of his books.  If that hadn't happened, he would only be remembered by the people he served with, his family, and perhaps a very small number of military officers who would have regarded him as an extremely minor footnote in the Normandy Invasion.\n\nIt's a bit bizarre, but Ambrose, who was legitimately an excellent writer and a sound historian, will nonetheless be best remembered for his most irresponsible and shoddily researched work *Band of Brothers* (in turn largely remembered because of the successful and popular HBO miniseries that used it as source material).  It's a book that has almost as much in common with fanfiction as it does with history.  It's unabashedly biased and relies almost entirely upon what amounts to war stories for its sources.  Due to the popularity of the book and even more so the miniseries, a practical cult of personality has sprung up around Winters and the other members of Easy Company.              \n\nIn the book Winters' personal opinions on a number of topics are presented as fact.  He insults a variety of people and Ambrose makes absolutely no effort to find alternative sources to either verify or debunk Winters' claims about those people.  So as not to be guilty of the same crime as Ambrose, I will admit that I don't currently have access to my copy of the book, and so am working from memory.  However I am completely able and willing to verify the claims I make as soon as I return home for anyone that doubts my statements.  Examples of the mud that Winters slings include:\n\n-Completely trashing the previous CO of Easy Company, Herbert Sobel, up to and including accounts of what can only be described as mutiny (although it is made clear that while Winters commiserated with the motivations of the soldiers involved, he did not openly encourage it, and in fact took efforts to stop it).  Additionally in Winters' defense, he does credit Sobel with ensuring discipline in the unit, which in turn served them well in combat.  However that is the entirety of praise that Winters gives to Sobel, and everything else is negative.      \n\n-Winters makes several statements throughout the book that either state or imply that Easy Company was head and shoulders above other Companies in the 506th.  While it's good that Winters took pride in his unit, it didn't have to be done by denigrating other units that Easy Company served with.  It becomes even more questionable when you realize that all historical inquiries into Easy Company's record show that it was pretty much an average unit in the 506th, and certainly not the exceptional outfit Winters would have you believe.  \n\n-Winters charges the pilots of the C-47's that were used in the Normandy Invasion with both cowardice and incompetence.  Ambrose makes absolutely no effort to investigate their performance, and in fact further research shows there were a great many valid reasons for difficulties the pilots encountered.\n\n-At one point in the book Winters openly admits that he has no interest in being unbiased in his story-telling.  The exact details elude me, however there is absolutely one part in the book where Winters is saying something negative about one of his superiors (I believe it was Colonel Sink, although it might have been someone else).  Ambrose is a bit taken aback by the venom Winters has towards this officer, and specifically asks Winters if he is being unfair/unbalanced/unbiased.  Winters spits back something along the lines of \"I'm not interested in being balanced\".  Out of all the charges, this is easily the most heinous and the most telling, since it directly demonstrates that Winters had some axes to grind, and was not shy about doing so.  This should have been a MAJOR red flag to Ambrose, and it's mind-boggling that Ambrose doesn't address it in any shape or form.  A major failing on Ambrose's part as a historian.\n\n-Winters was recalled to service during the Korean War and his record during this time is hardly distinguished.  During the time that he was called up, he traveled to Washington D.C. in an attempt to convince the Army not to send him to Korea.  When they declined his request, he seems to have become disillusioned and did not seem to be particularly enthusiastic about his job of training officers, citing their lack of discipline and poor attendance as the reason for his lack of enthusiasm.  He was finally discharged under a loophole that allowed officers that had served in World War II to take a discharge instead of deploying to Korea.  It's not hard to understand and believe that Winters was sick of military service by the end of World War II, and indeed had earned the right to a bit of pacifism after all that he had survived.  However it is a bit unsettling to think that he was perhaps a bit lackadaisical in his duties, particularly since he had first hand knowledge of the rigors that the soldiers he was training would have to be prepared for.  It's one thing to be reckless with your own personal preparation for risk, but something entirely different when your lack of enthusiasm could easily cause others to be ill-prepared.  It's even more unsettling when he doesn't take responsibility for his actions, but rather blames his trainees for his lack of enthusiasm.  Blaming others starts to seem like a pattern with Winters.      \n\n-There's a few other inaccuracies and inconsistencies throughout the book, and a few more lost in the translation from book to miniseries.  For example one scene in the miniseries has a soldier who is returning from being wounded in the Normandy Campaign being shunned upon his return to the unit (presumably due to perceived malingering/cowardice which resulted in his missing out on Market Garden and Bastogne).  However this was a complete fabrication of the miniseries, and in fact in the book the soldier is greeted with camaraderie and is brought up to speed without any rancor, and it is never even suggested that others thought the soldier guilty of anything.  Another error that I recall in the miniseries was the claim that a soldier had died shortly after the war, when in fact the person lived for several decades after his supposed death.  Certainly not huge errors, however enough to remind trained historians that they are watching a tv show, not a documentary.\n\nSo all this brings us back to your original question.  How exceptional and/or remarkable Winters was is an extremely subjective question.  However despite all my focus upon his negative traits, it would be absurd to claim that Winters was without merit.  Indeed he was obviously a very good leader.  His men clearly admired and respected him, and that's usually the only benchmark a good leader cares about.  From an official standpoint, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in the Normandy Campaign, a decoration that is only one rank below the Medal of Honor (which he was nominated for, and might still be awarded if interest groups get their way).  He was also awarded two Bronze Stars.  Two Bronze Stars and especially a Distinguished Service Cross are NOT the sort of decorations one gets for merely showing up.  Furthermore, he was also awarded a Purple Heart, which is earned by being wounded in action by the enemy.  While some people have pooh-poohed this medal in the past, or the circumstances under which it has been rewarded (a fairly recent example would be the scorn that some people laid upon John Kerry due to their belief that his wounds were so tiny as to barely warrant the award).  There have also been cases where people received the medal due to self-injury brought about by negligence, or other questionable circumstances.  However I'd retort that ANYONE that has ever received the Purple Heart was at the very least serving in circumstances that are more dangerous than average.  Simply being present in a war zone puts you at greater risk than the average person.  There is not a doubt in my mind that Winters' life was on the line, and probably with some regularity.  That alone is admirable.  While the wound he received for the medal was superficial at worst, it would be disgusting to claim that he did not rightfully earn it.\n\nIn conclusion, I would say that Winters was an above average officer who did his best and served with admirable courage and skill.  He was also a human being, with all the faults and warts that that entails.  He was certainly not a flawless saint, as some believe him to be.  However he did all that his country asked of him, and then some.  If fault needs to be assigned, it should be to Stephen Ambrose, who should have known better than to paint him as a perfect hero, as well as to those cult of personality types who would rather obsess over insignificant details (\"What shade of brown was Major Winters' excrement during Operation Market Garden?\"), rather than attempting to understand the bigger picture, or heaven forbid, study *any* of the other 16 million Americans that served during World War II, about 99.5% of whom did NOT serve in the Airborne, but who have stories that are potentially just as interesting and important.", "Thank you. I really appreciate your detailed and thoughtful response. As a documentary filmmaker I deal regularly with similar issues arising from using an individual's story to represent that of a wider group. It requires great care."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16pcws/major_dick_winters_certainly_a_war_hero_but_i/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2imz90", "title": "Did the other major powers of WWII have fictional characters like Captain America to boost national morale?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2imz90/did_the_other_major_powers_of_wwii_have_fictional/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl3mzzd", "cl3stm1", "cl3u5lj", "cl3ua6m", "cl3vg6j", "cl3zqzo", "cl425qs", "cl4617o"], "score": [57, 10, 10, 23, 16, 5, 4, 2], "text": ["In Britian during that time the primary 'Comics' where things like The Beano, The Dandy, Buster, Topper and Beezer which tend to be full of jokes and 1-2 page slapstick situations aimed at younger children and therefore difficult to compare with icons such as Superman or Captain America. \n\nIn an advertisement in the UK you would most likely see the 'Old Empircal Favourites' which had been a feature of WW1 and before, such as John Bull or Britannia.\n\nA very popular comic about the war, which didn't emerge until the 50's was Commando, however this was much more about 'Regular' Soldiers and no talk of super powers!", "Yes! Soviet poet [Tvardovsky](_URL_0_) wrote a serialized poem about Vasili Tyorkin, not a superhero by any means, but a real Soviet hero: an ordinary, but brave and resourceful soldier.\n\nEpisodes were printed in frontline newspapers as soon as they were written, and are still mandatory reading in middle school.", "There was a British newspaper comic strip titled \"Jane\" written/drawn by Norman Pett.  This was a \"pin-up\" comic strip that featured a young woman who would lose her clothing under various humorous circumstances.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nQuoted from the Wiki:\n\nThe \"Jane\" strip became very popular during the Second World War and was considered morale-boosting, inspiring a similar American version, Milton \"Terry and the Pirates\" Caniff's comic strip \"Male Call.\" Until 1943, Jane rarely stripped to more than her undergarments, but then she made a fully nude appearance when getting out of a bath and clumsily falling [out of a window] into the middle of a crowd of British soldiers.\n\nEdit: Wikipedia was quoted, but I actually know about \"Jane\" from \"The Penguin Book of Comics:  A Slight History\" by George Perry, which covers the history of British comics and comic strips.  The Penguin book shows the famous \"Jane\" strip from 1943 mentioned above.  The Penguin book also covers the comic magazines like Beano and Topper.", "Canada had Johnny Canuck! He appeared originally in the 1800's but was later used as propaganda much the same as Capitan America during WWII.  He was a lumberjack with a beard, so pretty much looked like the rest of Canadians.\nNowadays his image is heavily used by the Vancouver Canucks NHL team.\nLink:  _URL_0_ ", "Greece wasn't a major power, but it had the 'Tsolias' (\u03a4\u03c3\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03ac\u03c2), who became an iconic figure to boost morale after the victory over Italy in 1940. The character is wearing a traditional greek uniform like [this one](_URL_2_). \n\nThe Tsolias character would appear in cartoons during WWII, as shown [here](_URL_3_), [here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_4_) and [here](_URL_0_). ", "Time for some Canadian history!  (We like...never do that here)\n\nIn December of 1940 the Canadian trade deficit with the US was growing at an alarming rate and British gold shipments were becoming limited.   To combat this the Canadian government passed the  War Exchange Conservation Act which targeted nations outside of the Sterling Block to heavily restricted importing goods that weren't considered essential.   You know what isn't essential?  Comic books.   Or so they keep telling me, anyways.\n\nNow, Canadians loved comic books, and rightfully so.  Heck ol' Supes himself was drawn by a Canuck  and Metropolis was based upon Toronto.  There was no way we were going without comics to plaster on our igloo walls, so rose the \"Canadian whites\":  Comics by Canadians for Canadians.\n\n\nWe had [Canada Jack](_URL_3_) who valiantly fought fifth-columnists within Canada.   He only left the country once...to fight Nazis in South America.\n\nOur hero abroad was [Johny Canuck](_URL_1_), an Air Force captain who was also a secret agent... because reasons.\n\nWe can't forget our favourite heroine, one of the earliest female super heroes and likely the first ever Inuit superhero.   I speak, as you all know, of [Nelvana of The Northern Lights!](_URL_2_).  She kicked Nazi ass so much she had to create a new secret identity... as a secret agent... because... secret!\n\nI know you are all sitting there and wondering when I was going to talk about the first and most famous Canadian WW2 super hero of them all.   The one who we still hear talked about daily.  Well, here it is:  The fantastic, the unstoppable, the one and only **[IRON MAN!](_URL_0_)**  The hero from the depths of the ocean who rose from mourning the death of his race to fight the Nazis!  Oh, and then like 22 years later some other unrelated Iron Man guy came along, but nobody cares about that.\n\nThis was the Canadian Golden Age of Comics.", "While UK children's commics like the Beano and The Dandy didn't run to hero figures, they certainly ran to making fun of the Axis leaders.\n\nAccording to my late father, the favourite was \"Musso the Wop - he's a-bigga da flop\" - the exploits and failures of Benito Mussolini.  There was also something called \"Addie and Hermy, the nasty Nazis\" about which he could remember very little, which featured Hitler and Goering as two idiots.\n\nI managed to find an example on-line\n_URL_0_", "Any German ones? Or at least the Axis?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Tvardovsky"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_(comic_strip)"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Canuck"], ["http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_7.jpg", "http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_6.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evzones#mediaviewer/File:Evzone_Parliament_Greece_1.JPG", "http://perierga.gr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/geloiografia40_3.jpg", "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wPrvjbb6wcA/TMgtj84qLiI/AAAAAAAAANs/PpWrPB_nZKo/s1600/1940cartoons+004.jpg"], ["http://imgur.com/8wr6vdx", "http://imgur.com/Tb0tHKv", "http://imgur.com/4IVWkO9", "http://imgur.com/CrG4p5t"], ["http://www.shanklygates.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=56780"], []]}
{"q_id": "31fotp", "title": "Has Otto von Bismarck really said \u201cIf there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans\u201d?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31fotp/has_otto_von_bismarck_really_said_if_there_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq185d0"], "score": [206], "text": [" >  Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal \u2026 A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all \u2026 I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where \u2026 Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.\n\nComment by Otto von Bismarck during the Congress of Berlin in 1878, as quoted in \"European Diary\" by Andrei Navrozov, in Chronicles Vol. 32 (2008)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3fxxno", "title": "What do historians here think of the new AP US History framework and the process that creates it?", "selftext": "Seems like a pretty difficult undertaking given how widely it's used, and how closely it's scrutinized by so many groups.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fxxno/what_do_historians_here_think_of_the_new_ap_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctti4xv", "ctti4xx"], "score": [11, 36], "text": ["For convenience, here is the new framework so that our US experts can review it if they want: _URL_0_", "I'm really surprised nobody has taken a shot at this. I am obviously, not an American historian. That said, most of the Americanists in my department really do not like the new AP US history class. Frankly, I think if you are going to be awarded college credit for taking a class, the curriculum that is taught in many college classes should be reflected in the high school class. And based on the information found in this article, _URL_0_, as well as others, the 2014 curriculum that this new update attempts to \"fix\" is actually what is taught in university coursework. Yes, the United States has done some great stuff in its short (speaking as a historian of the premodern period) history. That said, the nation, its citizens, and its politicians have done some stuff that students should be taught to critique, that's what being in college is about. We (Americans, racism is everywhere, but I'm not going to talk about that right now) live in a world of institutionalized racism, a critical history of our nation is a way of approaching that problem and a first step in alleviating some of its consequences. This isn't the only issue on which that a critical history of the US can have an impact, but the citizens of any nation need to be critical of its past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-us-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf"], ["http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/05/429361628/the-new-new-framework-for-ap-u-s-history"]]}
{"q_id": "67g8ni", "title": "In the James Bond film \"Goldeneye,\" Russian General Ourumov blames his own attack on a satellite in Severnaya on \"Siberian separatists.\" Were there such separatists in post-Communist Russia?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67g8ni/in_the_james_bond_film_goldeneye_russian_general/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgrl2ij", "dgruvmd"], "score": [15, 5], "text": ["I understand that this response might be in violation of some of the rules of this subreddit, but I see no other way of addressing this question.\n\nThere were (and still are) indeed some groups that propagated Siberian nationalism and an independent Siberia (or at least an autonomous one). The peak of their development, however, was in the mid-to-late 19th century, when they enjoyed the support of some of members of Russian intelligentsia who were exiled to Siberia. \n\nHowever, in modern times there really hasn't been any serious movements propagating Siberian separatism, and certainly never anything even remotely resembling an armed insurgency.\n\nThe most relevant recent (so recent, in fact, that it is in violation of the rules of this subreddit regarding the discussion of current events) example is probably that of [\"Siberian Wikipedia\"](_URL_0_), a truly bizarre stunt wherein a Russian entrepreneur from Tomsk attempted to create a section Wikipedia in an artificial \"Siberian\" language. The crux of the matter was that the language was just a peculiar version of Russian, and certainly *not* a separate (or, indeed, real) language. It was eventually taken down, but while it was up a lot of the materials there propagated anti-Russian views and called for the creation of an independent Siberian state. \n\nIn general though such views are not (and, historically, were not) popular among the populations of the region. Think of Siberian nationalism as a slightly more absurd Russian version of an independent California movement. \n\n", "Short answer: not that I know of, but I know less about Siberia than I do about the Caucasus. \n\nLong answer: I haven't seen the film, but given the year it came out (1995), this line of dialogue could have been the screenwriters' attempt at an inoffensive reference to the general idea of post-Soviet separatist struggles. A bunch of satellites in the Caucasus and Central Asia declared independence in the early 90s after the USSR's collapse. Most relevantly, in 1995 Russia was embroiled in the first Chechen war. That was a separatist struggle, with Chechnya trying to gain independence after being conquered and held by Russia since its Tsarist period. However, Chechnya is in the North Caucasus (south-western Russia), not Siberia... but I'm not sure I trust your average Hollywood screenwriter to quite know or care about that geographical difference. \n\nA bit more on the first Chechen war [is here] (_URL_0_). A lot more could be said about that larger conflict; unfortunately, that would violate the 20-year rule, as unrest in Chechnya is still very much ongoing today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%C2%AB%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B5%C2%BB"], ["http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chechnya1.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "34gss6", "title": "What makes a place (city, fort etc) strategically important in war?", "selftext": "I tried searching but apart from a couple posts about Stalingrad's importance in WWII and it being the biggest defeat for Germany I haven't found anything that satisfies my curiosity.\n\nSo Stalingrad is obviously one, and I think Pearl Harbour was another? The French thought Marginot Line would be worth holding but (spoiler alert!) the Germans just bypassed it altogether.\n\nSwitzerland is also something I understand was an important place because it was the path to and from Italy.\n\nSo does being a direct, safe route from one place to another automatically qualify a region as a strategic point of contention in warfare? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34gss6/what_makes_a_place_city_fort_etc_strategically/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqulwrj", "cqutyow", "cqv301w", "cqvh8za"], "score": [28, 10, 5, 5], "text": ["Stalingrad was a major industrial center, a crossing point on the Volga, and a population center, all of which made it necessary to take. If the Germans had left Stalingrad unoccupied and drove on into the Caucuses, their flank would have been open to a Soviet counterattack, to say nothing of the tanks and guns that would have continued to roll out of Stalingrad's factories.\n\nPearl Harbor was important almost solely due to location. It was a major US naval base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at which the bulk of the US Pacific Fleet had been concentrated. Same idea; the Japanese couldn't advance into southeast Asia with an intact and fully capable American fleet in prime position to intercept them.\n\nThe location of the Maginot Line would have been defended even if it had never been built. You can't very well not garrison the German/French border if you're in a war with Germany. But anyway, it's not like the entirety of the French Army was sitting in forts with their thumbs up their asses; their best troops were suckered into Holland, then cut off from the troops holding the Maginot Line when German Army Group A drove through the Ardennes, across the Meuse, and to the sea.\n\nThere are any numbers of reasons why an area or a feature would be considered strategic. There's really no formula for it, other than to say \"holding X enables me to do Y; conversely, taking V prevents my enemy from doing Z to me.\"", "Atleast in pre industrial times but even up to WW1 a fortress/castle or walled City would usually act as either a force multiplier, sort of Roadblock for the attacker or safe haven for the troops stationed inside.\nOften it was just not feasible to leave an intact fortress in your back since that would leave the Garrison able to cut your flow of supplies, harass you or in the case of costal forts put you under fire with its guns and thus often defend its associated Cities from Naval invasion (See Fort Wagner and Charleston Harbour during the Civil War).\n\nThus a fortress and City under your own or the enemies control could either be a great help since it would offer shelter during winter and harsh weather, be a jumping off point where supplies could be pooled for the next campaigning season or severly slow down an enemys advance by requiring troops or naval assets to siege it into submission.\n\nA fortress would also usually control the land around it and in times of war act as an Arsenal/Prison or administrative center. ", "Why Switzerland was ignored:\n\nYou could compare Switzerland with the Netherlands, Belgium or Denmark. All four of them declared their neutrallity when the war began, but all four of them could be of stragetic importance for the Germans: \n\nThe conquest of Belgium was decisive for conquering France (ignoring the Maginot Line)\n\nThe Dutch Harbours were crucial for the war against the British\n\nThe Danes controlled the entrance to the Baltic\n\nAnd the Swiss is an important crossroad for traveling through the Alpes.\n\nStill the Swiss were the only one spared probably because of an easy cost benefit equastion. The Swiss were the only one of these 4 with a well trained and supplied army in a countryside difficult to conquer in contrast to the Low Countries and Denmark. Besides the Germans already had acces to Italy through Austria and having a neutral neighbour when you're in war can be just as useful as an ally", "Geography is usually what makes a place strategically important in war.\n\nLook at the American revolution as an example.  \n\nCities were not generally strategically important in this war.  The British proved able to capture any coastal American city they wanted to  (and all of America's cities were coastal at the time).  \nThey did occupy most of them at one point or another during the war.  (They only had the resources to occupy about three cities at once, but at different points in the war they occupied Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah.)\n\nAmerica, however, during the revolution, was a rural country.  Cities were not that important as economic or industrial centers.  The American war effort shrugged off the loss of the countries largest cities.\n\nThe most strategic locations in the Revolution were the forts of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, West Point, and the city of Quebec.  These were all important because they defended the strategic Hudson River corridor between Canada and New York, which if occupied by the British would cut the colonies in two.\n\nThe Americans seized Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point from the British by surprise attack early in the Revolution, which cleared the way for an American attack against Canada, which failed outside the walls of Quebec, which allowed the British to then attack south from Canada and recapture Ticonderoga and Crown Point.  This British advance was supposed to meet up with another British force advancing north from New York City, but this force did not capture the fort at West Point (didn't even try very hard), allowing the American victory at Saratoga which defeated the British advance from Canada.  The British tried again to capture West Point by encouraging Benedict Arnold's treason (he was trying to hand over West Point to the British) but the plot was discovered and prevented by the Americans.  \n\nBritish capture of the Hudson corridor was their best chance (at least after Washington got canny enough to never give them a crack at defeating the Continental army in a single battle - which he almost let them do during the defense of New York) at achieving a favorable outcome after the Colonies revolted, but they were unable to achieve it.  Despite at one time holding three of the four strategic fortresses defending the corridor, their failure to capture West Point at the same time was critical.\n\nForts which defended critical geographic features, in this case rivers (Hudson and St Lawrence) and portages (between the Hudson and the St. Lawrence) were the strategically important positions.  As Britain controlled the seas, if they could establish control of navigable rivers they could penetrate deep into the American interior and divide the colonies.  The Revolutionaries had to defend these strategic waterways."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "d0sbbp", "title": "Why did Buster Keaton believe that 1926 American audiences would want Union villains and Confederate heroes?", "selftext": "Buster Keaton was one of the great actors and directors of the silent era of Hollywood. His 1926 \"The General\" is considered one of his masterpieces and tells the true story of the Great Locomotive Chase when Union soldiers during the American Civil War hijacked a train on the Atlanta to Chattanooga line behind enemy lines and did a huge amount of damage to Confederate supply chains.\n\nIn the biography of Keaton \"Cut to Chase\" they mention that the history text Keaton went to for facts to base his script on on was told from the Union perspective but Keaton changed it so the Union were the villains kidnapping the Georgian protagonist's lover and the Confederates are the heroes. The book states that Keaton made this change because movie audiences would not accept Confederate villains and Union heroes, it would be necessary to reverse this to win their audiences.  Keaton himself wasn't a Southerner (he was born in Kansas and traveled a lot as a child but spent his summers in Michigan) so it can't have been personal.\n\nWhy would this be necessary? More Americans lived in formerly Union states than formerly Confederate states so why would the American film audience of 1926 want Confederate heroes and Union villains?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d0sbbp/why_did_buster_keaton_believe_that_1926_american/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f05ujmp"], "score": [2], "text": ["[This older answer](_URL_0_) from /u/OutlawHistorian may be of interest."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b0448k/when_buster_keaton_made_the_general_1926_he_made/eic4a9v/"]]}
{"q_id": "2wvn5e", "title": "Has \"End Time\" prophecies and Millennialist-esque thought played a notable role in the history of Islam?", "selftext": "I read an article mentioning that ISIS has such talk as part of its rhetoric, but at least to a relatively uninformed layman such as myself, I don't recall reading previously that this kind of stuff was a part of Islam, whereas it is a pretty well known part of Christian thought. Obviously talking about ISIS's use now is off limits here, but I was wondering what the history of this kind of stuff is within Islam, and whether I'm mistaken in my impression that it is a generally downplayed aspect of the religion.\n\nAlso, what is the general gist of the events that shall come to pass?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wvn5e/has_end_time_prophecies_and_millennialistesque/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cour0rt"], "score": [13], "text": ["I'll leave the exact details of the Muslim beliefs about end times to someone more theologically inclined.   However, yes, off the top of my head I can think of two very significant events inspired Millenarian beliefs: the Safavid takeover of Iran and the 1979 takeover the Haram al-Sharif in Mecca.  \n\nI talk about the Safavid takeover of Iran (this is how Iran became Shi'a) in [this older comment](_URL_4_) (particularly in the follow up comment).  Shah Ismail, the first of the Safavids to rule to Azerbaijan and Iran, declared himself Mahdi (the forerunner to Mesih, the Messiah, and generally the important figure in Muslim eschatology) in the early 16th century.  He came from a religious and noble heritage (his predecessors were heads of the Safaviyya Sufi order, and he was descended from both the Prophet Muhammed and Byzantine Emperors).  For most of his life before his rise to power, after his other relatives were killed, he was raised in isolation by other clerics.  The Safavid takeover in Iran is one of the most unexpected and fascinating moments in history, up there with the surprise and speed of the initial Arab conquests in the 7th century.    Obviously, the end of the world did not happen in his life, and his successor set up a stable dynasty that lasted over two centuries.  But his initial success was a military coalition of mainly Turkic tribes who clearly believed that he, Ismail Shah, was the promised Mahdi.  Since the period of Ismail Shah's rule, and particularly the Ottoman reaction to it, set up the Sunni-Shi'a split that continues to the present day, I think this unambiguously qualifies for a \"notable event\".  From his emergence until his defeat at the Battle of Chaldiran (1514), there was relatively little strife in his messianic followers.  That battle opened the door for strife because, since it was a defeat, it suggested that Shah Ismail wasn't divinely invincible.  It suggested this not only to his followers, but to the Shah himself, and he played a much smaller role in the decade between Chaldiran and his death than he did in the decade and a half leading up to the battle.  I don't know how reliable the sources are (i.e. whether they written by his or his son's political enemies) but some report that he fell to the drink after this turning point.  After his death, with no messianic figure leading them, the Safavid lands collapsed into a ten year civil war (civil wars were actually quite common consequences of succession disputes in the region at the time, though ten years is certainly on the longer end).  Still, the Safavid dynasty was able to consolidate power and Shi'a Islam did become an important rival to Sunni Islam from the sixteenth century onward.\n\nThe other major event that immediately comes to mind is the [1979 Seizure of the Haram al-Sharif](_URL_7_) in Mecca (the Haram al-Sarif, also called the Noble Sanctuary or the Grand Mosque, is the home of the Kabaa and so the direction that all Muslims pray).  During the Hajj that year, Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani was declared to be the Mahdi by a group of four to five hundred fervent believers led by his brother-in-law.  It was  a truly shocking event, and the armed group holed up in the Mosque sanctuary for about two full weeks, at points broadcasting their message from the mosque speakers.  It's worth noting that, by the Islamic calendar, this occurred at the very start of the year 1400 and followers drew explicit comparisons between Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani and his father and the Prophet Mohammed and his father.  Though eventually put down with Pakistani and finally French help (it's widely alleged that several French special forces commandos underwent a pro-forma conversion to Islam in order to enter the holy city of Mecca and end the uprising).  All told, several hundred people (including militants, civilians, and Saudi military and police forces) were killed.  This was a big turning point for the Saudi state, and marked perhaps the first point that their close relationship with the ulema--the clerical bureaucracy--was seen as a liability rather than just an asset.  Many of the participants were themselves members of the ulema--this was not just a group of uneducated peasants or nomads.  Further, this was the first time that the Saudi State took militants seriously in general, and most Saudi \"anti-terrorism\" measures and military cooperation with the West can be traced to this event (which happened shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which also made many leaders in the region quite wary of the clerics in their countries).  However, it should be made very clear that the Saudi State reacted not by limiting religion, but by closely watching it and empowering it--particularly those of a particular style that received even more state sponsorship than before.  Gender segregation was extended.  Women were slowly pushed out of newspapers and off television, and Western imports like cinema were restricted and then closed.  This increased religiosity gave the Saudi State more control over people, and it allowed them to make sure that they were getting a very clear, rigorous, and state-selected religious agenda (this eventually led to the marginalization of other, more moderate groups in the Kingdom, including the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been gaining influence in the Gulf at least through the 1950's and 60's).  Here, the event wasn't so much notable as the reaction.\n\n**Edit**:  Oh, man, I forgot my favorite Mahdi claimant!  I won't get into him, [Muhammad Ahmad](_URL_2_) of Sudan, whose partially messianic, partially anti-colonial wars are most commonly called the [Mahdist War](_URL_6_).  \n\nThe two other important Mahdi claimants of the 19th century can in someways be compared to Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism.  [Mirza Ghulam Ahmad](_URL_5_)'s movement is today known as Ahmaddiyya.  [Ali Mu\u1e25ammad Shirazi](), known as the Bab, claimed to be the Mahdi and founded the movement known as Babism.  As Mahdi, he foretold the coming of one greater than he (perhaps comparable to the role John the Baptist plays in Christianity).  After the Bab's death, most of his followers agreed that this next promised was Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, better known as the [Bah\u00e1'u'll\u00e1h](_URL_0_), who founded the Baha'i Faith and claimed to be not just the fulfillment of the Bab's prophecy, but all Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other groups' eschatological prophecies.  Neither of their claims were particularly apocalyptic, to my knowledge, and both concentrated heavily on building movements rather than the immanent end of the world.  Since participation in either movement is widely seen as making one an apostates in the Muslim World (similar to how Mormonism was long seen in the Christian World), Baha'is and Ahmadis are among the most persecuted religious groups in the world today.  There are probably [10-20 million Ahmadis](_URL_3_) (mostly in South Asia and some Muslim-majority parts of Africa), and probably about [six million Baha'is](_URL_1_) (spread surprisingly evenly all over the world, with the largest population still probably in Iran, but hugely prosecuted since the Islamic Revolution).  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah\u00e1%27u%27ll\u00e1h", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah\u00e1%27%C3%AD_statistics", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadiyya_by_country", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mzbji/was_the_christian_world_particularly_around_the/cm9ep2n?context=2", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Ghulam_Ahmad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure"]]}
{"q_id": "1nhpdl", "title": "At what period in time would the human population have passed 1 million?", "selftext": "2000 years ago it would have apparently been around 300 million so we'd already have been quite busy by then. When did it finally tip a milion? How spread out on the globe were we by then? Where did it go from there?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nhpdl/at_what_period_in_time_would_the_human_population/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccj702b"], "score": [4], "text": ["This is really a tough question to answer because the only evidence we can extrapolate from is the archaeological record and modern genetic variation.  \n\nWe can make some estimates of population density based on archaeological remains, but those estimates will be *very, very* rough over such a widespread area and time frame.  For example, we could use evidence of material remains to tell us humans arrived in X area, then extrapolate the [carrying capacity](_URL_2_) for X area at that time (these estimates are usually based on demographics of modern foraging populations), then add up all the maximum values for all the areas we know humans inhabited, and run with that total as the human population at that time.  Obviously, we are making so many assumptions by the time we have our population estimate that the number is virtually useless.\n\nWe can use modern human genetic variability to understand our population history, but, again, the timing and exact numbers will be very rough.  (As a caveat to the following discussion, I'm not a geneticist by training.  I took several graduate level genetics and population genetics courses, but if anyone finds fault with my interpretation of the genetic data please correct me.)\n\nSo what does the genetic data say?  The evidence points to a low overall population for our hominin ancestors.  When we first started examining the genetic data researchers noticed a theme of recent population expansion in the *H. sapiens* lineage.  Dates for this expansion ranged from 400,000 to 20,000 years ago depending on the genetic information and statistical analysis used.  A [recent mtDNA study](_URL_0_) indicates the story is slightly more complex than overall expansion.  The researchers examined 4 African mtDNA haplogroups. Two of the groups showed steady exponential expansion from 213,000-156,000 years ago.  One haplogroup showed substantial expansion at 12,000-20,000 years ago, and the final group showed substantial expansion 61,000-86,000 years ago.\n\nWhat does that mean?  It means that by ~200,000 years ago our population was growing exponentially (starting from a very low number).  The haplogroup that expands at 86,000-61,000 predates some estimates for the migration out of Africa (and may indicate that population expansion in Africa was a driving force for the migration out).  The [effective population size](_URL_1_) (which does not equal census population size) for sub-Saharan Africa crested one million by ~30,000 years ago.  Since humans had, by that point, spread over a substantial portion of the Old World (and census population size is greater than effective population size) we could likely push that date back to ~60,000-50,000 years ago for reaching the one million point.\n\nAgain, these are super rough estimates.  It is an interesting, if ultimately unanswerable, question."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1655/367.full", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity"]]}
{"q_id": "4vc653", "title": "Did any Holy Roman Emperors ever try to recreate the Roman Empire or de-feudalize and imperialize their Realm?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vc653/did_any_holy_roman_emperors_ever_try_to_recreate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5x7xwr"], "score": [36], "text": ["Not certain if this question won't be deleted too but let's try again :D\n\nThe person immediately coming to my mind would be Otto III. If we follow Percy Ernst Schramm's argumentation that the german emperor possesed a dedicated ideology of ressurecting the Roman Empire.\n\nAccording to Gerbert of Aurillac (later Silvester II), the core areas of the former Roman Empire, Italia, Gallia, Germania and Skythia were posessed by Otto, which legitimated the western empire as the true successor of Rome. To give this ideology a foundation, the city of Rome ( as well as Italy) had to be stabilised. According to Schramm, several new policies (creating and changing offices in Rome ) and part sof the Emperor's behavior (sitting alone at the table) point to an idea of Emperorhood which differs from his predecessors. We also have the use of metal bulls as opposed to wax seals can be interpreted as a visible sign of Otto's self perceived equality with both the pope and the eastern emperor. Certain depictions of Rome's anthromorphised core nations in Otto's evangelion point to the importance of Rome within the emperor's political worldview. [Have a look and note who is first](_URL_0_).\n\nSchramm tries to substantiate his argument with further evidence. Leo of Vercelli's \"Versus de Gregorio papa et Ottone augusto\" (which propagates mutual support between church and emperor and a restorated Rome), an increase of missionary activity as part of the religious renovatio and the use of S.P.Q.R. in a law against the misappropriation of church property are, among others, seen as evidence for Otto's desire to restore his idea of the Roman Empire. What can be said for certain is that there was a strong relationship between pope and emperor but the renovatio idea itself has been criticised.\n\nKnut G\u00f6rich and a bit later Althoff for example challenge the idea of a coherent poitical concept of roman restoration under Otto III's rule. G\u00f6rich for argues that seemingly antique roman words and formulas have changed and that Schramm failed to properly recognise this problem. For G\u00f6rich the renovatio idea chiefly means the renewal of the papacy. He further asserts that the city of Rome was divided between several factions and that it is problematic to assume some kind of homogenous restauratio friendly interest group. Althoff asserts that the new titles and offices created by Otto were in fact just a logical extention of already existing titles, which does not necessarily support the assumption that there were an attempt to restore the ancient roman empire.\n\nTo keep this answer from getting overly long and boring i will refrain from writing down all of Schramm's critics but G\u00f6rich's arguments will serve as example and should be kept in mind. I will close this answer with two additional notes:\n\nFirst: Imperium means Empire in middle latin (source PONS) Second: I consider a ressurection of the ancient Roman Empire to be unlikely and favour the idea of the Renovatio as an attempt to renew the Roman Empire in the guise of the Ottonian Empire.\n\nSources:\n\nAlthoff, Otto: Otto III.: Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft ,1996. G\u00f6rich, Knut: Otto III. Romanus Saxonicus et Italicus. Kaiserliche Rompolitik und s\u00e4chsiche Historiographie: Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbeck Verlag, 1995. Schramm, Percy Ernst: Kaiser Rom und Renovatio. Studien zur Geschichte des r\u00f6mischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des Karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit: Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, 2. Auflage, 1957.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Meister_der_Reichenauer_Schule_004.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "3wj8ga", "title": "[Literature] They say Alexander the Great slept with a copy of the Iliad by his side, so great was his love of Homer. Assuming this is true, what form would his copy take? How did he get a hold of it?", "selftext": "I've heard this story about Alexander before (though I don't know whose history is responsible for this claim). So let's say this is true. We can trust whatever ancient historian claimed Alexander loved Homer so much and felt such a personal connection to the story that he slept with it by his side every night. \n\nWhere would he get this book? Would it be a \"book\" as we imagine it today, with pages and a spine and binding? If not, what form would it take? How does a private individual acquire a copy of a book in the first place in the 4th century BCE? Would he buy a pre-existing copy from someone? Hire someone to make a new one? Something completely different?\n\nIt's my understanding that the Iliad was an *extremely* important and popular work to a lot of people in Classical Greece, so I figure someone has to be making copies. But who? Is book copying a full time profession or something people do to pass the hours or something else entirely?\n\nSo as you can tell I'm not so much wondering about Alexander in particular as I am wondering how a book that was apparently so popular and beloved was reproduced in the Ancient Greek world. Though if anyone has any information on Alexander's relation to the text, or how people have interpreted this relationship, or how he would go about getting a physical copy in the first place, I would love to know! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wj8ga/literature_they_say_alexander_the_great_slept/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxwo1vf"], "score": [74], "text": ["Plutarch says:\n\n > \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u1f38\u03bb\u03b9\u03ac\u03b4\u03b1 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b5\u03bc\u03b9\u03ba\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c6\u03cc\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03af\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f40\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03ac\u03b6\u03c9\u03bd, \u1f14\u03bb\u03b1\u03b2\u03b5 \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u1f08\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c1\u03b8\u03ce\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f23\u03bd \u1f10\u03ba \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, \u03b5\u1f36\u03c7\u03b5 \u03b4\u1f72 \u1f00\u03b5\u1f76 \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f10\u03b3\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03b9\u03b4\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7\u03bd \u1f51\u03c0\u1f78 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03c6\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, \u1f61\u03c2 \u1f48\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03ba\u03c1\u03b9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f31\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c1\u03b7\u03ba\u03b5\n\n >  > And as he considered and called the Iliad the way [\u1f10\u03c6\u03cc\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 is poorly translated into English, it means a path, or a way and means] of warlike virtue, and took with him Aristotle's recension and calling it the 'Iliad of the Casket,' he kept it always lying with his dagger under his pillow, as Onesicritus tells us\n\nStrabo says pretty much the same thing, also calling it the \"Iliad of the Casket.\" A \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03be is both the name of a kind of plant that had a hollow, rigid stalk that could be used as a cane or a container (Prometheus carried fire within the stalk of one) or it can be the name for a little casket, often filled with perfumes and other toiletries. \n\nDuring Alexander's lifetime the codex, with its familiar pages and binding, had not yet been invented, so all books came in the form of scrolls. Usually books were long enough to fill up several scrolls--it's from this that the division of works of classical literature into books originates. Within a single book of a work the text was arranged into columns of several dozen lines each--the size of these columns depended on the work contained, whether it was prose or verse, and what meter it was in. During Alexander's lifetime spaces between sentences, accent-marks, and punctuation were not employed yet in Greek--these innovations were apparently introduced at Alexandria. The books making up a single work would then be kept in a box all together, often with a little tag on each of the scrolls to identify whether that was Book One of Thucydides or Book Four. \n\nBooks were of course copied by hand, and we have references to the public sale of books as early as Plato, who has Socrates mention in the Apology that Anaxagoras' books could be bought in the \"orchestra\" for only a drachma (if the price was high). Large book collections are attested as early as Pisistratus, who was famed for his collection, but really big, important collections start appearing in the 4th Century, when the Athenians began churning out books like it was going out of style--Aristotle's library dates from this period. The \u03b2\u03b9\u03b2\u03bb\u03b9\u03bf\u03c0\u03ce\u03bb\u03b7\u03c2, \"bookseller,\" was responsible for their sale and production, presumably with a bunch of slaves copying stuff out for him. We have very little information on the price of books--Plato has Socrates say that all of Anaxagoras is no more than a drachma, and Martial says that a cheap edition of his poems is 6-10 sesterces, so a single book was well within the reach of an ordinary laborer, provided he could read it. Under the Romans bookselling was quite a large business, with booksellers established in major cities throughout the empire (at Rome they were particularly active in the Argiletum), and with private individuals or families undertaking to publish authors' works (Horace was published and sold by a family of booksellers called the Sosii, and Atticus maintained a staff of slaves trained as copyists in order to copy and distribute Cicero's works). But the book trade in antiquity was generally a private affair. Public booksellers are pretty well-attested, but intellectuals who had the inclination (and money) for large collections rarely actually bought their books. Instead copying of text was usually done as a private matter, either from the author directly (as many of the people building up large collections would know the author, they were intellectuals after all) or by borrowing editions from a friend. In either case you just had a slave copy it out for you and boom, you've got yourself a copy. \n\nAlexander's *Iliad*, though, must have been an oddity, being small enough to fit into a \u03bd\u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03b7\u03be. It's a bit unfortunate that you've asked specifically about the *Iliad*, and in particular Alexander's personal edition of it, because the *Iliad* is sort of an oddity in ancient books in general. The Homeric Poems were orally-composed and at some point in the early Archaic Period or late Dark Age were committed to text--how exactly is unclear and isn't important for our purposes. You'll notice that Plutarch mentions that Alexander had a copy of Aristotle's \"recension\" (\u1f08\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c1\u03b8\u03ce\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f23\u03bd), that is a revised and edited edition of the text. The Homeric Poems that we read today are not necessarily identical as those that Alexander might have read. For most of the Classical Period there were many different texts of Homer flying around, differing from each other ever so slightly (or sometimes differing quite a lot). This was a problem with all handwritten books even in antiquity and modern scholars still have to deal with it and decide what the correct readings are, but with Homer it was especially apparent already by the Classical Period. What we have today are descended from the products of the Alexandrian scholars of the Hellenistic Period, who reviewed the texts of Homer as they existed and drew up new recensions of them, but the text of Homer was not really standardized (and even then there are still mistakes in our manuscripts) until much later. There may have been an early attempt at a recension by Pisistratus, but there's not really any direct evidence for it--in any case Aristotle appears to have drawn up a recension of the text for Alexander personally. What this recension looked like we can't say, but it was probably done so as to make the text easily portable. The division of the *Iliad* into 24 books was something decided on by the Alexandrians, and Aristotle need not have used the same divisions--and probably didn't, since it's a bit difficult to make 24 books portable. Whether these scrolls were just written with a small hand (not impossible--we have a fragment from around the same time of a scroll of Orphic mysticism that's written with letters only about 2 mm high) or what isn't really clear"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "q7i6o", "title": "Were ancient people, such as Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, or the Han, aware that humans once lived in caves with stone age technology? Were they aware of human technological progression on that sort of scale? If so, how did they know, and did they keep record of it? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q7i6o/were_ancient_people_such_as_ancient_greeks_romans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c3vdf2b", "c3vdmqe", "c3vdn19", "c3vdtpd", "c3vdxbt", "c3veuq2", "c3vmxjv"], "score": [20, 5, 7, 125, 16, 8, 4], "text": ["The best example of a lack of understanding of the progression of technology is Classical Greek artwork depicting the Trojan War. The [Euphorbus Plate](_URL_0_) being a good example - Bronze Age-era soldiers are depicted using Classical Greek armour and weapons. Similarly, they concluded that Mycenae, a Bronze Age fortress, must have been built by Cyclopes.\n\nOf course, it's worth noting that most ancient peoples had origin myths, and some aspects of such myths might seem to reflect pre-agricultural existence (Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh being one such figure). However, the analysis of such texts, and comparing aspects of them to hunter-gatherer existence is pretty shaky basis for history, and also outside my expertise.", "I'm also interested as to the answer of this, but let me throw something out that maybe others more knowledgable can critique.\n\nI mean, most \"civilized\" societies, even in antiquity, were contrasted with some kind of \"barbaric\" or \"uncivilized\" or \"foreign\" people who might not have developed basic tenets of organized civilization- cities, agriculture, technology. \n\nI know the Romans especially had to deal with barbarians at every stage throughout their history, and they had a very strong conception of their own founding and development as a nationality, even if a lot of it was interwoven in mythology/state propaganda (i.e., The Aeneid). I could see an intelligent people like that connecting the dots and realizing that most people probably lived like the other \"barbarians\" way back in the past.", "I can't prove it, but I can't imagine that they didn't encounter hunter-gathers in their own era. \n\nThe big question is-- did they realize there was a time when _everyone_ lived that way.   I don't think so.   But this is all speculative.  ", "If you look at some really ancient texts, you can see a kind of cultural echo of times when humans were not settled, agricultural, dwellers in towns. This isn't as direct an answer as you might have hoped for, and perhaps someone will dig out some references from Herodotus or Pliny or someone. It is relevant, however, because it involves the adopting of agriculture, one of the most fundamental early technologies, perhaps the one most vital for settled life in cities. I'll provide two examples, one from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the other from the Book of Genesis.\n\nIn the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the third millenium BCE, Gilgamesh is the god-king of Uruk, and the prologue lays out his accomplishments: building walls, a great rampart, and a temple. If we consider those accomplishments a kind of metaphor for the construction of the city itself, the great king's accomplishment could be seen as bringing the people into city--or civilized--life. Not that Gilgamesh *actually did these things*, but the *idea* that a great king is responsible for the very city they inhabit is, I think, indicative of a deep, cultural memory of unsettled, non-agricultural life. It also suggests a link between city life and larger-scale government and attendant politics.\n\nGilgamesh's companion in the Epic is Enkidu, another sort of echo of the past, a kind of metaphor for the transition from unsettled to settled life. In Chapter 1, the goddess Anu makes him, and the text describes him:    \n\n >  He was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land... Enkidu ate grass in the hills with the gazelle and lurked with wild beasts at the water-holes; he had the joy of water with the herds of wild game. \n\nEnkidu represents people who have a vastly different and non-agricultural relationship with nature, and therefore people who do not dwell in the same place all the time, and certainly not in cities. You might even say that Enkidu is *closer* to nature, almost an animal. Interestingly enough, when Enkidu has sex with a woman, he changes and becomes more fully human, more civilized.\n\n >  For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills; but when he was satisfied he went back to the wild beasts. Then, when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled. Enkidu would have followed, but his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. And now the wild creatures had all fled away; Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.\n\nAfter this, the woman convinces him to return with her to Uruk. The connection to sexuality suggests an even greater depth here, that a connection between civilization and gender relations exists, though that is probably better saved for another conversation. For now, consider that laying with a woman severs his relationship to nature, to the animals, as well as changing his mind, giving him the \"wisdom\" and \"thoughts\" of a man.\n\nThere are similar themes in Genesis, and in particular when Adam and the woman are expelled from Eden in the Fall (she doesn't get a name until 3:20, right after). Up to that point, God has created the heavens and earth, populated it with animals. The creation of humans happens twice, first in Gen 1:26-27:\n\n >  [26.] And God said, \"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.\"\n[27.] And God created man in His image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.\n\nAfter this, God gives humans dominion over everything on the earth, every \"seed bearing herb,\" every \"tree that has seed bearing fruit\" (1:29). Those seed-bearing herbs and trees with seed-bearing fruit suggest to me the origins of cultivation: the herbs as grains, and the trees as fruit. After all, unless you plan on re-planting things, the fact that fruit has seeds or that grains are seeds is unimportant; otherwise, they would simply be edible parts.\n\nChapter 2 then documents basically the same story. There's a bit more detail and the creation of humans happens slightly differently: God makes man out of the earth (2:7) woman out of man's rib (2:21-22), and man actually names all the animals (2:19-20). Most importantly, however, God puts man in the Garden of Eden, \"to work it and to guard it\" (2:15), on one condition: \"'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. 17. But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die'\" (2:16-17). This will become important in a moment, and I'll return to it shortly.\n\nMan and woman, at the suggestion of the serpent, eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, and realize they are naked. God is angry at them, and throws them out, but does so in a very interesting way. He says,\n\n >  ... cursed be the ground for your sake; with toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life.\n[18.] And it will cause thistles and thorns to grow for you, and you shall eat the herbs of the field.\n[19.] With the sweat of your face you shall eat bread...\n\nOne way to look at this, I would argue, is that this represents a transformation of human relationships to nature corresponding to a change in knowledge. In this sense, humans become \"civilized.\" They gain knowledge of good and evil, knowledge which people who are more like animals (like Enkidu, for example) cannot have. Further, they must labor much more to eat, suggesting cultivation of the earth. It is true that man was placed in Eden \"to work,\" but it does not seem to have been very laborious; the trees seem to have given up their fruit without much effort. Now, however, man must eat bread, and battle against thorns and thistles: weeds. Weeds can only exist if you're farming. \n\nThe correspondence between gender and civilization also exists here, as woman is basically doomed to pain and patriarchy for her role in eating the fruit. God says \n\n >  [16.] To the woman He said, \"I shall surely increase your sorrow and your pregnancy; in pain you shall bear children. And to your husband will be your desire, and he will rule over you.\"\n\nAfter He kicks them out of Eden, God also makes them clothing, further evidence of their increasing \"civilization.\" The whole thing, in short, reads to me like a culture explaining to itself why it has a particular relationship with nature--agriculture, clothing--although it imagines, deep in the recesses of its culture, a time when things were different, when they lived in absolute harmony in a perfect environment.\n\nI know it's not exactly the answer you were looking for since it does not explicitly address technology. However, I think it is relevant, since agriculture and building construction themselves are technologies, indeed some of the most important early technologies for humans.\n\nSources:\n\n1. *The Epic of Gilgamesh*, N. K. Sandars, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1972; first ed. 1960)\n\n2.  Genesis quotes from *The Complete Tanach with Rashi*, The Judaica Press, Inc.\n\nMinor edits for clarity.", "In the case of the ancient Chinese, they were fairly aware of things. Han histories usually mark their predecessors as the Qin, Zhou, Shang, and Xia (in reverse chronology). We have solid evidence as far back as the Shang, with Xia being as of yet unproven. I'd say that's pretty good, since Xia would probably have been a prehistoric warlord or somesuch. The mythologies of the time usually talked about a series of emperors before the Xia (with the last one founding that dynasty), and generally the people of those times are seen as having been gifted agriculture and such by the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors over a few thousand years.\n\nEDIT: forgot those silly Zhou", "Creation myths themselves are generally predicated on the concept that a mythological figure brought about the beginning of time in what would have previously been a state of chaos or nothingness.  It would be difficult to touch on this generally, as if everyone could have thought or felt in the same way, but even in pre-historical times, mythology itself generally recognizes a beginning that is not \"highly civilized\".", "I would argue that they were. Here is a rather famous passage from Ovid, quoted in full (Dryden's translation--it's quite good). I put some relevant passages in bold.\n\n**The Golden Age**\n\nThe golden age was first; when Man yet new,\n\n\nNo rule but uncorrupted reason knew:\n\nAnd, with a native bent, did good pursue.\n\nUnforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear,\n\nHis words were simple, and his soul sincere;\n\nNeedless was written law, where none opprest:\n\nThe law of Man was written in his breast:\n\nNo suppliant crowds before the judge appear'd,\n\nNo court erected yet, nor cause was heard:\n\nBut all was safe, for conscience was their guard.\n\nThe mountain-trees in distant prospect please,\n\nE're yet the pine descended to the seas:\n\nE're sails were spread, new oceans to explore:\n\nAnd happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,\n\nConfin'd their wishes to their native shore.\n\n**No walls were yet; nor fence, nor mote, nor mound,**\n\nNor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:\n\nNor swords were forg'd; but void of care and crime,\n\nThe soft creation slept away their time.\n\n**The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,**\n\nAnd unprovok'd, did fruitful stores allow:\n\n**Content with food, which Nature freely bred,**\n\nOn wildings and on strawberries they fed;\n\nCornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,\n\nAnd falling acorns furnish'd out a feast.\n\nThe flow'rs unsown, in fields and meadows reign'd:\n\nAnd Western winds immortal spring maintain'd.\n\nIn following years, the bearded corn ensu'd\n\nFrom Earth unask'd, nor was that Earth renew'd.\n\nFrom veins of vallies, milk and nectar broke;\n\nAnd honey sweating through the pores of oak.\n\n**The Silver Age**\n\nBut when good Saturn, banish'd from above,\n\nWas driv'n to Hell, the world was under Jove.\n\nSucceeding times a silver age behold,\n\nExcelling brass, but more excell'd by gold.\n\nThen summer, autumn, winter did appear:\n\nAnd spring was but a season of the year.\n\nThe sun his annual course obliquely made,\n\nGood days contracted, and enlarg'd the bad.\n\nThen air with sultry heats began to glow;\n\nThe wings of winds were clogg'd with ice and snow;\n\nAnd shivering mortals, into houses driv'n,\n\nSought shelter from th' inclemency of Heav'n.\n\n**Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;**\n\n**With twining oziers fenc'd; and moss their beds.**\n\n**Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,**\n\n**And oxen labour'd first beneath the yoke.**\n\n**The Bronze Age**\n\nTo this came next in course, the brazen age:\n\nA warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,\n\nNot impious yet...\n\n**The Iron Age**\n\nHard steel succeeded then:\n\nAnd stubborn as the metal, were the men.\n\nTruth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:\n\nFraud, avarice, and force, their places took.\n\n**Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.**\n\nRaw were the sailors, and the depths were new:\n\nTrees, rudely hollow'd, did the waves sustain;\n\nE're ships in triumph plough'd the watry plain.\n\nThen land-marks limited to each his right:\n\nFor all before was common as the light.\n\nNor was the ground alone requir'd to bear\n\nHer annual income to the crooked share,\n\nBut greedy mortals, rummaging her store,\n\nDigg'd from her entrails first the precious oar;\n\nWhich next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;\n\nAnd that alluring ill, to sight display'd.\n\nThus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,\n\nGave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:\n\nAnd double death did wretched Man invade,\n\nBy steel assaulted, and by gold betray'd,\n\nNow (brandish'd weapons glittering in their hands)\n\nMankind is broken loose from moral bands;\n\nNo rights of hospitality remain:\n\nThe guest, by him who harbour'd him, is slain,\n\nThe son-in-law pursues the father's life;\n\nThe wife her husband murders, he the wife.\n\nThe step-dame poyson for the son prepares;\n\nThe son inquires into his father's years.\n\nFaith flies, and piety in exile mourns;\n\nAnd justice, here opprest, to Heav'n returns.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Images/EuphorbusBM_GR1860_4_4_1.jpg"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3bn71t", "title": "Did the South celebrate the 4th of July in 1865?", "selftext": "It was only 2 months after the Civil War ended. There were huge celebrations in the north but I'm curious if the south celebrated at all", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bn71t/did_the_south_celebrate_the_4th_of_july_in_1865/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csnq8ky"], "score": [34], "text": ["Follow up question: did the South have an \"Independence day\" that they celebrated during the War?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "b8bnh1", "title": "Shakespeare wrote several plays set in classical Rome. How would his theater company have costumed Roman Legionaires and Senators? Did they know soldiers of antiquity were outfitted any differently than the contemporary english Army? Did they try to make sure, e.g., Brutus had an accurate toga?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b8bnh1/shakespeare_wrote_several_plays_set_in_classical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejyzt9d"], "score": [13], "text": ["Interestingly, one of the most useful documents giving us insight into the original staging of Shakespeare\u2019s plays depicts characters from one of his Roman-set plays: the so-called Peacham drawing (c.1595). This contemporary image (_URL_0_) shows a moment from \u2018Titus Andronicus\u2019, Shakespeare\u2019s early Senecan-style Roman tragedy (the one where Titus feeds Tamora her own rapist sons cooked into a pie...). It suggests that costumes of the time combined early modern elements (the Elizabethan-clothed attendant soldiers on the left) and an attempt to evoke Roman dress (Titus in a toga-like robe in the centre). Aaron the Moor on the right would have been a white actor (like Richard Burbage, the first performer to play Othello) in a dyed lambs-wool wig and black make-up (possibly charcoal). \n\nTLDR: Sartorial accuracy was not a priority, it appears, but Shakespeare\u2019s company would have made some effort to convey a sense of historical era and location through costume. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://shakespearestaging.berkeley.edu/system/files/images/1595TAScene.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4ajedz", "title": "In the series Versailles, Louis XIV requires nobles to present proof of their noble lineage. Was this something that actually happened and if so what would this proof consist of?", "selftext": "As the titles states, did Louis XIV require proof from his nobles as Versailles depicts? If so, would this simply be a birth record? It seems that noble families would be well known and established and it wouldn't be easy to simply pretend to be of noble birth. So aside from the obvious posturing and intimidation did this serve some legitimate purpose?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ajedz/in_the_series_versailles_louis_xiv_requires/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d11gqnf"], "score": [36], "text": ["I haven't seen \"Versailles\" yet, but it's on my list. Can you give a little more context as to how Louis XIV is demanding his nobles prove their lineage? \n\nThat said, Louis XIV did go after so-called \"false nobles\" in his court, starting in the 1660s, and this may be what the show is referencing. The sale of noble titles in the 16th century created a glut of individuals whose only distinction was that they were rich enough to afford to purchase their titles. Louis XIV took exception to this and, with everything regarding the culture of Versailles that he created, he wanted to maintain a clear distinction between noble families who were \"gentlemen\" versus ones that had only lately acquired their titles via purchase (nobility in title only). If you could not produce documentation that proved your noble status (dating back 100 years or more, if I recall correctly), then you had to pay a stiff fine (*taille*).\n\n* *The Century of Louis XIV*, edited by Orest Ranum, Springer, Jul 2, 1973,[ pg. 346](_URL_0_)\n\n* *French Society: 1589-1715*, by Sharon Kettering, Routledge, Aug 21, 2014, [pg. 76](_URL_1_) \n\nEDIT: Sorry for the double post and the annoying formatting. Should be fixed now."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=1VOxCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA346&ots=AMrPZLaA2b&dq=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&pg=PA346#v=onepage&q=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=jRBUBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA76&dq=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q=false%20nobles%20louis%20xiv&f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "268jxy", "title": "What was WW1-era nobility like ?", "selftext": "I'm looking for information on the European nobility during WW1. A book suggestion would be great. Basicly, I'd like to now what were the caracteristics traits of nobility at that time, how they were dressed, how they acted, the values they shared. Also, how was the October Revolution lived by the Nobles who were in Russia, and fled the country, and those in other European countries.\nMy main focus is Russia and France. As France is not a monarchy by that time, any insight of how did the nobles lived in a Republic and though of the multiplication of Republics at the expense  of monarchies would be great too.\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/268jxy/what_was_ww1era_nobility_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chp59u8"], "score": [2], "text": ["Can you clarify what you mean by nobility?\n\nDo you mean aristocrats or royalty or both?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2c5evw", "title": "After a village was sacked and \"raped and pillaged\", how would that village look at the victims of the rapes? Normally if a woman was raped it seems she \"lost value\", but was it seen as different from a societal standpoint when it happened to the whole town?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c5evw/after_a_village_was_sacked_and_raped_and_pillaged/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc7h7m", "cjc9hjl", "cjcg96f"], "score": [162, 14, 2], "text": ["I don't think your question can be answered without more specifics. But very broadly, 'rape' didn't mean the same thing that it does now, mostly because women frequently went on to have long-term relationships with their rapists--something that doesn't generally happen anymore. At least not in the West. \n\nLet's talk about the Mongols. They did a fair bit of raping. What happened afterwards?\n\n1) The women were killed along with the men. And the children. The Mongols tended to kill everyone first, ask questions never. In this case, the town might cease to exist.\n\n2) The women were left in the ashes of their village. This is what you're asking about, but this is also the category that will be most absent from the historical record. Whatever happened to these women, it probably wasn't good. I'm also not aware of what might have happened to any children born of that sort of anonymous rape. Again, probably nothing good. But remember, the Mongols devastated whole continents so the rape would have been so universal that there likely wasn't much social stigma attached. People were too busy starving (this is likely what happened to the victims and any children).\n\n3) The women were taken as 'wives' or concubines by the Mongols. This often meant they left the place they were living and went wherever the Mongols took them. But some of these women were well treated (broadly speaking). A woman named Toregene (with some umlauts, not sure how to do those) was the wife of a local clan leader. When the Mongols defeated her clan, she was 'given' to Ogedei, Genghis Khan's son. While we can assume 'given' here includes what we would define as rape, she might not have seen it in exactly the same way. After all, she had also been 'given' to her previous husband. Anyway, Toregene had a number of children with Ogedei and, after his death, she became interim Khatun (Emperor, more or less) of the Mongol Empire. And by what I remember, she did a good job.\n\nEra, region and circumstance make all the difference.", "To branch off into something more specific from OP's question, how would rape victims be treated in the Medieval Europe, depending on the time period (Early, High, Late) and on the location and region?", "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."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "34hrdq", "title": "Was Gautama Buddha illiterate? Was there a written language at that time?", "selftext": "I am guessing that Gautama was educated because he was born in a wealthy family. But what would his education look like? Could he read and write? What language (spoken and written) was used at that time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34hrdq/was_gautama_buddha_illiterate_was_there_a_written/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqv4xuv"], "score": [15], "text": ["The dates of the birth and death of Gautama Buddha are among the few things that most historians are relatively sure about when it comes to ancient Indian history. They are not fixed in stone but most historians agree about the period being 5th century BCE with the date of his death varying between 483 BCE to 420 BCE. This was near the end of the Vedic period and knowledge was still primarily orally transmitted. There is no proof that Vedic Sanskrit had a written alphabet at all.\n\nThe earliest examples of writing in Sanskrit appear from 3rd century BCE onwards during the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the Brahmi script. During Buddha's time, Sanskrit was supposed to be the language of the elite and was used for literary purposes like composing religious hymns or epics. Ordinary people of that era mostly used Prakrit and depending on the region, there were probably different dialects of Prakrit. Given that Gautama was born a prince and must have had training in elite arts, he probably did learn Sanskrit. However, he probably did learn the Magadhi variation of Prakrit too when he delivered sermons as the Buddha to ordinary people in his travels, mostly across the Magadha Empire. But there exists no written documents in India from Buddha's time and neither Sanskrit nor Prakrit seemed to have started using writing yet.\n\nFrom Panini's *Ashtadhyayi*, a book composed of eight chapters of Sanskrit grammar, the art of writing seemed to have been known to people of that era. Panini is dated to have existed anytime between 6th and 4th century BCE but it is anybody's guess whether he wrote his book or, as was the tradition then, the book was orally transmitted. If he did write his book, he could have written it in the Kharoshti script which was used by Persian administrators in north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent. The Brahmi script that arose in India later was most likely derived from Kharoshti and was still used mainly for Magadhi Prakrit and Pali rather than Classical Sanskrit, following Panini's grammar rules, which had become the language of the elite. \n\nTL;DR - Buddha was born in Nepal and lived and worked mostly in eastern India. As such, he was probably illiterate despite being educated as written language was still not used in most parts of the subcontinent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "fsgsw8", "title": "Did European Medieval queens who were born to foreign countries and were married off for diplomatic purposes ever see their parents again?", "selftext": "Hi everyone,\n\nI was reading some Wikipedia articles about European French and English medieval queens who were often born in other, often not so geographically close, countries (e.x. the modern Czech Republic or in Kievan Rus) to the local rulers/kings and got a question.\n\nAfter a future queen/princess was shipped off to another country, did they ever see their parents (who were rulers) again? Because traveling would take a much longer time than it would today and I suppose high nobility could not afford to \\*waste time\\* to visit relatives. Or could they?\n\nThank you!\n\nPS. English is not my first language, so I hope I expressed myself clearly enough :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fsgsw8/did_european_medieval_queens_who_were_born_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm4k3m0", "fm24y2m"], "score": [3, 38], "text": ["The Four Queens of Provence by Nancy Goldstone is an interesting read about highborn women marrying across France and England but still keeping in touch and seeing each other and their mother frequently. Two of the daughters married Henry III of England and his brother, and the others married the (then) Dauphin of France and his brother Charles. Doesn\u2019t exactly prove that every princess or highborn daughter saw their parents again but it\u2019s an interesting read.", "There is always much more than can be said about this, but I answered a very similar question a few months ago!\n\n[Would medieval princesses ever see their families again after being married off to far away kingdoms](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cs97e6/would_medieval_princesses_ever_see_their_families/exuwngt/"]]}
{"q_id": "5txg8o", "title": "Did the American Founders express any thoughts on the idea of personally profiting from public office?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5txg8o/did_the_american_founders_express_any_thoughts_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddq27pz"], "score": [49], "text": ["Absolutely. I typically refer folks to [*The Founders' Constitution*, a work of the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund](_URL_0_) which has an easy-to-understand, browsable list of primary source documents for each portion of the constitution.\n\nThe idea of profiting from public office was addressed in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, otherwise known as the Emoluments Clause:\n\n > \"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.\"\n\nOne of the base documents from which the American founders worked in creating the Constitution was William Blackstone's *Commentaries on the Laws of England*, which was almost ubiquitous on lawyers' shelves at the time. The first edition was published in 1765-1769 and was widespread at the time of the American Revolution. \n\nBlackstone, writing from the position of a strong monarchy, said the acquisition of titles and ambition was a good thing in an office-holder \u2500 at least in a monarchy. \"And emulation, or virtuous ambition, is a spring of action *which, however dangerous or invidious in a mere republic or under a despotic sway,* will certainly be attended with good effects under a free monarchy; where, without destroying it's existence, it's excesses may be continually restrained by that superior power, from which all honour is derived.\" \n\nNote my emphasis on a particular portion of Blackstone's writing with regard to ambition in a republic. \n\nBlackstone had a more rosy view of English society than did some of his contemporaries. The radical Whig historian Catherine Macaulay wrote George Washington in 1790, according to Gordon Wood's *Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789-1815*. In that letter, he worried that Americans would \"copy all the excess\" of England with regard to public office. If that were to happen, \"an inattention to public interest will prevail, and nothing be pursued but private gratification and emolument.\"\n\nJames Madison believed such a system had already come to dominate the American government by 1792. He ascribed to a more republican form of government and believed that the Federalists \"are more partial to the opulent than to the other classes of society; and having debauched themselves into a persuasion that mankind are incapable of governing themselves, it follows with them, of course, that government can be carried on only by the pageantry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments and the terror of military force.\"\n\nThis was the division among the founders. The Federalists, including George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, believed that office-holders should be the nation's elite, people who had already made their riches and were independently wealthy. That way, the thought went, they wouldn't have to worry about supporting themselves in office, the government wouldn't have to pay very much in the way of salary, and their financial independence would grant them an Olympian-like neutrality when it came to judging issues.\n\nThe Democratic-Republicans, including Madison, took the opposite view. They believed that in order to represent the people, elected officials had to be truly *representative,* coming from all classes and walks of life. These republicans had a distaste for large government, which they saw as emblematic of monarchy, and they disliked large expenses on the military. As Madison wrote in 1795, wartime meant \"the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.\"\n\nBoth Federalists and Democratic-Republicans believed people should not profit from public office, but they generally attacked it from different sides. The Federalists took the view that those in office should have no need for additional money. The Democratic-Republicans believed government should be kept weak so as to not entice corruption and manipulation of the system.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/"]]}
{"q_id": "6msp9d", "title": "Did any large Phoenician/Punic/Carthaginian cities survive and thrive after the Punic Wars and retain their culture into the Roman Period?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6msp9d/did_any_large_phoenicianpuniccarthaginian_cities/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dk4czcb"], "score": [35], "text": ["Punic cities, culture, language, and the Punic identity survived intact into late antiquity. Augustine, after all, was quite proud to claim not only Punic blood but knowledge of the Punic language. The conclusion of the Punic Wars did not, in fact, result in the mass destruction of all Punic sites or the systematic destruction of anything Punic. Far from it. Punic texts were preserved, and distributed to native African kings (likely the Numidians), and most Punic sites survived intact, and continued to be settled by the native peoples. Carthage was destroyed, yes, and not resettled until its establishment as a colony by Caesar (barring the abortive attempt to found a colony on the site by C. Gracchus). The Punic cities were hardly so united that the destruction of Carthage signified the destruction of all things Punic. Notably, Utica, the second city of Punic Africa, sided with the Romans during the Third Punic War, having at last broken free from the domination of the Carthaginians, and was rewarded with the status of a free city as well as becoming the capital of the new province of Africa. In 36 Octavian granted the inhabitants of Utica Roman citizenship. Leptis Magna, a Carthaginian tributary city, following the war was supported by the Romans in their dispute with Massinissa and in 111 was named a friend and ally of the Roman people, accepting a protecting garrison some years later. Diocletian's reformation of the imperial provinces made Leptis Magna, in which we find Punic inscriptions throughout the Principate, the capital of Africa Tripolitania. Leptis Minor defected to the Romans in the Third Punic War and was considered exempt from the *lex agraria* that divided up Punic land. Augustine's native Hippo was left alone by the Romans, and only formally refounded as a colony at the very end of the Republic. Romanization was never a formalized project or program. It occurred organically, as the wealthy and powerful adopted \"Roman\" customs and speech to communicate and fit in better with the superiors with which they interacted, spreading down through all levels of society. In Punic Africa, as in many provinces, it was not particularly thorough, nor was it intended to be--it was not \"intended\" to be anything, as the Roman state had no formal program. Punic inscriptions survive throughout the Roman Period, and Augustine remarked that even *a viris doctissimis proditur*, \"it is remarked even by the most learned men\" that reading Punic texts had great value--Augustine notes that Punic was still spoken as late as the fifth century."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7ars1z", "title": "In WW2 i have often read and seen pics of german snipers staying in ruined towns alone in random buildings/churches/towers. Was there a tactic they had to do this and did they not know that if they did this they would likely never return alive from that place again?", "selftext": "I mean, for me it just sounds like the kamikaze pilots, they must have known they would never make it out of it alive again.\n\nAnd to add to my question, these pics im talking about are often american soldiers in these towns dodging german snipers, so was the tactic by the german army to abandon a town and then just leave some snipers in them that known that they will never make it back to their army again if they stay there? Or was these cases where german sniper was captured alive? \n\nSorry for weird and long question, i am just curious about this cause i would never have accepted this if i was a sniper, it must have been a death sentence?\n\nLast, was this ''tactic'' used in eastern front also by retreating german army? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ars1z/in_ww2_i_have_often_read_and_seen_pics_of_german/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dpd5exi", "dpdc3ei"], "score": [9, 6], "text": ["I apologize since I am not offering an answer. However I am curious as to what books or articles you have read that discussed these snipers. It would help to know the resources you are referencing so that way we could look at what they referenced. ", "This link may help with some answers you wish for:\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uyftb/in_several_wwii_films_and_tv_series_snipers_stay/"]]}
{"q_id": "absu1r", "title": "How did Prince Albert piercings become associated with Prince Albert?", "selftext": "There is a lot of hearsay and rumour online about why Prince Albert penis piercings were named after Prince Albert. Is there any evidence to support these claims? If not, then how did rumours become so widespread that the piercing was named after him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/absu1r/how_did_prince_albert_piercings_become_associated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ed2twaz"], "score": [17], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion, but u/Georgy_K_Zhukov addresses this in his answer to this question:\n\n* [Whats the history of sexual peircings? Nipple piercings, clit/labia piercings, stuff like that.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p26hr/whats_the_history_of_sexual_peircings_nipple/dco5uqu/"]]}
{"q_id": "23tlgv", "title": "Did \"the Great Game\" between the Russian and British Empires actually occur? Or is it a myth?", "selftext": "I was about to start Hopkirk's \"The Great Game\" which sounds fascinating, but I found [this](_URL_0_) while googling around. Is this minority opinion, or is this idea of a 19th century cold war mostly a fabrication?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23tlgv/did_the_great_game_between_the_russian_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch0j5hh", "ch0j6jc"], "score": [12, 16], "text": ["Peter Hopkirk has probably written more about this than any other generally available scholar. His books are accessible and interesting, and he's researched the heck out of the Great Game. I would highly recommend them. \n\n* Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia, 1980\n\n\n\n* Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet, 1982\n\n\n* The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, 1990\n\n\n* The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, 1992\n\n\n* On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Great Game and the Great War, 1994\n\n\n* Quest for Kim: in Search of Kipling's Great Game, 1996\n\nEdit: Formatting.", "Read the book, it is very interesting and explains in detail the genesis of Russian-British tensions.\n\nI will admit, I am only able to read the first page of the article you supply. However, in that excerpt, I understand the author to be arguing against the existence of a Machiavellian, very organized very-competent intelligence service out of British India, with the express purpose of frustrating Russian expansion.\n\nSo, to argue that the British werent *that* organized, or weren't *always* able to frustrate Russian ambitions, or not *all* British officers were Russophobes; that argument does not necessarily negate the basic existence of the Great Game.\n\nThe larger truth that Hopkirk explains is that there were factions of both Russophobes and Russophiles in Britain. At times, Britain considered Russia the great threat, and at other times fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia diminished. There certainly were instances where British and Russian explorers traveled into the Khanate of Bukhara or the Khanate of Khiva, but it was a rarity for these agents to meet their opposites.\n\nSo, the events that Rudyard Kipling presents in *Kim* were fictionalized, but there definitely were British fears of Russian expansion in Central Asia in the late-19th century.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03068377308729652"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8soa0s", "title": "Do we know why Romance of the Three Kingdoms has such a strong pro-Shu / anti-Wei bias? Is it propaganda against northern invaders, or something else?", "selftext": "Given my own limited knowledge of Chinese history, I've been under the impression that this bias was inserted as anti-Mongol propaganda when it was written during the Yuan Dynasty, then later turned up to 11 during the Qing Dynasty when Mao Lun apparently re-wrote the entire thing, assumedly in response to the Jurchen conquest.\n\nIt's easy to draw literary parallels between Cao Wei  &  the Yuan/Jurchen as the tyrants from the north, with Shu Han  &  the Ming as the true heirs from the south. But due to my ignorance of Chinese cultural history, I'm curious if there was some specific reason that the Shu Han might've been the ones who were viewed more favorably over time instead of their more successful rivals.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8soa0s/do_we_know_why_romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_has/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e11c6y6", "e136bab"], "score": [18, 6], "text": ["While you wait for an answer, you might be insterested in [this] (_URL_0_) answer by u/_dk, especially this part:\n\n > About Xi Zuochi though, he was actually from the Jin dynasty, which is close enough to the end of the Three Kingdoms for him to be able to write a reasonably accurate history of the Three Kingdoms. It was said that he wrote the pro-Shu Hanjin Chunqiu not to please his boss, but instead to remonstrate against him since his boss Huan Wen was about to pull a Cao Cao and take the throne from the Jin dynasty. So Xi Zuochi went to demonstrate, using Wei as a negative example, that even if you underwent the ritual to receive the throne, that didn't make you legitimate. Since that was his goal, his writing immediately becomes suspect as a historical work, and later commentators and compilers were quick to point out that the Hanjin Chunqiu carries events that other sources didn't, or was portrayed differently. Xi could have made those stories up, but also consider this: Chen Shou could not be too anti-Wei in his Records of the Three Kingdoms because the Jin succeeded the Wei - attacking Wei's legitimacy would indirectly attack Jin as well. Also, Chen Shou may have chosen not to write of the things that the Sima family had done against the Cao family since he could not make the Sima family look like usurpers. Xi Zuochi, by denouncing Wei and still upholding Jin as legitimate (he reasoned that Jin became legitimate by unifying the empire), became free to write about the Simas' conspiracies against the Caos, since those conspiracies would become righteous acts against a illegitimate dynasty.", "Since you also asked \n\n >  I'm curious if there was some specific reason that the Shu Han might've been the ones who were viewed more favorably over time instead of their more successful rivals.\n\nlet's break this down a bit into two separate questions:\n\n***1. Was Shu-Han viewed more favourably over time?***\n\nThroughout Chinese history, different dynasty's governments as well as many other factions have associated themselves to different ancient personages and kingdoms, not only including the Three Kingdoms but also the Warring States and others. For the rulers and upper roles of government, most dynasties needed to assert one singular lineage of succession through all the previous dynasties, so they especially needed to choose one or another of the Three Kingdoms to be the \"right\" successor of Han and predecessor of Jin. This doesn't have to mean that they really cared that much about picking a side... even if it was just for the sake of having a consistent list of reign years. \n\nSo not necessarily every Emperor or upper bureaucrat cared deeply about whether Cao-Wei or Shu-Han was the more legitimate Han successor. But some people *did* care, and almost always their opinion of which was legitimate comes from their own circumstances. Some of the early Tang emperors such as Emperor Taizong identified strongly with Cao Cao, unsurprising since they, too, had been military aristocrats under the recently-collapsed Sui Dynasty. Others identified themselves with Kongming's able stewardship (whether or not they felt Liu Bei had a more legitimate claim to succeed Han than Cao Pi), or with other famous personages of the era.\n\nThe first really major cultural association comes from the Southern Song dynasty. There is a very obvious parallel between the Southern Song and Shu-Han: the Jurchen invasion of the north had driven the dynasty into the south, and after the Song Emperor and crown prince were captured by the Jurchens a second son of the Emperor re-established the capital in Chengdu while the Jurchens occupied the northern heartland. The drive to retake the northern heartland was encouraged by poets and court advisors using direct comparisons to the Shu-Han situation (even though Sima Guang's history commissioned by the same court earlier in the Song dynasty when they themselves still held the north had used Cao-Wei as the official dynasty of the era). Perhaps the most notable such case was the *zizhi tongjian gangmu*, written at that time by Zhu Xi, basically a rewrite of the *zizhi tongjian* which editorialized the historical text into having a pro-Shu-Han slant. So here we see not just particular figures honouring certain past figures, but a more widespread government/cultural association with one of the Three Kingdoms and using that kingdom as a symbol for their own present ideology.\n\nThen the Mongols invaded the Jurchens, and then they conquered the Southern Song, unifying all of China under Mongol rule. Most of the *literary* history (at least, as far as we know) comes from this era, especially as part of the rise of Yuan theatre. Following from the Southern Song and occupied-Northern Song, and now occupied by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan storytelling tradition likewise always casts Liu Bei and Shu-Han as heroic, and usually casts Cao Cao and Cao-Wei as villainous.\n\n\n***2. Why does Romance of the Three Kingdoms have an overall pro-Shu narrative?***\n\nWe don't have any direct quotations from Luo Guanzhong or his colleagues concerning his viewpoint on Shu vs Wei, nor any other sort of primary sources of that sort. For that matter, we don't even know for sure that Luo Guanzhong wrote *Romance*, nor when exactly the first edition of it was written, nor do we have a copy of the original manuscript. If we do indeed wish to believe that Luo Guanzhong wrote the original edition of *Romance*, there is over 100 years between his death (~1400) and our oldest known complete manuscript (1522), and we don't know how the novel could have changed in that time. \n\nThese unknowns in dating and authoring of the novel are problematic for placing the novel in its original context, as well. Was it written during the 1330s or 1340s, and represents a call to action against the Mongol rulers? Was it written in the 1350s, the last years of the Yuan dynasty, as a celebration and assertion of legitimacy for the rebels overthrowing the Yuan? Was it written in the early Ming to reaffirm the new dynasty's legitimacy (especially since the Ming asserted their legitimacy in relation specifically to the Han, rather than the Song), or perhaps even as a cautionary tale (some of the Ming's early court struggles share elements with the late Han's internal struggles...)? \n\nFurthermore, who was the audience of the original text? It might seem strange at first that the Yuan rulers would look fondly upon a novel praising the rebellious southern Shu-Han heroes, but because the Jurchens had associated themselves with Wei, the Mongols/Yuan had in-turn distanced themselves from the Jurchens by associating themselves with Han and Shu-Han, even conducting ceremonies to honour many of the Shu-Han heroes as a method of appropriating these symbols to try and make themselves look more legitimate and calm Han-chinese anti-Mongol fervor. \n\nThus, we're left with many possibilities. *Romance* could be pro-Shu because it is part of the anti-Yuan nationalist movement. It could be pro-Shu because of a desire to help establish the legitimacy of the Ming. It could be pro-Shu because that is the viewpoint which Han and Yuan audiences alike identified with. It could be pro-Shu simply because virtually all of the Yuan plays from which it draws much of its themes and content were, themselves, pro-Shu.\n\nFurthermore, if the novel had been written with a pro-Wei narrative, what would this have accomplished, literary-wise, and for what audience would such a narrative be for? The last government to identify with Cao-Wei was the Jurchens, and it is dubious that a Han Chinese author not employed by the Jurchen government would have much reason to write a novel for a Jurchen audience... and besides that, the Jurchen's Jin dynasty had ended a century prior. The Northern Song, two centuries prior. \n\nBy the time that *Romance* was written, be it the Yuan or the Ming dynasty, there wasn't really anyone still espousing a pro-Wei narrative, be it in government pronouncements, theatre, poetry, or otherwise. It could simply be that a pro-Shu narrative was the established, default option and there was no reason to deviate from such. \n\nBut I think it is important to highlight that despite the novel being overall pro-Shu and written in the Yuan/early-Ming, it draws from a wide range of sources reaching as far back as the *sanguozhi* and which are not all pro-Shu. Compared to the highly fictionalized and dramaticized Yuan plays that were the popular Three Kingdoms narrative at the time the novel was written, *Romance* includes a lot of historical information drawn from older texts even when their inclusion does not benefit the pro-Shu narrative. Wei and Wu generals who are dastardly or cowardly in Yuan plays are given brief heroic treatment in the novel, Liu Bei's advisors protest against some of his choices (in some editions, anyways), and perhaps most importantly the narrative continues beyond the deaths of the most popular heroes to show the failure to restore the Han. Thus, it is also possible to argue that the novel is scarcely pro-Shu at all, that is a rebuttal to the overwhelmingly-pro-Shu stance of the other literature that surrounded it.\n\nGiven how little we know of the origin of the novel, and of the presumed author Luo Guanzhong, all of these are simply theories which have not yet been borne out, and there are many more such theories out there as well (e.g. one theory posits that a later Ming author wrote the novel as a protest to the actions of the Yongle Emperor, but put Luo Guanzhong's name on it to give the novel greater fame and/or avoid persecution).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nAs for Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang, some scholars consider the difference between the 1522 edition and the Mao edition to be minor, others say the changes are significant. Once again, there are many possibilities that the Maos' editorial decisions were politically-inspired by the Ming-Qing transition. But, much like the author of the original text, we greatly lack sources describing the Maos' own views on the Manchu rulers. Some have argued the editorial changes made in the 1660s edition are pro-Ming, others argue they are actually pro-Qing, and yet others argue that the Maos made their changes with professional detachment from the political situation. There are strong arguments on all sides, but unless someone finds Mao Zonggang's secret diary we'll once again never know for sure.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t21kq/romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_was_historicalshu/"], []]}
{"q_id": "4g8vu0", "title": "Has Hajj ever been suspended or conducted at a different place for any period in history?", "selftext": "*different place other than mecca.  I searched and couldn't find a good source to read, so I turned to you guys. \n\nThanks in advance", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4g8vu0/has_hajj_ever_been_suspended_or_conducted_at_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2g57qc"], "score": [4], "text": ["Follow up question*\n\nEspecially during the First World War when the Arabs revolted against the Ottoman Empire."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3ku05s", "title": "I heard someone state 'the Roman empire never ended, we just call it the catholic church nowadays.' Could someone explain this statement for me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ku05s/i_heard_someone_state_the_roman_empire_never/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv0ketu", "cv0v45b"], "score": [111, 2], "text": ["When the institutions of the catholic Church were created it was not onto a blank space. While in the first two centuries Christianity was, to an extent, a subversive an occaisionally revolutionary movement, when it was legalized it was bent into the shape of the Roman empire and became a true imperial institution. The most obvious example of this is the geographic arrangement of Church territories into dioces, which matched the imperial divisions instituted by Diocletian. Although there is certainly good, early precedent for organizational divisions of the Church, the specific way in which it was done was very distinctly imperial.\n\nThat being said, the idea that the Church is actually a continuation of the empire rather than an institutional fossil of it is not terribly justifiable (if nothing else, the Orthodox Church has at least as much claim to legitimate continuity). I would hazard a guess that someone saying this is perhaps attempting to grant historical legitimacy to the Church and overstating it a few touches.", "Related question: was the spurious Donation of Constantine ever widely believed, and if so what impact did it have?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2yiqap", "title": "When did the boy scouts adopt the fleur-de-lis as their symbol?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yiqap/when_did_the_boy_scouts_adopt_the_fleurdelis_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpa0fqi", "cpa5hbv"], "score": [23, 3], "text": ["Lord Baden Powell, the father of the world scouting movement, started giving out fleur-de-lis badges to army scouts while serving in India in 1907.   It's used internationally, not just in the BSA.   Most countries just have \"Scouts\" and don't have a gender divide.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)  ", "The fleur-de-lis symbol is shown as the \"scouts badge\" in the origional text of scouting for boys, the book that became the foundation of the scouting movement. In the text he states that it is taken from the badge used by military scouts.\n\nSo it was certainly around in 1908, when the movements founding ideas first became public. The only earlier opportunity for it's use in a scouting sense would have been the 1907 brownsea island camp.\n\nsource:\n\"Scouting for boys, the origional 1908 edition\" by Robert Baden-Powell, with introduction and notes by Elleke Boehmer, Oxford university press, 2004\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://archive.is/CeuM5"], []]}
{"q_id": "20zdjw", "title": "Did merchants or towns along the Silk Road's land route ever develop a creole language similar to sailors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20zdjw/did_merchants_or_towns_along_the_silk_roads_land/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg895pc", "cg8hf04"], "score": [135, 3], "text": ["The language of the Silk Road in the medieval and post-medieval period, that is, from about 900 AD to 1850 was Persian (now often called Farsi). \n\nThis was the primary spoken and written language in the central portion of the road's transit, from Samarqand and the Ferghana valley (modern Uzbekistan) almost to Tabriz in Iran, and was understood in Turkistan (now Xinjiang, China) and well into what is now Turkey. It was also the native language of perhaps a majority of the road's merchants, whatever their ethnic origin might have been. Indian merchants all spoke Persian; so did Armenians. Persian was the literary language of Turko-Mongol governments that ruled the Silk Road territories from the 12th century as well. It was the perfect lingua franca.\n\nTurkic dialects were of course understood, as they covered a similar range, but they were less rooted in urban areas and the sedentary population.\n\nIt's worth remembering that actual transit from China to Istanbul more or less stopped in the early 1500s as Iranian silk was then shipped directly west and Safavid Iran effectively closed its eastern borders to trade. The Silk Road then became two separate roads: one going from Iran to Aleppo or to Istanbul, and one, much less travelled, overland from China north of the Caspian Sea through Russia. In any case the maritime trade had become much more important.\n\nJames Corcoran, Religions of the Silk Road, Richard Frye, the Heritage of Central Asia, Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, any of the Cambridge Histories of Central Asia or of Iran or even Marco Polo's account discuss this pretty clearly. I don't have a complete bibliography handy so maybe someone else can dig up more sources.\n\nEDIT: Adjusted a date.", "Also it is good to remember \"silk road\" was not a single intact highway type of an entity but rather, a series of more or less connected trade routes. Ancient History doesn't know of a single person who would have travelled it from one end to another.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1yuibk", "title": "How long was the average run of a Globe Theater play?", "selftext": "I'm writing a paper on Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess which ran for nine days before being pulled from production. I'm trying to figure out how long that was relative to other plays.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yuibk/how_long_was_the_average_run_of_a_globe_theater/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfo67nm"], "score": [21], "text": ["The short answer: We don't know for certain because extant written accounts from the period are scarce.\n\nThe long answer:  It is possible to make an educated guess.\n\nThe Globe Theatre was a wooden, twenty-sided, three-storey, open-air amphitheater that could (reportedly) house about 3,000 people at maximum capacity.  The majority of that crowd would have been standing for the duration of the play, exposed to the fickle London weather.  An [excavation of the old Globe's foundations](_URL_0_) in 1988-89 revealed that the floor was covered in a layer of nutshells that helped to keep mud from the earthen floor under control, but the duration of a season would have been completely dependent upon the English climate.  So we're probably talking about a performance window between late April and early October (the same as the modern Globe Theatre in London today).  Records of winter productions by The Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men between 1599 and 1613 are all commissioned indoor performances at court or at private homes during weddings, holidays, etc.\n\nIt would have been common at the time for theatre companies to perform multiple plays in repertory.  It is often presumed that this repertory was sequential and overlapping but it's possible that all the shows were in rotation throughout the season.  There are mentions of Shakespeare's earlier plays from the 1590s being remounted at The Globe, but the constant demand for new material ensured that newer plays would have been favored.\n\nThe Globe was completed *at some point* after March of 1599.  The most likely candidate for the first production in the new structure is *Henry V*.  *Henry V* is easy to date thanks to a reference by the Chorus to the Earl of Essex's Irish expedition of 1599 that puts the time of its completion between March and September of that year.  Just in time for a summer/fall premiere at the newly finished Globe.\n\n[The opening Chorus to *Henry V*] (_URL_1_) appears to reference the building in which it was intended to be performed:\n\n > ... But pardon, and gentles all,\n\n > The flat unraised spirits that have dared\n\n > On **this unworthy scaffold** to bring forth\n\n > So great an object: can **this cockpit** hold\n\n > The vasty fields of France? or may we cram\n\n > Within **this wooden O** the very casques\n\n > That did affright the air at Agincourt?\n\nHowever, although we know when it was written and can say that it was *probably* part of the 1599 season, the earliest confirmed performance of *Henry V* was in January of 1605.  Dover Wilson, Regius Professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh, suggests in the [*Cambridge New Shakespeare* version](_URL_2_) that the first production mounted at The Globe may have been *Julius Caesar*.  He notes a Swiss tourist's account of a performance of *Julius Caesar* on 21 September 1599 at the Globe.  There is no mention of exactly how long the play had been running by that point \n\n**TL;DR:**\n\n* Multiple overlapping shows in repertory.\n\n* Minimum run = ~3 weeks.\n\n* Maximum run = ~24 weeks.\n\n* Likely run = ~5-8 weeks.  (My estimate, presuming a 3 - 6 show season.)\n\nThe 9 show run of *A Game at Chess* before the actors were prosecuted would have been considered very short indeed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/myads/copyrights?from=2f6172636869766544532f61726368697665446f776e6c6f61643f743d617263682d3435372d312f64697373656d696e6174696f6e2f7064662f766f6c30362f766f6c30365f30362f30365f30365f3134335f3134342e706466", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZFngXSDD0I", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Julius_Caesar.html?id=zmSi5Bnw12oC"]]}
{"q_id": "3orb45", "title": "Before airplanes were invented, did U.S. Presidents just sit in the White House much more and not travel to foreign countries?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3orb45/before_airplanes_were_invented_did_us_presidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvzxyw5", "cw04ikd", "cw0ejrq"], "score": [88, 12, 4], "text": ["Teddy Roosevelt is credited as making the first foreign visit as a president-elect. And Taft is credited for the first visit by a sitting president, in 1909. Even after that, travel remained rare. Few presidents made visits abroad during their time in office. And those visits tended to be to places like Mexico, Canada, and Cuba (or the Bahamas for a vacation). Wilson of course made his famous visit to Europe as part of the 1918 peace conference, which was a huge deal at the time. A sitting president had never been to Europe before. And it wasn't until the late 1950s or early 1960s that it became somewhat common.\n\nPrior to the 20th century, travel simply took too long. 90 days was common for New York to London in 1800. And even 70 years later, 30 days was a pretty standard transit time. It is only with the adoption of self propelled ships that travel time changed enough to make it practical. Likewise the invention of the radio and transoceanic telegraphic lines allowed a president to remain at least in some level of contact with his White House staff back home. So it isn't surprising that sitting presidents mostly stayed in Washington.", "In the age of rail they had Presidential trains for long distance travel around the USA. There were special carriages that would make up the train, complete with bedroom and offices just like Air Force One now. Foreign travel was of course less common as it took longer but still happened, the President taking advantage of luxury passenger liners, especially across the Atlantic. During times of war military ships were often used, though by the time of WW2 this was considered too dangerous at times (due to the U-Boat threat) or too slow and an aircraft option was used.", "Wasn't the whole point of having a Secretary of State and Ambassadors to foreign countries that leaders could stay at home and lead while maintaining diplomacy?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "87pgb6", "title": "Considering humans have coped with humour for centuries; did people make jokes about the Black Plague? Or was the tragedy simply too huge for comedy?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87pgb6/considering_humans_have_coped_with_humour_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dweu5j7"], "score": [61], "text": ["If only this question had come up in a few months' time - humour in the face of death is the focus of the chapter of my thesis I am working on, but it's in *really* early stages, so I probably can't give as full an answer as you would necessarily like right now. My work is focused on commemoration in epitaphs (and to some degree, funerary art) so that's where this answer will be focused. Others may be able to offer a broader take.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIn short, yes, humour is a staple for dealing with death from a very early stage. To offer some Classical context for humorous approaches to death, the Milan Papyrus (dated between late third century, and early second century BCE) contains a number of epitaphs, some of which are collected in a section labelled \u2018tropoi\u2019, or \u2018characters\u2019, and are probably not for real individuals, but are comic exercises in the form. One epitaph demands:\n >  Why have you stopped, won\u2019t let me sleep,\n\n >  And, standing near my gravestone, keep\n\n >  On asking from what land I came,\n\n >  And who\u2019s my father, what\u2019s my name? \n\n\nThe deceased then gives his name, father\u2019s name, and home country (all details to be expected from an ancient Greek epitaph), before demanding that the passer-by at this imaginary gravesite walk on, declaring \u2018We foreigners don\u2019t like much talking\u2019, playing on a stereotype of Cretan folk being a bit on the taciturn side. (Gordon L. Fain, Ancient Greek Epigrams: Major Poets in Verse Translation (University of California Press, 2010), p. 95  < _URL_0_;). Clearly, humour can be used to characterise the dead and lightly parody our expectations of commemoration. Humans have been comfortable with making light of death for a good long while.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTo turn to the Black Death more specifically, it's worth remembering that at this point, you had to be of decent means to get a grave monument in the first place, and many plague-dead were buried hastily in mass graves. I don't know of any particularly comical epitaphs for the plague-dead, though comic epitaphs are certainly not at all unheard of at this time (Guthke's *Epitaph Culture in the West* is a good source for this). That doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I haven't seen them - and if anyone knows of some, TELL ME!\n\n & nbsp;\n\nPlague humour is certainly accessible in a broader social context though. The most famous of these is probably the *Danse Macabre*, or *Dance of Death* which was a pervasive theme in art and literature following the Black Death. In these images and poems, death is depicted coming for each level of society, from pauper to King, summoning them into one last, frenetic dance. The visual imagery here is often quite deliberately comic - for example, the *Danse Macabre des Femmes* (printed 1491) includes images of skeletal musicians, and beautiful young women engaging in courtly dance with visible rotting skeletal figures as their handsome beaus. ([see here for the book on Gutenberg complete with illustrations](_URL_4_)). The figure of death is often laughing, teasing, and shown as 'catching out' senior figures in a way which can only be regarded as comical.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nStaged drama also held elements of this bleak humour attached to genuine loss. Richard Beadle describes how the York Cycle of medieval mystery plays includes a representation of the plagues of Egypt, in which the loss of the firstborn child is described as the 'grete pestelence', the customary way to refer to the Black Death. Beadle describes the receipt of the news of the 'grete pestelence' as follows:\n\n  >  Upon hearing the grim words, the tyrannous and verbose Rex Pharaoh is immediately deflated, capitulates and orders the release of the Israelites - in performance, a moment of chill stasis after the pell-mell black comedy with which the reports of the preceding plagues of Egypt would probably have been presented. When the play was new, this my also have been a moment of remembrance for survivors of the Balck Death and those born in the succeeding generation, for the York Hosiers' play of *Moses and Pharoah* was probably composed when the memory of this, the most destructive of all the plague's visitations, was still a living memory. ([*The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre*, ed. by Richard Beadle, 'The York Cycle' (pp. 85-108)](_URL_1_)).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nWhile medieval and early modern folks certainly had a real taste for bleak comedy, comedy also had other, more structured purposes. In *the Culture of Pain*, David B. Morris describes how the Bible verse, 'a merry heart doeth good like a medicine' (Proverbs 17:22) was often treated rather literally, and comedy could be seen as '[strengthening] Christian readers for resuming their combat against the world, the flesh, and the devil'. ([p.94](_URL_2_)). One of the most striking examples of this in literature is Boccaccio's *Decameron*, in which a group of people escape the Plague by retreating to the countryside, during which time they tell one another bawdy, silly, comic stories. As Morris points out, this may well be regarded as just as much remedy as pastime, with humour helping to allay the onset of the plague. It is well worth noting that the *Decameron* is prefaced by a deeply disturbing and descriptive account of the effects of the Black Death ([this](_URL_3_) seems to be a decent source of the text here, if you're interested). The juxtaposition of physical malaise, great social loss, grief and comedy is very explicit here, marking humour as a clear coping strategy in a time of great trial.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nI have rarely found on-the-nose jokes specifically about the black plague (though again, I would be delighted to hear the details of any known to exist - seriously, I live for finds like this!) but it's certainly not treated as off-limits for comedy both during, and in the immediate aftermath of enormous loss."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1bz5wAPk1HsC&gt", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ecMHMg3HrCgC&amp;pg=PA85&amp;dq=black+death+plague+comedy&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjBlOmu347aAhWpDcAKHbDqAUsQ6AEITTAH#v=onepage&amp;q=black%20death%20plague%20comedy&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.ca/books?id=Ia4wDwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA94&amp;dq=black+death+plague+comedy&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjBlOmu347aAhWpDcAKHbDqAUsQ6AEIOjAD#v=onepage&amp;q=black%20death%20plague%20comedy&amp;f=false", "http://www.themiddleages.net/life/decameron.html", "https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24300/24300-h/24300-h.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "ddofkw", "title": "Serious: What happened to the train Lenin used to travel back to Russia in 1917?", "selftext": "Russian fianc\u00e9e and I have searched without luck.  History major myself and suddenly wondered what happened to the train? Is it in a museum somewhere? Destroyed, scrapped? One of the small things that are now annoying me, will bug me, until I know.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ddofkw/serious_what_happened_to_the_train_lenin_used_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f2mkz6d"], "score": [73], "text": ["Which/what do you mean by _the_ train? \n\nLenin went Z\u00fcrich-Berlin by the famously-sealed train, and from there to Sassnitz. From there, a ferry to Trelleborg, Sweden. In Sweden he traveled by ordinary trains from Trelleborg to Malm\u00f6 and another to Stockholm, yet another to Lule\u00e5 and another to Haparanda, where he crossed the iced-over Torne river on sled, being the border to Finland - which was part of the Russian Empire and would remain so for 8 more months. There is no railroad connection there; Imperial Russia had a different rail gauge from the standard one used by Sweden and Germany, hence the sled trip. It's also here (in Tornio on the Finnish side) that Lenin had to bluff his way through the border checks, posing as a journalist. Then from Kemi in Finland, Lenin took a train to Tampere and then another to Petersburg. \n\nSo Lenin did not use a single train, nor cross the Russian border by train. He did however cross into Russia proper by train."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9dvnvg", "title": "After the fire of the National Museum in Brazil, how would historians attempt to piece together what was lost?", "selftext": "Hey all, I recognize that this isn't so much a historical question as much as it is a question about how contemporary historians would approach the problem of documenting and piecing together an outline of everything that was lost.\n\nPrimarily, I'm interested in knowing how often, if ever, historians take into consideration what *future* historians would find useful when assessing the scope and significance of the loss of a museum such as this one. \n\nDo historians ever attempt to preserve certain historical or contemporary artifacts and documents for future generations with the knowledge that it is precisely *these* sorts of documents and artifacts that they themselves would like to possess when engaging in historical scholarship?\n\nOr a bit more precisely, we have a fairly good idea of what was lost in this fire because individuals who worked there are able to tell us just what was contained in these collections. Does this first-hand knowledge ever become formally documented after an event like this so that future historians with no access to individuals who worked at the museum can nevertheless still have an idea of what this museum contained?\n\nMy second question is, given the prevalence of technology such as smartphones with built in cameras, it would be reasonable to think there exist massive amounts of personally taken photos of the contents in the museum so that, even if the original artifacts no longer exist, at the very least photos of them still do. Is this helpful to future historians?\n\nAnd lastly (I hope the mods forgive the lack of specificity of my questions!), have there been efforts to recreate digital walkthroughs of museums for posterity such as the one Google did a few years ago? Would something like this be feasible for all the existing museums in the world?\n\nThank you!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9dvnvg/after_the_fire_of_the_national_museum_in_brazil/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5kl8qh"], "score": [26], "text": ["This is less an Historian question, more a Museology question, and fortunately I'm a museologist.\n\nSo, first thing's first, museums (and archives) *are* the way in which artefacts and documents are preserved for future generations. The decision to accession particular artefacts or documents is a difficult one, as a number of factors need to be considered - first and foremost, the relevance of the object to the collection of the museum or archive. For example, I work at the Museum of Industry in Nova Scotia, and while we have people bringing us all sorts of neat personal effects from former industrial workers in the province, they don't often fit into our collection's mandate - which is the preservation of *industrial* history and culture. We *do*, however, encourage them to send those to the relevant museums (usually local museums, but occasionally to other large, Provincial museums)\n\nIn general museums (like, for example, the Royal Ontario Museum or the British Museum) the mandate's a little more easy-going. Anything that the curator of a specific area believes would be of value for preservation can be taken in. The Museu Nacional held a massive collection of huge variety, from ethnographic documents and artefacts to archaeological finds to biological specimens, and had curators for each department making the decisions on which objects to accede into their particular collection at the museum. Cataloguing the collection, including the provenance of objects (origins, history, significance, donated by, etc.) is one of - if not *the* - key duties of collections management in a museum, and provides future researchers with as much information as is available at the time of accession. \n\nMuseums have - or *should* have, according to ICOM, the International Council of Museums  - a Disaster Recovery Plan, which includes fire safety, object recovery, restoration, safe storage, and - increasingly - digital records of objects and documents. The problem with digitization of collections is that it is both time consuming and *extremely* expensive. You can't just take snaps with your smartphone and upload them to a database; they need to be of extremely high quality and very detailed, so that in the event of the loss of the artefact any future researchers will have as good a representation as possible. Digitizing documents is also difficult, as the material the original was created on can be extremely fragile or photosensitive or hydrosensitive or all three and scanning it or keeping it in too warm or dry or damp or cold an environment could damage it irreparably.\n\nInsofar as your second question goes, yes! Museology students from Unirio are [sharing photos of the Museu Nacional](_URL_0_) and hope to [create a virtual space to provide some context for what was lost](_URL_1_).\n\nYour last question is one which I've been struggling with at my museum, and I know that others have been too. Many (most) museums outside of the UK are paid entry and there is a reluctance from directors, boards of trustees, etc. to allow, essentially, free tours of the museum online. This is often a site-specific issue, and it is understandable when the majority of the site's revenue comes from admission fees or, as is increasingly common, gift-shop and caf\u00e9 revenue. That said, the future of museums is, in part, digital, and having tours done online - or at least some sort of interactive online element to the site - is going to be, in my opinion, an essential part of keeping sites open and relevant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=y&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Foglobo.globo.com%2Frio%2Falunos-de-museologia-da-unirio-recolhem-fotos-do-museu-nacional-para-preservar-sua-memoria-23033247&amp;edit-text=", "https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=pt&amp;tl=en&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww1.folha.uol.com.br%2Fcotidiano%2F2018%2F09%2Falunos-fazem-campanha-para-reunir-imagens-do-museu-nacional.shtml&amp;sandbox=1"]]}
{"q_id": "2wfmwy", "title": "Why is Lebanon so religiously diverse and how did it hold itself together?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wfmwy/why_is_lebanon_so_religiously_diverse_and_how_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coqg2ga"], "score": [40], "text": ["The geography of Lebanon has played a significant role in the shaping of its religious diversity. Hills, valleys, mountain passes and other features, combined with further artificial reinforcement, allowed communities to thrive that otherwise would have been destroyed by larger imperial powers.\n\nAs a result, virtually every ruling power in Lebanon has found some portion of its population to be restive from the time of the initial Arab conquests (when Christian pseudo-bandit warlords were able to resist the initial conquests and maintain significant autonomy for centuries) up until this century with the Israeli and Syrian occupations.\n\nAs for how it's held itself together, well, it has and it hasn't. [The National Pact](_URL_0_) established strict guidelines for sectarian political representation. This idea that power must be distributed along sectarian lines according to demography extends through theoretically non-political entities. When I say it hasn't however, obviously the Lebanese Civil War very nearly ripped the country apart. [The Taif Agreement](_URL_1_) adjusted the National Pact to reflect the changing demographic balance of power over the course of the 20th century that saw the Maronite population experience a relative decline in numbers (but not wealth, status, and power) in comparison particularly with Lebanon's Shia.\n\nThat said, however, and without getting into 20 year territory, the Taif agreement's allowance of Hezbollah to exclusively retain its armed militia has allowed to exercise a level of governance in the south and in the Beqaa valley that is comparable to or surpasses the authority of the central government.\n\nSources. For Lebanon in the Arab Conquests: I've recently been reading Robert Hoyland's *In God's Path* which has some interesting details on this. For the past 500 years or so see Eugene Rogan's *The Arabs: A History*\n\nEdit: tried to clarify some ambiguous phrasing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taif_Agreement"]]}
{"q_id": "70v9vg", "title": "Why was genetics called a \"bourgeoise science\" by Lysenko and thus dispelled?", "selftext": "Lysenko aimed to dispel the study of genetics during the Soviet Union period and instead pushed for his own \"Lysenkoism\" principle. \n\nAlso, what does the term \"bourgeoise science\" really entails? Thanks in advance! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/70v9vg/why_was_genetics_called_a_bourgeoise_science_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dn6jl1n", "dn74mif"], "score": [49, 26], "text": ["To answer your question you have to understand a few things about Marxism.\n\nMarxism is centered around dialectical materialism (diamat). Marx began his academic life as a member of The Young Hegelians, basically intellectuals subscribing to Hegel's views. Hegelian dialectics viewed history as the interplay between ideas; this is a simplification, but basically, opposing ideas clashed and the clash in turn produced the world as it is. Marx came to reject this idealism (the belief that ideas create reality) in favor of materialism. In Marxist diamat, economic circumstances and the socioeconomic conflicts arising within society are responsible for the movement of history. As The Communist Manifesto boldly declares, \"the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.\" (FWIW older Marx would often temper and modulate the beliefs of young Marx; for example, *Critique of the Gotha Program* almost reads like a critique of a program very much like the Communist Manifesto itself; but the loud, brash proclamations of the Communist Manifesto- i.e. \"workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains\"- have cemented themselves into our culture much better than his later writings, some of which weren't even published until the 1930s).\n\nAs an example, many young Hegelians blamed cultural values (like religion) for many of the woes of the Germany they lived in. Marx affirmed the existence of these same inequities but argued they proceed from the economic circumstances of Germany. When Marx said \"religion is the opiate of the masses,\" this wasn't strictly a condemnation of religion- as you can tell if you look at the full quote:\n\n > The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. **But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man \u2013 state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.** Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d\u2019honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.\n\n > Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.\n\n > The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.\n\nMarx adds depth to the long standing Enlightenment critiques of religion by pointing out that religion was the product of socioeconomic circumstances, and to renounce oppressive religious constructs necessitated renouncing oppressive economic relationships (serfdom, slavery, wage labor, etc.) that gave birth to religion in the first place.\n\nConsequently diamat leads to the conclusion that ideas (and systems of ideas aka ideologies) are themselves influenced by the **material base** of society, rather than the other way around as Hegel argued (Marx on Hegelian dialectics: \"With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell\").\n\nThe material base refers to the economy, the socioeconomic relationships between people. This is a simplification, but the basic idea is that in a capitalist society, ideas which benefit capitalists tend to propagate and be favored over those that don't benefit them or which actually hurt them. In *The German Ideology* Marx argues:\n\n > **The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas**, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. **The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,** the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. **For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an \u201ceternal law.\u201d**\n\n(emphasis added)\n\nMarx, being a historian, formulated this idea specifically with respect to history and historiography but Marxists have since applied the idea elsewhere.\n\nSo, to answer your question, Lysenko believed that the Darwinism which undergirded Western eugenics (not just in Nazi Germany, but in the US, UK, France etc. also) was the result of bourgeoisie material conditions. This is quite correct, I would argue. His mistake was then throwing evidence based science out the window and attempting to fit the data to the ideology, while not realizing Darwinian evolution and Mendelian inheritance does not in any way imply that eugenics is a good thing. It would be unsatisfactory to reject a Marxist philosophy of history simply because of the failure of Lysenkoism.\n\nThe discussion around Lysenkoism often makes it seem uniquely bad in history, and people often ascribe bizarre death tolls to it with little evidence. In truth, ideologically guided science is not the historical exception; it is the rule. Western science at the time was just as ideologically guided by the dominant material realities of capitalism and racism, which resulted in widespread support for eugenics and \"race science\" intended to justify slavery and imperialism, as well as scientific human experimentation on subjects deemed subhuman (Tuskegee syphilis studies and Dr. Mengelev's experiments, for example; if you're interested in learning more, the book *Medical Apartheid* is a good book on the scientific experimentation on black Americans, and Gould's *The Mismeasure of Man* is a good book on race science). These had a human cost that was certainly higher than Lysenkoism.", "Part 1:\n\n/u/specterofsandersism has explained Marxist views on the dialectic very well, but Trofim Lysenko's motivations and influence on Soviet science were not just pure ideology, but instead need to be put in historical and scientific context. The Soviets weren't ideological robots, and their motivations for pushing theories were more complex than what Marx said, taking in issues of Russian nationalism and being responses to particular problems. It's also been argued that Lysenkoism (as its Western detractors called it) or Michurinist biology (as its supporters called it) was the crucible in which modern Western views of pseudoscience were formed; as a result, Lysenko's motives and effects have been hotly contested, with different people on different sides of arguments pushing their own barrows about the extent to which Lysenko was scientific, depending on what they think about the idea of pseudoscience.\n\nTo sum up the facts very briefly, Lysenko became prominent in Soviet science in the late 1920s for his work on what's now in English called 'vernalization' - basically inducing winter crops to grow in summer by applying moisture and cold to the seeds. This led him to become prominent in Soviet scientific circles, and as the 1930s progressed, he came to strongly push the barrow of a basically Lamarckian view of evolution, arguing in a semi-mystical way that living things could inherit characteristics of their parents - the famous Lamarckian example being a life of giraffes striving to reach the leaves on trees having an effect on the length of their childrens' necks (as opposed to Darwinian views of evolution which see the unit of inheritance being genes, and mutations as the only way for evolution to occur). \n\nNote that, before the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick (not to mention Franklin) in the 1950s, Lamarckian thought wasn't as implausible as it now seems today, because the unit of inheritance was something of a mystery - Mendelian genetics wasn't as convincing as it is today (especially considering that simple Mendelian genetics can only be demonstrated easily with certain somewhat 'on-off' phenotypical traits of individuals - eye colour, for example - most traits are instead the result of a melange of different genes). And note that epigenetics means that the lives of ones grandparents can effect the way that genes are expressed - [see this example](_URL_0_) - and so there was some limited support for Lamarckian inheritance theories that Lysenko heavily overextended.\n\nIn general, Lysenko is usually contrasted with Nikolai Vavilov, his big rival for prominence in Soviet biology in 1930s, and - you guessed it - an adherent of Western-style genetics. Because of the severe famines that the USSR had experienced, and their limited resources, agricultural science was heavily politicised in the USSR, to the point where Stalin and Molotov were meeting with Vavilov and Lysenko in order to roar at them to improve harvests. Gary Paul Nabhan's *Where Our Food Comes From: Tracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest To End Famine* is much more sympathetic to Vavilov than Lysenko, claiming that, in these meetings, Lysenko peddled quick cheap fixes that didn't actually solve a lot of the problems in harvests (i.e., lots of vernalisation), which stopped Vavilov from being able to make the long-term changes that would have actually increased yields significantly. \n\nVavilov lost political ground to Lysenko through the 1930s for a variety of reasons that might go beyond ideology; at one point Stalin shouted 'GO AND LEARN FROM THE SHOCK-WORKERS IN THE FIELDS!' at Vavilov when he suggested going overseas to learn new crop yield techniques. Vavilov also antagonised Stalin and Molotov by pointing out in public that crop yields were higher before the revolution, and it seems that the hierarchy thought Lysenko's quick fixes were more achievable. In the end, Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died of starvation in prison in 1943.\n\nThe Soviet famine of 1946-47 sadly appeared to show that Lysenko's Michurinist biology was not any more successful at increasing yields than previous agricultural techniques (the widespread application of vernalisation, seemingly, had the effect of increasing short-term gains but depleting the soil). Nonetheless, in 1948, Lysenko had risen to become the President of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and at their conference on July 31 he announced that modern biology had diverged into two opposing trends - a Soviet science called 'agrobiology' or 'Michurinist biology' based around Lamarckism and a Western science which Lysenko called 'formal' genetics, which was based around Mendellian genetics ('Mendelism-Morganism-Weismannism'). Lysenko prominently argued here that 'formal' genetics was 'bourgeois'. \n\nHe had been arguing this for 15 years by this point, and was already one of the main voices in official policy, but what changed in 1948 was that *Pravda* heavily publicised this argument. Suddenly this became a hot-button issue; newspapers published articles glorifying Lysenko, and hundreds of thousands of copies of the proceedings of the conference were published. By the end of 1948, Lysenkoism was official policy. Genetics laboratories run under the principles of 'formal' genetics were closed, biologists fired, and courses at universities abolished. Mendelian genetics had officially been banned in the USSR and its satellites; in December 1948 a movie about Lysenko was released directed by a famous director, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, with a score by Shostakovich, and with one of the most popular actors of the time, Grigorii Belov, in the title role.\n\n/u/specterofsandersism is correct that the link between 'formal' genetics, eugenics, and fascist thought was pushed heavily in Soviet literature in this 1948 period as a justification for Lysenkoism. Lysenko had consistently been opposed to eugenics since the 1920s, and 1948 was a period when the horrors of eugenics were clearer, post-Nazi Germany, than they had been in previous eras. However, before Lysenko ascended to prominence, there had been various attempts at creating Bolshevik/Soviet eugenic programs which were intended to improve society as a whole. In the post-war period, however, the Soviets could use their scientific opposition to eugenics as an effective propaganda point in the nascent Cold War. This was a point in time when there was a fair bit of sympathy for the Soviets in Western intellectual circles, before the 1956 Hungarian revolution was crushed, and before the full extent of Stalin's brutality was clear. The USSR being the kind of ethical place that had the empathy for humanity to be against eugenics still seemed plausible in such circles at this point, however, and so it made for good propaganda material.\n\nLysenkoism lasted as official policy until 1962; Khrushchev ended it as part of his de-Stalinisation policy. 1962 was close to a decade after DNA had been discovered, making Lysenkoism much harder to justify. Thanks in part to the application of an increased understanding of genetics, corn grain yields in the USA, for example, *doubled* between 1940 and 1960 (they also came close to doubling between 1960 and 1980, meaning that they had almost quadrupled in 40 years). Because Lysenkoism was official policy in the USSR until 1962, it was only in the 1960s when the Russians seem to have been able to effectively predict crop yields. \n\nIt's fair to say that Lysenkoism didn't do a great deal to help in the 1946-1947 Soviet famine, and that alternative approaches that were available at the time would have helped more; Lysenko's policies had a tendency to increase yields in the short-term but decrease them in the long-term, and Lysenko discouraged the use of American corn breeds with increased yields because he didn't believe they worked. I'm not quite clear in my reading about the extent to which the 1948 purge was basically finding scapegoats for the famine, but I strongly suspect that 'bourgeois' genetics was a convenient scapegoat for the famine at this point, much as Vavilov became the scapegoat in the 1930s (and that there's a big dose of Russian nationalism that's an inherent justification of home-town hero Lysenkoism). \n\nIn science, you need theories to explain data, and the theories you choose and the data you choose to emphasise are influenced by your assumptions about the world, which are ideologies to a lesser or greater extent. It's not enormously surprising that Lysenko as a committed Stalinist had a view of the world coloured by that ideology, and that his science was therefore also coloured - this is the nature of science. In the high-stakes world of Stalinist politics - which interacted with agricultural science because of famines - it's also not surprising that Lysenko made power plays based on trying to appeal to Marxist ideology as interpreted by the USSR at the time, and that he was quite successful doing so. \n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/descendants-of-holocaust-survivors-have-altered-stress-hormones/"]]}
{"q_id": "4xv6cv", "title": "How long did Roman/Phoenician/Greek ships last? Were merchants/fleets constantly rebuilding ships to deal with attrition?", "selftext": "I can't imagine that ships and boats built in the ancient world were very resilient to time and sea; but I also know that shipping and seapower were important (less to the Romans -- at least until they finally decided to deal with pirates), but I imagine that keeping ships in tip-top shape would require intense and continual investment.  How long did your typical ship last? And what happened with the ships of large fleets built for a specific war (a la the Greek fleet that fought the Persians; did those turn in to merchant ships during peace?)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xv6cv/how_long_did_romanphoeniciangreek_ships_last_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6j0ekz"], "score": [50], "text": ["Ships in antiquity were serviced constantly. Harbors had extensive facilities for storing and maintaining ships, most famously the ship-sheds that in military harbors housed the warships, but also including large storehouses of rigging and other necessary materials. Maintaining a fleet, private or public, was a long-term investment that was for most states prohibitively expensive because of cost--even at Athens part of the expense for the fleet had to be offloaded onto the trierarchs. We know little about the specifics of private ship maintenance, but there seems to be no reason that private shipowners didn't have similar systems of maintenance for their properties. \n\n > And what happened with the ships of large fleets built for a specific war (a la the Greek fleet that fought the Persians; did those turn in to merchant ships during peace?)\n\nWarships were, well, weapons of war. They were not particularly seaworthy, made and designed to fight battles. They had to be beached at night and did not have room for food and water. Their crews numbered in the hundreds, most of which were rowers who had to be paid and provisioned and without whom the warship was basically useless. Merchant ships were very different, with no oars, relatively small crews, low speed, etc.--they were large cargo-haulers. It'd be like repurposing a tank into an eighteen-wheeler. Warships were frequently mothballed, since the cost of maintaining a fleet of any significant size was so prohibitively high. Generally these ships would be apparently simply abandoned--Plutarch tells an apocryphal story about a young Themistoles being shown the abandoned warships rotting on the shore. I guess it's possible that the timber could be reused, but I've never heard of that happening, and I think it'd be a bit difficult "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3l2al1", "title": "What was Germany's  &  Belgium's reaction when Holland legalized marijuana in the 70's? How drastically did they have to change their drug laws to keep up? (if at all)", "selftext": "Quick edit - I should have used the term decriminalized instead of legalized. \n\nBasically, if someone were to buy pot that is taxed by the Dutch government then travel to, say, Belgium where pot is illegal  &  they're  incarcerated  &  sent to trial all on the Belgian tax payer's dime, wouldn't the law makers in Belgium want to have a word with the law makers in Holland? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l2al1/what_was_germanys_belgiums_reaction_when_holland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv2n1md"], "score": [50], "text": ["No historian and I hope my answer doesn't violate the subreddit rules.\n\nFirst of all, technically the Netherlands never *legalized* Marijuana. They only *tolerate* coffeeshops selling it and people consuming it. It's actually a quite absurd situation, because growing is *not* tolerated, and *de jure* coffeeshop owners break the law when they purchase large quantities. A couple of years ago, growing operations were even partly outsourced to Germany (where it's also illegal, but police weren't really expecting large-scale growing operations in abandoned warehouses).\n\nNow to your question, I can only answer for Germany: They didn't change any laws. What happened in the last years/decades, however, was that the federal states set recommended limits under which prosecutors should drop the charges. These limits vary from state to state. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, and Rhineland-Palatinate charges are usually dropped if you carry less than 10 g, while in all other states the limit is 6 g. \n\nHowever, as I said before, these are only *recommendations*. Prosecutors might still decide to press charges, or to drop charges under certain conditions, such as community service or mandatory counseling. Bavarian authorities are notorious for pressing charges for absolutely tiny amounts.\n\nThen there's another aspect to this: While no penal charges might be pressed, people who own a driver's license (and that is basically everyone over 18) will most likely lose it, because you're considered \"unable to responsibly take part in traffic\". To get your license back you need to pass a \"medical and psychological examination\" (*Medizinisch-psychologische Untersuchung, MPU*, aka *Idiotentest*).\n\nWit the advance of rapid tests for THC and its metbolites in sweat and urine, people don't even have to carry marijuana while driving or be under acute influence, but having consumed several days ago can be sufficient for losing the license. There is currently a discussion going on to establish set limits for THC in the blood, because currently this limit is more or less equal to the analytical detection limit.\n\nAs a final remark, medicinal marijuana is legal since 2011, but only for very few conditions, mainly multiple sclerosis (MS)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3darpr", "title": "How were the WWII atomic bombs transported from their place of creation to within bombing distance of Japan? What sort of convoy/security/secrecy was utilized?", "selftext": "Super curiuos about the logistics of getting this precious cargo halfway around the world", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3darpr/how_were_the_wwii_atomic_bombs_transported_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct3jj39", "ct42934"], "score": [32, 9], "text": ["Have you ever seen the movie \"Jaws\"?  At least part of the story is there in the film.\n\nI am not sure how the parts for the bomb made there was to San Fransisco, but hopefully someone else can add that in.\n\nIt was in San Fransisco that the parts for the bomb and the enriched uranium were secretly loaded on the USS Indianapolis for transport to the island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas (right next door to Guam).  The Indianapolis left San Fransisco and sailed to Pearl Harbor and from there sailed secretly and unescorted to Tinian where the bomb was assembled and loaded onto the Enola Gay (there is an interesting monument to the whole thing on Tinian).\n\nSo Jaws.... after leaving Tinian the USS Indianapolis went down to Guam and from there sailed alone to join the fleet at Leyete Gulf; however the ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.  Over a quarter of the crew went down with the ship; another half died in the waters after the ship sunk as they had little food, little water- sailors began hallucinating and- as relayed in the movie Jaws (and Shark Week on year)- the survivors suffered numerous shark attacks as they waited to be found.  Out of a crew of nearly 1,200- only 317 survived- most having died from exposure to the elements and dehydration; no one knew what had happened to ship for several days and even then the first rescue came from a lone seaplane that landed in the water near the survivors and did its best to help them out while larger ships eventually sailed to their aid as well.\n\n", "They broke the bomb parts in several distinct, secret shipments code-named BRONX (irreplaceable parts, like fissile material) and BOWERY (parts that could be replaced within several weeks, like the other components of the bomb). \n\nMost of the heavy components \u2014 the non-nuclear parts for the gun bomb (with many spares), and the ~80 lb high-enriched uranium \"projectile\" for the Little Boy bomb were from Los Alamos to Albuquerque on July 14st, in \"a closed black truck and seven cartloads of security guards\" (Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb), and from there were flown to Hamilton field in San Francisco in two DC-3s. There another security convoy moved them to the USS Indianapolis at Hunter's Point, San Francisco, and which left for Tinian on July 16th (just hours after the Trinity test was completed). The containers were welded to the deck of the Indianapolis and kept under 24-hour armed guard.\n\nThe Indianapolis arrived at Tinian on July 26th (apparently a record run) and unloaded those components. (And was sunk soon after, although I would maybe not emphasize the danger to the bomb here, since the sinking took place in a much more dangerous zone than the transport route.) \n\nThe ~55 lb uranium \"target\" was shipped in three pieces on three different, otherwise-empty C-54's; they arrived on Tinian on the 28th and 29th of July (the last at 2am). \n\nSeveral non-nuclear parts for several plutonium bombs were sent on five C-54s from Albuquerque, arriving by July 23rd. The plutonium pit and neutron initiator of the Fat Man bomb was transported on a Command C-54 from Albuquerque to Hamilton Field in California, and from there to Tinian on two B-29s, arriving on July 28th. The final ballistic casings for two plutonium bombs arrived on July 28th. \n\nSo, we might summarize: many components were purposefully shipped separately, both as a matter of logistics (they didn't have everything ready at exactly the same time) and redundancy (if one shipment failed, they will not lose everything). The security mostly consisted of having guards, quiet convoys at night, and the dedicated transport methods in all cases other than the Indianapolis. The whole thing was done with code-names and secrecy, as with the rest of the bomb project. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4ntqno", "title": "How famous was Robert Johnson (early blues musician) during his life time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ntqno/how_famous_was_robert_johnson_early_blues/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d473cfm", "d4744ht", "d479s5u"], "score": [6, 51, 12], "text": ["Well if there's no blues historians here, I'll give it a crack if the mods are okay with it. My only qualification is living in the Delta.\n\nRobert Johnson, like many poor black men of his time, doesn't have much documentation following his life. His birthdate is even up for debate, but is assumed to be in May of 1911. It is assumed based on what documents we do have of his life, like his marriage certificate. It is also known he was considered a lackluster guitarist until he was a bit older when he left his home town and came back a few months later seemingly having become a master overnight, lending to the myth of him selling his soul to the devil.\n\nShortly after this, he began moving from city to city making a living playing wherever he could, often under aliases as he did not want to be known. His popularity rose in the 60s when his recordings were discovered and his genius could be appreciated. So while he created quite a buzz in each place he went, he was far from a superstar.\n\nApologies and thanks to the mod team for running a tight ship. The Blues Foundation offers a brief description of him and his life: _URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_ is far from comprehensive but provides backing for the claims of his relative obscurity during life and a couple of more documentaries about his life: _URL_0_\n\nThe Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a decent piece on him. However, as you might be able to tell by now, there's much conflicting information on his life. This is no less true in this source: _URL_4_\n\nI did, however find a YouTube link to the documentary I previously mentioned. I feel like sourcing YouTube is a bit lame, but out of all the sources, I would trust this one most personally. Robert McCormick and John Hammond have dedicated their lives in the search of documenting the legacy of old legends of American music. _URL_1_", "It depends what you mean by \"famous.\" If you mean fame similar to what musicians like Bob Dylan experienced in their early years in the American folk music revival (Greenwich Village, New York City, 1960-1961), a fame of \"community awareness/relevance\" \u2013 then sort of. I mention Bob Dylan for a reason, which you'll see below.\n\nFor the most part, Robert Johnson wasn't \"famous\" during his lifetime, and wouldn't become the blues figure that he is known to be until almost two decades after his death (explained below). The extent of his \"fame\" when he was alive reached only to a certain range. One, being his circle of friends, (especially musicians he knew, some being famous blues musicians). Two, being those who were involved in the music performance scene (particularly in the Southern States) who came to know him (or of him). And three, others, such as industry professionals and record collectors came to know of him. His \"fame\" never fell outside of that extent during both his lifetime and for a short while after.\n\nFirst, you should come to understand that Johnson was a \"drifter,\" or an itinerant musician.\n\n >  Now well on his way to becoming a polished professional, Johnson established a base in Helena, Arkansas, and worked extensively throughout the South as a walking musician, traveling sometimes alone and sometimes with other guitar players, such as Johnny Shines or Calvin Frazier. **He frequently traveled and played under assumed names, a habit that complicated later efforts to construct an accurate biography.** It was during this time, between his late teens and midtwenties, that Johnson began to absorb, blend, and refine particular stylistic nuances\u2014drawn from piano as well as guitar\u2014that would eventually help redefine blues for a new generation of musicians who left the South and moved to St. Louis, Detroit, and most prominently, Chicago.\n\n---\n\n >  **Although Johnson was well known in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee by the midthirties, he yearned to record, as many of his mentors and influences already had.** So, according to most accounts, he traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to audition for H. C. Speir, a music-store owner whose ear for talent had led to recording sessions for a veritable who's who of important regional blues artists during the twenties and thirties.\n\nBarry Lee Pearson, Billy McCulloch, \"Robert Johnson: Lost and Found.\" University of Illinois Press, 2003.\n\n--- \n\nMore interesting is Bob Dylan's account of coming to know about Robert Johnson's music in 1960/1961. From Dylan's *Chronicles: Volume One*, there is an implication to how Johnson's fame came to elevate in the years after his death.\n\n >  Before leaving that day, **[John Hammond, a record producer for Columbia Records had] given me a couple of records that were not yet available to the public that he thought might interest me. Columbia had bought the vaults of \u201930s and \u201940s secondary labels \u2014 Brunswick, Okeh, Vocalion, ARC \u2014 and would be releasing some of the stuff.**\n\nThis is around 1960/1961.\n\n >  One of the records that [John Hammond] gave me was The Delmore Brothers with Wayne Rainey, and the other record was called **King of the Delta Blues by a singer named Robert Johnson.** Wayne Rainey, I used to hear on the radio and he was one of my favorite harmonica players and singers, and I loved The Delmore Brothers, too. But I\u2019d never heard of Robert Johnson, never heard the name, never seen it on any of the compilation blues records. Hammond said I should listen to it, that this guy could \"whip anybody.\" He showed me the artwork, an unusual painting where the painter with the eye stares down from the ceiling into the room and sees this fiercely intense singer and guitar player, looks no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat. What an electrifying cover. I stared at the illustration. Whoever the singer was in the picture, he already had me possessed. **Hammond told me that he knew of him from way back, had tried to get him up to New York to perform at the famous Spirituals to Swing Concert but by that time he had discovered that Johnson was gone, had died mysteriously in Mississippi.**\n\n---\n\n >  I had the thick acetate of the Robert Johnson record in my hands and I asked [Dave] Van Ronk if he ever heard of him. [...] Dave thought Johnson was okay, that the guy was powerful but that it was all derivative. [...] The record that didn\u2019t grab Dave very much had left me numb, like I\u2019d been hit by a tranquilizer bullet.\n\n---\n\n >  **Johnson recorded in the '30s, and in the 1960s there were still some folks around in the Delta who had known about him.** Some even, who knew him. There\u2019d been a fast moving story going around that he had sold his soul to the devil at a four-way crossroads at midnight and that\u2019s how he got to be so good. Well, I don\u2019t know about that. The ones who knew him told a different tale and that was that he had hung around some older blues players in rural parts of Mississippi, played harmonica, was rejected as a bothersome kid, that he went off and learned how to play guitar from a farmhand named Ike Zinnerman, a mysterious character not in any of the history books. Maybe because he didn\u2019t make records.\n\nBob Dylan, \"Chronicles, Volume One.\" Simon  &  Schuster, 2004.\n\nYou gain some insight and an understanding from reading about Bob Dylan's experience of coming to learn about Robert Johnson. It says a lot about Johnson's (arguably miniscule) fame during his lifetime, and the lack of fame for his work for up to two decades after his death, from before Columbia Records released his compilation album in 1961.\n\nIt's also interesting to note, that Dave Van Ronk, who was a prominent figure in the American folk music revival with Bob Dylan, was roommates with Sam B. Charters, a music historian who wrote *The Country Blues* in 1959. The book, which detailed a whole chapter on Robert Johnson, was written just two years prior to Columbia Records' release of Johnson's compilation album. So, Robert Johnson, John Hammond, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan were all in some way relevant to one another (which is why I quoted Bob Dylan's mentioning of Dave Van Ronk. Van Ronk knew about Robert Johnson most definitely, especially from his roommate Sam B. Charters).\n\nIt was only when Columbia Records released that precise album that Bob Dylan mentions (King of the Delta Blues, 1961), that rose Johnson to supposed \"fame,\" the fame that is accredited to him today. Let me emphasize that it was this album, which was acquired by Columbia Records and released in 1961, that forged Johnson's relevance... two decades after his death.\n\nMainly, it was friends, musicians/performers, producers (and after his death, record collectors and enthusiasts) who knew, or really, paid attention to Johnson, for the most part. In short, he was not famous at all, not even in the sense of being that much known within \"the community,\" like Joan Baez was, for instance, in the American folk music revival prior to Bob Dylan's fame.", "Robert Johnson first entered a recording studio in November 1936, and he died in August 1938. His recording of 'Terraplane Blues' for Vocalion Records - released in his lifetime - is usually claimed to have been a minor regional hit in books like Elijah Wald's *Escaping The Delta*, while other singles released before his death were less successful. However, Billboard didn't start polling record retailers about sales until 1940, so it's hard to verify. \n\nOf course, recordings in the 1930s weren't as big a contributor to a musician's success as they are today, though they certainly didn't hurt. Johnson was clearly well-known in the delta blues community - he was an itinerant working musician, and so fans of the music in the areas where he lived would have known his name. Certainly plenty of the delta bluesmen who survived until the 1960s, like Son House, knew who Johnson was and told stories about him. /u/shy mentions John Hammond's From Spirituals To Swing concert, [which I discussed more here](_URL_1_); this was a big boost to the careers of some of the musicians who performed, and might have also been so for Johnson had he lived for a few more months.\n\nHowever, the important context for Johnson that is less well-understood today, but which is clearer in books like Wald's *Escaping The Delta* is this: Johnson's delta blues style, in 1937, was already old-fashioned. The heyday of the delta blues style we associate with him was in the late 1920s. Johnson recording music in that style in 1937 is broadly equivalent to someone releasing music in 2016 that sounds like the music of 2005-2009; say, the big hits of the Black Eyed Peas or Fall Out Boy. \n\nThe record industry had discovered that black Americans bought records in the mid-1920s, and so the late 1920s saw a rush to record the popular music style of the time in the South, where people were buying records - this happened to be the delta blues. However, the onset of the Great Depression sent a great many record companies bankrupt. Other record companies de-emphasised putting out music recorded mostly for regional ethnic minorities (as the record industry generally regarded black people in the South). Because of this, and because of the general economic downturn, most of the delta blues musicians recorded in the late 1920s - including some of the most popular - had given up on music as a career by the early 1930s, going back to occupations like sharecropping. Such musicians, if they survived until the 1960s, were often re-discovered by intrepid white fans and encouraged to play folk festivals and the like. \n\nVocalion, the record label Johnson recorded for, was relatively unusual as a record company in that it survived the depression while still putting some focus on black music. However, it's instructive that there aren't a great many delta blues artists on [Vocalion's catalogue circa 1936-1937](_URL_0_) - instead the record label at the time seems to be putting more emphasis on swing and jazz acts like Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong, presumably because this is what the black community was most likely to buy at the time. All in all, it's probably unusual that Robert Johnson got a chance at all to record delta blues in 1937, and it was probably not surprising it wasn't that great a hit."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.biography.com/people/robert-johnson-9356324#death-and-legacy", "https://youtu.be/ONZbSir45rQ", "http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/biography/", "Bio.com", "https://rockhall.com/inductees/robert-johnson/bio/"], [], ["https://www.discogs.com/label/74112-Vocalion-2?sort=year&amp;sort_order=&amp;page=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mv9oa/at_what_point_in_american_history_did_blues_music/d424l65"]]}
{"q_id": "1s2uxr", "title": "What was the Nicaea council and what were its outcomes and impacts on future Christianity?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1s2uxr/what_was_the_nicaea_council_and_what_were_its/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdtgrpt", "cdth40f"], "score": [87, 6], "text": ["Then Council of Nicaea was the first of a series of Ecumenical Councils. These are frequently grouped into a series called \"the first seven ecumenical councils.\" The date from Nicaea in 325 to the second Council of Nicaea in 781. These Councils deal with some pivotal theological issues, but also are crucial in their historical significance. Things that can be traced through the council are the growing schism of the East and West, both politically and ecumenically, the shift of the Church from sect to political power, and the look at regional autonomy in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, amongst a plethora of topics.\n\nThe first Council of Nicaea was assembled by Constantine. His conversion is crucial. Politically he was looking to reunite an empire that had suffered what has been deemed \"the crisis of the third century.\" Large historical periods are difficult to define as they are fluid, but this crisis marked, in many opinions, the transition from antiquity into what we call \"late antiquity.\" Late antiquity is, in itself, a transitionary period from the \"classical\" into the \"medieval\" world. The crisis had it all, a small pox epidemic (plague), the breaking up of the empire into three parts that Babushka dolled into further states like Hispania and Britain did from the newly established kingdom of Gaul, and all sorts of assassination with no end in sight nor any means of viable succession. \n\nEnter Diocletian. He defeated a lot of the invading \"Barbarians\" (who in some cases were just that, and in others were immigrants who were nnearly as Romanised as their Roman neighbours). He reunited the Empire and co-ruled with Maximian. He is the only emperor \"to retire.\" What is particularly notable for our discussion of Nicaea is his \"great persecution\" of the Christians.\n\nConstantine was first and foremost a soldier. He worked his way up through the ranks during Diocletian's reign. After the death of Diocletian, he won emerged victorious in a series of civil wars. For a number of motives, in 330 Constantine founded a \"New Rome\" in Constantinople and made this his empire's capital. This was to symbolise the uniting of the Greek and Latin speaking parts of the empire, to materially display his prominence, but also to serve as distinctly Christian centre of power. He brought in all sorts of relics to commemorate massive building projects, including \"the true cross\" amongst others.\n\nBut what happened between his first year as sole ruler in 324 and his founding of the city was a remarkable work of political deftness and religious zeal. Eusebius of Caesarea is our chief source on Constantine. He builds a narrative that place Constantine as a fulfiller of prophesy, ending a time of tribulation, and ushering in a \"kingdom of God\" in a \"new era\". In some ways, despite the propaganda of sorts, you can't blame him when Christians went from losing their property and being tortured to serving as trusted advisors and councilors, with all of their property that had been seized returned and more.  \n\nThe Council of Nicaea was the first church wide meeting since the Apostolic age (when the events of the Bible were happening). This was when it was formally enacted to let the Gentiles become Christians alongside the Jews. Hopefully that points put what a significant even it is, both to its contemporaries and historically. \n\nIt was chiefly concerned with Arian theology. Though it concerned itself with the dating of Easter (a major uniting force, when the churches across a vast empire all are celebrating as one) and with the preeminence of the Roman See, but also with the reiteration of the importance of other Apostolic sees like Antioch and Alexandria, plus it introduced Constantinople as an important and eminent centre of Christianity. \n\nI'll do my best to quickly cover Arianism:\n\n\"It is far less amazing that human beings should progress upwards towards God than that God should have come down to the human level.\u201d \u2013 Pope Leo I\n\n1. Historical: \n\nA. Following the reasoning of  Henry Chadwick, the Arian controversy can be divided into three stages; the first down to the death of Constantine (22 May 337), the second from the accession of the sons of Constantine to the death of Constantius II (361), and the third from the accession of Julian to the suppression of Arianism under Theodosius the second.\n\nB. Obviously in an introduction the motives and nature of Constantine\u2019s conversion are complex and so widely hypothesized that we do not have time to pause here, but it must be said that, regardless of motivation, Constantine had in mind a unity of both the faith and the empire. This is demonstrated in his letter to Arius and Alexander, \n\u201cTherefore I have been driven to the necessity of this letter and am writing to your concordant sagacity. And, after calling upon divine providence as my ally in the matter, I offer myself \u2013 as is reasonable \u2013 in the midst of your strife as an ambassador of peace.\u201d\n\nC. Ultimately, Arianism will be a leading cause of the schism of the Western and Eastern Roman Churches.\n\n2. Theological: \n\nArianism was a doctrine concerning the nature of the Christian trinity, specifically the substantive relationship between the Father and the Son. The Arians held that Christ was a creation of the Father. They scripturally would substantiate their claims with Scripture such as Colossians 3:15: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.\n\nAnd would be argued against based on verses such as Matthew 3:16-17:\n \"And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.\n\nThe controversy would lead Constantine to call Council of Nicaea from which came the Nicene creed. \nWhile it seems an issue of semantics the question of the *substantiae* of the nature of God would have broad religious and social implications concerning the role of the church in late Roman society. The three Greek words concerning the nature of God were *Homoousian* or same substance, *Homoiousian* or similar substance, and the *Heteroousian* or different substance.\n \n\nThis may seem insignificant to a non Christian, but without Christ having divinity he becomes just another moral teacher and social activist Therefore you really have distance yourself from any presuppositions and take on some personal and historical empathy to understand just how important the divinity of Christ was to Chrsitians at the time (and continues to be to now).\n\nThe Council concluded with the condemnation of Arianism and the formation of \"The Nicene Creed.\" What is know today as \"The Nicene Creed\" is commonly referred to by scholars as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed and came out of the next Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381. And from my studies, really was wasn't formalised until the fourth council, the Council of Chalcedon in 451.\n\nThe Arian controversy rages on even after the Council of Nicaea. It is dealt a decisive blow in the next council at Constantinople in 381. I think it would be fair to see it out and do a quick look at the politics and theology of that second, follow up council.\n\n**Council of Constantinople 381**\n\nFor something as voraciously nuanced and vast as Constantinopolitan theology to be considered with brevity and understanding, a microcosmic approach will best suit. This second part will consider the council of Constantinople, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed attributed to it, and its contribution to the city\u2019s emergence as a center for the intertwined power of church and state. Hopefully, rather than an interchange of opinion and statements, this questioning introduction will foster, as is the intent and nature of introduction, further questions.  \n\nAn imperial frenzy and mistrust haunted state politics following the unprecedented death of Valens at the 378 battle of Adrianople. Gratian and the newly instated Theodosius did have a point of unification in religious ideology. In February of 380 they issued a joint edict, the cunctos populos, which demanded that all people practise \u201cthat religion, which the divine Peter the apostle transmitted to the Romans.\u201d Part of this joint effort was the assertion of the authority of the Nicene position. After some seeming power-play between the emperors concerning the where and when of the council, Theodosius won out and the assembly of bishops was to gather in Constantinople in May of 381.\n\nThe imperial Nicene sympathy was seen as an opportunity to deal a decisive, anti-Arian blow by men like Ambrose of Milan. He would go to great lengths of intellectual ingenuity to strengthen the Nicene cause, asserting the sanctity of the 325 AD council by highlighting the significance of the number of bishops in attendance\u2014318, the same as the number of Abraham\u2019s servants and the Greek numerals symbolising the cross of Jesus (TIH).* In the midst of this tension Theodosius, in an attempt to successfully mediate, awarded the presidency of the council to Meletius of Antioch, thus appeasing the Cappadocians.\n\nContinued below...", "The effects are wide-ranging, but here's the immediate low-down on the Council of Nicaea:\n\nThe first council was called by Constantine in 325 CE in order to unify and homogenize the various Christian sects spread throughout the Mediterranean/Roman Empire. The sects often bickered over...well, pretty much everything - the divinity of Christ (the so-called Arian Controversy), what gospels or messages of Christianity to emphasize, and even on their relationship to other Christian communities throughout the rest of the Roman world. The meetings were often fraught with tension as topics such as usury, the practice of self-castration, the divesting of Easter from the Jewish calendar, and other topics were discussed.\n\nThe council eventually laid the groundwork for Christian canonical beliefs (that Jesus was both divine and man and that he was the son of God, born and not 'made'), unified dogma (with the Nicene Creed), *and* because Constantine called the council as well as enforced its decisions, gave official - and powerful - weight to its pronouncements. This set the precedent for later kingdoms' close ties to the church; a symbiotic relationship which would guide at least European history for the next thousand or so years.\n\nOh, and Arians, Nestorians, and other 'heretical' sects which did not comply with the Council's decisions were persecuted, often forcing them to flee into the fringes (and beyond) of the Empire. For example, Nestorian Christians sought refuge in the Persian Empire while Arians moved further into the Germanic north of Europe."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3gdg4l", "title": "During the Cold War did Chinese citizens ever defect to Hong Kong by jumping the border or boating across the straits? Were they able to integrate into Hong Kong life or were they sent back?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gdg4l/during_the_cold_war_did_chinese_citizens_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctx8oa7", "ctxxq8f"], "score": [48, 5], "text": ["**Yes.** I'll speak to one aspect of this in particular.\n\nAfter the failure of the Tienanmen Square democracy movement in 1989, [a kind of Underground Railroad developed in China.](_URL_2_) It was small, but it existed \u2500 with between 400 and 800 (estimates vary) dissidents escaping the Chinese government crackdown through an organized network and unknown numbers escaping through unofficial channels. \n\nKnown as **[Operation Yellowbird](_URL_0_)**, it [united Hong Kong gangsters, police officers and businessmen, the British and French governments \u2500 even a Baptist minister](_URL_1_) \u2500 in a network designed to bring dissidents from mainland China to the coast, where they would be loaded onto boats and dropped off on a Hong Kong beach. A British minister would provide paperwork, and the dissidents would board planes to other destinations. Most did not stay in Hong Kong proper.\n\nNow, this is only one aspect of dissident escape to Hong Kong. I'm sure there are plenty of other stories out there, but I've always found Yellowbird (also Yellow Bird) fascinating, even though it's outside my area of expertise.", "Very much yes. At the end of WW2, Hong Kong only had 500,000 people. By 1980, that figure grew 10 times and Hong Kong had 5 million. Now that number is closer to 7.2 million. Immigration from Mainland China is a major factor in Hong Kong's explosive growth. Many celebrities from the older generation openly admit that they swam across the straits that divides Hong Kong and China. The colonial government in Hong Kong had a \"Touch Base policy\" until 1981, meaning that if you managed to get past the Frontier Closed Area and into Hong Kong proper, you would be allowed to stay in HK. If you were intercepted before that, then, like the baseball metaphor suggests, you're out.\n\nHong Kong had a serious shortage of housing for this sudden influx from the mainland (and still does). Most of these new immigrants lived in shanty towns, while people associated with the Republic (and did not follow Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan but came to HK instead) mostly lived in their own \"exclave\" in Tiu Keng Leng. Those escaping from both Chinese and Hong Kong authorities would find refuge in the famous Kowloon Walled City, where the British laws of Hong Kong didn't apply, since it technically belonged to China.\n\nThe British turned a blind eye to these developments for the most part, until a devastating fire in 1953 burned the shanty town of Shek Kip Mei and left 53,000 people homeless. This forced the colonial administrators to find ways to accommodate the new immigrants, which led to HK's first government housing. \n\nAt this point I should say that Chinese citizens fleeing from Communism did not just integrate into Hong Kong life, they shaped Hong Kong life itself. All the talents of China considered too bourgeois and faced prosecution there eventually concentrated in Hong Kong since it was one of the few liberal Chinese-speaking areas in East Asia. They were the ones behind Hong Kong's explosive growth and put the city on the map."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-27/escape-from-tiananmen-how-secret-plan-freed-protesters", "http://www.newsweek.com/still-wing-175592", "http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/world/hong-kong-escape-network-is-driven-into-shadows.html?pagewanted=all"], []]}
{"q_id": "8kxsge", "title": "Where did the idea come about that Buddhism was \"non-theistic\"", "selftext": "I always hear people refer to it as such, but it just isn't true. People say Buddhism \"isn't a religion, it's a philosophy. It's even non\\-theistic\" when that is patently false. Buddhism sprung out of Hinduism, and it has a wide array of gods venerated and worshiped. [Buddhists have a large pantheon of gods](_URL_2_), as well as the [fierce deities](_URL_0_) which destroy obstacles against Buddhists. Buddhists also venerate [Bodhisattva's](_URL_3_), or people who have achieved enlightenment, and they have their own concepts of divine beings similar to angels known as [Devas](_URL_1_). If one person said that to me, I'd just ignore it as one guy who didn't know what he's talking about. However, it's been so many people that at this point I'm starting to wonder if they know something I don't.\n\nThis is also related, why are most Eastern religions called \"philosophies\" instead of religions? Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are all religions with their own concepts of divinity and heaven, yet they are for some reason treated differently from paganism or Abrahamic religions.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8kxsge/where_did_the_idea_come_about_that_buddhism_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzbqw4e", "dzcmd7h"], "score": [82, 5], "text": ["The difference between a \"religion\" and a \"philosophy\" is itself a somewhat philosophical difference. I, someone who has lived in Buddhist-majority countries and study it for a living, have been informed that I was wrong, Buddhism is *not* a religion, it is a *philosophy.* At some point, you just have to throw up your hands and shrug. It's worth remembering that some of Christianity's greatest thinkers - Saint Augustine, Thomas of Aquinas, Boethius, etc. - are by definition philosophers. This is usually where the conversation ends for me: Buddhism has just as many logicians and Priests as Abrahamic religions. \n\nThat said, your question is a little bit more in depth so I'll try and address each of the points you've raised and then address your main question: \n\n >  Buddhism sprung out of Hinduism, and it has a wide array of gods venerated and worshiped.\n\nThis is... technically not true. \"Hinduism\" isn't so much a religion like we'd consider Christianity and Judaism religions, but more of a complex of religions like Abrahamic faiths. The most popular forms of Hinduism today have their most pervasive elements sourced in far more recent centuries. Bhakti (the practice of devotion) for example, began in southern India at the end of the first millenium (Buddhism grew out of northern India). Vedanta (arguably the most popular and well known form of Hinduism today) began to pick up speed, mostly as an intellectual movement, but later expanding, about five centuries ago. Pretty much any form of Hinduism we have today will have roots and tendrils deep into history (every single one of them will source the literally timeless Vedas, more on that in a second) but the main point is salient: what we call \"Hinduism\" today, in any form, is not what Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was responding to when he sat under the Banyan Tree 2500 years ago. To say that Buddhism \"comes from\" Hinduism is patently false. \n\nMore to the point, the most particular point where Buddhism and Hinduism diverge into completely different religions is that Hinduism reveres and holds sacred the Vedas, where Buddhism rejects them entirely. This is *crucial,* as the Vedas are Hinduism's most sacred scriptures (i.e. the ones with all the gods) and all of Hinduism's following scriptures (i.e. the Upanishads, the Puranas, etc.) all emerge out of Vedic philosophy. Buddhism's primary distinction is that it rejects the Vedas. And arguably, by extension, the gods. \n\n*Arguably.* \n\n >  Buddhists have a large pantheon of gods, as well as the fierce deities which destroy obstacles against Buddhists.\n\nNeither of the articles which you posted are patently false, but they are sorely lacking in nuance and present local cults and single-use rituals as if they are universally \"Buddhist.\" This is an unfortunate mistake that Buddhists make, not just on Wikipedia, but in publication format as well. \n\nAn easy give away on the \"Buddhist deities\" page is the list of names are all listen in Tibetan (i.e. Ksitigarbha is an Indian name, with its Tibetan equivalent listed next to it, \"sa'i nying po\"). This doesn't mean the beings listed on this page don't exist in other parts of the world, i.e. Japan or China, in fact there's a pretty good rule: if it's Indian, it probably exists in the mythologies of other parts of the Buddhist world. Take the Bodhisattva Avaloketishvara: in Tibetan he is considered among the most sacred Bodhisattva, often referred to as \"the god of compassion,\" Chenrizi (Tib: spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug). In China and Korea, he takes a primarily female form as Guanyin. \n\nThe \"Fierce Deities\" page, however, is almost entirely Tantric Buddhism which is almost (*almost*) exclusive to India and Tibet. Tantric Buddhism gets... tricky, quickly to say the least. I'm not a tantric adept, so I'm not going to start expounding doctrine. But I can say with some authority that Tantric philosophy isn't necessarily supposed to be taken literally. This is something that has caused conflict in Tibet, with Tibetans being confused historically over how to interpret violent and sexual imagery that was prevalent in the Tantras (where these Wrathful Deities originate). Teachers, of whom Atisha is probably the most well known, informed the Tibetans that these were symbolic, not literal. The image of the yabyum is meant to be the union of wisdom and compassion. The image of the wrathful deity is meant to be the destruction of illusion, falsehood, and evil in the presence of truth. Later, there would exist Tantric Fundamentalists who would take these images to heart and wear pieces of corpses on their bodies and drink blood. \n\nSo while yes, these things are true and are a part of the constellation of Buddhism, it's worth looking into each one individually. There are few (or probably better yet *no*) scriptures that are universally Buddhist. While Avaloketishvara might be found in all Buddhist countries in some form, you will find that his treatment is vastly different from prayerful weeping in Tibet, to candle-lit offerings in Korea, to polite indifference in Thailand. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the wrathful gods (are not listed on that page because they) are local cults that predate Buddhism in some form, and their worshipers are cognizant that the gods are not a part of Buddhism, but tangential to it. \n\nOne worshiper in Bhutan put it pretty well in Christian Schicklgruber's article *Gods and Sacred Mountains*, \"I would never dare ask the Buddha to keep my cows healthy or to protect me in war.\" \n\n >  Buddhists also venerate Bodhisattva's, or people who have achieved enlightenment, and they have their own concepts of divine beings similar to angels known as Devas).\n\nThis is true. None of what I wrote above necessarily negates your point about Buddhism worshipping gods (not that that's my goal either). But the way Buddhists approach their gods, whether local or Indian in origin, are *vastly* different from the way that Christians, Muslims, or Jews would approach their God. \n\nAs I said before, many Buddhists will light a candle for Avaloketishvara at the temple, but won't do much else. \n\nPlenty of Catholics will do that for the Virgin Mary, or St.  < Insert Literally Any Name > . But it'd be wrong to then say that Catholics worshipped the Virgin or the Saints as Gods. It'd be heretical, in fact. On the page listing \"Fierce Deities,\" (I keep stumbling over this term because the more commonplace term is \"Wrathful Deities\") they list the Four Guardian Kings as \"Deities,\" which I suppose may be technically true, but these four statues usually grace the gateways of temples and monasteries but are never really *worshiped* like one might worship the Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or a local deity. \n\nThe problem really seems to be this term \"deity.\" \n\n\"Bodhisattva\" literally means \"enlightened being.\" An \"Arhat\" literally means \"Perfected one.\" None of these English translations even remotely carry the significance or the context that their Sanskrit equivalent has, so the default \"Deity\" is employed instead. Somewhat ironically, \"deva\" does literally mean \"God\" but in the hierarchy of beings you've listed, the Devas would be the lowest and least likely to be worshiped.\n\nIt's worth lingering on that point: what makes the Abrahamic God *god*? Usually three qualities are imposed: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. The Devas are none of this. They enjoy extreme pleasure and power for an extended period of time, but the Devas (assuming we can subsume the Wrathful Deities and Local Deities into their realm) are subject to the winds and fluctuations of Karma just like any other being and their time as gods will eventually come to an end. \n\nThe Bodhisattvas, as you said, are human beings who have achieved enlightenment. Neither by classification nor behavior, gods. Their goal is the ultimate enlightenment of everyone and everything they can reach. \n\nTo put it simply: just because Buddhism venerates certain beings and labels other beings (often ones with less veneration) as gods, doesn't really affect the theoism-icity of the religion. \n\ncont'd. ", " > This is also related, why are most Eastern religions called \"philosophies\" instead of religions? Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are all religions with their own concepts of divinity and heaven, yet they are for some reason treated differently from paganism or Abrahamic religions.\n\nReligion in China is a very complicated matter, and I think it's ultimately overly reductive to worry about whether these are philosophies *or* religions. However, the simple answer though is that they are treated differently from Abrahamic religions because they *are* different. \n\nIn China, the biggest religion in terms of adherents both now and for thousands of years has been what we call \"Chinese Folk Religion,\" which is difficult to describe in a nutshell but has many of the characteristics that one would typically ascribe to a religion: afterlife, gods, worship, sacrifice, cosmic and natural order, the role of mankind in the universe, and so on. \n\nFor Confucianism and Taoism, some people might claim they are a \"philosophy and not a religion\" because both find their origins in texts that are not particularly religious. If you read any of the canon of Confucian or Taoist thought, you will find that the overall thrust of the texts is commentary on ethical behavior, what a person should do or understand, and how society ought to be organized. Taken individually, it is dubious to claim that any of the texts are primarily religious in nature. Of course they are different from what we would call modern philosophy - all the texts claim some kind of *a priori* knowledge without building up an axiomatic system of logic. As an example, Confucian texts reference the concept of \"Heaven\" as an abstract source of perfection and harmony, and reference divination practices.\n\nArguments against calling Confucianism a religion is that the canon lacks most of the characteristics of what most people would imagine a religion is: afterlife, origin of humanity, or requirement of belief. A Confucian gentleman is enjoined to take part in ritual, but as a matter of social harmony. Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit priest and missionary (and one of the first westerners to master the Chinese language) believed that Confucianism and Christianity were compatible, and in fact borrowed a lot of Confucian language in his effort to introduce the gospels into Chinese. \n\nTaoism I think is more complicated because it encompasses both a liturgical tradition and a more philosophical tradition based on several canonical texts. An argument against calling Taoism a religion is that the first liturgical tradition involving Taoism (the Way of the Celestial Masters) did not come about until hundreds of years after Taoism began as a philosophy (sometime in the 4th century BCE vs 142 CE). I think that if someone must classify it as a religion, it cannot be considered an organized religion. \n\nBuddhism has to be considered separately, because although it has had great influence on Chinese culture it has also been suppressed as a foreign influence during various points in history that are beyond the scope of a simple comment. \n\nUltimately however Chinese scholars since at least the 6th century CE have been writing about the concept of the \"three Teachings\" - Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism - as parts of a larger harmonious tradition, the core of which is Chinese Folk Religion. While Buddhism could be separated from this tradition and viewed as its own independent system in other countries, Taoism and especially Confucianism cannot really be excised from the syncretic folk religion without losing their religious aspects. In the end I think the argument over whether they are primarily religious or primarily philosophical is not particularly useful, *but* they do have a lot of characteristics that make it unwise to try to make a one-to-one comparison with an Abrahamic religion. \n\ntl, dr: Taoism and especially Confucianism have no real religious characteristics of their own that weren't borrowed from the larger folk religion, and the differences between Taoism and Confucianism are mostly philosophical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fierce_deities", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deva_(Buddhism)", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7uvrqb", "title": "The ancient Romans ate their banquets reclined on couches. As far as I know, no country in the former Roman Empire still does that. How and when did it die out?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7uvrqb/the_ancient_romans_ate_their_banquets_reclined_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtpab03"], "score": [7], "text": ["Michael Psellos (c.1030-c.1080) in eleventh century Constantinople offers an amusing anecdote on this. Constantinople's Great Palace was known for possessing a room called The Hall of 19 Couches  and the imperial family and custom were still forcing people to recline like ancient Romans in the high medieval period. \nPsellos, a renowned philosopher of Plato, complained of the effect of eating while lying as such causing his stomach pain and causing indigestion and flatulence, literally 'pressing the waste from my backside'. \n\nAs he makes such a note of this we can presume it was a most unusual custom to force people to do by then.\n\nBy 1081 Alexios Komnenos was emperor and he moved the family to the Blachernae Palace on the other side of the city. We may suppose the couches did not come too."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ab0950", "title": "Would there really have been black and Asian people in Mary Queen of Scot\u2019s and Elizabeth I\u2019s courts?", "selftext": "Just got back from seeing Mary Queen of Scots and was intrigued by the amount of POC actors cast to play members of the queens\u2019 courts. This doesn\u2019t seem historically accurate. Spanish or Portuguese would make sense but black or Asian baffles me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ab0950/would_there_really_have_been_black_and_asian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ehktgpl", "ecwov3p"], "score": [2, 91], "text": ["At the time, blacks were employed as musicians, foot carriage men and other servant positions; some were indentured. As far as Court life went, no records (to my knowledge) indicate blacks filled Ambassador or other lofty positions, although, they were steadily rising in the English gentry. \nElizabeth would later attempt to expel blacks from the country for a variety of reasons: blaming the poor, of which most blacks were, for failing economics; blacks were of Muslim origins,  a threat to a Christian nation rallying cry, etc. \n\nStill, the movie \u2018feels\u2019 somewhat forced, viewing a period piece knowing that Blacks  &  Asians didn\u2019t have those roles in that hierarchy. It\u2019s not a slight, merely historical facts, but its director publicly stated her refusal having an all white cast, therefore, the cognitive dissonance is palpable...", "Why does the presence of individuals of African ancestry baffle you while Spaniards and Portuguese would not, despite the fact that the strait of Gibraltar separates the European continent with the African continent by a mere 16.3 km? \n\nTo answer your question, the answer is: Yes. The royal court of Elizabeth I had individuals of African ancestry. So did the courts of her predecessors, Henry VII and Henry VIII. Her successor, James I (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), also had them in his court. Alongside this, wealthy and influential individuals also had people of African ancestry in their households. In cities and villages across the British isles, people of African ancestry lived and died throughout this era. \n\nThis African presence in the courts of different English monarchs is visible in the archives, but the majority of what we have is fragmentary. This is not something to be surprised about, seeing as we often have very little to go on in regards to the lives of specific commoners during this era. Sometimes, we're lucky, such as in the case of \"John Blanke the blacke Trumpet\" who was one of 8 trumpeters in the court of Henry VII and who first appears in the records in 1507. What makes the case of John Blanke so extraordinary is that he is [depicted in the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll.](_URL_0_) Historian Miranda Kauffman expands on John Blanke as well as 9 other individuals of African ancestry during this period in her book *Black Tudors* (2017).\n\nBut in the case of Elizabeth I, we have considerably little to go on. It is not for nothing that historian Imtiaz H. Habib has \"Imprints of the Invisible\" as a subtitle to his very detailed *Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677* (2008). It is in the household records of Elizabeth I that we in 1547 find a \"litell blak a More\" living in her court. Beyond this anonymous description, we have nothing. It has the \"classic anonymity of the black subject whose particulars are irrelevant for the early modern English historical record,\" as Habib describes it. It is very likely that there are many individuals who simply went unrecorded. The reason as to why we know of this girl of African ancestry is because she was most likely given as a gift to Elizabeth I. Unfortunately, the scarcity of sources in the matter makes it difficult to give an in-depth and detailed description of the live of these (to us) anonymous people of color in European courts. \n\nYet, they are there. In household registries, on tournament rolls, in parish records and many other that records their presence, their baptisms, their marriages, their children, their deaths and their burials. The presence of people of color in a period movie should only be seen as an acceptance of that fact and an attempt to depict the historical diversity of European courts during the 16th century."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/51593/image.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "6hvotw", "title": "I'm a knight in the mid 15th century. I'm commissioning my first full plate harness. Once I choose the armorer, how much actual influence do I have on the details of what my armor will look like when finished?", "selftext": "The mid-late 15th century when plate was flourishing seems to be the era where many people take the popular image of the knight. And it seems that the era had a great variety in the options or aesthetics for different pieces of armor. So the question is, once I decide on who is going to make my armor, how much say do I actually have in the final result?\n\nWould there be a long meeting discussing, say, whether I want an Armet or a Sallet? Or pointed sabatons instead of squared ones? Or fully articulated gauntlets vs armored mittens? Or one Pauldren bugger than the other? How would I even be able to decide? Would there be a book of drawings of the things he can make, or would he maybe have examples on display of the styles he can use?\n\nOr would each armorer basically have their own signature style with just a little variation? And if I wanted something different I'd simply have to contract a different person who makes armor closer to my preferences?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6hvotw/im_a_knight_in_the_mid_15th_century_im/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dj5eg6i"], "score": [7], "text": ["This is a fantastic question. First of all, I apologize for the late answer - I was away this weekend, and then needed to consult my sources. With that said, here it goes.\n\nThe short answer to this is yes, buyers of a custom-made armour in the 15th century absolutely could select 'options' when discussing their armour with the armourer that would make it.  As the armourer Martin Rondelle of Bruges bragged to John Paston (of East Anglia in England) in 1473:\n\n > ..Moreover, I have heard that you would like to have a full armour. As I recently took your measurements when you were in this town of Bruges, you know that I still have them for all pieces. For this reason, if you would like me to make it for you, I will do it willingly and all the elements that you would like made. With regard to the price, I shall ensure that you shall be satisfied with me. So, when you know what pieces you would like to have and the style and the day you would like to receive them through someone with whom I can deal in your name and who will pay me a deposit, I will work so well that, God willing, you will praise me.\n\nNow, first of all this letter is a great piece of salesmanship. But a good salesman doesn't promise more than he can deliver, especially when the final payment will be received on receipt of the finished product! So it is telling that Rondelle offers Paston his choice of both 'pieces' (IE, what individual pieces of armour he would like) and the overall 'style.' Since Paston is in the market for a full armour, the choice of pieces may refer to choosing between options for the armour's elements, such as between a Sallet and an armet for the helmet. 'Style' here probably refers to the the decorative scheme (fluted versus not, applied brass borders or not, the patterns to stamp on those borders), but it can also refer to a more fundamental question of construction - how long the skirt is (long in the English fashion, shorter in the neatherlandish/flemish/French/Italian fashion), what the construction of the guantlets is (mitten, half-mitten, fingered), how the pauldrons/spaulders are constructed. Importantly, this is an international order, being ordered by a man in a country that had both its own native armour style and a variety of foreign influences, and being ordered from a man who was in a country with a combination of native and Italian armourers. Both Paston and Rondelle would be acquainted with a variety of armour styles.\n\nWe have other examples. In 1438 the Duke of Burgundy ordered gauntlets in 'The English Fashion' - specifically requesting a distinctive, foreign style for his own gauntlets. Orders for armour (even mass orders) often specify the helmet type, sallet - armet, etc. The type of helmet was not merely assumed. \n\nWe also have surviving armours that appear to show stylistic elements of their buyer's country, not of their maker's country. A dramatic example is the 'Export' armours of Brescia and Milan, which were fluted (in a way that Milanese armours weren't). Even more extreme, the armours 'alla tedesca' of the late 15th century look very nearly like later 15th century 'Gothic' armours from Southern Germany. \n\nIn at least one example we find a maker of 'classic' Milanese armour adapting his work to a foreign client. Tomaso Missaglia is from the most famous family of Milanese armourers in the 15th century - not just armourers, they were merchant/capitalists (industrialists, almost) whose commercial interests included branches in multiple European Countries and multiple Italian cities as well as mutliple workshops in Milan. Collectors value their work as an examplar of the 15th century Milanese style [see a late example here](_URL_0_). Elements of this style include armet helmets, asymmetrical pauldrons, and asymmetrical arm defenses (features a heavy elbow guard on the left arm, the gaurd of the vambrace). However, in the Kunsthistorichesmuseum in Vienna we see the [armour of Friedrich of Pflaz, Count Palatine of the Rhine](_URL_1_). Note its design - symmetrical spaulders with besagews, a great bascinet (of the sort that Italians had never worn much), and symmetrical vambraces. Now, this armour is still identifiably 'Italian' in make - we see a high lance rest attachment via a pin-and-staple, vambraces rivetted together at the elbow (rather than being made in 3 parts), a strapped plackart (lower breastplate) and other features. So what we see is an armourer working within some basic assumptions of how armour is put together (which he takes from his training) mixing and matching elements for his client. And this is how armourers worked generally - they had basic construction elements that they took from their training, but they were able to adapt the details to the needs of the client.\n\nNow, it should be said that this flexibility is much more likely from centers of armour production that served international markets, or were part of a large cross-cultural exchange. I detect less 'borrowing' and adaptation in the works of south German armourers in the 'high gothic' period (which was not very long, c.1460-1485, but which is famous due to the beauty of the armours produced). But then, at this time Augsburg was not the international armouring center it would become as the power of its Habsburg patrons expanded across Europe.\n\nIn the 16th century we have even more evidence of how armour was bought. We have pattern books, which could be used to select designs for decoration and armour designs. We also have corpus's of armours that seem to show the stylistic preferences of the purchaser - for instance, Charles V's armours all begin to feature the Virgin Mary prominently on the breastplate in the 1530's, around the time his struggles against both North African 'Moorish' powers and reforming 'heretics' in Germany were intensifying. He also seems to have a fondness for parellel or radiating bands of gold, often sunken into the armour - a feature seen on other 16th century German armours, but not nearly as much as on Charles'. Beyond this, we have a wealth of documentary evidence of how armour was bought, and what people specified when buying it.\n\nTo conclude, when you comissioned an armour to be made *for your*, customization was one of the perks you were buying with all that extra money (at least several times the cost of an 'off the rack' or used harness). And it should be remembered that truly custom armour was the privelege of the elite of the elite - the upper echelons of the military aristocracy and royalty. Most fully armoured men at arms (people who were in the wealthier portion of society already) wold wear armour bought 'off the rack' or perhaps used, whether they were buying it themselves or whether it was bought for them by wealthier employers or patrons. This was not the cruder 'munition' armour worn by infantrymen - it was full armour, constructed like any 'knightly' armour, but without either the fit or the finish (or the customization options) offered by a bespoke armourer. It is like the differences between a perfectly fine suit purchased at a department store and a bespoke suit from Saville Row. To extend the metaphor, munition armour would be like khakis and a polo from Target.\n\nSources:\n\nMatthais Pfaffenbichler - Armourers\n\nTobias Capwell - Armour of the English Knight 1400-1450\n\nNickolas Dupras - Armourers and their Workshops \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ab/36/1f/ab361f9b61e3dca5e6d675804e6061de.jpg", "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/27/fc/9927fc46eef8575f91eacd9169aebab8.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1cdm8x", "title": "Is there evidence of Hua Mulan's existence outside of the ballad? Did the ballad have an impact on the perception of women in China?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cdm8x/is_there_evidence_of_hua_mulans_existence_outside/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9fpitd", "c9fxtuw"], "score": [8, 8], "text": ["Sorry this might not be the best answer.  \n\nProbably not, based on analysis and controversy over the original composition of the song.\n\nFor instance, one controversy involves when and where the events in the song supposedly took place.  If there was corroborating historical evidence for her existence, this kind of debate would either not take place or would mention it as a compelling fact.\n\n[Source.](_URL_1_)\n\nFor what little it's worth, the [Chinese wiki page](_URL_0_) also says as much.\n\n", "Without mention in the histories or other sources, we have nothing but a song. A lovely song, but just a song. There was a chapter on \"Exemplary Women\" in the biographies of the history of the Northern Wei, but she wasn't in it, so there is little reason to suspect she was a well known historical figure. Instead she has been interpreted as an archetypal character used to represent different (mostly martial, but also filial) values at different times, with different tellings of her tale. \n  \nEDIT: I missed your second question!  \nI think it is more important to look at the ballad, and the growth in popularity of her story, and the literature/drama surrounding her from the Ming dynasty on, as reflections of the perception of women in China, and not things that had an impact on the perception of women. I am only now reading the prologue, so I cannot give a good review, but *Mulan\u2019s Legend and Legacy in China and the United States* by Lan Dong seems to be THE book for your question.   \nHere is a quote from the prologue -   \n\"This book argues that, instead of being considered a model character at the first dissemination of her story, Mulan has evolved into an ideal heroine during a lengthy process of storytelling and retelling. The ethi- cal and moral values that her image embodies reflect a collection of the virtues found in a typology of heroines in premodern Chinese culture. The sketchy portrayal in the \u201cBallad\u201d enables varied interpretations of the ethics implied by the character and her unconventional behavior. One conceptualization takes Mulan as the exemplification of the martial tradition applied to both men and women in the northern literature in premodern China (Hu Shi; Wang Zhong 147\u201349; Chen Youbing 47\u201348). Another interpretation underscores the Confucian idea of filial piety to\njustify her unusual actions (Zhang Rufa). In yet another view, Mulan\u2019s story reveals that a female protagonist can be cherished for her talents beyond the domestic sphere (Wang Rubi; Zhang Jing 47). All these read- ings between the lines have contributed to the character\u2019s iconic image; her name has become synonymous with \u201cheroine\u201d in Mandarin, and her story is known in almost every household in China.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B1%E6%9C%A8%E5%85%B0", "http://www.xys.org/xys/netters/Fang-Zhouzi/essays/mulan.txt"], []]}
{"q_id": "2dqea5", "title": "Did the Vikings leave any noticeable genetic impact on the indigenous population of Newfoundland?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dqea5/did_the_vikings_leave_any_noticeable_genetic/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjs8mun", "cjs941j"], "score": [16, 2], "text": ["There is no indication that there was any intermingling between the Vikings and the Beothuk. Keep in mind though that the Beothuk were all killed off by 1829. ", "I know the Vikings left Dupuytren's Contracture almost everywhere they went. It is a genetic disease specific to northern parts of Europe that is always passed on in the male line. It is present in every location the Vikings occupied for any large period of time. However I do not know if this is true for Newfoundland. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "43fb29", "title": "To what extent was Catalonia a \"successful anarchy-syndicst experiment\" before it was repressed during the Spanish Civil War? I've heard this claim a lot from the anarchist left. Is there a definitive book on the period?", "selftext": "Obviously definitions matter a lot here but I don't think anyone is confused as to what I'm asking. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43fb29/to_what_extent_was_catalonia_a_successful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czicp7s"], "score": [9], "text": ["If you could provide a source for your quote we would have an easier time answering your question. The Spanish Civil War involved a mish mash of ideologies, and evolved over time. There were certainly socialist and communists in Spain during the Civil War, but they were not operating in any utopia. Paul Preston's 'The Spanish Civil War' describes nearly every part of the struggle as torturous to the populace. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4vqwnw", "title": "Why do we put stamps on the top-right of an envelope?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vqwnw/why_do_we_put_stamps_on_the_topright_of_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6144tj", "d61i0go"], "score": [13, 8], "text": ["In the United States, we do it [because the United States Postal Service requires that we do.](_URL_1_) \n\nWhy do they specify the upper-right? As near as I can tell, it appears to be based on tradition. The first postage stamps were issued in the United States in 1847. The system before that involved the local postmaster hand-writing the postage on an envelope. The postage could be paid at time of sending or by the recipient. In any case, the postmaster wrote the postage in the upper-right. Later, this was standardized when automatic cancelling machines were introduced in the late 19th century. Think of how when you get a letter, the stamp has been cancelled with an ink stamp. For a while now that's been done automatically, rather than by hand.\n\nSource: [This nifty USPS history published by the USPS](_URL_0_)", "The UK introduced the world's first postage stamps in 1840. From the outset, the Royal Mail asked people to put stamps on the top-right of the envelope. [This site](_URL_0_) has an image of a complete sheet of the \"Penny Black\" (the first postage stamp ever issued, 1840) as well as a complete sheet of the \"Penny Red\" (1841). In both cases, note the inscription along the margins of the sheet: \"*Place the Labels ABOVE the Address and towards the RIGHT HAND SIDE of the Letter.*\"\n\nThe prescription of a particular location for the stamp on letters was convenient to post office employees, who at that time were required to cancel each stamp by hand. I have however never heard of a stamp not being accepted due solely to its position on the envelope (in the UK or any other country), so it seems like the admonition to put the stamp in the top-right was always a recommendation rather than a commandment.\n\nThe UK also introduced widespread, and very successful, reforms of its public postal system in 1840, and in subsequent decades other countries viewed the UK as a model to emulate, both in reforming their own postal systems and introducing postage stamps. I don't know why any other country chose to follow the UK's system of stamp placement (and indeed many seem not to have, at least initially) but as the UK was seen as an example of good postal practices in general, I would assume other countries which followed the UK's lead on stamp placement did so for that reason.\n\nNow, none of this actually answers *why* the UK chose the top-right in the first place, and unfortunately I can only speculate as to that, so I won't. But at any rate the top-right corner was selected as the optimum location for the first postage stamps in the world, and other countries seem to followed the British example.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://about.usps.com/publications/pub100.pdf", "http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/604.htm"], ["http://philatelics.org/~allan/shrop/blacks/page1.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5t12oi", "title": "I'm a governor of a Roman city. My city has been kept safe by a wall for many years but the citizens have out-grown this perimeter. Is there any way I can modify and rebuild the wall to allow my city to expand or am I just going to have to establish new districts outside the perimeter defenses?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t12oi/im_a_governor_of_a_roman_city_my_city_has_been/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddjzzf2", "ddk0lkz"], "score": [27, 3], "text": ["In one of the more important cities for my era of study, Milan, this actually happened in the year 286. The ancient city, called Mediolanum, had outgrown its walls. Consequentially, Emperor Maximilian commissioned an expansion. You can see the expansion of the walls [here, marked by a blue line](_URL_2_). \n\nIt was common for there to be small communities outside a large city's walls; expansions like those in Mediolanum were undertaken when these communities became too large to effectively evacuate in times of crisis. However, most ancient city walls would allow for large open spaces within the limits of the walls, giving the city space to grow. An exaggerated example is Syracuse, in Sicily, [where the walls constructed by the ruler Dionysius in the 5th century BCE defended a massive area even larger than the modern city limits](_URL_1_). [The walls of Rome](_URL_0_) also allowed for large green spaces between the limit of urbanization and the actual wall. \n\nThis practice would continue until the middle ages, for example look at [this representation](_URL_3_) of the Italian city of Siena. ", "By and large, when Roman cities expanded beyond their walls there was no real attempt to make additions or rebuildings. From a practical defensive standpoint, you don't really want a bunch of additions because that makes defense more difficult. It is a basic surface-to-volume ratio situation, as the ideal is the shortest possible wall circuit encompassing the largest possible area. Adding a bunch of additions greatly increases the \"surface area\" without greatly increasing the \"volume\" and so are impractical--in fact Chinese siege manuals--to use a comparison--generally recommend setting fire to suburban development to cut down on defensive complexity.\n\nBut there is a hidden assumption here, were walls for defense? It is a bit of a counter intuitive question, but if you look at individual cases, say the spate of wall building in second/third century British cities, it doesn't really make sense. There were no foreign invasions threatening London or Cirencester, so why bother building walls (also why build them so neatly, but that is a different issue)? It is probably because having a city wall was an important status symbol, and so rather than seeing Roman walls as practical defensive structures, we should often see them as decorative.\n\nIm having a bit of difficulty finding the particular papers related to this, but JS Wacher's *The Towns of Roman Britain* discusses the wall building."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Muraurelien_planrome2.png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Mura_di_Siracusa.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Storia_di_Milano_%28Roma%29.jpg", "http://www.ortodepecci.it/sito/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1384331499931.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "a7bnvk", "title": "If Socrates was sentenced to death for his teachings, why did Plato not get in trouble for disseminating those teachings?", "selftext": "And if the true reason was Socrates' past friendly relations with the Thirty Tyrants, Alcibiades, etc., Plato still seemed to have had similar beliefs and moved in the same circles, so why was he left alone? Was he just excused on the grounds of his relative youth and obscurity at the time?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a7bnvk/if_socrates_was_sentenced_to_death_for_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ec2jkqn"], "score": [47], "text": ["Briefly, because Plato (who had just started his literary career at the time of Socrates' death) was still an obscure figure, with no school or students of his own. \n\nOver his decades as the gadfly of Athens, Socrates seems to have accumulated quite a few enemies. According to Diogenes Laertius: \n\n\"there were three accusers \\[of Socrates\\], Anytus, Lycon and Meletus...Anytus was roused to anger on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians, Lycon on behalf of the rhetoricians, Meletus of the poets, all three of which classes had felt the lash of Socrates\" (*Lives of the Eminent Philosophers*, 2.39)\n\nThe charge, famously, was impiety: \"Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth.\" (Diogenes, *Lives* 2.40)\n\nIn the jittery social climate following the restoration of the democracy, Socrates (some of whose pupils, as you note, had been associated with the Thirty Tyrants) was especially vulnerable to these charges. But in the end, of course, it was his cheerfully impudent defense that got him sentenced to death. \n\nPlato was already known to be a close associate of Socrates by the time of trial. In fact Diogenes, reporting a later tradition, notes:\n\nJustus of Tiberias in his book entitled *The Wreath* says that in the course of the trial Plato mounted the platform and began: \"Though I am the youngest, men of Athens, of all who ever rose to address you\" \u2013 whereupon the judges shouted out, \"Get down! Get down!\" (2.41)\n\nYet despite this public stand (if it indeed happened), Plato simply was not prominent enough to be prosecuted. His early dialogues (which may have just begun to circulate among his friends in 399 BCE) were not yet publicly known, and he had no pupils. \n\nPlato was worried enough about the possibility of prosecution to withdraw to Megara immediately after Socrates' trial (Diogenes, *Lives* 3.6). He returned to Athens, however, a few months later, apparently after the Athenians showed remorse for their execution of Socrates (2.43). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9yaa97", "title": "In the show Versailles (which takes place in the 17th century) nobles are asked to show the paperwork proving their nobility. What would these papers say?", "selftext": "Some characters in the show claim their noble family goes all the way back to the early medieval period. Today most people can\u2019t speak past their great grand parents. So what kind of meticulous record keeping did they have that would prove you had such old noble blood?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9yaa97/in_the_show_versailles_which_takes_place_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ea0i0xg"], "score": [7], "text": ["Also, if I may ask, did this actually happen?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3ud27l", "title": "Did John the Baptist \"invent\" the practice of baptism?", "selftext": "Wikipedia says baptism has a precursor in tvilah and general ritual washing, but differs in that baptism is only administered once.\n\nWas John the Baptist the first person to perform this kind of baptism? Was he responsible for the invention of the baptism as a singular, transformative event? What purpose did it serve in his messianic movement?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ud27l/did_john_the_baptist_invent_the_practice_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxdyqbd", "cxdz5lk", "cxee9aa"], "score": [4, 14, 3], "text": ["I don't have enough time to make a long answer right now (boutta sneak off to Gran's from some of that Thanksloving), but short answer is no. [Baptismal fonts were discovered at Qumran](_URL_0_) (think Dead Sea Scrolls), which existed ca. 100 BC, but scholars think it was more of an ablution ceremony than a covenant with Christ ordinance.", "While this answer is more /r/ELINT, I'll answer from a biblical doctrine angle.\n\nCleanliness is the major point of the Old Testament. God is pure. And to be a member of God's chosen people in the Old Testament, purity was to be expected. This is why there were odd rules about not eating certain kinds of meat or wearing certain garments. It was the job of the High Priests to mediate for the people by approaching God in the temple. To do this, they were instructed to be clean in every way: their clothes, their bodies, what they ate, their hearts etc. including ritual washing as they prepared to enter \"the holy of holies\" where the High Priest met with God once a year to atone for the sins of the nation of Israel.\n\n\"Baptism\" comes from the Greek (baptizo: to plunge, dip or immerse). With most of the OT written in Hebrew and much of the NT written in Greek, Matthew (1st book in the NT) is the first place in the bible we encounter the word Baptism or Baptist in the character of John.\n\nIn the New Testament, Baptism is constantly associated with repentance or confession. Very rarely are the two terms far apart especially with regards to John the Baptist. He also said \"I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.\" Early in the NT (during Jesus' life), baptism is introduced as taking place in a river and as a reaction to confession or repentance. Later after Jesus's ascension, Acts 2 describes the first Christians getting baptized in the Holy Spirit and no water is present. Following this event, baptism is seen often among early Christians immediately following a conversion and often with water. When someone is converted to Christianity (Simon the Magician, and the Ethiopian eunuch [Acts 8], Saul of Tarsus [Acts 9], Paul and Silas's jailer [Acts 16] etc), they are immediately prompted/encouraged to be baptized.\n\n Nowhere in the New Testament is baptism paralleled to Old Testament purification. Old Testament cleanliness was preventative, New Testament Baptism is reactionary. Therefore, while many historical religious ceremonies introduce the step of \"ritual washing\", Baptism as introduced in the New Testament (first through John the Baptist) is unlike most religious washings. Baptism is in response to the singular event of conversion.", "It's unclear that baptism was only administered once. Reread the parts of the New Testament that involve John the Baptist ([Wikipedia has a list](_URL_1_). You certainly *can* read them as something that happened once, but you can also read them as something where if you sin again, you have to repent again (and get baptized again). That's probably more in line with the evidence we have from Qumran--that ritual immersion was an important and regular practice for at least some Jews of this period. \n\nBut neither in the New Testamanet and Josephus (our two accounts closest chronologically to the historical John) is there a once and done implication. Indeed, the later explanations for why Baptism is a single transformative event--either the erasure of original sin, accepting Jesus as one's savior, etc--aren't implied in the texts. Look instead to Luke, for example, where we see John as a social reformer or in Mark where, to my eyes, the clearest context is that these are earthly, lived sins that one is repenting for. \n\nAs for John's movement, I think it's clearest from Josephus:\n\n > [John] who was a good man, and commanded the Jews irate, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.\n\nSo John's movement was one about personal transformation--perhaps in preparation for a coming future event (like Jesus, or a day of judgement, or whatever), perhaps not. But I don't think you should assume it was only possible to administer once. It should only be administered once, because there was supposed to be a spiritual cleansing along with the bodily cleansing (perhaps relate this to Jesus's, \"now go and sin no more\"), but there isn't a hard limit implied anywhere in the texts if the spiritual purification faltered and needed to be reperformed. Indeed, [Mandaeans](_URL_0_), who claim spiritual descent from John the Baptist (historically, this lineage is questioned) but reject Jesus, continue to perform ritual baptisms, and not only once. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2265.1960.tb00187.x/abstract"], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeans", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Baptist#In_Mark"]]}
{"q_id": "2upzzi", "title": "The new Total War game focuses around the idea that Attila the Hun was a sign of the coming apocalypse for the Romans. How true is this?", "selftext": "\"We've got the seven seals of the apocalypse, as each of these seals breaks you get one step closer to Armageddon and the world ending completely, which is what the Romans thought was happening. Attila the Hun was death on a horse, and you didn't really want to get involved\"\n\n\n\"Going back to the religion, that's a really nice point because we are telling that story of the apocalypse as seen through the eyes of the Catholic factions. So we are focusing on west and east Rome, and how they literally thought the world was going to end because of the climate change and how Attila was this god coming to punish them for their sins.\"\n\n\nSome quotes from an interview. How much truth is in this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2upzzi/the_new_total_war_game_focuses_around_the_idea/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coaqm3p"], "score": [19], "text": ["My answer [here](_URL_0_) should help. Let me know if you have any questions!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nn7gx/in_the_new_game_total_war_attila_the_makers_want/"]]}
{"q_id": "2kd1ym", "title": "What would it have been like to be a upper middle class/royal virgin bride on her wedding night in the Georgian/Regency era in Britain?", "selftext": "I have always wondered how much information these high-born ladies had regards sex. \nI know the men were well-versed on the topic, but for an upper class woman and members of the royal family being married off for money etc, would they have known the basics of sex and what to expect on their wedding nights?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kd1ym/what_would_it_have_been_like_to_be_a_upper_middle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clkblfs"], "score": [66], "text": ["My instinct is to say that it would really depend upon the individual family in question and how frank and open they were. The period in question was one of some transition with regards to society's views on sex and sexuality, shifting from an earlier period of relative candor to the development of much more prudish attitudes that define middle class society in the nineteenth century. That said, it would not have been unheard of for an older female relative to discreetly inform a young bride of what to expect, though how explicit those instructions were may never be fully known since they likely would not have been committed to writing and would have, instead, been passed from mouth to ear.\n\nGiven the emphasis placed upon conception and the bearing of children upon all marriages, but particularly those of a political nature (as most royal marriages and many noble marriages would have been), a bride might be expected to know something of what to do in order to fulfill her expected 'duties'. Moreover, it was common medical belief in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that in order for a woman to conceive, she must experience an orgasm during intercourse, so that it is possible that such 'facts' would be passed down to a prospective wife to prepare her as well.\n\nI would suggest looking at G.J. Barker-Benfield. *The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain* (Chicago, 1992) since, if I recall correctly, there's a section around page 125 or so that discusses contemporary attitudes towards female sexual knowledge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "15orr4", "title": "[META] A reminder to all about downvotes and staying civil.", "selftext": "(This meta post was approved by the mods)\n\nHi all!\n\nI've been browsing the /new section of this great subreddit for a while and I've noticed a certain trend - almost every new question posted to this subreddit begins its life with a downvote or two, some of them stay with 0 karma or in the negative even a serious answer to OP's question was posted.\n\nNow, I'm not saying you shouldn't downvote, but there should be a reason for your downvotes: people come into this subreddit to receive answers and learn new things, downvoting a newcomer's post for no reason makes us look like some gated off community on an ivory tower,  which isn't really the purpose of this subreddit.\n\nIf a question is too broad (what happened in pre-Colombian America?), ask OP to narrow it down or clarify himself; if a question was asked before (Why do Israel and Palestine fight eachother?), link to the relevant thread; if someone made an error or a fallacy (Why was Italy's army so bad?) explain to him the error of his ways. Don't just downvote and move on without at least giving an explanation, and if you don't feel like doing any of the actions mentioned above, just leave the question there undownvoted.\n\nAlso, do not downvote because the question sounds silly or trivial to you - the history of bovine domestication is just as relevant as the social-economical structure of the Soviet union, and not everyone online received the same education as you did. Unless someone is clearly trolling, there's no need to downvote a basic question.\n\n**tl;dr**: Don't just downvote and move on, be helpful instead.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15orr4/meta_a_reminder_to_all_about_downvotes_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7oetvm", "c7oewjh", "c7oj9om", "c7ojqao", "c7om37w"], "score": [24, 65, 7, 5, 8], "text": ["I've also noticed a trend that people downvote questions which have already been asked here a lot (like the ones [on our Popular Questions page](_URL_1_)): it seems to be almost a reaction of \"Not this old question *again*...\"\n\nWe don\u2019t *want* to discourage people asking questions here. As per [this previous discussion]( _URL_0_), we welcome even \"the simple questions\". We want to encourage an atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable asking questions \u2013 even questions about things which may be obvious to many other people, or which have been asked before. Everyone comes to learning in their own time. We've also had times where someone adds a new point of view or new information to a new version of a popular question.\n\nAlso... without people asking questions... r/**Ask**Historians wouldn't exist. :)\n", "This post makes me feel a lot better, as I'd posted two previous questions that I then deleted after receiving a quick splash of down votes and a few \"This questions is stupid, everyone knows this\"-like responses.\n\nGlad to be subscribed to /r/AskHistorians!", "Reminders like this are useful periodically as new Redditors are exposed to this community. We've seen the result, on Reddit as a whole, of floods of new users coming in who have changed the culture--to some extent because reddiquette was never explained to them. The values weren't instilled in the new waves and they're being lost. The only way to ensure this sub doesn't fall victim to the same fate is to regularly explain what you've outlined here. \n\nSo thank you for that, /u/whitesock.\n\nedit: punctuation", "I'd like to preface this by admitting that I occasionally crave instant gratification, and with the attentionspan of a stoned gnat, and a complete lack of shame, would happily stand up in the middle of a room and ask the most idiotic question possible... \n\nBut since we're not in a room, I would have to WAIT for your response. No way I can do that -- **so, I Google it.** \n\nThat is truly a part of my motivation: lack of patience. But on a more positive and important note, it is also a matter of RESPECT for those whose brains I'm asking to pick. \n\nIt's a balancing act. ", "Speaking as someone who has downvoted their fair share of new posts, I can say that even with the most inane and poorly written questions, I'll try to give the asker *something*, even if it is only \"You have posed a poorly phrased question, please hang up and try again.\" With hackneyed questions, I've in the past directed them to previous questions (which the new wiki makes amazingly easy, thanks mods!). Some feedback on why the question is terrible is far preferable to a simple downvote. \n\nAs this sub has grown, I've had to retrain myself to acknowledge that other people don't know what I know -- to relearn empathy. It's easy to dismiss questions about what seems like basic knowledge, but basic knowledge is like common sense: neither basic nor common. \n\nI have a friend who seriously didn't know Britain was an island until his early 20s, but is remarkably brilliant in other ways. Whenever I encounter a question that seems painfully ignorant to me, I think of my friend. Far better that someone takes the time to share their knowledge than allow ignorance to persist."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14s6tz/meta_please_stop_with_the_simple_questions/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2rcss1", "title": "What were some dirty tricks used by soldiers and armies in the Middle ages or Medieval/Classical periods?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rcss1/what_were_some_dirty_tricks_used_by_soldiers_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnev5s5", "cnevk4i", "cnevn35", "cnewzj9"], "score": [18, 11, 3, 2], "text": ["Signifying something as a 'dirty trick' presupposes mutually-agreed upon standards of conduct in warfare that it would contravene, and for most of (European) history this has not *really* been the case. General principles (capture rather than kill nobility, for instance) may have been perceptible but usually those had an underlying layer of practicality (prisoners/hostages are more politically useful than corpses). You can find many examples throughout history of military subterfuge, but not much stuff that was roundly condemned as 'dirty.' Even those were usually isolated or unique events. If some 'secret trick' allowed a smaller army to regularly rout a larger one, regardless of circumstance... Would it really stay secret for long?\n\nAs a side note, GoT's fighting and warfare owes much, much more to Errol Flynn and lord of the rings than to history. Don't put too much stock in it.", "Deception plays an important role in all martial systems, from movements of armies to the movements of a body in a duel; what you call dirty tricks, martial writings call sound tactics.  In dueling, the most basic and common deception is the feint: you attack a target knowing your opponent will react, and you redirect your attack to counter that reaction.  \n\nBut you want something more fun... In his 1606 fencing manual, Salvatore Fabris takes a brief look at the rapier with a cloak as an off hand weapon.  He shows an action where the fencer throws his cloak at his opponent's face, and as it opens up and moves forward through the air he puts the point of his sword into the cloak and thrusts forward, through the cape, into the face of his opponent!  You can find the (almost) original illustration of this with a quick google image search.", "You might want to head over to /r/wma and ask in there, there's certainly plenty of dirty tricks as well as some straight up nasty ones in the old manuals. In the meantime, you may find this amusing:\n\n_URL_0_", "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."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://youtu.be/jETLCm7k3sU"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "9loyl9", "title": "Between 1914 and 1918, over 2 million Africans were mobilized for the war effort, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, carriers and civilians died in the conflict. How is the Great War remembered or memorialized in sub-Saharan Africa? How does it shape the story of the people of Africa?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9loyl9/between_1914_and_1918_over_2_million_africans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e78xg0e"], "score": [105], "text": ["To analyze the effect of the Great War in sub-Sahara Africa, we must first have to distance ourselves from our more Euro-centric values when we look at history. Sub-Sahara Africa incorporates numerous ethnicities, languages, religions and is incredibly diverse. The effects of the Great War in Sub-Sahara Africa are as varied as the peoples that live in it. \n\nWhen Colonial powers came to Africa, they imposed their own values of government and what constitutes a nation-state. Oduntan in his thesis, states that the Egba for instance viewed the Great War in terms of their local politics and to take sides as a matter of local practicality and making the best out their situation. Basically, they tried to live their lives as best as possible, as free as possible. \n\nIn addition, some peoples in Africa saw it as way to make it some breathing room, Chafer writes about the Volta-Bani Anticolonial war, a revolt in 1915 against French Colonial rule in the middle of the Great War. \n\nWhile others, as M'Bokolo affirms, especially for African elites, it opened the door for what they saw as an expansion of the African consciousness and a chance to modernize their country along the lines of what Indian nationalists later did. Not only that, it deculturalized the soldiers, and exposed them to other ways of doing things, making them unhappy with the current situation in the countries. \n\nNot only that, WWI was a shattering moment, when old lines were destroyed and the dynamic between colonizer and colony came into question. Colonial soldiers were given arms and expected \\*nay\\* encouraged to now kill other white men. Not only that, they had deeply personal and intimate contact with the civilian populations  of Europe.   \n\n\nUltimately, though, the sheer destructiveness of the conflict, and the lack of advancements and recognition by Colonial Authorities, led to an increase in the vocalization of anti-colonial sentiment. \n\nHowever, the legacy of the great War is mostly forgotten, cemeteries to askari, porters and fallen colonial troops are mostly ignored. Local ethnic loyalties, pay and professional advancement was what drew most colonial troops to serve in the Great War, and this sentiment reflects on the legacy of the war in the minds of the peoples of Africa. \n\n So thus, while it did plant the seeds of anti-colonialism, the Great War is seen as ultimately a tragedy, a futile waste of resources, lives and time. A colonial war, waged by Europeans, for Europeans at the cost of their colonies. Something that is best left forgotten.   \n\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)  \n\n\nOduntan, Oluwatoyin B. (2010). [*Elite Identity and Power: A Study of Social Change and Leadership among the Egba of Western Nigeria 1860\u20131950*](_URL_5_) (PDF) (PhD). Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University. pp.\u00a0218\u2013232. [OCLC](_URL_4_) [812072776](_URL_6_). Retrieved 12 November 2017.  \n\n\nChafer, Tony (2005). [\"Review: West African Challenge to Empire: Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War\"](_URL_2_) (PDF). **VIII** (2). African Studies Quarterly. [ISSN](_URL_3_) [2152-2448](_URL_7_). Retrieved 12 November 2017.\n\nM'Bokolo, Elikia \"au coeur de l'ethnie ; ethnies, tribalisme et etat en afrique\", 2007\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-5354", "https://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/counterpoints/how-the-great-war-razed-east-africa/", "http://asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Chafer-BR-Vol8Issue2.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Serial_Number", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCLC", "http://www.obafemio.com/uploads/5/1/4/2/5142021/egba_leadership.pdf", "https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/812072776", "https://www.worldcat.org/issn/2152-2448"]]}
{"q_id": "5odywm", "title": "Were there presidents disliked by public and media more than trump and what happened to them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5odywm/were_there_presidents_disliked_by_public_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcj6msw"], "score": [2], "text": ["This submission has been removed because it involves current events.  To keep from discussion of politics, we have a [20-year rule](_URL_0_) here.  You may want to try /r/ask_politics or another current-events focused sub. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult [this Rules Roundtable](_URL_1_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_current_events", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wqkl/rules_roundtable_5_the_current_eventsmodern/"]]}
{"q_id": "2uvtvp", "title": "According to Wikipedia, the University of Bologna is the oldest university in the world. Why are Islamic schools of learning not counted?", "selftext": "Reading about Al-Azhar University, whose page says it dates back to the tenth century, making it older than Bologna. Why is it not counted as a university?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uvtvp/according_to_wikipedia_the_university_of_bologna/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coc7owu", "coc87kh", "cocfdkr"], "score": [75, 188, 12], "text": ["Because \"university\" is not synonymous with institution of higher education. While there are many different types of higher learning institution and several predate the university, the university has its origins in the High Middle Ages.", "Because many of those universities, including European universities, are quite dissimilar from what we understand to be a university. University and center of learning are not synonymous, and the University of Bologna is the first university in the modern sense of the word, and was the institution to coin the term.\n\nAl-Azhar was originally built as a mosque. Fatimid Caliphs encouraged scholars to study in the mosque, and soon these scholars began to teach classes. On the other hand a university is a guild/corporation-like organization that has a unified curriculum or objective in its classes. There's a group of people who decide \"Okay, this is how this institution will be run, we'll have this guy teach astronomy, this guy teach rhetoric, we'll charge this amount of money etc.\" While Al-Azhar has converted over to a secular university in the modern sense in the last century, the University of Bologna was founded as such, making it the oldest. It was also autonomous, and awarded degrees. Otherwise, we would call the schools of Socrates and other ancient/medieval schools. ", "As has been said before, a university is not the same as a school of higher learning. Because nobody stated explicitly what qualities designate a university, I will give a short definition:\n\nI quote Walter Ruegg, wo paraphrases a university as \"_[...] a community of teachers and taught, accorded certain rights, such as administrative autonomy and the determination and realization of curricula (courses of study) and of the objectives of research as well as the adward of publicly recognized degrees_\" [[volume I, page xix]](_URL_0_).\n\nInstitutes in the Islamic world did e.g. not adward degrees, hence they can not be considered a university. This doesn't devalue the quality of their teaching though! Calling an institution \"university\" is more a question of nomenclature and terminology.\n\n\nSources: The four volume History of the University, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens and Walter R\u00fcegg (eds.), Cambridge University Press, between 1992 and 2011"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://books.google.de/books?id=5Z1VBEbF0HAC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=A+History+of+the+University+in+Europe&amp;hl=de&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=EOPTVLX6O4fcaqm-gGA&amp;ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "4hjc8k", "title": "Were there any WWII bomber tail gunner aces?", "selftext": "How effective were the tail / under cockpit gun bubbles of WWII?  Are their many examples of enemy fighter planes being taken down by them? Was it possible to become a \"gunner ace\"?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hjc8k/were_there_any_wwii_bomber_tail_gunner_aces/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2q6pi4"], "score": [54], "text": ["There are definitely some examples of lost and damaged fighters as a result of rear facing guns.  For example, famous Japanese ace Sakai Saburo was seriously wounded by rear gunners of a flight of SBDs.  However, it's very difficult to compile a statistical measure of the effectiveness of rear turrets.\n\nOne difficulty is that bombers usually flew in formations and an attack by fighters from the rear was generally met by fire rear facing guns in several planes.  Tallying the accounts of many gunners into valid statistical counts of planes damaged or destroyed was very difficult.  For this reason, there are no highly publicized accounts of \"tail gunner aces\", it's too difficult to sort out who hit what when a formation of bombers defends itself.\n\nProbably the most important quality of rear turrets is that they make a \"zero deflection\" shot from directly astern vastly more difficult and dangerous.  Many fighter pilots instead chose a safer \"high deflection\" shot from another angle, which is a much more difficult feat.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6cf8xt", "title": "Did men really throw their coats on the water so women wouldn't get their shoes soaked?", "selftext": "I can't believe that possibly being a thing, I mean, why would anyone do that? Where did the movies take that from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cf8xt/did_men_really_throw_their_coats_on_the_water_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhuk7fr"], "score": [9], "text": ["Follow up question, I hope this is relevant enough: How expensive would a typical tailored gentleman's coat be around the regency era? Were the amounts Beau Brummel spent on his clothes as absurd then as they sound today?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5lpuqn", "title": "Who are the Sabians mentioned in the Qur'an as \"People of the Book\" alongside Jews and Christians? What did they believe, and do any texts from them survive?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lpuqn/who_are_the_sabians_mentioned_in_the_quran_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbxqaqi"], "score": [71], "text": ["No one has been able to match the Quranic and Hadithic descriptions of the Sabians to any historical group. I go into more detail [here](_URL_0_). It's possible they were some Mandaean or Jewish Christian group, but it's possible they were something else entirely. This essential ambiguity of the category let later Muslim administrators protect various local groups as \"Sabians\". "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5jom6f/who_were_the_sabians_that_were_mentioned/dbi3npj/"]]}
{"q_id": "1ha9xl", "title": "Has the Hajj ever been significantly disrupted or cancelled?", "selftext": "There's [some concern about a virus](_URL_0_) in the Middle East right now and fears that it could use the upcoming Hajj pilgrimage to spread even further.\n\nSo it got me thinking: with all the turmoil, plagues, world wars, and other international crises between Islam's emergence in the 700s and today, has the global Muslim pilgrimage ever been seriously affected or even cancelled before?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ha9xl/has_the_hajj_ever_been_significantly_disrupted_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["casdm0z", "casg47m", "caspbuj"], "score": [59, 35, 4], "text": ["This wasn't *huge*, but in 1987, some Iranian Shiites clashed with Saudi security forces, and some 400 died.  This prompted the Saudi government to restrict the number of Iranians it would let in for the *hajj*, which made Iran boycott the *hajj*.", "The qaumathians were a Shia sect and in 929 they raided Mecca and tore down the black veil around the kaba. They removed the black stone and took it back to Hajar where they had their headquarters. It stayed there for 12 years and no one could complete the hajj at that time. I wrote a paper on the qaumathians around two years ago, I can't remember what my sources were now but I'll try and find them and post them here. ", "In the first decade of the 1800s, the Wahabbi armies of the first Saudi state were engaged in a war with the Sharif of Mecca for control of the Hijaz. This conquest did result in the disruption of caravans trips to Medina or Mecca in 1804-06. John Sabini' *Armies in the Sand* discusses this period and the subsequent Saudi-Egyptian war.\n\nAdditionally, concerns about plague are nothing new in Mecca. Sabini also mentions a plague that quarantined the port of Jiddah in the 1770s or 1780s. Also, [this person's thesis](_URL_0_) examines late 19th and early 20th century British imperialist concerns of the Hajj being a vector for plague (among other subjects)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.rferl.org/content/hajj-fears-mers-virus/25024828.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&amp;context=history_theses"]]}
{"q_id": "282u1v", "title": "After the elevator was invented, how did the perception of top floors of buildings change? Was it a swift or gradual cultural shift?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/282u1v/after_the_elevator_was_invented_how_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci7j5qh"], "score": [2], "text": ["Before the invention of lifts, flats/offices on the top floors of buildings were the least desirable as obviously you had to walk up several flights of stairs to get to them. After the invention of the lift, however, they became more desirable, as the higher up you were, the less pollution and noise you would experience from the streets below (horse-drawn carts were noisy things)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9se19j", "title": "When reading about Caesar and Pompey's wars, we see them \"raising legions\" in places such as Greece, Africa, Spain, etc. How many Roman citizens would actually be present in these provinces during the Republic?", "selftext": "It seems Roman generals can summon legions out of thin air in every corner of the empire. I know Roman colonies were a thing, and citizenship was extended to Auxilia veterans, and that non citizens were also used as soldiers, but the bulk of a Legion's force was still largely citizens I assume. How come so many Romans seemed to already live outside Italy by the Caesarion Civil war? Citizenship had only recently been granted to all Italians, it seems the Roman diaspora was immense already by the Republic. How many Roman colonies were scattered throughout the Mediterranean world?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9se19j/when_reading_about_caesar_and_pompeys_wars_we_see/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8p7z84"], "score": [21], "text": ["There were more Romans abroad in the first half of the first century than you might think. In this \"Roman\" category I also include those who had been \"Italians\" before the Social War (90-88 BCE) and instantly became Roman citizens under the *lex Iulia.*  The Italian merchant class had enclaves in every corner of the empire and beyond, though we only get scattered references to them. For instance, when Mithridates invaded the Roman territory of Bithynia in Spring of 88 BCE, he was persuaded to perpetrate a radical action: to kill all the \"Romans\" there. Our sources for this are pretty lousy (Appian and Plutarch), but Appian says 80,000 \"Romans\" (this includes \"Italians\") were killed in a single stroke. Even if he is doubling his figures, it still seems to be a significant number. Of course not all of these \"Romans\" were fighting men, but you get the idea.\n\nSimilarly: when Pompey fled to Greece during the Civil War, the backbone of the forces he raised were technically Roman citizens. We don't know the percentage, and we do hear about distinctions between Spanish \"auxiliary\" infantry (vs Roman legions), but it isn't exactly clear how that worked. I suspect every legion had a core of Romans, especially the centurions, and were filled in as best as could be managed.  A while ago I wrote on this topic in this subreddit, and said this about Pompey's forces in the Civil War:\n\n > Lentulus Crus, technically a consul, had raised two legions in Asia. We know these were Romans because we know that Romans of Jewish descent were exempted in this conscription effort thanks to his decree, preserved by Josephus (Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, 14.228ff). Metellus Scipio was to bring two additional legions from Syria, and Pompey's own son went to Egypt to round up what he could find. These legions might have, and probably were, under-strength, but they formed the citizen core of Pompey's army. By the time of Pharsalus, we hear of legions from Cilicia on the right wing, supported by auxiliary infantry from Spain. We know he also sought and obtained massive numbers of auxiliaries from the various remaining client kingdoms in the East, and he even sent overtures to Parthia asking for support (Dio 42.2.5). Cicero was certainly disgusted by the notion of Pompey's not-so-citizen legions bearing down on Italia: \" I\u2014whom some called the preserver of this city, some its parent\u2014I to bring against it armies of the Getae, Armenians, and Colchians! I to inflict famine on my fellow citizens, devastation upon Italy!\" (Cic. ad Att. 9.10) ([link](_URL_0_))\n\nEven back in 58, Caesar was bending the rules a bit as far as legionary recruitment. When the Helvetii made their move, Caesar tells us that he immediately began raising legions in the extant Gallic provinces. We know that he also recruited among the \"Transpadani,\" a group mixed Gallo-Italians living in the Po valley. They were not technically Roman citizens, though some communities there had various levels of Roman privileges, and we know that Caesar promised those recruits full citizenship after their service. \n\nAs to the number of Roman colonies: the short answer is \"a lot, but not nearly as many as would come later.\"  Before the 50s BCE, the biggest were in Spain (Italica, Corduba, Valencia, Segovia), France (Narbonne), and of course in Italia (Ariminum, Placentia, Salernum, Bononia, Aquileia, etc), and very very few in the East. That means that most of the legions raised in the east by Pompey in 49 were not from colonies, but from these elusive groups of \"Romans\" present for other reasons. The really crazy colonial period in Roman history comes after the second Civil War, the one between Octavian and Antonius, when Augustus settled tens of thousands (possibly over 100k) of troops in new colonies in places all over the Med, from Spain to North Africa to the Near East."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8arhr4/how_did_pompey_raise_legions_in_the_east/"]]}
{"q_id": "2klr2x", "title": "During the Classical period, the Roman Republic/Empire absorbed several kingdoms due to their rulers bequeathing their kingdoms to Rome after their deaths. Why on Earth did they do that?", "selftext": "For example, the kings of Pergamon and the ancient tribal kingdom of the Maures (AKA Mauretania) left their entire state to Rome in their wills when they died. I wonder why they did that? Did they sense the coming storm and did it to avoid eventual wars with Rome, or were prior negotiations between these kings and Rome involved? Did they leave it the 'the Roman state' or to some Roman politician with whom they had a client relationship? Did they never consult their people or at least their kingdom's nobility before they did it?\n  \nDid this happen to any other kingdoms besides Pergamon and Mauretania?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2klr2x/during_the_classical_period_the_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clmo4qy", "clmpmzm", "cln588x"], "score": [43, 18, 6], "text": ["In some cases, it seems like coercion or outright theft. Boudica, a queen of the Iceni, rebelled against Rome after her husband, Prasutagus, [left his kingdom to Rome and his daughters jointly](_URL_1_) to repay debts incurred earlier, or so Roman historians would write. That ended as badly as can be expected, and after Rome seized it all, flogged Boudica, and raped her daughters, the Iceni followed the warrior queen to battle. Cities, inclding London - or Londinium at the time - were burned by the Celts, but eventually the Romans defeated the more poorly trained and equipped tribesmen. \nSo... paying off debt seems to be the surface reason, but also, I'd have to guess that Rome wrote that into history in some cases after they'd already annexed their new acquisition.\n\nHere's the [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) link for a quicker read if you want.", "Ptolemy XI left his Egyptian kingdom to Rome in his will (maybe -- a will was produced as having been lodged in Rome that made this provision, and required Ptolemy XII to bribe Caesar to ignore it, although it was still used to justify the annexation of Cyprus), but Rome did not attempt to enforce this. Egypt was in something of a mess, and Ptolemy XI was installed by Sulla as a pro-Roman king; he had been required to marry Cleopatra Berenice, but mysteriously chose to murder her. Because she was more popular with the locals than he was, Ptolemy XI was promptly murdered by the people of Alexandria. This made it unlikely that his subjects would be terribly likely to accept his having submitted them to Roman rule, so Rome did not contest the inheritance of Ptolemy Auletes in Egypt and of his brother in Cyprus, at least for a little over 22 years, when they annexed the island.\n\n(apologies -- edits because I can't spell today, let me know if I typed anything else horribly)", "I did an undergrad essay on Pergamum so I can shed some light on that kingdom until someone more knowledgable comes along.  From what I read it was becoming apparent that while Pergamum was not a vassal/client state of Rome, it was almost a roman dependency.  Two major wars had been won with the extensive military and diplomatic support of Rome that basically gave Pergamum hegemony over Anatolia.  If Roman support was withdrawn, IE pergamum started backing the wrong horse, it was not without reason that they would be on the losing side of the next war and suffer greatly, and that even should the relationship merely cool, Pergamum would still suffer for this lack of support.\n\nAt the time of his death, Attalus III did have no heir, was very aware of the relationship between Rome and his kingdom and if I recall correctly, also aware of some internal strife that had recently been settled somewhat.  His decision to bequeath the kingdom to Rome could have been in tacit aknowledgement of Pergamums status increasingly becoming a Roman Dependency, or perhaps a more altruistic reason of wanting to prevent civil war in a successio crisis, which were very common in the ancient world.  Of course in politics altruistic reasons should be looked at with heavy scrutiny, so it is my opinion that he it would have been a combination of both, mixed perhaps with some roman pressure/promises of intervening in Pergamum in the event of a succession crisis, as they were wont to do throughout history.  Had they done this, a puppet king would have been installed who was pro roman, so it was perhaps better to be done with the pretense and spare the bloodshed.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica", "http://www.historynet.com/boudica-celtic-war-queen-who-challenged-rome.htm"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1tcbau", "title": "Do historians assume too much homogeneity within ancient cultures?", "selftext": "(Sorry for the confrontational-sounding title, I wasn\u2019t sure how else to phrase this!)\n\nI recently finished reading Holland\u2019s *Rubicon* and while I quite enjoyed it (and indeed I\u2019m reading another of his books, now), I was struck by the extent and frequency with which he made sweeping generalizations about the Roman character. For instance, in the first chapter, he remarks that...\n\n >  No Roman could tolerate the prospect of his city losing face. Rather than endure it, he would put up with any amount of suffering, go to any lengths.\n\nHolland makes similar remarks throughout the book, asserting that any Roman would... or no Roman could possibly... etc. I realize that *Rubicon* skews towards the pop-history side of the spectrum so there\u2019s probably a bit of narrative license being taken, but I\u2019ve definitely encountered similar remarks and sentiments even in less narrative and more strictly academic discussion.\n\nWhen historians say that, for instance, it was the firm custom in some ancient culture to welcome visitors in a particular way, or note that a particular religious feast was always met with a set of specific rituals or customs, to what extent can they be sure they\u2019re not overgeneralizing or assuming that a custom is more rigidly adhered to than it actually was? Is there a threshold of evidence needed to back up statements like this? Is there reason to think that ancient cultures and customs weren\u2019t as internally varied as modern ones? As someone who comes from an anthropology background, I\u2019d be fascinated to hear if and how this question is handled by professional historians.\n\n(Also, I can\u2019t help but imagine far-future historians remarking that no American would miss a holiday with their family or consider relinquishing their firearms.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tcbau/do_historians_assume_too_much_homogeneity_within/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce6iepz", "ce6v3pm"], "score": [21, 30], "text": ["Broadly speaking, yes. Or, to be more precise, we tend to equate the majority view of a given culture with the view which was predominant in the privileged of that culture. This is mainly due to the fact that the textual sources we have were generated by that subsection, particularly when we go farther back and only have written texts to refer to. It's a source bias that historians have only really started to try to rectify from the late 60s onwards. \n\nAt the same time, we tend to collapse time together, a problem most acute in teaching. It's kind of shocking to think that the gap in time between Christ and the assembly of a canonical Bible in a form we would currently recognize is about 50-150 years longer than the US has existed. Or, as another example, the gap in time from the founding of Oxford (1214) to the founding of Harvard (1636) is roughly the same as the gap from the founding of Harvard to now. This also occurs when we think of language. People like to talk all \"Shakespearean,\" by which they mean the general form of English in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but imagine shoving together all the slang that has ever been used in America, or even in the past 50 years. \n\nFor Antiquity and the Medieval period, fighting against this is particularly difficult for the reasons given above - sources. A great deal of modern scholarship has turned towards approaching the issues obliquely in order to rectify the problem. While we can never truly do so, one example has been in using scientific methods to extract DNA, to see if the population movements (Goths, Lombards, etc.) described in ancient sources actually existed in any concrete way.", "Oooh, I really like this question, but you have also unintentionally hit upon some really specific points!\n\nTom Holland needs some introduction. He is not 'a historian' in the sense that he isn't actually a primarily (or even secondarily) academic historian. He has no PhD, and his Bachelors degree was not in history. He is not a researcher attached to an institution, or a teaching professor, or any number of other variants. He is an author by career rather than just a by-product, having originally found his niche with fiction before turning to history. This is not leading up to saying 'he doesn't know the slightest thing about what he's talking about'. His books are better than that. But he is what we'd call a popular historian, who primarily writes books intended for mass publication, wide audiences, and without academia in mind. Popular historians are a very different beast to academic historians, though it is not only possible but positively encouraged for academic historians to be able to write books with clear language and a wide audience. \n\nTom Holland has a popular reputation as an expert on those areas he has written books on. Within history as an academic subject, however, he does not have that reputation. Many are ambivalent or oblivious to his work, but a not insignificant number of academic historians actively dislike his work, including me. And I'm about to tie this neatly into the second half of your question by saying that one of the things he is constantly guilty of is talking in hugely broad terms about particular cultures, implying that the culture exists as a kind of gestalt entity or that every individual thinks in a particular way. This is one of the most common problems with his work, along with many others. His other problem is that part of his charm is the creation of flowing, snappy narratives consisting of extremely clear prose. But in order to do that, he has to bend the material into shape, and the concept of the narrative historian within academic history is one that has been problematised enormously for the past few decades. He fills in gaps with what fits the narrative he has intended, and gives full license to one of the worst and most tempting instinct of academic historians as well- to have your evidence fit what you want to see, rather than having the evidence help determine what you conclude.\n\nTo now directly deal with your question, assumption of homogeneity within cultures has been a massive, massive problem in history, particularly ancient history. This is where perhaps the greatest efforts to change historical methodology have come about- for example, the shift in emphasis from texts leading conclusions to archaeology combined with texts (and for archaeology to be considered more direct, accurate evidence than texts), and the emergence of fields such as Socio-economic history and Gender studies. Many of these changes have been attempting to do exactly that- to stop conversations talking about what the Greeks thought, or even what the Athenians thought, and to instead talk about individual opinions and the trends of our surviving evidence.\n\nOne place, however, where I would talk about your own conclusions is when you mention the firmness of customs. There are a number of aspects of ancient societies that make the discussion of customs a very different one from those in a modern society. The first is the overall smaller scale of societies, both in the sense of specific communities and the wider identities that they strove to belong to. The population of the UK as of the present date is greater than the entire population of the Achaemenid Empire at its height, a society which stretched from the Aegean to the Indus. The second thing is that an important aspect of customs in general is regards to the expectations of two individuals as to how the other would behave. In many prior periods, these expectations had a great deal more anxiety to them; in many periods and places, there is a real terror that comes from opacity regarding the intentions of others. But likewise, this also comes onto the matter of scale of society again- many particular communities were interconnected to others, but all of them would still be a relatively self contained organisation. This brings me onto what I feel is a big difference, which is my third point, and that is regarding ritual- many societies have placed a far more enormous emphasis on set rituals across many different spheres than what I tentatively call 'our own'. One of the fundamentals of being a Greek polis is religious 'brotherhood' with your fellow citizens; you would have festivals, processions and many other sacred events occur rubbing shoulders with everybody else. And this really is a situation in which all of this is cast-iron organised; calenders pre-ordaining not only the sacrifice for that given day (both deity and kind of sacrifice) but also what the expense would be of acquiring that sacrifice, set festivals occuring yearly on predictable dates with particular rules as to who could attend, and many other aspects of the events like official ceremonies and whatnot.\n\nI am not arguing that your overall point is wrong; any conversation about a particular community, society, or culture should always be doing so carefully, and with an eye to avoid the problems that you mentioned. Individuals should not be regarded as having a fixed thought process due to their origins, or having no ability to break with custom or break rules, or as having no differing opinions from those that individual otherwise considered companions. But what I am arguing is that one should not discount certain areas in which you can more easily attest to a very rigid pattern of behaviour.\n\nOn the other hand, another point in your favour is that many historians are bad at actively dealing with differences between different communities in what we consider the same culture- what you are asking for, when it comes to 'internal variation', is not just the acknowledgement that societies are made up of individuals but also that Athenian does not equal Greek. And yet, think how many times the Athenian examples are held up as models of what all 'Greek' behaviour and customs were. Think how many times Sparta and Athens are held to define Greece in various periods, and how many times only a handful of city-states are ever brought up in discussions of the variety of ancient Greece. Restoring chaos and variance to what we consider the 'ancient Greeks' is something that I take very seriously, but it can also be seen as more extreme on occasions when people talk about the 'Celts doing X' and 'Celts thought Y'. The Romans, originally, were a community speaking a particular Italic language based around a particular city on the river Tiber. That is a relatively specific society when it comes to talking about shared traditions and identity. The Greeks, though diverse and consisting of hundreds of distinct societies, nonetheless actively claimed a single identity rather than us making up one for them; the boundaries of that identity changed, and they argued themselves about it constantly, but we can attest to the existence of the concept of the Hellene. But when we talk about the 'Celts' we talk about a swathe of Europe with shared linguistic and cultural heritage that nonetheless functioned as totally distinct societies, neither acting nor thinking as a collective whole. What was true for those in Gaul was not necessarily true for those in Britannia, and what was true for the Brigantes was not necessarily true for the Iceni. We have no indication that a Goidelic speaker in Ireland conceived of any kind of shared identity with a Celtiberian speaker in Numantia.\n\nTo summarise, you are absolutely being confrontational, in exactly the way that one should be. These kinds of approaches and narratives should be questioned, actively. Tom Holland is regarded a poor model for many aspects of historical work precisely because he falls into all the problems that you enumerated. There are areas, I feel, where one can talk about relatively organised behaviour, but this is also because individual variances would be so difficulty to spot or so relatively minor; when we have new features added to the Greater Dionysia, such as the performance of comedies in addition to tragedy and satyr plays, we have a lot of discussion about it and that is considered a major event. But Dion dropping one of the sacred cups at the procession to Mount Etna, and it having to be replaced last minute with a bushel of wheat- that is where I argue that drawing lines of internal differences are perhaps operating on too low a threshold. Also, if you have an anthropological background then I would absolutely make clear the fact that modern ancient history cannot exist without anthropology or archaeology, and the three exist (depending on the precise discipline and sometimes the institution) in a rather beneficial m\u00e9nage a trois. You are not wrong to seek at least some evidence of approaches that can co-exist with anthropology within history. The question that you asked is an important and critical one, and is the kind of question that academic historians should (and often do ask) of their own subject. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "fmmlem", "title": "Cuban doctors are again in high demand during COVID19 breakout. How has Cuba, despite still stringent sanctions, developed a strong medical sector? If recently, how did Castro\u2019s revolution in 1959 change Cuban medicine?", "selftext": "This is making the assumption Cuban medicine really is as good as it\u2019s touted to be. If it\u2019s not true, how did the Castro regime make Cuban doctors appear to be so competent?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fmmlem/cuban_doctors_are_again_in_high_demand_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fl6jvay"], "score": [26], "text": [" I wrote [this answer on the very connected topic of Cuban medical diplomacy](_URL_0_) with one focus on Angola, and one on the influence of the regime's literacy campaigns on education. One additional point for your question: medical diplomacy was/is very cost effective for Cuba in that training doctors and carrying out those specific operations are comparatively not that expensive, but bring many diplomatic/economic advantages as I discuss there. I've included sources to show that these are not just rumours. \n\nHope this helps!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ecwtqo/how_was_cuba_able_to_afford_so_much_foreign/"]]}
{"q_id": "7x6sjf", "title": "Old Photo of Abraham Lincoln on Cloth.", "selftext": "From my understanding, photos weren't printed on cloth until the early 20th century. I have this [patch of cloth](_URL_0_) with a photo of Abraham Lincoln on it, with a note claiming it's from the possessions of my great-great Grandfather, who fought in the civil war. That would date this patch to the 1860s. Is that even possible? I'd like to find out more about it, but google searches have turned up empty.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7x6sjf/old_photo_of_abraham_lincoln_on_cloth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["du6c0l6"], "score": [22], "text": ["What you appear to have here is a political campaign ribbon depicting Lincoln from the famous 1860 [Cooper Union portrait](_URL_2_). \n\nThe image depicted in your cloth is not actually a photo, but an illustration, specifically, the same illustration [seen here](_URL_0_). \n\nWhile I'm not sure of when photographic printing directly to cloth was first used, lithographic printing of illustrations on cloth was quite common for presidental elections back as far as the late 1820's, as seen by these [Andrew Jackson Ribbons](_URL_1_).\n\nFor more on political ribbons, possibly even including the one you have here, see *American Political Ribbons and Ribbons Badges 1825-1981*, by Sullivan, Edmund B. and Fischer, Roger"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://imgur.com/a/JBacn"], "answers_urls": [["https://historical.ha.com/itm/political/abraham-lincoln-single-portrait-brady-ribbon/a/6133-42039.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515", "http://politicalmemorabilia.com/political-item/andrew-jackson-political-ribbons/", "https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7B9400F95D-89A4-4920-A05E-46EE3CEDC9C0%7D&amp;amp;oid=302567"]]}
{"q_id": "7nmi8f", "title": "In 1942, US forces launched a successful cavalry charge against Japanese tanks and won. How did that work?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7nmi8f/in_1942_us_forces_launched_a_successful_cavalry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds2x12x"], "score": [95], "text": ["Do you have a cite for the tanks?\n\nI presume you are referring to the charge of 16 January, 1942, at Morong by the 26th Cavalry, Philippine Scouts under then-LT Edwin Ramsey, which is known as the US Army's last horse-mounted cavalry charge. (Events in Afghanistan may have changed this, though).\n\nThe platoon had encountered the advanced guard of a Japanese force starting to cross a river into the town of Morong. Ramsey decided that he could do a better job of delaying the Japanese advance by bloodying the advance guard in a spoiling attack than by holding position and defending against a strong attack.\n\nIt worked. At the cost of three troopers wounded, the Japanese were thrown back. While they reconsolidated and tried to figure out what happened, American reinforcements showed up. LT Ramsey received the silver star.\n\nRamsay survived the war, retiring as an LTC. Here's his statement on the charge in 2009. _URL_0_\n\nNow, no mention that I can see anywhere indicates that this advanced guard had tank support, which is why I put my first question up. At most, mortars and light artillery. I wonder if you're not confusing the incident with the charge at Krojanty, the mythical anti-tank charge by Polish cavalry in 1939. This also didn't happen, as the Poles successfully charged a group of resting infantry, only to be counter-attacked by tanks (and not faring well on the receiving end of it)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez8g7_jQYWY"]]}
{"q_id": "89qth5", "title": "How did people survive artillery barrages in WW1 so often?", "selftext": "I often hear about how positions would be bombarded for days or weeks and people always somehow survived. Were there specific methods that they would use for surviving barrages like this? Was it kind of just based off of luck?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/89qth5/how_did_people_survive_artillery_barrages_in_ww1/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwt8j5k"], "score": [66], "text": ["Prior to the advent of the VT proximity fuze in WW2 artillery had severe limits to its effectiveness.\n\nHere's the problem. An artillery shell comes in from the enemy, it hits the ground near you, its contact fuse causes it to begin to explode right when it hits the ground, it excavates a crater with its blast and directs the blast and shrapnel out of the crater at an upward angle. If the shell hits you directly: you are dead, if it lands right next to you: you are dead, but what if it just lands sort of nearby? If it hits a few meters away and you are far enough away that you won't die from the direct overpressure blast effects then what you have to worry about is the shrapnel, which can travel for many meters. But remember, the shell blew up in a crater, the shrapnel is going at an upward angle, arcing through the air above you. If a bunch of people are standing around in the open unprotected then artillery can still be very deadly since they can be hit by flying shrapnel a fair distance away from the impact.\n\nWhat if people take some basic precautions to limit their vulnerability to shrapnel? What if they keep low to the ground by crawling or laying in a fox hole? What if they dig trenches and build bunkers? What if they wear helmets so that lower speed falling shrapnel and debris (the mostly likely stuff to hit someone who is a distance away from an artillery blast) has a lower chance of killing them? Well, then a lot more artillery strikes are survivable. If you happen to be standing in a trench when a shell explodes then you are dead. If a shell hits *in* your fox hole then you are dead. Otherwise, a lot of otherwise fairly close impacts will be survivable as the shrapnel will either go above you or rain down on you after it has slowed down a lot and your helmet will give you some protection.\n\nArtillery in WWI could be pretty accurate, but not down to a single meter, it took raining a lot of shells onto an area to get a significant number of hits on trenches and fox holes. Even so, an enormous quantity of shells were used, so artillery was far and away the leading cause of battle deaths in most theaters of WWI, despite many soldiers surviving many artillery barrages.\n\nThe VT fuse invented by the Allies during WW2 dramatically changed the effectiveness of artillery. Artillery is more effective if it detonates in the air. Because the blast isn't directed away from the ground by the impact crater the blast effects encompass a larger area. Also, instead of the shrapnel flying upwards and mostly away from the targets (except the one directly at the location of impact) the shrapnel is directed downwards, and covers a substantially larger area. If you can achieve an artillery detonation in the air at the most effective height then even shells that are only near a trench, fox hole, or crawling troops will still be able to kill. A larger percentage of shells will cause damage, injuries, or fatalities, which will increase the amount of damage done per artillery barrage.\n\nAchieving this effect is tricky, though, in principle you could set timers in the shells to achieve an air burst, but in practice this was not very effective in WWI, a shell will fall through the height of a building in a mere hundredth of a second, it would be impractical to precisely calculate and adjust for the exact travel time of a shell for every single square meter of target area, aside from the vaguaries of different speeds caused by slight differences in gunpowder volume, burn rate, etc. The VT proximity fuze, however, uses a very simplified and compact RADAR set to detonate at a pre-defined stand-off distance, but such technology didn't exist during WWI."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5or2dl", "title": "How would the Saharan \"Silent bartering\" work? What kept someone from just stealing the goods?", "selftext": "In [this comment](_URL_0_) /u/lynx_rufus mentions a process of silent bartering where merchants would leave goods on a mat and adjust the quantity over several days until a consensus was reached, often without seeing each other. \n\nHow did they agree to a consensus in absentee? What stopped one party from stiffing the other by taking their goods and leaving too little? What prevented outright theft?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5or2dl/how_would_the_saharan_silent_bartering_work_what/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dclf108", "dclla5e", "dclt55t", "dclxc9z"], "score": [23, 13, 3, 13], "text": ["Follow up question: What were the advantages of this system as opposed to normal bartering?", "Another follow up question:\n\nThis seems reminiscint of Carthaginian trade beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as described by Herotodus. \n\nDoes this practice suggest that Hanno the Navigator of Carthage traded with Saharan groups? To what extent did people South of the Sahara also engage in this process?", "Follow up:  How does \"silent bartering\" compare with potlatch?", "As posted in the parent thread, here are a couple of posts on *silent trade*:\n\n* [Can someone please explain to me Old-style African trade? I'm afraid I don't have a particular local in mind, but I gather it](_URL_0_) - an archived post featuring /u/sunagainstgold \n\n* [How did early civilizations trade and negotiate with each other if they didn't know each other's language ?](_URL_1_) - a still-active post featuring /u/SUSHIKID1 and /u/still-improving"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5opntw/comment/dcl94se?st=1Z141Z3&amp;sh=a0c0c11b"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rza27/can_someone_please_explain_to_me_oldstyle_african/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5a53ty/how_did_early_civilizations_trade_and_negotiate/"]]}
{"q_id": "364smp", "title": "I need an Occult historian. Who is Lilith? I've heard so many conflicting stories and read too many dubious origion stories.", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/364smp/i_need_an_occult_historian_who_is_lilith_ive/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crawbo6", "crb1t71", "crb3fwh", "crb5j1f"], "score": [10, 29, 2, 4], "text": ["Lilith is supposed to have been the first wife of Adam, who was turned away for basically \"wanting to be on top\" or otherwise being equal.  This doesn't appear in the bible anywhere, so that story may have been made up much later.  One source says it is mentioned in Isaiah, so you could check there.  \n\nOne possible origin for how this entered into Hebrew mythology is from 'Lilitu', a kind of mesopotamian (Babylonian, IIRC) female demon that eats children.\n\nObviously Lilith isn't an actual historical figure, so there isn't any *true* origin story, only who said what about her when.", "Lilith is from the Midrash, or Jewish legends that the rabbis of the last centuries BCE-first centuries CE told to explain aspects of the Bible with moral lessons. (Other prominent Midrash include the story of Moses getting his Biblical speech impediment by preferring to burn his tongue on hot coal than to worship Egyptian gods). \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs you can see, there are many different versions of the Lilith story and the modern one that she was Adam's wife, born from the ground like he was and not from his rib, and that she left rather than submit to him, was actually not a popular version originally. Traditionally, Lilith was a demon responsible for child mortality and a succubus who would use sleeping men's semen to produce more demons. The feminist interpretation of Lilith as first feminist popularized by Jewish women today is very modern and downplays the link to infant mortality.", "This question may be worth x-posting to /r/AskReligion", "You might get good answers for this question over at /r/AcademicBiblical/ as well.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9986-lilith"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bbkv5p", "title": "How did Ancient China (Qin era) stop/prevent crimes?", "selftext": "[deleted]", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bbkv5p/how_did_ancient_china_qin_era_stopprevent_crimes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ekm2d7w"], "score": [5], "text": ["I don't actually know the answer to your question, but I think I can point you to some sources that might. If you're really hardcore, you could read the Zizhi Tongjian, which, in Chinese, consists of 294 volumes. The first eight of these, helpfully covering the Zhou and Qin dynasties, have been translated into English. If you want to have fun, you might check out Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee series, which is itself based (loosely) on an 18th century Chinese novel, which is itself based (likely quite loosely) on volumes 202-206 of the Zizhi Tongjian, which contain, among other things, the story of noted Tang dynasty magistrate Di (Dee, in van Gulik) Renjie."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "51rqvz", "title": "Why did so many non-disabled men in the past carry canes?", "selftext": "Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I've been wondering this. In old pictures, stories, movies, etc., I always see men carrying canes even if they don't need them to walk. Why do they do this and why did this practice fall out of favor?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51rqvz/why_did_so_many_nondisabled_men_in_the_past_carry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7ebayx", "d7fmybp"], "score": [154, 3], "text": ["Short answer? It was a fashion statement. It's almost like asking \"Why did men in the 18th century wear knee britches or those big silly wigs?\" It was just what caught on. Like many aristocratic fashions, the walking cane was born out of courts of Europe as a fashion accessory. There are famous portraits of monarchs like King Henry VIII, King George II  &  III having portraits done with a cane; not because of weakness but as a symbol of authority. King Louis XIV of France carried an elaborate, jewel encrusted cane and actually forbid his subjects from carrying a cane in his presence. It was a symbol of his power. In late 17th century and early part of the 18th century, the cane began replacing the sword as the accessory of choice for gentlemen about town in Europe and in the colonies. The more decorative a cane was, the more wealthy the gentleman was and it could still be use as a weapon in dire circumstances. \n\nJust because it was a fashion statement didn't mean that there wasn't a practical use for it. For instance, doctors were well known for carrying a cane. Vinegar was believed to ward off illnesses so many would have a hollowed out head with a vinegar soaked sponge in it. The doctor would hold the head of the cane in front of his nose and inhale the vinegar as he visited patients, kind of like a protective mask. \"Gadget canes\" also became popular with doctors as they would use hollowed out canes to store their medical devices and drugs when making house calls. This allowed them to draw less attention to themselves and lessen the chance of them being robbed than if they were carrying a medical bag.\n\n*Edited a couple times for clarity. I'm tired and on my phone*\n\nEdit #2: I should be asleep right now, but instead I'd rather make lengthy posts here. I've lost control of my life...", "Adding onto this: were cane swords ever used as a serious weapon?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "buy2kk", "title": "Why is Strabo's world map of the 1st century BC so accurate?", "selftext": "I'm quite fascinated by how accurate Strabo's world map was for the time period which was compiled no later than 20BC, it contained many details such as a rough outline of Ireland alongside locations even as far away as Sri Lanka\n\nWhat I find so fascinating was what this map shows about the Roman / Greek world and how advanced their navigation and technology really was, as it seemingly took more than a thousand years for a world map of such accuracy to that of Strabos' to be completed, as many of the Medieval maps, both European and Islamic are utterly inaccurate.\n\nHow then, and what technologies did the Romans use to create such a markedly precise (for the time) map of the known world?\n\nEDIT: I have included an image of the map below\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/buy2kk/why_is_strabos_world_map_of_the_1st_century_bc_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eplio1g"], "score": [58], "text": ["One important thing to consider first and foremost. As far as I am aware **none** of the images of maps from Greco-Roman era are actually originals from that time, as none survived. What you usually see are more or less modern reconstructions trying to create the maps based on the verbal descriptions that were preserved through ages through copying and preserving manuscript texts. I think the oldest actual examples of the famous mapmakers are some Ptolemy maps from the middle ages, recreated several centuries after Ptolemy made his original work.\n\nFor Strabo the same applies. We don't have his map. We aren't even sure he actually had a map ever drawn, even though we suspect it was so because his text work *Geographica* (which is actually dated to circa 7.A.D - 20 A.D) is written specifically saying it's intended for experts to draw a map according to it, if possible on a globe, if not a planar surface would suffice.\n\nI suspect the map linked comes from the editions of Strabo from the 19th century (e.g. [here](_URL_2_)), but I might be wrong about exact dating. Not that it matters much, the point is that it is certain that these maps are not copies of the ones Strabo drew, just estimates. So it is possible that they were partly influenced and shaped by more recent conceptions, not applicable for the time. \n\nAnd the thing is Strabo's descriptions are pretty vague and often widely inaccurate and leave much to the imagination. His description of Western Europe, especially Britain is very much wrong and it can be seen on this map as well. He describes Britain as a triangle, with it's the longest side facing France and extending all the way from the Pyrenees to the Rhine. He mentions Ireland but places it incorrectly and it's obvious he only knows it from hearsay. The same applies to the eastern parts where e.g. he quotes Eratosthenes to mention Taprobana (Sri Lanka) but places it again incorrectly. Sure this is better than the T-O maps of medieval times, but frankly, those maps never intended to be accurate while Strabo did. In fact, the portolan charts that appeared from 14th-century onward were much more accurate then Strabo's attempt. Modern analysis of his work show deep mistakes, often conflicting amongst each other and not just reality.\n\nYet despite the mistakes, Strabo's work is magnificent in its breadth and content. He compiled his work from his own voyages, from travel accounts of merchants of his time (of which he laments were often inaccurate) and finally drawing on the most famous geographers up to his time: Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Polybius, Posidonious, and mentions Pytheas and Cratus. Even though unlike Ptolemy, he didn't really use latitude and longitude observations of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, he did utilize large swaths of their information provided. He did offer plenty of other geographical information and offer considerable insight into what was the up to that point idea of how the world looks like.\n\nSources:  \n\n[The History of Cartography](_URL_3_), Volume 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Chapter 10: Greek Cartography in the Early Roman World ([PDF](_URL_0_))\n\n[A history of ancient geography among the Greeks and Romans, from the earliest ages till the fall of the Roman Empire](_URL_2_) by Bunbury, E. H. (Edward Herbert), 1811-1895 \n\n[The Geography of Strabo](_URL_1_) published in Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1932"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabo#/media/File:C%2BB-Geography-Map1-StrabosMap.PNG"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V1/HOC_VOLUME1_chapter10.pdf", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/home.html", "https://archive.org/details/historyofancient02bunb/page/238", "https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V1/Volume1.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5equ40", "title": "Do we have any way of knowing how long the average 1v1 gladiator fight would last? Was there a system to match equally skilled fighters against one another?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5equ40/do_we_have_any_way_of_knowing_how_long_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dahzlst"], "score": [2], "text": ["I wrote a post about gladiatorial combat basics and style which provides a good preamble. I'm also on mobile so please forgive any formatting errors. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere was no truly standard length to a gladitorial match. Depending on what you were viewing, be it the hunts, matched pairs, executions, or the rare special events, fights could last anywhere for a few seconds to an hour or so. Naval battles would tend to last the longest as they had to flood the Flavian Amphitheatre to do so they used them for more entertainment, the midday executions lasted the shortest individually as prisoners were either marched unarmed against animals or against each other with both being inexperienced fighters. \n\nMatched pairs would last as long as the men could fight, those in good condition could last for up to 15-20 minutes at the longest. These were generally highly skilled individuals and were the most 'honorable' of the contestants as they fought in solo combat and with minimal protective gear (amounts varied from class to class).\n\nEspecially when the opponents were well matched in experience and armament style, the bouts could last as long as the men could fight. There was no hard line system of matching strong opponents against other strong opponents, sometimes an experienced fighter would engage a newly trained gladiator. Especially in the matches where gladiatorial styles were mismatched and the skill and experience such as the retarius pitted against a secutor or murmillo, a very common match, was needed to make a good fight. An inexperienced murmillo against a retarius would likely lose as would the reverse as the experience of how to fight the particular class of gladiator was crucial in the mismatch of speed and reach vs armour and power.\n\nThe editor had a vested interest in making strong matched pairs especially towards the end of the games as it would entertain the crowd and whose thirst for bloodshed had been dampened by the earlier executions and perhaps lesser skilled bouts. Better to risk two skilled and valuable gladiators at the end of the games when the crowd was less likely to demand blood. Overall the matching system was moreso to pair styles together with historic significance, as to whom the gladiator class represented, or historically prominent class pairings known to provide skillful combat.\n\nThe editor, the one who organized the fights would want to match experienced gladiators together to provide more entertainment while lesser experienced gladiators would either be a sacrifice to the crowd, matched against a better opponent, or against one of their own approximate level to provide the entertainment of a lesser skilled but, matched dual.\n\nIn the end the editor and sponsor had a vested interest in providing skilled opponents and quality duals as it would provide better social recognition for the sponsor and better economic benefit (both in displaying their skill in organizing a series of quality games and the price they could demand for their skills for future clients). \n\nSources: \n*Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games* by Roland Auguet (discusses the cultural significance of the games in Rome)  \n\n*Roman Histories* by Cassius Dio (includes descriptions of gladitorial combat through the imperial age)  \n\n*De Re Military* by Vegetius (mostly about late Roman military but does discuss gladiators somewhat)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://m.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4cx8w8/which_type_of_gladiatorial_combat_style_was_most/"]]}
{"q_id": "32k7ck", "title": "What are some of the most notable influences the Visigothic Kingdom has had on the Spain of today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32k7ck/what_are_some_of_the_most_notable_influences_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqc8d7d", "cqcb2bi", "cqchhe5"], "score": [9, 7, 2], "text": ["Unfortunately very few. The Visigoths as a people ceased to exist after the Muslim invasions of 711. It was only in the late 15th century that the Muslims were expelled. In that nearly 700 year period, Muslim culture dominated and displaced most Visigoth practices with their own. Prior to the invasions, the Visigoths maintained some aspects of old Roman infrastructure and class systems, much like the Ostrogoths in Italy under Theodoric, which worked rather well. Roman Coloni farming estates, for example, continued to survive under Visigoth rule. However, because they sought to preserve the roman infrastructure that worked so well, they didn't make many radical chances to the people or land themselves. And again, any changes they did make were overwritten by 700 years of Muslim rule.\n\nSaint Isidore of Seville was a Spanish scholar who produced perhaps some of the most influential works to come out of Visigoth Spain. His \"Etymology\" was a collection if words and their supposed origins. Most of what he says is not at all accurate, yet it remained popular with Western European monasteries and referenced excerpts from classical literature which would otherwise have been lost. He also helped to compile the \"collecto hispania\", an influential collection of Spanish common law. \n\nToledo was also made the capital city of the Visigoths and was noted for being a place were christians, Muslims, and Jews co-existed after the Muslim invasion. \n\nThose are the only examples I can think of, there are others I'm sure but the Visigoths in the end had very little influence on Spain in the long run. \n\nSource: Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1475 by Brian Tierney", "Tangentially, are there many Visigothic words that have survived into the modern Spanish? ", "A somewhat short but to the point answer to this question is: Almost nothing.\n\nRemember, Spain was heavily populated already when the Visigoths invaded. Culturally they weren't some backwater. They had assimilated Latin culture, had centers of learning and even contributed a few Emperors to the Roman throne.  \n\nThe Visigoths arrived and were then largely kicked out within a span of around 200 years.\n\nYou also have to keep in mind that Visigoths were of the Arian sect of Christianity while their subjects were largely Catholic. I remember reading that the Visigothic code of law prohibited marriage between the two, meaning people had to convert or remain unmarried. This impeded the full assimilation of the Visigothic ruler class by the dominated Iberian natives.\n\nSome Spanish historians even propose that the lack of unity fed the armies of invading Muslims with fresh recruits who welcomed aid in deposing their heretical overlords.\n\nSources:\nThe Age of Faith by Will Durant\nVisigothic Spain 409 - 711 by Roger Collins.\nThe Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3csoax", "title": "Why is Britain always afraid somebody would take India?", "selftext": "I read a lot about Britain and the Empire, specially after the Napoleonic Wars. Constantly, in almost any context, any reason to do anything is somehow connected to 'the fear of losing India'. I understand the status of India as 'Crown Jewel of Empire' but the fears are usually completely unreasonable.\n\nFor example the idea that Russia, after the 1905 Russo-Japanese War would try to take India because Britain helped Japan. This is of course mad because Russia was already basically broke after the War, the idea that they could project military power threw the hole of central Asia all the way into India is not based in reality.\n\nThis pattern repeats itself again and again. With Germany multiple times, with Russia, with France and with Japan. There was for example this fear the Japan would take China and then, threw Tibet conquer India.\n\nNobody ever seam to come even remotely close until WW2 but even then Britain could fight a full scale war against Germany, Italy and still credibly fight Japan on the borders of India (I do unterstand that they could not have done this with US aid but its still impressiv).\n\nI do not want to suggest that they should never have worried or planned for this problem. Playing the 'Great Game' as a long term system is smart. My porblem is with comments that suggest their is imidiate danger, within the next couple of years.\n\nHowever a lot of times, the fear over this is in now way connected to real military possibility of the situation. How did India reach this almost mythical standard in the minds of these otherwise smart and logical people?\n\nPS: I would also be interested in how much profits were derived from India. How much government revenue? And what other benefits India gave Britain.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3csoax/why_is_britain_always_afraid_somebody_would_take/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csyls74", "csym8jf"], "score": [56, 21], "text": ["I'm not convinced it was entirely a phantom. During the Boer War Britain was isolated diplomatically and the sympathies of Europe were frankly with the Boers. Russia had long felt hemmed in by British opposition to Russian expansion in Central Asia, the Bosphorus, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Tsar Nicholas visited the German Kaiser to remind him of his previous support for the Boers and he tried to build an anti-British alliance with the French. The Tsar wrote that\n\n > ...it is pleasant for me to know that I and _I only_ possess the ultimate means of deciding the course of the war in South Africa. It is very simple \u2013 just a telegraphic order to all the troops in Turkestan to mobilise and advance towards the [Indian] frontier. Not even the strongest fleet in the world can keep us from striking England at this her most vulnerable point.\n\nLuckily for Britain, Germany and France declined his offer.\n\nOn your last question, it was commonly assumed that India was essential to British power. \"As long as we rule India,\" the Indian Viceroy Lord Curzon proclaimed, \"we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power\". Was this true? I don't think it was.\n\nFirstly, the possession of India led to enormous burdens. Not only the thousands of miles of frontiers to defend, but 450 miles of the North-West Frontier which was in a state of constant readiness for combat. Britain's expansion into South Africa had originally been motivated by the need to control the Atlantic passage to India, as had the purchasing of the Suez Canal. This in turn led to a large Middle Eastern empire too. Much of the Empire was justified on the need to secure the passage to India. If India was the \"jewel in the crown\", did the crown exist only to support the jewel? In return for these vast strategic commitments and economic burdens, what was India worth to Britain in economic or strategic terms?\n\nIndia added nothing to the industrial power of Britain. In 1921 71% of Indians worked in agriculture and only 12% in industry. As for raw materials, India only had jute, chromium and manganese. In 1913 India as a market for British exports was worth \u00a370,273,221 (France and Germany combined were worth \u00a369,610,451) but this was less than half the figure for the Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). For British investments abroad, India (at \u00a3378,776,000 in 1914) was worth half of America and not much more above Argentina (\u00a3319,565,000). \n\nIn the twentieth century, industrial power was paramount and just as important as ships and men. This was demonstrated by the experience of WWI and the _Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms_ (1918) noted that \"Nowadays the products of an industrially developed community coincide so nearly in kind though not in quantity with the catalogue of munitions for war that the development of India's national resources becomes a matter of almost military necessity\". Britain had failed to do this and the Report noted that India's resources \"should henceforth be better utilised. We cannot measure the accession of strength which an industrialised India will bring to the power of the Empire\". However the industrialisation of India was not something the British would or could countenance. Irrigation schemes were about as far as this went.\n\nIndia was undoubtedly loyal to Britain during WWI and her volunteer army of over one million was heartening. However India raised just 0.3% of her peoples for the military, compared to 12.4% for Britain, 11.6% for New Zealand and 8% for Canada and Australia. Just 90,000 Indian troops were sent to the Western Front, the rest were sent to defend the Middle East, which concerned Britain only because it was a gateway to India. \n\nOn balance, then, India served only to weaken Britain and was a classic example of imperial overstretch. The clue to why Britain remained in India despite this is is due to the nature of British society. Curzon said the Raj was the \"miracle of the world...the biggest thing that the English are doing anywhere\": India served as a vast arena for the British ruling class. The civil service, the Army, administrators, clergymen, all were needed in British India and the British public schools supplied her with them. As the ruling class was fairly small, everyone knew someone who was or had been in India. The idea of jettisoning India was inconceivable. They did not think in economic or strategic terms but of public service and duty which they had been inculcated in at public school.", "In a sense, it sounds as though you have a handle on Britain\u2019s strategic situation in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Their absolute priority in imperial policy was always to preserve the Raj, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire.  However, as you point out, it was rarely in imminent danger (with the exception, you rightly suggest, of Japan\u2019s campaign in Burma.  Rather, Britain mostly played the long game and sought to entrench its position for the longue duree. Much of Britian\u2019s broader foreign policy across the last two centuries was based on securing the long-term survivability of its influence in India, including the possession of the cape c. 1806 and its protectorate in Egypt.\n\nLet\u2019s examine, then, Britain\u2019s imperial anxieties.  What were they afraid of with regard to India? For one, they did worry a great deal about growing Russian influence. Their struggle for hegemony against them in Central Asia, immortalized by [Kipling]( _URL_4_), was founded on a few issues.  For one, Britain was interested in checking Russian power not only in central Asia but across the globe; they did not want to see a Russia with imperial ambitions upset a balance of power which saw Britain at the forefront and they went to war with them in 1853 in order to halt its growing influence.  Russia expanded very quickly into central Asia during the 19th century, and so Britain thought it in its interest to set up its own puppets to secure possible invasion routes into India.  Most notably, the British fought several horrible wars in Afghanistan in order to stave off Russian influence in the Raj\u2019s most vulnerable border.  It was only after the rise of German *weltpolitik* and mutual concern over their ambitions in the middle east and Europe, as well as Russia\u2019s terrible performance against Japan that Britain began to worry less about the threat from the Czar in Asia.  \n\nThe worry from Japan was of a slightly different sort, especially in the twentieth century.  Japan was not only militarily and politically threatening, but ideologically threatening.  Empire was built on the belief in the innate inferiority of some people compared to others.  In Britain, this was expressed most clearly in the anthropological theory of sociocultural evolutionism: civilizations occupied different rungs on the the same [ladder between savagery and civilization]( _URL_2_).  Asian peoples were regarded as in the middle zone, moribund cultures still centuries or millennia removed from advanced Europeans.  Empire was a mechanism of \u201cuplift,\u201d by which the colonizers were on a civilizing mission to bring progress to the colonized.  Japan knocked those racialist theories on their head by suggesting that Asian peoples could not only govern themselves, but that they could form empires of their own.  Britain was actually quite impressed by Japan\u2019s prowess in their war against Russia and formed an alliance with them in 1902, the first alliance they had formed since the 1860s. Nonetheless, Japanese expansion would only come at the cost of European influence in Asia, whether on the part of the British, the French, the Russians, the Dutch, or the Americans\u2014and by the interwar period it became clear that a militarized Japan could be a substantial threat to imperial interests.  All of these anxieties were absolutely realized in 1942 when the Japanese took Singapore.  An Asian army had taken Britain\u2019s key imperial port city, and they did so handily. It is not for nothing that one historian titled his book on the city\u2019s capture [the Worst Disaster]( _URL_0_). While Japanese occupation was hardly welcome in Asia, it did demonstrate that the empire was fragile and that Asian states and Asian people could defeat it.  In the case of India, that sentiment was enacted most famously by Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, a guerilla organization of tens of thousands that allied with the Japanese and sought the removal of Britain from the subcontinent. \n\nAnd that leads me to the third, and by far largest, anxiety Britain faced with regard to india: Indians.  India was and remains a massive place, home to a plethora of languages and hundreds of millions of people. The British civil service in India numbered in the thousands.  The absolute fear was an uprising against british rule.  After all, direct rule in India was itself the result of a rebellion that [traumatized]( _URL_5_), or at least traumatized the British imagination.  For the entire span of British rule, the unspoken risk of [peasant insurgency]( _URL_3_) permeated everything.   It was not for nothing that Orwell, in [Shooting and Elephant]( _URL_1_), still on a word-for-word basis perhaps the best thing ever written on colonialism, wrote  about the pressure he felt from the crowd, that \u201cmy whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.\u201d \n\nFinally, the worth of India to the empire is literally uncalculable. I mean to say that I\u2019ve never seen a convincing figure for its worth in modern pounds that is convincing since any such exact figure would be essentially meaningless across such a long period.  However, it made some people [astoundingly rich]( _URL_6_), and those who newly returned from ventures in India were regarded as astoundingly gaudy flaunters of new wealth.  India was a site of massive [capital investment]( _URL_7_) by the City of London as new railroads were built, making still more people very rich indeed.  By the 20th century, fully a fifth of Britains exports went to india\u2014one reason Gandhi so vehemently pushed for a boycott to make his movement felt.  And, of course, India was a massive supply of labour, not just for bulk of the empire\u2019s army, but for its construction projects across the indian ocean and the world.  The massive indian diaspora today exists in no small part thanks to the huge migrations of labourers across the last two centuries.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Worst-Disaster-Fall-Singapore/dp/087413112X", "http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant", "https://archive.org/stream/primitiveculture01tylouoft/primitiveculture01tylouoft_djvu.txt", "https://www.dukeupress.edu/Elementary-Aspects-of-Peasant-Insurgency-in-Colonial-India/?viewby=title", "https://archive.org/details/kimkipling01kipluoft", "http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8516.html", "http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Empire-Culture-Conquest-1750-1850/dp/1400075467", "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0289.1987.tb00417.x/abstract;jsessionid=FCB68D15D2167F31694E770F7897BD61.f03t03?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+11th+July+2015+at+10%3A00-16%3A00+BST+%2F+05%3A00-11%3A00+EDT+%2F+17%3A00-23%3A00++SGT++for+essential+maintenance.++Apologies+for+the+inconvenience&amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage="]]}
{"q_id": "1qbd48", "title": "Pythagoras, Confucius and the Buddha were all alive and teaching at the same time; was there anyone in the world who might have been aware of all three of them?", "selftext": "I guess I'm also asking about just how much cultural penetration each of them would have had in relation to the others, if any.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qbd48/pythagoras_confucius_and_the_buddha_were_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdb43r9", "cdb5t3k"], "score": [57, 42], "text": ["A similar question - \"Confucius died when Socrates was 10, how aware were the Greeks of the Chinese or vice versa?\" - was asked [here](_URL_0_). Unfortunately we just don't have evidence of any interaction between Indian and Chinese philosophy around this time. The first incursion of Buddhism into China probably happens [sometime around the first century CE](_URL_1_), or not too long afterwards (although uncritical sources/legends place it a bit earlier).\n\nThe situation with Greece and India is a little more complicated. Forgive me for simply copy-pasting one of my follow-up comments in the post I linked:\n\n > We know that the late 4th/early 3rd century BCE historian/ethnographer Megasthenes wrote a work (at the instigation of Seleucus I) called *Indica*, that had data about Indian religion/philosophy. \n\n > Further, there were later works - some perhaps dependent on Megasthenes in parts - that refer to the Indian *gymnosophists*: 'naked sages' (who were probably followers of some form of asceticism). For example, \"Diogenes Laertius . . . refers to them, and reports that Pyrrho of Elis, the founder of pure scepticism, came under the influence of the Gymnosophists while travelling to India with Alexander, and on his return to Elis, imitated their habits of life.\" Although this may be fanciful.\n\n > Not necessarily restricting ourselves to a post-Alexandrian timeframe, we know that there were certain traditions common to Greece and India (cf. metempsychosis). If we were to speculate about this, it's extremely difficult to sort out what might have arisen due to actual influence of one on the other (and then *which way*?), and what is just coincidental similarity - or what might even have arisen due to a common Indo-European heritage of both (for some reason I'm reminded of Buddha's birth from the side of his mother, like the births of Indra and [the Hittite god] Tar\u1e2bunna - cf. also Derrett, \"Homer in India: The Birth of the Buddha\"). \n\n > The scholar Thomas McEvilley has done more work than anyone else on this - esp. on Greco-Indian philosophical connections (and see also the work of Nicholas Wyatt); though his works have been met with some controversy and criticism. A 2005 issue of the *International Journal of Hindu Studies* was devoted to his work. ", "An alternative and possibly easier question is who was the first person to be aware of all three?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1myle2/confucius_died_when_socrates_was_10_how_aware/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Buddhism#Earliest_historical_arrivals"], []]}
{"q_id": "3e6ytf", "title": "Before Cell Theory, how did people explain \"eye floaters,\" (those little strands you sometimes see when you look at something like the sky)?", "selftext": "Tried googling (admittedly briefly) and didn't find anything. Searched here and the only similar question had no responses. Been wondering about it for a bit, so any help would be much appreciated. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3e6ytf/before_cell_theory_how_did_people_explain_eye/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctcdrb3"], "score": [4], "text": ["You could try your luck over in /r/askscience, I'm sure there's someone who can give you a good answer on this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4li7hl", "title": "In The Man In The Highcastle universe the Japanese conquer the west coast of America  &  turn it into a colony. During WW2 did Americans really believe the Japanese wanted to, or were capable of doing that?", "selftext": "Philip k Dick would have been a young teenager during the war", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4li7hl/in_the_man_in_the_highcastle_universe_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3nr47y", "d3nrqcx", "d3o0rxg"], "score": [29, 18, 5], "text": ["They certainly believed that the Japanese might attack at least, as seen by the network of facilities built near the coast and also inland (such as the Naval Ordnance Plant in Pocatello, Idaho) and \"[passive defense](_URL_0_)\" camouflage ordered for military and critical civilian facilities in case of air attack. \n\nIf there was a serious notion about invasion, the leadership didn't appear to roll it down hill. I've been through the security officer's files for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Seattle and there's lots of things about aerial attack, but no plans for invasion.", "To help bolster OP's question some time ago [a thread](_URL_0_) in /r/MapPorn showed what was supposedly an American anti-war propaganda map from 1937. It shows the US divided very similarly to the situation in Philip K. Dick's book, with the West Coast under Japanese(?) domination.\n\nIf this map is real, does anyone know the story behind it?\n\n[Direct imgur link to map.](_URL_1_)", "I've never heard of any reasonable expectation of Japanese colonization of the US mainland but the internment of Japanese-Americans/expats gives a strong indication that some sort of 5th column sabotage effort was perceived to be possible. \n\nIt also bears mentioning that The Man in the High Castle's setting is supposed to be a deliberately counter-factual parallel to the real world. Rather than America colonizing Japan and Germany the reverse happened in Dick's universe. The practical considerations of the setting were much less important than the thematic value."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Misc/PassiveDefense/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44i1bw/american_antiinvolvement_propaganda_map_1937/", "http://imgur.com/eabense"], []]}
{"q_id": "u6p7k", "title": "Did we ever find out what was behind that secret door in the pyramids that they found in the ventilation systems with a robo cam?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6p7k/did_we_ever_find_out_what_was_behind_that_secret/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4ssgio", "c4ssl51", "c4st1sn", "c4stmnc", "c4stx2k", "c4sut86"], "score": [27, 38, 22, 19, 25, 3], "text": ["you talking about [this?](_URL_0_)", "I remember a Fox special in the early 2000s where they drilled through a door thing only to find another door.  Is this what you were talking about?", "I'm glad we're getting questions like yours now as opposed to all those war ones, they got old and irritating quickly.", "For those who are confused, there was a website called \"_URL_1_\". Anyway, it had a grainy black-and-white picture of what looked like a tunnel, with a message on it saying that you had some amount of time (it varied wildly, apparently depending on time zone) to pay him $5,000,000 or he would upload the \"full video\" onto the WWW. LiveLeak had the video, but now-i-know filed a copyright claim and it's taken down. I never took interest in it. It appears the guy was charging $7 for downloads, and it's essentially a scam. I'll keep doing some research.\n\nEDIT: [Found this just now.](_URL_0_) I haven't seen the full video yet, but apparently something creepy appears partway through the RC car's excursion. A statue or effigy of some kind.", "Deep down, I want the pyramids to be more than just tombs.  The things are so huge and must have consumed so much of the surplus labor(seriously, does anyone have good figures for the number of man hours/ population size, for a rough idea of the % GDP?) of a society that was unimaginably poor by modern standards, I really don't want people build them to house corpses.  are there any respectable theories on this account or just history channel nonsense?", "On a related note, any one know what good old Dr Hawass is up to these days?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://news.discovery.com/history/great-pyramid-secret-door-mystery-111209.html"], [], [], ["http://theparanoidgamer.com/now-i-know-full-video/", "now-i-know.com"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2iurco", "title": "In the Soviet Union, was \"Kremlinology\" really a thing? Were Kremlin watchers really able to learn what has happening behind the scenes in the govt by interpreting seemingly minor gestures  &  details? Examples?", "selftext": "From Wikipedia:\n\n > During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to \"read between the lines\" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the *removal of portraits*, the rearranging of chairs, *positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square*, *the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as \"First Secretary\"*, the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper \"Pravda\" and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.\n\n\nI know that Soviet scholars  &  journalists at the time tried to read these signals. What I want to know was, were they ever right? Or was it all some kind of political science mysticism?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2iurco/in_the_soviet_union_was_kremlinology_really_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl6efdo"], "score": [5], "text": ["Just to clarify: your quote seems to be saying that Western analysts were the ones doing these deep readings, but your question is about Soviet journalisms. Do you mean Western journalists that covered the Kremlin/USSR, or do you mean journalists within the USSR?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3f9v6a", "title": "What factors allowed the Romans to dominate the entire Mediterranean? Specifically, why were they the only ones to achieve this?", "selftext": "To clarify the question, I'm not asking for an exhaustive list of what the Romans did well. Rather, I'm asking what was so unique about their circumstances that no other complete Mediterranean empire ever arose, and how after the Romans very few even managed to united Italy for at least another thousand years, much less the rest of their core domains.\n\nMore specifically, for many major, ancient long lasting Empires, there is a repeating patterns of their geographical heartlands and limits. For example, the Chinese heartland has unified, fragmented and unified again numerous times. The Persian Empires almost always contain the same heartlands as their predecessors. Most of the Northern Indian empires throughout history occupy the heartland. Same with Egypt, the Anatolian states, or even the entirety of the Eastern Mediterranean. \n\nTo be concise, it seems many of these regions repeatedly come under the same regimes and empires throughout history. There almost seems like geographical and ethnic fate for the core regions of these empires to never be splintered for long. One can say it's logical for these great empires to arise again and again out of the same place, and occupy roughly the same core areas.\n\nObviously there have existed many empires who go far beyond these traditional borders (that is to say, empires that combined large swaths of previously unrelated territories), and afterwards we never again see those territories under the same authorities. But it seems most of such empires never last very long, and they quickly dissolve back to the status quo.\n\nFor example, Alexander quickly conquered and combined Macedonia, Greece and the Persian empire. Yet just as quickly the empire dissolved back into pieces that fit pretty neatly with predecessor states and empire (i.e. it dissolves roughly into the old territories of Egypt, Median Empire, Hittite Empire, Greece).\n\nSame with the Mongols. As quickly as they conquered, they dissolved even quicker into 4 pieces, 3 of which geographically correspond well with older empires (Persia, Qara Khitai, China). Even the Caliphate dissolved similarly within time.\n\nBut the Romans seem special. They completely dominated the Mediterranean for what, 500 years? Much longer than most of the \"one-and-done\" Empires in history. For centuries the Romans held off the decay into their original constituent states, seemingly without extreme difficulty. Yet afterwards barely anybody managed to unite Italy, much less the Mediterranean. \n\nJustinian came close to ruling the entire Mediterranean, yet that effort exhausted the Byzantines, so much so that in hindsight we consider the reconquest to be a hopeless venture that could never have lasted, despite massive military victories. Why was it so incredibly difficult, and almost logistically impossible for the Byzantines to fully recreate the Roman empire? And for that matter, virtually anybody else?\n\nWas it simply because the Romans were fortunate enough to greatly develop in technology and organization at a time when none of their neighbors could match it? And once the people of the Mediterranean semi-reached parity with each other, it became impossible for any one of them to dominate all of the others?\n\nOr were the Romans of the late Republic/early Empire just... special?\n\nTLDR; why is it considered pretty much impossible, in the post-Roman world, for anybody to recreate the borders of that empire in a lasting manner? What changed in those centuries of Roman rule, that turned the reality of a lasting, united Mediterranean into a pipe dream?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3f9v6a/what_factors_allowed_the_romans_to_dominate_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctnjuek", "ctmx9i2", "ctmy8t9", "ctn05ob", "ctn431k"], "score": [2, 10, 96, 7, 2], "text": ["I think there are some flaws, but Arthur Eckstein wrote a book called Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome.  His central thesis was the Roman flexibility and ability to incorporate their conquered enemies into their system of government (usually not entirely, but with gradually increasing privileges) and their ability to harness their manpower in future conquests went a long way.  The book is written from a political science perspective and, imo, convincingly argues that the normal state of being at the time was war (everyone was either at war or planning for a war) and international law was at a minimum.\n\nI think the most illustrative example is the Second Punic War.  During that war, the Greek cities rebelled, but the Latin cities never did and Rome was able to harness their manpower to the point that, even after Cannae, they were able to field enough Legions to harass Hannibal and to conquer Spain (and support efforts in Illyria).  But I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say it was preordained.  The Seleucids had just a strong claim to lasting empire in spite of their serious flaws.  Eckstein was able to demonstrate the balance of power in the Diodichi and, when Antiochus started to upset that balance, Rome was invited in.  Romes success created a new status quo where she was able to dominate the entire Mediterranean.", "This is both a answer to your question and not.\n\nIf you asked a roman your question he would certainly say: \"That's easy, we were meant to conquer everything. It was our destiny\". This idea is probably best represented in Virgil's \"Aeneid\", notably in the following passage:\n\n > Others will cast more tenderly in bronze / \nTheir breathing figures, I can well believe, / \nAnd bring more lifelike portraits out of marble; Argue more eloquently, use the pointer / \nTo trace the paths of heaven accurately / \nAnd accurately foretell the rising stars. /\nRoman, remember by your strength to rule / \nEarth\u2019s peoples\u2014for your arts are to be these: / \nTo pacify, impose the rule of law, / \nTo spare the conquered, battle down the proud.\n\nVirgil lived in the end of the first century BC and was a contemporary to Augustus, Rome's first emperor. So this was written in a moment where Rome's rule was reaching its height, but the idea is probably older.\n\nIt was certainly widespread among Rome's elite and was present in the mindset of romans for a long time. This is an account by Peter the Patrician (c. 500-64) about the peace talks between the Romans and the Persians after Galerius had utterly crushed the Persian armies and was raoming free in their heartlands:\n\n > For you guarded the rule of victory well in Valerian\u2019s case, when you deceived him with tricks, took him captive and did not release him until old age and his shameful death, when you, after his death, conserved his skin with some disgusting method and thereby afflicted the mortal body with immortal offence.\u2019The emperor went through all this and added that his mind was not changed by what the Persian embassy tried to convey, namely that he should respect human fate (because one should rather be enraged by this if one considered what the Persians had done), but that he would follow the footsteps of his own ancestors, whose custom it had been to spare their subjects but to fight the ones who opposed them;\n\nThe reference to \"Aeneid\" is very clear in the last sentence.\n\nOf course, this is more of a justification than a cause. And I doubt any serious historian would argue the romans conquests was divine will. But it's interesting to note that the romans did have an answer to your question (at least the why it rose part). And without a doubt that kind of mindset helped the Roman Empire achieve its success.", "This is a question that has been around since the days of Rome's expansion: the historian Polybius actually wrote his book to explain to contemporaries how it was possible that Rome, emerging from the comparatively marginal western Mediterranean, was able to become masters of the area in such a short amount of time. His focus was primarily internal: he believed that the Roman political system had more or less hit the \"sweet spot\" in terms of its organization, in that it was dynamic enough to change to new circumstances but stable enough to not collapse in on itself. The army also got credit, as the Roman war machine was regarded, correctly, as a step above all its opponents. There has been a lot of nuance, debate and reworking of this argument but the basics have remained more or less relevant two thousand years on.\n\nInstead, I want to focus on the external situation, because Rome was actually very lucky in quite a few ways. For one, it never really faced two major enemies at the same time. If, for example, the Gallic kings of Italy had risen ten years after they had they would have been fighting along a renewed Carthage under Hannibal and perhaps would not have faced a rather ignominious defeat at Telamon. When the threats were a bit closer to each other things went poorly, such as when Mithridates attacked just after the a major civil war and very nearly caused the entire eastern empire to collapse. And of course in the third century CE when Persian and German expansions coincided the empire came very close to collapsing. So blind luck played a role.\n\nAlongside this, though, the political situation in the Mediterranean was favorable for something like Rome. Its expansion was somewhat video game like, in that it didn't face outsized threats after the fourth century or so. The Rome that faced Pyrrhus probably could not have defeated Carthage, but within a century it had absorbed its conquests and added them to its strength. This was because Italy was just marginal enough that it didn't attract the notice of the wealthier powers in the East, but it also wasn't some sort of backwater. Unlike Sicily, for example, which was the battleground of empires for centuries. And as for its opponents in the East when it did face them, they were the right mix of being state societies, so that Rome was able to simply co-opt the systems it conquered, while also not being super well governed. They were never able to levy their superior economic potential into military potential, and they were also always fighting among themselves.\n\nFor why nobody did it before, probably in part because Rome was the first empire to think of the Med as \"Mare Nostrum\".", "This is, of course, a classic question in Roman historiography. How did one tiny village founded on a hill in Latium come to hold sway over the entire Mediterranean? Polybios posits that is was Rome's \"\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03b5\u03af\u03b1\" or constitution, for more information see Polybios book vi. Mommsen, the great German historian, believed that Rome conquered the Mediterranean in self-defense. Indeed, this is greatly similar to how Rome's own historians defended Rome's actions, even Polybios mentions \u03c6\u03cc\u03b2\u03bf\u03c2 or fear's role in Rome's conquests. A watershed monograph in the study of Roman imperialism is W.V. Harris' \"Roman Imperialism,\" in which he propounds that Rome was spurred on to conquer the Mediterranean on account of self-enrichment and cultural/social reasons. To expand on the former: the Romans wanted to conquer because they liked wealth that came from conquest; to expand on the latter: military success was integral to a Roman elite's standing in society and, in many ways, dictated his success in the politics, one here recalls Sallust's certamen gloriae. For example, most praetores triumphales reached the consulship prior to the first century BCE (if I recall correctly the number is something to the tune of 19 out of 21). The study of roman imperialism had entered a sort of fallow period, but economic imperialism has become more or less accepted. If this really interests you, you should consider reading Harris' monograph, though be warned: none of the ancient texts are translated.", "One factor appears to have been the systematic militarization of Roman society coupled with a process of replacing small farmers with slave labor.  \n\nI was taught the process was something like this:  \n1.  Farms consolidated into large estates  \n2.  Farmers join army with promise of land after serving  \n3.  Conquest brings in new slaves and new land for retiring soldiers  \n4.  Slaves replace farmers as yet more small holding were consolicated . . . \n\nIt was a self perpetuating cycle that allowed a significant % of men to serve and that drive intense pressures to keep expanding.\n\nSignificant food imports also freed manpower for service.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7ojy39", "title": "In \"Born in the USA\" Springsteen sings \"Got in a little home town jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/Sent me off to a foreign land/To go and kill the yellow man\". Is he referring to some kind of punishment where troublemakers would be drafted during the Vietnam war, or something else?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ojy39/in_born_in_the_usa_springsteen_sings_got_in_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsadt0u"], "score": [146], "text": ["A good case to examine regarding \"go to jail or join the military\" or \"forced volunteering\" is [*United States v. Catlow*](_URL_0_), conducted in the United States Army Court of Military Review and the United States Military Court of Appeals in 1973-1974. The U.S. military has always striven to obtain quality soldiers; men who are found \"physically, mentally, or morally unfit\" are barred from joining the military. The medical and legal standards for enlistment are sometimes relaxed in times of war, and in times of peace or after the U.S. military became all-volunteer, are often applied in a stricter manner.\n\nParagraph 2-6 of Army Regulation 601-210, dated May 1, 1968, provided that juveniles of enlistment age, during any point in their legal proceedings, could either continue with their proceedings as normal or, following the proper procedures, enlist voluntarily into the Regular Army for a specified term of service, after which the charges against them would be dropped; \n\n >  2.) Persons who, as an alternative to further prosecution, indictment, trial, or incarceration in connection with the charges, or to further proceedings related to adjudication as a youthful offender or juvenile delinquent, are granted a release from the charges at any stage of the court proceedings on the condi\u00adtion that they will apply for or be accepted for enlistment in the Regular Army.\u201d\n\nThomas W. Catlow, born on November 14, 1951, was charged with loitering, resisting arrest, assault, and illegally carrying a concealed weapon a month before his seventeenth birthday. Catlow's home life was complicated. His parents had divorced, and his mother handed over legal guardianship of him to his uncle; however, Catlow continued to live alternately with his mother and father. In juvenile court, Catlow was informed by the judge that he could either serve five years' imprisonment for the charges, or three years in the Army. It is implied that Catlow opted for the latter, and an Army recruiter contacted him to start the induction process.\n\nCatlow was enlisted into the Army on November 20, 1968, six days after his seventeenth birthday, and the juvenile court charges were dismissed on November 28, 1968. A problem soon arose; Catlow was a minor, and his mother, who was not his legal guardian, had signed the consent form. Catlow soon made his displeasure for military service known, and informed authorities that he thought his enlistment was not genuine. Catlow went absent without leave for a cumulative period of nearly two years, and was soon court-martialed by the Army and sentenced to six months' confinement and hard labor, forfeiture of all pay and benefits, and a dishonorable discharge. Catlow appealed his conviction.\n\nThe appellate counsel (Catlow's lawyers in the appeal case) cited the Army regulation and Catlow's enlistment circumstances as proof that Catlow's enlistment into the Army was invalid, but the Army Court of Military Review rejected their assertion in *U.S. v. Catlow, 47 C.M.R. 617 (A.C.M.R., 1973)*, saying that Catlow, unlike many other jailbird soldiers, had avoided an actual conviction, that there were \"many beneficial aspects of military service,\" and that his civilian legal proceedings and the official dismissal of the civilian charges against Catlow made his enlistment valid.\n\nThe United States Court of Military Appeals had a different opinion in *U.S. v. Catlow, 23 U.S.C.M.A. 142, 48 C.M.R. 758 (1974)*. They contended that Catlow's enlistment, as a result of the policy and circumstances, was \"not the product of his own volition,\" and that \"inherent vice affected his acquisition of the status of a member of the Army.\" The charges against Catlow were dismissed. Another case, from 1975, *United States v. Dumas*, played out in a similar fashion; the defendant was not given proper consent to join the military by his legal guardian, and so his enlistment was invalidated.\n\nThe U.S. military soon moved to re-write their regulations, and the choice of \"go to jail or join the military\" was done away with. it was still a problem in the Army as late as December 1977; many civilian courts had yet to be informed of the policy changes, which exasperated military authorities.\n\nAll U.S. military branches [now explicitly prohibit a person from enlisting](_URL_1_) if they are released from civilian legal proceedings under the stipulation that they join the military. Military recruiters are also prohibited from appearing in court on the behalf of any applicant, and may not offer advice to, or help to an unqualified applicant to enlist.\n\n**United States Air Force:**\n\nAir Force Recruiting Regulation, AETCI 36-2002, table 1-1, lines 7 and 8;\n\n >  [An applicant is ineligible for enlistment if they are] released from restraint, or civil suit, or charges on the condition of entering military service, if the restraint, civil suit, or criminal charges would be reinstated if the applicant does not enter military service.\n\n**United States Army:**\n\nArmy Regulation 601-210, paragraph 4-8b;\n\n >  [Any] applicant who, as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, is ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States, is not eligible for enlistment.\n\nParagraph 4-32a of the same regulation states the following;\n\n >  Waiver is not authorized if a criminal or juvenile court charge is pending or if such a charge was dismissed or dropped at any stage of the court proceedings on condition that the offender enlists in a military service.\n\n**United States Coast Guard:**\n\nCoast Guard Recruiting Manual, M1100.2D, Table 2-A;\n\n >  An application may be denied when, based on articulable facts, it is determined that accession would not be in the best interest of the Coast Guard.\n\n**United States Marine Corps:**\n\nMarine Corps Recruiting Regulation, MCO P1100.72B, Chapter 3, Section 2, Part H, Paragraph 12;\n\n >  Applicants may not enlist as an alternative to criminal prosecution, indictment, incarceration, parole, probation, or another punitive sentence. They are ineligible for enlistment until the original assigned sentence would have been completed.\n\n**United States Navy:**\n\nNavy Recruiting Manual-Enlisted CNRC1130.8H, Section 02083(l):\n\n >  Applicants may not enlist as an alternative to criminal prosecution, indictment, incarceration, parole, probation, or another punitive sentence. They are ineligible for enlistment until the original assigned sentence would have been completed.\n\n\n**Sources:**\n\n\"Forced Enlistments Plague the Army.\" *American Bar Association Journal* 63, no. 12 (December 1977): 1699.\n\nMilburn, Travis. \u201cExploring Military Service as an Alternative Sanction: Evidence From Inmates' Perspectives.\u201d Master's thesis, Eastern Kentucky University, 2012.\n\nSchogol, Jeff. \u201cJudge said Army or jail, but military doesn\u2019t want him.\u201d Stars and Stripes (Washington, D.C.), Feb. 3, 2006.\n\nUnited States. United States Army. *Department of the Army Pamphlet 27-50-19 The Army Lawyer, July 1974*. Washington: United States Department of the Army, 1974."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/07-1974.pdf", "https://www.thebalance.com/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail-3354033"]]}
{"q_id": "20r9j6", "title": "What would films \"really\" have looked like when they were first produced in the 1940s/50s? How much of the blurring/specks are due to degradation over time, and not the technology itself?", "selftext": "I was watching an old film from 1955, [a \"What in the World\" episode](_URL_0_) from the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (some of you may find it interesting!). I couldn't help but notice all the little \"defects\" in the image, such as the blurring, lack of contrast, specks, lines, etc. How many of those defects are due to the film itself deteriorating over time? \n\nAdditionally, has anyone replicated and used 1950s or 1940s filming equipment today? Does anyone know what those results looked like?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20r9j6/what_would_films_really_have_looked_like_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cg64nrn", "cg64qs0", "cg65abh", "cg6aszf"], "score": [2, 31, 11, 2], "text": ["Something I've always been somewhat curious about is old television kinescopes (the 1950's equivalent of using your phone to record television) and whether or not they could be \"upconverted\" to what they would have looked like when first broadcast.\n\nFor example, here is a very high quality capture off (I assume) the original 2\" quad tape of part of a Tonight Show episode from 1964:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI always wondered if it would be possible to run this clip through a kinescope to compare \"broadcast vs. kinescope\" and then devise some filter or program or something to colorize and correct the framerate on existing kinescopes.", "*Edit: the reason your sample film looks so bad is a combination of it being originally shot on much poorer quality film and process than would have been used for the cinema at the time, then poorly preserved over time allowing it to accumulate dust and the sprokets to wear creating judder, then converted to video using a very poor quality process (perhaps even analogous to \"point camera at screen\") and compressed for the web using a poor quality process.  If you dug up the original master somewhere and it'd been sufficiently preserved, it should not look like that.*\n\n-----\n\nAny sufficiently preserved film should not look very different now to when it was new, unless it's been poorly preserved, or you're watching a bad/early film-to-video transfer of it, or something like that.  You may get some color fading in some circumstances, and wear and tear on the sprockets may make it jump around a bit, but then you can always get another print made from a master and it'll be mint-condition.\n\nIf you're seeing specks and blurring in an old film, then something else is wrong - film whether it's shot in 1955 or 2005 should not have specks and blurring if it's in good condition.  You may have seen poorly preserved or heavily worn/used film, or an early transfer to video (telecine).\n\nThe thing is, there were a great many different film formats and stocks, everything from ultra-clean ultra-sharp 70mm film (the likes of Ben-Hur or South Pacific) down to cheaper and more portable 16mm film which was used for newscasting and (since then) for some inserts in television like when filming outdoors.\n\nBen-Hur would have looked about as as crisp and clean as a modern film-based Imax film (albeit a different aspect ratio, it was very \"widescreen\"), and much crisper and cleaner than an average 35mm film (any normal film 10 years ago).  In fact it would have looked so much better to cinema audiences in 1959 than to audiences who saw it on home video or television in the 80s or 90s or even DVD in the 90s or 2000s, simply because that film format is superior to all those subsequent small-screen formats and the methods of transferring to them from film.\n\nAnything originally shot on 35mm film would look comparable to most modern 35mm films.  It should not be blurry by any means but will have visible grain - this grain might be easier to control with modern films but is still present.  Modern pre-digital films like American Beauty, The Matrix or Fight Club have a lot of grain if you look in particular places, and in a way older films tended to shoot in brighter lighting conditions which minimised grain.\n\nWe've now fully entered the digital era - which is a much bigger change than the evolutionary changes from the 1950s up until 10 years ago.  The difference between a film shot digitally in 2013 and a film shot on 35mm film in 2005 will be a lot more than the film in 2005 and a film in 1960.  Digital did have a shaky start but anything in 2012 or later will have much reduced grain, fogging and judder than film while still having decent dynamic range - pretty much an absolute upgrade.\n\nEvolution in film means that colour improved and so did sensitivity, allowing shooting in nature/outdoors and night with less light and/or less grain.  But even by 1955 film was already at a relatively advanced stage.\n\nWhen you see a blu-ray release of a classic film and the picture is so much cleaner and crisper than you ever remember seeing it on video or TV, it's simply because they've gone back and re-digitised a well-preserved film print of the original.  Sure you can run video through de-noising or speck removal but this is no substitute for actually going back to a well-preserved print directly from film.\n\nA lot of the time you see old film footage and it looks really poor, it's because:\n\n- It's newsreel type footage which used much poorer film than cinema in the first place\n- It's taken from a worn-out print that has been heavily used - dust all over it and very worn in the sprokets, maybe even scratched - as opposed to a clean master print that should be locked in a cupboard\n- It's an older film to video conversion (telecine) which sucked a lot of quality out of the picture\n\nI'm no historian but I studied film theory and film history at one stage.", "The film used in the forties onward was already a fairly mature technology, not immensely distinct from the monochrome film emulsions that we have today. This particular footage however was shot for television, so I'm not familiar with the technology. UPenn's archives website is also not doing us the favour of informing us what the actual format they have in storage, if any, or what and how that copy was digitised. Since this is a television show, it may have been shot on a television camera and transferred to film using a kinescope, for example.\n\nBut the short answer is: No, film would not have looked blurry or indistinct back then. Assuming it was shot on equipment that was modern for the time, black and white films would have more or less the same level of clarity that modern films do, though cinematographers at the time were much more tolerant of film grain. Colour film would have had very different colours, but in terms of resolution and clarity, no issues either; while the colour processes used at that time still had kinks to work out, particularly in low lighting and with darker or less saturated shades, the way films were shot at the time ameliorated or sidestepped those issues.", "To give somewhat of an answer for the second part the closest I can think of is the good German which was filmed using 1940s lenses and techniques. However they used other modern technology so it does not fully work. The only case of film makers using old technology is Lumi\u00e8re and Company a 1995 series of short films using 1890 s cameras"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://archive.org/details/upenn-f16-4005_what_in_the_world_6"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkeqkEg2SiI"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3jy7s1", "title": "The US had the \"containment\" foreign policy during the Cold War, what sort of foreign policy did the USSR have?", "selftext": "Did the USSR know of the US's containment policy? Did it try to counteract it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jy7s1/the_us_had_the_containment_foreign_policy_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cutke8r"], "score": [31], "text": ["This is a difficult question to answer since there were very few Soviet analogues to Kennan's overarching Containment Doctrine. One could argue that Marxist-Leninism, which argued that a revolution could be achieved under the leadership of an organized communist party, was the cornerstone of the Soviet's understanding of foreign affairs, but the importance of a Marxist-Leninist *Weltanschauung* generates more questions than answers. Although Moscow's foreign policy establishment produced reams of pronouncements on world affairs, these were often couched in such sweeping ideological rhetoric that made it difficult to parse out what was actual Soviet policy. One of the important subfields of the West's Cold War-era Kremlinologists was engaged in actively trying to parse out the kernels of wheat from its Marxist-Leninist chaff. \n\nIn general, the Soviet's foreign policy in the Cold War had a degree of continuity from its foreign policy in the 1930s. The position of the USSR was that it was the leader of a large global movement of both anti-fascist and anti-imperialist organizations. Within this umbrella organization of the global left, Moscow reserved pride of place for local communist parties who were tasked with being the ideological leaders in local political movements. The Soviets encouraged party discipline and demanded a degree of loyalty from the leadership of various communist parties. Andrei Zhdanov's [1947 pronouncement](_URL_0_) of the creation of the Cominform, a successor to the disbanded Comintern, outlines this Soviet-centric umbrella approach:\n\n > In the pursuit of these ends the imperialist camp is prepared to rely on reactionary and anti-democratic forces in all countries, and to support its former adversaries in the war against its wartime allies.\n\n > The anti-fascist forces comprise the second camp. This camp is based on the U.S.S.R. and the new democracies. It also includes countries that have broken with imperialism and have firmly set foot on the path of democratic development, such as Rumania, Hungary and Finland. Indonesia and Vietnam are associated with it; it has the sympathy of India, Egypt and Syria. The anti-imperialist camp is backed by the labor and democratic movement and by the fraternal Communist parties in all countries, by the fighters for national liberation in the colonies and dependencies, by all progressive and democratic forces in every country. The purpose of this camp is to resist the threat of new wars and imperialist expansion, to strengthen democracy and to extirpate the vestiges of fascism.  \n\nEven though Zhdanov's declaration was one of the first major foreign policy pronouncements by a Soviet leader in the postwar era, the Cominform fizzled out despite the fears it engendered in the West's anticommunists. In practice, the Soviets sought to use the structure of the Cominform to break any sign of independence from its constituent members. Although initially headquartered in Belgrade, Yugoslavia would actually be expelled from the Cominform less than a year later on account of Tito's independent approach to Yugoslavia's relations to its Balkan neighbors. The Cominform's coordination with Western communist parties fared little better. Instead of resurrecting a Popular Front strategy, Western communist parties increasingly adapted a strategy of being political outliers critiquing the postwar political establishment. Although this meant communism was able to make some ideological inroads in the West, especially in the late 1940s, Western communist parties became marginal political actors. The case of the KPD was an extreme example in which its kneejerk political activism (abetted by forged documents provided by the CIA) led the FRG courts to ban it as an antidemocratic party in 1956. \n\nUnderlying the general failure of the Cominform is a thread that remained one of the few consistencies of Soviet foreign policy: whatever the situation, Moscow's interpretation and interests were paramount. This fusion of *realpolitik* and Marxist-Leninism created a highly mercurial foreign policy that was highly reactive in nature. In his memoirs, Molotov outlined thegeneral thrust of the Soviet postwar view of its interests:\n\n > They hardened their line against us, and we had to consolidate what we had conquered. We created our socialist Germany in part of Germany, and in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, where the situation was fluid, we needed to restore order. Suppress capitalist order. This was the Cold War. Of course, you had to know the right measure. I believe that in this sense Stalin kept himself well within the limits.\n\n Italy in the late 1940s was a case in point of how Stalin tried to temper the situation in favor of order. The attempted assassination of the PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti in July 1948, coupled with widespread allegations of electoral fraud the previous April, generated widespread strikes and demonstrations among the Italian left. Togliatti would sometimes employ the rhetoric of civil war in public pronouncements, indicated the PCI was going to lead a wider struggle. Stalin reigned in this rhetoric, underscoring to  Togliatti that the PCI had not exhausted all legal measures to power and that a civil war was not in the larger interests of the Soviet Union. So despite fulfilling much of the criterion of Zhdanov's proclamation, Soviet geostrategic interests trumped that of the need for a global struggle. \n\nMoscow's insistence that it was the elder brother of the global communist movement did not sit well abroad, especially in areas outside of direct Soviet military power. Stalin's somewhat patronizing attempts to control Mao and the CCP poisoned Sino-Soviet relations well after Stalin's death. With the conclusions of hostilities in 1945, Stalin desired for Mao to continue his wartime collaboration with the KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek. Stalin believed not only would the KMT prevail in a civil war, but that civil war would destroy China. Stalin gave Mao a diktat in August 1945 that he should travel to Chungking and negotiate with Chiang or \"his stand would be repudiated in China and abroad.\" The Chungking meeting had the opposite effect than Stalin intended. Mao's meetings with Chiang reinforced within him the idea that he could win a civil war; Mao would later claim that Chiang was \"a corpse and no one believes him anymore.\" The communist victory thus came as much a shock to Moscow as to Washington. Although the Red Army turned over some Japanese war material to the CCP, they largely kept the best equipment and destroyed the remainder. Mao's victory emerged as a fait accompli for the newly-formed PRC as the USSR could not repudiate a successful communist revolution. But this did not stop Stalin from insisting that the PRC make economic and political concessions to the USSR and refused to aid Mao in efforts to invade Taiwan.\n\nThe emergence of Mao and the PRC as an ideological rival deeply unnerved the Kremlin and colored the perceptions of its foreign policy. With an alternative and seemingly more vibrant Marxist rival, Soviet actions seemed to be much more the actions of an old-school great power than a force trying to lead the world's downtrodden masses. The need for the Soviets to maintain security over Eastern Europe led to a series of crackdowns in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary. In light of these actions, Khrushchev's attempt to craft a peaceful coexistence with the West became the source of much criticism in the PRC and other left radical groups. The dissolving of the Cominform in 1956 and the Soviet destalinization drive gave further fodder for these anti-Soviet critiques. This denuding of its ideological purity meant that as the USSR sought to engage with movements in the Third World like Nasser's Egypt, Soviet foreign policy appeared to many as less it leading an umbrella movement and more as sheer opportunism. The fact that many of these nationalist movements in the third world, such as Nasserism or Ba'ath ism repressed or subordinated local communist parties gave cause for further critiques of the USSR for its self-interested foreign policy.     \n\nThese matters came to a head in the 1968 Prague Spring where a Warsaw Pact invasion crushed a Czechoslovakian reform movement. The resulting outcry both within the Soviet sphere of influence and abroad was quite condemnatory. The result of this outcry was the most clearly articulated Soviet position on foreign policy yet, the Breznev Doctrine. Although the Brezhnev Doctrine fit within the pattern of prior Soviet (or Soviet-enabled) interventions in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, the Doctrine was only truly formalized in the aftermath of Prague Spring. The rationale behind it was to try and reinvigorate the connectivity of the Warsaw Pact and underscore each member's commitment to the Marxist-Leninist socialism championed by the USSR. The Doctrine not only stated that the USSR had a right to intervene in a Warsaw Pact state if it adapted a political course contrary to socialism, but also other Warsaw Pact states had to intervene as well. The fear of other Warsaw Pact states forming their \"own road to socialism,\" and breaking Moscow's monopoly on what it perceived as the correct political path. This fear was particularly acute for many Soviet leaders and the events in Prague Spring underscored how such a danger was real.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/nss/documents/zhdanov-response-to-x.html"]]}
{"q_id": "384ty2", "title": "Monday Methods | Can the Subaltern Speak?", "selftext": "Welcome to another Evening edition of Monday Methods.\n\nI want to thank /u/lngwstksgk for suggesting today's topic, and referring me to [this thread](_URL_0_).\n\nI recognize that terms like 'subaltern' and 'hegemonic discourse' can be opaque to many who are reading this. I hope that the following quote and questions can give an accessible sense of what is being asked here.\n\nIn \"Choosing Marinality as a Site of Resistance\" ~~Bell Hooks~~ bell hooks described the dynamic between the Western Academic and the non-Western Subaltern thusly:\n\n > [There is] no need to hear your voice, when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still [the] colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now at the center of my talk.\n\nIs this a fair accusation? In writing the story of the Subaltern^1, does the Academic take away the subject's voice and replace it with the voice of the Academic?\n\nIs Joanne Sharp correct in saying that Western intellectuals relegate non-western ways of knowing as *unscientific* or *folklore* or *superstition* or *traditional*; and to be heard in the Academic community, subaltern people or groups must express themselves in Western ways of reasoning and language. Thus, in changing the \"language of knowing\" the Subaltern can no longer accurately express their traditions of knowing?\n\n----\n1- a broad, simple definition of Subaltern could be \"persons or groups in society that are written about by others, but whose first-hand accounts do not exist\". Most definitions of the Subaltern assume them to be at the margins of Western society. Historically, medieval serfs, Afro-American slaves, and women could be considered a few examples of subaltern groups, among others.\n\n----\n\nNext week's theme is **Handling manuscripts and other primary documents**.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/384ty2/monday_methods_can_the_subaltern_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crsd4ec", "crsh09j", "crsldzg"], "score": [17, 14, 6], "text": ["I don't have any problem with the description you lay out here - I think the scholarship on the subject has really adequately outlined the issue and I don't disagree in the slightest. Where I think an issue still lies is that I don't think anyone has yet to propose a very satisfactory or pragmatic solution for Western academics to continue their work on these subjects without silencing other perspectives. I find the entire discourse troubling because at some fundamental level it proposes that *there is no way* for me to continue writing history about the subaltern without perpetuating the silence. Perhaps there isn't a way to reconcile my position as a Western academic with the subject matter I would like to write about, but I hope we, as in social scientists, can at least explore some other possibilities for this reconciliation. \n\nIn American archaeology, at least, the best work is being done by archaeologists working with descendant communities - primarily Native American groups - in order to incorporate their perspectives into the history being written. At the end of the day, however, it seems that all these projects either entirely abandon their academic agency in controlling the work (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does produce different work), or they produce a final product wherein the subaltern perspective is still shackled to a fundamentally Western academic context and framework. I try not to despair, but finding a middle ground within one body of work seems difficult. Maybe the only real way to embrace a multivocal scholarship is just to flood the \"market\" with many different perspectives, rather than trying to incorporate them all into single bodies of work. ", "I think it's a problem of source material. The state didn't let the subaltern speak (essentially by definition) so the material is absent state archives, except perhaps the archives of the organs of criminal justice. It's no accident that the famous microhistories of the West that deal with peasants (*The Cheese and the Worms*, *the Return of Martin Guerre*, *Mountaillou*, etc) are all taken from court records that happened to be i) recorded in sufficient detail and ii) preserved to the present day (the records for Mountaillou only survived, for example, because the inquisitor of Mountaillou became pope, and all his paper brought to Rome and preserved).  One can construct a history from snatches of songs, and folks tales, and offhand mentions (see E.P. Thompson's work), but it is more difficult and almost impossible before printing became popular. Outside these and a few other very particular events (like peasant revolts), getting the voices of the subaltern is very difficult if not impossible. Talented social historians can pick up and stitch together a thousand scraps (either through statistics or prosopography or some other method), but it's hard to hear a \"voice\" from such a tapestry, even a magnificent one (like Eugene Weber's magisterial *Peasants into Frenchmen*). I think accusing historians of saying \"There is not need to hear your voice\" is a little facile. If their voices survived in documents (or even documented songs, folktales, etc), at least some historians would strain to hear it. But where no documents exist, those voices are dead to history.\n\nThis is purely about *academic history*. I think it often gets mixed up with current *policy* debates, where even when given amplification, the interests of subaltern groups are often not heard. To conflate those would do a disservice to both living subaltern groups (in exaggerating the difficulty of hearing them, rather than seeing it as a strategy) and dead subaltern (who most of whom can never be resurrected due to never being documented in a way that future historians could look back on).\n\nI think that the historian/anthropologist/sociologist who studies subaltern groups should do her best to understand their frames of action, but simultaneously, should not be limited in her understanding by the frames that she is supposed to be analyzing. A historian who only understood French kings (to choose the least subaltern example possible) as they understood themselves would be a bad historian.  Likewise, a historian who paid no attention to how French kings understood themselves, and only imposed outside frames (modern ones, economic ones, psychological ones, rational choice ones, etc.), would also be a bad historian. The trick of history, for a modern historian, is trying to do both at once.  It's a difficult job, to say the least (as a sociologist, I often lean towards prizing the outside frames, at least for important state actors), and reminds me at times of an old Yiddish (and, I learned this weekend, German) proverb, \"You can't dance at two weddings\" (the Yiddish adds \"with one *tuches*\", which as far as I know is absent in the German). Yet, the historian must do her best to try to be attentive to both of the bridal parties. ", "The discussion between Vivek Chibber and Spivak, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, et. al., over Chibber's attack on the Subaltern Studies group, *Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Captial* (Verso, 2013) has been really illuminating for me in understanding the stakes in the question of the subaltern's speech and the incommensurability of East and West. Spivak wrote a scathing (even for her) review to which Chibber responded, and there's a YouTube video of Chibber debating Chatterjee as well. Anyone else been following this?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bf7tw/can_the_subaltern_speak/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "7vwe99", "title": "Did Charles Manson actually know what a Helter Skelter was? Did he sincerely believe the Beatles were also talking about a race war?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7vwe99/did_charles_manson_actually_know_what_a_helter/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtw92is"], "score": [23], "text": ["I hope this answer is sufficient for the sub, but I've read Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Charles Manson trial. Bugliosi's case was built partially on the idea that Manson thought the Beatles were sending him hidden messages, particularly in the \"White Album\" about a coming race war called Helter Skelter. During this race war, Manson and his followers would live underground somewhere in the desert in safety, and then come up after the war was over and rule over the blacks, who in Manson's opinion would not be able to rule themselves.\n\nAccording to Bugliosi, Manson thought the race war wasn't coming about fast enough so he and his followers would trigger it with the killings, and after killing the LaBiancas they wrote \"Helter Skelter\" in blood on the wall, which would seem to support Bugliosi's theory.\n\nI believe Manson always protested his innocence and claimed the notion of \"Helter Skelter\" as a race war was just an idea dreamed up by Bugliosi."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "42wlnl", "title": "It's often said the Japanese monarchy was founded by Emperor Jimmu, in the 6th century BCE. Was he a real person? How much do we know about him historically?", "selftext": "I've heard people say that he was just a myth, and not a real person. How much is there to this point? Was Jimmu a real person, and can the foundation of the Japanese monarchy really be attributed to him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42wlnl/its_often_said_the_japanese_monarchy_was_founded/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czeactf"], "score": [11], "text": ["Most of what we know of this period in Japan comes to us from 2 works, the [Nihon Shoki](_URL_0_) which serves as the official state history of the Yamato state up until that point, and the [Kojiki](_URL_1_) which is largely a collection of poetry of historical value due to the fact that it was mostly the aristocrats and soldiers who were composing them. What you need to understand first about the Nihon Shoki is that it's essentially propaganda. It's main purpose is to lend authority to the imperial line of the Yamato state by associating their personages with the gods of the people. It isn't necessarily reliable, much like numerous aspects of the various chinese state histories. And as a matter of fact, there are reasons to doubt aspects of some of the older sets of poems in the Kojiki. In the Nihon Shoki it says that Jimmu is a descendant of the sun goddess Amatarasu and the storm god Susa-no-O. Now even though both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki corroborate his reign dates, they were both commissioned works from the aristocracy leading the Yamato state in (probably) Asuka and they were commissioned at about the same time anyway, and after several hundred years after Jimmu lived. If you take it for granted that he existed in the first place, you may accept the secular information about him while taking a grain of salt over his deeds as depicted in the Nihon Shoki. You certainly can't have any faith in the mythical information about him or the absurd, such as him living for 126 years. If he existed at all, that tells you that the following reigning emperors *do not* have the correct reign dates, as well for Jimmu since he could not have lived that long. However, the point of the Nihon Shoki is to present him and the imperial line as divine. As a result of this, we really don't know how far the imperial line goes back, because what we do know isn't trustworthy here. Jimmu not existing in the first place is certainly possible because the writers of the state history had a political need of such figures anyway. Alternatively the legend of Jimmu may have predated the state history and just been very convenient for the fledgling Yamato state. The only way to know for sure if he really existed would be for the discovery of a kofun burial mound that clearly identifies him by name and can be carbon dated to the time period, but so far that hasn't been discovered (to my knowledge). I would say that given the current knowledge we have, it's a safer bet that he never existed in the first place, but we can't know for sure. Large sections of history come to us from a few biased sources and this is just one of those cases. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Shoki", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojiki"]]}
{"q_id": "21ihri", "title": "Are there any reasons why historic Asian sailing ships looked so differently from the sailing ships of the rest of the world?", "selftext": "The design of many early century sloops from Asia seemed so different from the ships common through out the rest of the world. I've always found the [hull designs beautiful works of art](_URL_3_), but it seems the sails have a common feature of being [stacked square shapes](_URL_1_), [colorful](_URL_2_), and for lack of a better term [\"window-blind\" like](_URL_0_). I have a great appreciation of all tall ships, but I've always wondered why Western ships didn't seem to influence the ship designs of early Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21ihri/are_there_any_reasons_why_historic_asian_sailing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgdfi2b", "cgdmi57", "cgdp8fv"], "score": [74, 15, 3], "text": ["Unfortunately, the maritime history and archaeology world has not given as much attention to Asia's maritime shipbuilding traditions and architectures (at least when compared to those of the Atlantic World). Some of it might be that, besides how much newer the discipline of maritime studies is compared to the others, western archaeologists wishing to work on Asian vessels often find legal barriers to working on Asian sites. But, there has been some study.  I remember from studying Chinese Junks a few points that may help explain the differences.     \n      \nIt should be established that, yes, Asian shipbuilding traditions did develop separately from European ones. And while Asian ship building did start adapting things from Europeans when they arrived, they still maintained plenty of of their own unique styles and methods. Just a couple small differences I can remember between European and Asian vessels (in particular, the Junk) is the use of reverse-clinker on the Asian vessels (instead of strakes overlapping in an outboard direction like those in Europe, the strakes overlap in an inboard direction) and the drastically different way stem and stern posts were designed.      \nFor the sail design, that was a distinct style that made it easier for fewer people to operate a vessel. Instead of men going up shrouds and pulling in sail while perched on a yardarm, the sail was just raised and lowered from the deck (you even said \"window-blind\", think about how that is lowered and raised and you can get an idea of how that works from the deck).      \nThis topic is quite a large one, and deserves more attention than I can provide (as my flair indicates, I pay attention to the Atlantic world). But, if you want books that can help you get a better understanding, I would recommend *Chinese Junks on the Pacific: Views from a Different Deck* by Hans Konrad Van Tilburg and *Boats of South Asia* by Sean McGrail, Lucy Blue, Eric Kentley, and Colin Palmer (I highly recommend anything by Sean McGrail for Asian naval architecture development, he was one of the first to dig heavily into it). These are the two books I learned about Asian ship construction. ", "Aside from the other points, remember that European ships are not \"everywhere else\". They are just as much a product of historical forces and distinct to a particular culture as junks, waka, or pirogue. In fact, the closest thing you will get to a \"universal\" ship type is probably the dhow, which was and is used all across the Indian Ocean.", "Thanks for all that have commented on this. While we are on the subject of historical Asian ships, are there any particular ships from China, Japan, or Korean history that would be interesting to read about? Something similar to infamous western ships like Blackbeard's Queen Anne's revenge? I'd love to build a model of one!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/snafu1056/koreaship.jpg", "http://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/images/eet/rodes_3/history4.gif", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Xu_Fu_expedition%27s_for_the_elixir_of_life.jpg", "http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/images/exbig_images/2a235dd003a59bf0ada024e6988ff8b4.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "bh5zwi", "title": "Why are there four different Gospels that cover much of the same material? What was the intended purpose, or who was the intended audience, of each Gospel?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bh5zwi/why_are_there_four_different_gospels_that_cover/", "answers": {"a_id": ["elqwik3", "elqymhl", "elrkm4n"], "score": [169, 20, 18], "text": ["The Gospels were all written at least 50 years after Christ (Mark) to 100 years after him (John).\n\nWe think the Gospels are inspired by works we have since lost. The most famous is the \"Quelle\" or Q source (Quelle means source in German), which is supposed to be a list of sayings of Jesus.\n\nBasically what Bible scholars do is they read each text meticulously, line by line, then they compare what is similar and different between each. Doing this - it is pretty ingenious - they are able to reverse engineer earlier texts and even figure out what percentage of each text comes from each earlier work. We started doing this in the 1800s and it's persisted to present day Bible scholarship.\n\nThe other early work (other than Q) is Mark. Basically we think Matthew and Luke used Mark (the earliest Gospel) and Quelle as sources.\n\nThe first three Gospels are called \"synoptic,\" meaning they have roughly the same presentation of the Jesus story.\n\nThe last Gospel, John, is considered anomalous so it gets its own category. It doesn't have the same sources as the others and Jesus goes on long, philosophical sermons in it which he doesn't in the others.\n\nWe call the authors of the Gospels the evangelists.\n\nIn the New Testament, Matthew was placed first because *originally* we thought it was the earliest Gospel. This conclusion came from its (mostly Jewish-oriented) perspective. More recently scholarship has accurately found Mark was the earliest, using the reverse engineering method I mentioned.\n\nThere is some division over how you can interpret each Gospel but I usually present it to my students as the following:\n\nMatthew - The \"Jewish\" perspective on Jesus\n\nChristianity was originally a sect of Judaism, so Matthew is often more concerned with interpreting Christ's teachings in relation to Jewish law and tradition. Matthew is also the only Gospel written in Aramaic, not Greek.\n\nLuke - The \"Gentile\" (or Greek) perspective on Jesus\n\nAs time proceeded, Christianity began to attract adherents who were non-Jews (Gentiles) - mostly people from the Hellenic world - but there was much resistance to this as it was originally a Jewish sect. Luke's view is often focused on interpreting Christ to make it more accessible to non-Jews.\n\nThe next two are my views of the other Gospels and how I usually teach them (I like to keep it simple and clear), but just know you could dispute these and interpret them differently:\n\nMark - Emphasis on the \"Humanity\" of Jesus\n\nAs you know the Christian view of Christ says he has a dual nature, both human and divine. I base this reading mostly on the very interesting conclusion to Mark - the resurrection. The resurrection is left ambiguous in the original version of Mark. Jesus does not reappear to the disciples or overtly demonstrate his risen form. This Gospel also focuses on the \"mystery\" of who Jesus is. It is accepted he is a prophet, and he demonstrates miracles throughout, but it is unclear who he is.\n\nJohn - Emphasis on the \"Divinity\" of Jesus\n\nAnd this is how I usually frame John: as one in which the divinity of Christ is accepted - there is no \"mystery\" like in Mark. Focus on his godhood rather than his humanity. For example, he begins as a divine \"Logos\" which preexisted.\n\nGetting back to your question - you raise a very interesting point about the unique situation in which there are four different accounts of effectively the same narrative in Christianity.\n\nThe Gospels *do* offer different versions of events, tweak the exact things said by Christ, *and* contradict each other at different points.\n\nWhile in earlier epochs you might run into the danger of being accused of heresy, I feel it enriches the religion greatly and opens it up to many different analyses and lenses.\n\nPerhaps it is also not the point we are supposed to get *the exact version of what happened,* but rather understand the overall synthesis or theme of Jesus' teaching.", "The textual history of the Bible is quite complex and fascinating. The four Gospels can be divided into two groups: Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John, which is narratively and theologically distinct from the others. \n\nScholarly theories vary but one of the most common over the past 100 years or so is that Mark was the first Gospel (circa 60 AD), and Matthew and Luke were developed from Mark in combination with a lost source or sources, and John was the latest, from about 100 AD. This is very much a simplification of the distinctions between the four, but while all four gospels focus on biographical details of Jesus, the Synoptic gospels are more concrete, focusing on specific stories of Jesus's life, and John is much more abstract and philosophical in style. \n\nCertainly there were others floating around; some have survived to this day (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, etc.) and others have undoubtedly been lost over the centuries. During the first few centuries, there were a lot of arguments and differing philosophies about the developing Christian faith; the losing ideas ended up being deemed heretical. The books which eventually came to form the accepted canon of what we know now as \"The New Testament\" were developed by the end of the 4th century AD by various bishops who came up with the lists of gospels and letters which they felt were both accurate and - importantly - best reflected the theories of Christianity which matched the prevailing, orthodox(with-a-small-o) theology at the time. Primary sources which reflect the first modern New Testament Canon include St Athanasius's \"39th Festal Letter\" as well as the Codex Vaticanus, written in Rome about 30 years earlier.", "As a preface, none of this is certain.  Scholars are simply attempting to make their best guesses as to the answers to each of your questions based on the limited evidence available to them.  Virtually every position below is disputed by at least one reputable scholar.\n\nMark, Matthew, and Luke are known as the Synoptic (lit. \"seeing together\") Gospels because their content is so similar that it can be set out in columns next to each other and read side-by-side.  The academic consensus is that Mark was the first written and that Matthew and Luke adapted Mark.  Matthew and Luke would have done that to produce Gospels that they believed to be \"better\" for their intended audiences than Mark (in addition to adding more material and focusing on different issues, Matthew and Luke both improved Mark's grammar).  The most common position is that Luke and Matthew were independent of each other and that each was combining Mark, an unpreserved separate source known as \"Q,\" and their own unique traditions.  (Other theories exist, such as that Q never existed and that Luke simply had access to Matthew as well as Mark).  Mark was probably written in the late sixties or early seventies.  Matthew and Luke were likely written in the eighties or nineties.  \n\nJohn is an entirely different beast.  Over 90% of John has no parallel in any of the synoptic gospels and it has an entirely distinct character from the Synoptic Gospels.  Unlike Matthew and Luke, John shows no obvious dependence on Mark and the author of John may or may not have had access to it, Matthew, or Luke.  Most scholars date John to the mid-nineties.\n\nMark is normally presumed to have written for his own local Christian community, although others have argued the Gospels (including Mark) were intended to instruct the Church at large).  Arguments in favor of the former position include the use of personal names of specific individuals who are not otherwise referenced in the NT, that certain prophecies appear to be directed to specific locales, and that the audience of Mark appears to be persecuted (despite the absence of systemic, as opposed to local, persecution at the time Mark was written).  Additionally, the continued survival of Mark despite the existence of Luke and Matthew may point to the local use of Mark.  Traditionally, Mark was presumed to be writing from (and, under the standard presumption, to) Rome.  However, Roman Syria may be more likely for geographical and demographic reasons.  Mark's Gospel was also likely targeted primarily to those who were already Christian (rather than adversaries or nonbelievers); it presupposes Christian belief at numerous points and does not provide a reason for the disciples answering the call of Jesus (unlike in similar tales found in philosophical and wisdom literature). Mark did not presume that his audience would know Aramaic or many Jewish customs and laws (which, along with its status as a war-front, likely eliminates Palestine as its place of composition, despite a number of proponents of that theory).  The traditional answer as to the purpose of the Gospel of Mark is to preserve the Jesus tradition. However, this requires two arguably false assumptions: (1) that those in Mark's time believed written traditions to be superior to oral traditions (2) that Mark did not himself rework the Jesus tradition in his own writings.  Some scholars argue that Mark wrote to address a crisis in the early Church's eschatology caused by the Jewish war or to counter a Christological heresy.  Others argue that Mark was written pastorally to remind readers and listeners of who Jesus was, what he came to do, what he would do, and what the Kingdom of God constituted.  It may also be that Mark was intended for liturgical services.\n\nThe Gospel of Matthew was most likely written to Jewish Christians.  Reasons for this position include: its stress on the fulfillment of the Old Testament and Jesus's righteousness and fidelity to the law, the omission of explanations of Jewish customs found in Mark, Matthew's decision to present a number of discussions in rabbinic patterns, and refutations of Jewish claims against Jesus (e.g., that his body was stolen or that his birth was illegitimate).  Most scholars believe it was written in Syria (and most of those scholars believe it was written in Antioch).  There is less certainty as to its purpose.  It clearly recounts the life of Jesus, explains how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, and proclaims the saving activity manifested by Jesus's death and resurrection.  In doing so, Matthew likely intends to help his church or churches understand their new faith in the interim between the death and resurrection of Christ and his second coming.  In this manner, Matthew acts as a discipling manual, a \"handbook\" of Jesus's life and teachings.  Further suggested purposes include: to act as a midrash of Mark, to act as a lectionary or as a catechetical manual, to address divides within Matthew's community, to act as missionary propaganda, or to function as a polemic against rabbis or Pharisees.\n\nLuke's Gospel contains a preface stating that he intends to write an orderly account of \"the events that have been fulfilled among us\" for Theophilus (a name meaning \"friend of God\" that may be a pseudonym), so that he \"may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.\"  The traditional assumption is that Luke wrote pastorally to a Gentile church or churches.  However, he may have been writing to an audience of God-fearers (non-Jews of a Hellenistic background that are attracted to Judaism and follow some of its precepts but have not converted).  It should be noted since Luke is explicitly addressed to Theophilus, it is possible, but not likely, that Luke was written specifically to address the needs of Theophilus and not a wider readership.  Luke's ideal audience would have been of higher education than average, knowledgeable of northern Aegean Greek Culture, and familiar with the Septuagint.\n\nThe Gospel of John is widely assumed to have been written in either Roman Asia (likely Ephesus or Smyrna) or Syro-Palestine (likely Galilee or Antioch).  Its own statement of purpose is that it was written \"so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.\"  However, uncertainty as to the underlying Greek text and ambiguity as to its meaning renders it unclear whether that statement is missionary or instructional (i.e., to outsiders or to members of the Church) in character.  A majority of scholars believe the latter, while a minority believe it has a missionary or dual purpose.  The Gospel of John was certainly written to provide an authoritative interpretation of the Jesus tradition.  It is less clear whether John was written to supplement, correct, or interpret the synoptic Gospels (or even if John was aware of those Gospels).  However, the Gospel of John does have definite polemical aims against contemporary understandings of John the Baptist and against \"the Jews\" (generally referring to Jewish leaders, especially Pharisees, who were opposed to Jesus and his followers, not the entirety of the Jewish people).  It may also be anti-gnostic and anti-docetic, although this is far less certain.  The majority of community to which the Gospel of John was addressed were likely Jewish Christians, the core of whom would possess the Palestinian Jewish cultural knowledge assumed by the Gospel.\n\nMark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament:  A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (2d ed. 2018)\nCraig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Social-Rhetorical Commentary (2009)\n1 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (2003)\n1 Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (2012)  \nJoel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (2000)\nGeorge R. Beasley-Murray, John (rev. ed., 1999)\nJohn Nolland, Luke 1:1-9:20 (2000)\nRobert A. Guelich, Mark 1-8:26 (1989)\nDonald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (2000)\nNRSV"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "82li0i", "title": "In the 1932 German elections, the Communists won almost six million votes. The Social Democrats 7 million. Why wasn't there a massive German resistance movement under the Third Reich?", "selftext": "One thing I've heard time and time again is that there was no sizeable German resistance to the Nazis and that the Germans overwhelmingly supported Hitler during the war. But If almost 12 million people were prepared to vote for the sworn enemies of the Nazis in 1932, they couldn't have all (or even mostly) been killed, imprisoned, or converted within the next 12 years. Why was there no large-scale underground opposition?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/82li0i/in_the_1932_german_elections_the_communists_won/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvb69uc"], "score": [11], "text": ["On top of this, how did Ernst Thalmann not appeal more than Hitler? Wouldn't most Germans be anti-war?\n\nEdit to rephrase: Wouldn't people support a system that help their economy and health and whatnot, rather than Hitler's ideals of genocide and combat, as well as suppression of media?\nAlso to answer to the best of my abilities: when people don't get their candidate, it's not an immediate revolt. They would revolt when they start doing bad things. Before the war and concentration camps really started, the Nazis imprisoned and killed and tortured the Communists. On top of this, many may have been drafted or simply not disagreed strongly enough. While this doesn't answer the question fully, I think it's important to realize that by the time Hitler was worth revolting against, all the people who would had been forced into military, imprisoned/tortured, killed, or fled."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2f2ixc", "title": "What is the oldest piece of evidence pertaining to Judaism? Who's the first person we're sure existed, first event, first town or kingdom etc?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2f2ixc/what_is_the_oldest_piece_of_evidence_pertaining/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck5vusw", "ck79oqc", "ck7tlbw", "ck5nd14"], "score": [7, 4, 2, 11], "text": ["Evidence is reasonably strong that there actually was a King David.  At least, there is an inscription that refers to the \"House of David\"--his subsequent dynasty.  His dating is to around 1000 BCE (not entirely uncontested, but then, what is?).  So far as I know, no one earlier in the Bible has any external corroboration of their existence.\n\n_URL_0_", "Probably the [Merneptah Stele](_URL_0_), dated c. 1208 BCE.\n\n3 of its 28 lines deal with a military campaign in Canaan, and one line states that \"Israel is laid waste\". The way it's worded suggests that \"Israel\" at the time was a tribe rather than a kingdom. ", "Ive never posted here before but Ive been lurking for a while. This overmoderation is really beginning to bother me. I can't stand seeing all these deleted comments and shadowbanned posters. When there is a reponse to deleted posts that is allowed to stay, we're left without context.\n\nIt's to a point I'm considering unsubbing. I anticipate This post will be deleted soon.", "We have pieces from the books of Numbers that date from the 7th century BCE.\n\n_URL_0_\n  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele"], [], ["http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/01/06/The-Blessing-of-the-Silver-Scrolls.aspx"]]}
{"q_id": "36vyy1", "title": "Given what's likely to happen to its ruins, what is considered the 'must read' book on the history of Palmyra?", "selftext": "As the title says. I've been fascinated by the city ever since first hearing about it on Mike Duncan's \"The History of Rome.\" Is there a definitive book about the city's history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36vyy1/given_whats_likely_to_happen_to_its_ruins_what_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cri5vwh"], "score": [9], "text": ["I've heard good things about Pat Southern's *Empress Zenobia*, which was written to be accessible to a general audience but by somebody who knows her stuff. If you are up for it, Andrew Smith's *Roman Palmyra* is very good but very dense.\n\nRichard Stoneman's *Palmyra and its Empire* is, as far as I know, the most widely available general work on the topic. I hear it is well written but somewhat sloppy historically: for example, it takes the somewhat problematic stance that Zenobia was a native anti-Roman insurgent rather than a more complicated modern perspective. Still, it would certainly be a good place to start."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "ahy840", "title": "A Persian View of Thermopylae?", "selftext": "I was amazed to discover that nearly everything in 300 hundred was a lie, that Spartan military supremacy was a myth, that theirs was a horrendously cruel slave state, that Persians were actually more Democratic and egalitarian and free in many key ways, and so on. I feel this need to hear a coherent counter-narrative. Any recommendations? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ahy840/a_persian_view_of_thermopylae/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eejtb5a", "eek37m9"], "score": [29, 60], "text": ["I caught the AskHistorians Podcast ep 116 a few months ago that might have what your looking for. Not specifically a Persian view but a more balanced one.\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\nFrom user /u/iphikrates\n\n\n\n_URL_0_", "There is very little in the way of Persian sources, and nothing that a coherent narrative can be constructed out of. Due to a limited number of sources and administrative records, the degree to which it is possible to understand the Achaemenid Empire is very limited.\n\nThey were absolutely not democratic, though - in principle, that is, ideologically speaking, the Great King was not just a powerful monarch, but an absolute theocrat governing with perfect justice. I have written a bit on this [here](_URL_1_).\n\nI've also written a bit on Persian governance and taxation [here](_URL_2_).\n\nAlso, in case any other answers interest you, my wiki profile page is [here](_URL_0_).\n\nFor the matter of the invasion of Greece I defer to /u/Iphikrates as linked by /u/seekunrustlement ."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/90ha3e/askhistorians_podcast_116_debunking_300s_battle/", "https://soundcloud.com/user679855208/askhistorians-podcast-116"], ["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/lcnielsen", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0cqhp/what_role_did_the_persian_emperor_play_in/eawirps/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/adelmt/how_did_the_persian_government_work_on_a_daytoday/edizkk4/?context=2"]]}
{"q_id": "b2xy98", "title": "Why did the Patriarch of Rome specifically become the most powerful patriarch prior to the Great Schism?", "selftext": "Why not answer to Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, or even a city in Aksum?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b2xy98/why_did_the_patriarch_of_rome_specifically_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eiwijs6"], "score": [17], "text": ["Thing is the bishop of Rome wasn't necessarily the most powerful patriarch of Christiendom : it is true that it claimed some primacy over other main seats of Christianity as the bishops of Rome were considered the successors of Peter from one hand, and ruling from one of the most prestigious imperial centres, but nobody really agreed on what this primacy was or how it was to be applied.While Leo I, supported by the western emperor Valentinian III, asserted Roman claims to primacy in 451 during the Council of Chalcedonia, it was made clear too that the Patriarchate of Constantinople would enjoy a similar primacy especially in the East.\n\nAnd, in facts, the Roman Papacy only enjoyed a symbolic (if pretty much real) dominance over western metropolites : Milan and Ravenne beneficied from a closer relationship with western emperors and patricians such as Ricimer (and actually tended to have not a good relation with them). Roman influence over eastern churches policies was superficial at the very best. As Papacy fall under patrician/Barbarian control over the late Vth and VIth century, its prestige was fragilized.\n\nConstantinople, on the other hand, was closer to imperial authority than any other seat, and thanks to this could arguably actually enforce its primacy over the other eastern patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, following a broad imperial religious policy, and Constantinople could really be considered the most powerful patriarchate of western Christiendom during Late Antiquity.\n\nThe Vth century, while Roman pontiffs tried to assert the independence of the Church to the political power, was essentially a small \"Dark Age\" : most of royal authority in the region was Homoian (even if, at the notable exception of Vandals, not actively anti-Niceans) and Nicean Barbarians as Franks directly ruled ecclesiastical matters with their clergy, as Roman popes were, if autonomous, essentially set within Ostrogothic political influence. Seats like Carthage, without being really recognized as patriarchates, tended to function largely autonomously.\n\nByzantine reconquest of Italy, while putting Rome into Constantinople's sphere as much it was done in history which wasn't without real resistence and hostility in Italy itself, especially as Justinian proclaimed Constantinople the \"chief of all churches\", but it contributed to remove most of simony in favour of imperial nomination and to connect Rome with the general Christian theological community.\n\nWith the fall of Ostrogothic Italy, Nicean Merovingians took the lead in Western Europe where what remained of Homoian Christianity quickly vanished and began to be a political and religious influence for pagan kingdoms-in-building (such as Kent, Sussex and East-Anglia), while inner dynamics and imperial policies led to the adoption of the Nicean Credo by Spanish Goths.\n\nIn the same time, Rome and the territory it overseed, became a haven for clergy fleeing Lombard, Slavic and Persian armies (and later, Arabs), effectively making the patriarch not only more connected with the theological problems, mostly christology and defence of Chalcedonian _URL_2_ Latin Christianity grew, ecclesiastical assemblies and organisations whuch were still first and firstmost managed trough royal authority, acknowledged a significant spiritual and pastoral leadership from Papacy.\n\nImperial religious policies, critically the Three Chapters, monoenergism and monothelism, tended to be ill-recieved outside Constantinople, and the clergy of other patriarchates (especially Jerusalem, due to a lot of monastic ties with Rome since the Vth century) which opposed imperial policies looked to Rome for championing their struggle, which Rome did, less to increase its overall authority but maybe more because there wasn't much motivation for them to compromise over Christology as the matter was resolved in the _URL_3_ might seems bizarre as Roman Papacy was largely under Imperial thumb in the VIIth century. But thanks to the apparent triumph of Nicean Credo in the west and the conversion of England, a growing political autonomy born out of the Lombard advance in Italy and emperors being busy with Persians, Roman pontiffs were able to lead a short schism over monothelism, further increasing their prestige in _URL_4_ would be wrong, however, to consider the primacy of Rome established  : even in Italy, pontifical authority was challenged during the Three-Chapter controversy, as pointed by the schism of the self-proclaimed Patriarchate of Aquilea. Both the emperor and the patriarchate of Constantinople readily acted against Rome there, intervening in Roman matters and putting popes in inner exile at Constantinople.\n\nSimilarily, it's not to mean the roman partiarchate was crushed either : the emperors wanted to keep a working relationship there, rather than burning bridges (especially as Constans II toyed with the idea of moving the center of the Empire in Italy). The continuous stream of Greek and Syrian popes of the late VIIth were rather a compromise with Latins than any political imposition. In fact, Latin Church, under Rome, became more and more autonomous and (partly because of these non-Italian popes) became to identify Roman church with _URL_0_ this point, indeed, Latin Christianity's pastoral and ritual differences with Greek and Eastern Christianities became obvious, and Latins simply didn't considered abandoning it, considering these to be regular and _URL_1_, when Justinian II attempted to backtrack on the compromise and impose Constantinople's considerations and Greek rites, backleash was immediate in Italy (while the clergy in Rome was mainly Greek and Syrian), and the emperor adopted more conciliatory tone which was met by Roman church without too much trouble : the main focus of both emperor and pontiff was to keep a Roman and Christian commonwealth alive.\n\nNevertheless, what really killed it was the adoption of Iconoclasm by Leo III. Rome was really keen to championing against  imperial \"innovations\", just as before. This time, especially due to the capture of the other patriarchates by Arabs during the century, the opposition was dualistic rather than polycentric, and Leo III reneged on most of the compromises made by his predecessors, which achieved to alienate him the Roman church.Eventually, as Lombards tried to benefit from Roman isolation to achieve their conquest of Italy, Stephen II turned to the main power of Western Europe, Francia that Arnulfids (also known as Peppinids, later named Carolingians) reached a large prestige having defeated Arabo-Berbers during the 730's, while having built a tight relationship with Latin clergy with several missions in Frankish Germania. This forged a relation which climaxed with the sacrality of Carolingians and the establishment of the Carolingian Empire, as an alternative Christian Empire compared to Byzantine (the title of Charlemagne \"emperor ruling over the Empire of Romans\" is rather a reference to the pope, incarnating the will of Romans, than a reference to the old WRE).\n\nWhile Frankish Papacy, at least initially, was really under the thumb of Charlemagne, it took more and more autonomy as the sole religious reference in the West, even as Byzantine Emperors recanted iconoclasm. The late IXth and early Xth was particularily messy for Rome, which lost a lot of prestige in the anarchy that followed the fall of Carolingia; but reforms of the Xth century essentially strived to restaure Roman sole primacy, not just in the West, but also universal primacy as Constantinople obviously needed some theological discipine as far as Latin Christianity was concerned.\n\nBasically, the primacy of Roman church was always more or less asserted by Rome, but didn't really existed in practice for a long time. It was concretly built over a shaky relationship with imperial Christianity, the triumph of Nicean Credo in the West, and a defiance to imperial religious policies. It wasn't really ever acknowledged by Constantinople, but this is what made the claim of universal primacy a reality in the West at first : there are later movements (Ottonian reforms, political decline of Byzantine Empire, etc.) which reinforced it, of course, but they were mostly built over this evolution."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["Christianity.At", "catholic.So", "Credo.As", "West.It", "Christiendom.It"]]}
{"q_id": "c84x5y", "title": "Why was the 29th Infantry Division selected to assault Omaha Beach when there were other veteran divisions available?", "selftext": "I've been trying to research this but haven't gotten anywhere so I thought I would turn to the pros. Looking at the units chosen by the Americans for the Normandy invasion the 29th Infantry Division stands out as odd. The 1st Infantry Division, their counterpart at Omaha was a veteran regular Army formation that had already conducted 2 assault landings, and from what I can tell in my own research fared better than the 29th. The other American division at Utah was the 4th and although not a veteran unit, was at least regular Army and consisted of troops from various locations, unlike the 29th being a National Guard formation. Also, there were, at the very least, 2 further veteran divisions available that would later fight in Normandy - the 9th Infantry Division and the 2nd Armored Division.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c84x5y/why_was_the_29th_infantry_division_selected_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eskaln8"], "score": [97], "text": ["You are right. Many people expressed skeptisim at the abilities of the 29th ID. Both before, during and after the operation. By British officers, but also by senior officers in the US military, like Ike and Bradley.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat fact that the landing at Omaha were almost an unmitigated disaster didn't help/.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut generally.\n\n* Its true that the 29th was a NG division. But it had been reinforced with West Point Grads as officers in severa;l battalions.\n* The 29th had been sent to England in later summer of '42. By the time of  Normandy it had spent a lot of time in the UK (earning the derisive nickname, Englands own). They had spent a lot of time in training. In fact, they had been sent to England at the same time as the 1 ID had been, part of the first 4 divisions to be sent. 3 of these divisions had been sent to N Africa, so in some ways 29ID was a regular division in practice.\n* Further to the above, all US troops who had to land on the first day needed to go throught the US Army assualt school at Devon, in the SW of England. All 29 ID troops went through that school for three weeks, as did 1 ID troops (to their surprise and very much not delight). This training taught the men in obstracle clearance, wire cutting and use of Bangalore torpedos and other such devices.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn short the division was as well trained as could be. The near disaster at Omaha has perhaps sullied their reputation unfairly. Other things to remember.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* Only two formations of the entire Allied assualt group on the first day of the landing were veteran. The 1ID and the Britisn 50th Division. Everyone else were green (as a formation, individual soldiers and officers might have experience).\n* The 29th was far from the worst performing division, during the Normandy campaign. That dubious distinction goes to the US 90th ID, who landed at Utah (and didn't land in full on 6th June'44). They \\*were\\* high inepxerienced, having arrived in April of '44. They did have a hard time of it. And for some reason the 29ID gets the reflected derision. Although not for lack of bravery, the 90th ID suffered 20,000 casualties during its combat tour.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSources\n\n* Omaha Beach-6th June 1944. By Joseph  Balkoski \n* *Omaha Beach*: A Flawed Victory  Adrian R. Lewis"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1hpyxz", "title": "Meta: Historians, tell me about your interdisciplinary activities? Do you talk to scientists? Linguists? Anthropologists? Do you study other areas? What other discipline do you think would be most useful to you to have specialist knowledge of in your field and why?", "selftext": "Game theory as applied to the hundred years war \n\nGenetic science as applied to migration patterns \n\nClimate science to explain the spread of farming \n\nPsychological evaluations of tyrants \n\nThere must be many, many more examples. \n\nSurprise me please!\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hpyxz/meta_historians_tell_me_about_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caws6or", "cawsumz", "cawtmsd", "cawvm90", "cawwn2o", "cawwxfl", "cawyrgw", "cawzgyw", "cax1wn1"], "score": [23, 11, 14, 3, 6, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["As a Comic Book historian, I am constantly forced to look outside the field of history for my information and research.\n\nThose few (and I mean few) comic book historians that have written manuscripts (either articles or books) on the subject have either faded into academic obscurity or moved on to more \"profitable\" avenues of study. One is hard pressed to find information on any of the \"big\"...and I use that word with a tinge of sarcasm...comic historians. In this respect, I have often found myself plodding alone through the mires of comic book research.\n\nThankfully, however, Comic Book studies are alive and well in other departments, especially Fine Arts and Literature/English departments. It is from these departments that most of my contacts/partnerships have come. While writing my thesis, I consulted with my historian supervisor for what he referred to as \"co-temporality\" (concurrent events, trends, and movements in society) while I met with a faculty member in the English department for the more nitty gritty analysis sections of my thesis. \n\nThis has benefited me greatly as \"literature analysis\" is perhaps my greatest weakness as a scholar. I can dissect all different types of documents, ledgers, censuses, and memoirs, but when it comes to fiction, I'm lost. Thankfully, the comic books I'm looking at aren't exactly \"dense literature\" so my lack of experience analyzing fiction isn't too much of a drawback.\n\nThe main problem I have had with interdisciplinary study is that our methods are completely different. When discussing ideas with the professor in the English department, I often found it difficult to lead her away from \"text analysis\" and back into the realm of \"history\". The two aren't mutually exclusive, I admit, but in the greater scheme of things my research has to be weighted far more to the \"history\" side of things.\n\nThe other major problem I have faced is that my research will likely never be published in any of the major \"historical journals\". While it is too early in my academic \"career\" to really be thinking about that, most of the professors I have talked to have told me that my more likely avenue of publishing would be in an American Studies, Pop Culture, or Fine Arts journal. While this isn't in of itself a major roadblock, it sort of shatters that freshman dream of being featured in the American Historical Review or some other major publication. \n\nInterdisciplinary study comes with bonuses and drawbacks. Getting taken seriously is difficult sometimes, but pursue what you're interested in and don't worry about whether you're \"history\" or \"near-history\". The research is what matters.", "I study history of science and environmental history about whaling and fisheries; primarily 18th c U.S.. I've been involved in a number if interdisciplinary research projects with scientists and some anthropologists. My undergraduate degree was interdisciplinary and because of those studies and the nature of my work I've always tried to communicate with people in other disciplines who do similar work. I chose my graduate school partly because it has a strong tradition of interdisciplinary research.  \n\nIt is hard to say exactly how this has shaped my work as an historian. I feel that as an historian of science having worked and conversed with scientist makes me more capable of discussing science but I'm not always sure that is true. On the negative I can say I feel at times my readings in other disciplines has left me behind in my readings as an historian. This was particularly true when I first started graduate school and hadn't done readings that many people who majored in history had already read. For the most part this is less of the case now.\n\nWorking with scientists has at times made me think more about \"data\" and how historians have and have not used quantitative history effectively. My advisor is an old school labour historian who spends much of his research time putting together large databases and while I feel he is largely able to use that data to create a narrative I feel that when many historians use numbers they do it poorly and are working out of their element.\n\nAnother interesting element of working with scientists is the subject of funding money. For good and bad scientist get a lot more of it and there are temptations for a poor graduate student to try to get some of it. I've been fortunate to receive some money from a fisheries research center without feeling like I've corrupted myself and feeling that I've contributed to both science and history.", "I have degrees in history, anthropology, with folklore as a major field of study. I have published books and articles using each of this disciplines, usually mixed together with demographic analysis and architectural history. I have stood between disciplines, which has tended to make me an academic homeless. Although history dominated my degrees, I am adjunct faculty in anthro, where they have made me welcome even though they believe I am a historian or something.\n\nI have also employed dozens of interns in my position as a public historian and administrator. I have tended to employ grad students from anthro because historical archaeologists must understand history, but historians do not need to understand anything but history, and too often, that's all they know. \n\nThe most rewarding journeys I have taken have drawn on several disciplines to understand the past. And what I try to tell history students (and a few more are listening today than once was the case) is that looking at the past through several lens is not only rewarding, it opens doors to more jobs. I highly recommend emerging from university with as many tools in one's kit as possible.", "Quick question: isn't the study of historical methods called *Historiography*? ", "I don't actually *do* this kind of work, but it forms a valuable foundation for the work I actually do: Derek Oddy (I think... it's early) has been doing history and nutrition for decades now, leading a lot of work attempting to reconstruct the historical British diet based on modern knowledge of nutrition. I was thinking that this was through a History and Nutrition program at the University of Leicester, but now I can't find any info on it. I'll try to fill in the institutional background later. \n\nI think that kind of work is very useful, within limits. It certainly benefits us to know just how much people were eating, and what the possible health effects of their diets were. However, we should not stop there, for a couple reasons. First, even the best work in reconstructing diets works from an uncertain source base. Dietary surveys exist, but these were generally done by middle-class Britons looking at working-class Britons, and they reflect a set of expectations about what constituted good food for which people. They are also quite incomplete, rarely accounting for food eaten outside the home. \n\nSecond, even if we can identify what people were eating in the aggregate, it's difficult to use this as an explanatory mechanism for other historical changes without knowing what people *thought* of their food, and what it meant to them. And this, unfortunately, is even more difficult to get at, because sources are so very thin.\n\nIn general, I wish I had a really good understanding of contemporary anatomy and physiology because it would make my readings of nineteenth-century medical research a lot easier. The same is true for botany and reading nineteenth-century scientific agriculture research. However, the danger with that approach is that if you have a current knowledge of some kind of science, you've essentially been trained that that knowledge is *correct*, that it's the right explanation of digestion or plant fertility or whatever. It can then be very hard to overcome that built-in bias and understand how the people of the past were approaching human bodies, soil, plants, whatever, on their own terms. The problem is really that if we approach the history of science and medicine (and technology) with the attitude that what we have now is \"right\" (always implicit, often explicit in histories of those things written by scientists), then our research becomes a question of \"When did they get it right?\" This leads to a focus on a few Great Scientists or Great Doctors that \"discovered\" whatever important thing. But really, those handful of people to whom we attribute discovery or invention are anomalies. The overwhelming majority of doctors, scientists, engineers, and technicians do NOT make some great contribution to the knowledge that we now think is important. But, all of those doctors and scientists are still participating in the social, cultural, and political formations of science, medicine, and technology. And if we're interested in understanding human history, we have to recognize that.\n", "Despite my interest and research in military aviation, tactics, and technology, I have a degree in Chemistry, and I am currently working on my doctorate in Polymer Science and Engineering. Simply put, a polymer is the \"science-y\" word for plastic-like materials. \n\nA vast amount of chemistry, engineering, and physics go into making a polymer, and tweaking a certain aspect of the creation process can result in a widely different product. For example, polyethylene can either be low density (resulting in sandwich bag types of plastic,) high density (stronger plastic bags or plastic bottles,) or ultra high density (bullet resistance materials, aircraft parts, etc.)\n\nSome of the polymer research that I have done in the past focused on making a stronger, more bullet resistant polymer that was to replace the current windshields in American Apache helicopters. I've also worked on a project that involved creating advanced missile casings (self-staining missile casings. This is useful if, for whatever reason, the missile was damaged in transit or in storage, the body would stain itself a different color where the structure was compromised. For example, if the missile was dropped or fell off an aircraft, and resulted in a giant, brightly colored crack, then the maintenance crews knew that it needed to be replaced.) \n\nProbably one of my favorite projects that I have worked on involved ferrocene derived polymers. Back in the 1950's, the unique structure of ferrocene was discovered, and it soon became the focus of various military studies to test its physical properties. During the 1960's at the height of the Arms Race and the Cold War, both Soviet and NATO scientists were in a sort of \"ferrocene race\" to see how strong and durable the material was, with the intention of using it to help create the newest generation of military supersonic aircraft. \n\nAlthough there are a nearly infinite number of modern day military applications for plastics and polymers, the history of synthetic plastics only goes back to the early 20th century. It was not until the 1930's that chemists began to study the science of polymer synthesis. During World War II, the great demand for synthetic plastics for both the Allies and the Axis war machines led to considerable advancements in the field of polymer science. One of my favorite examples of how rubber helped win the war for the Allies was in the South Pacific. The Japanese, who built their aircraft with weight and speed in mind, decided to not implement self sealing fuel tanks. As a result, Japanese aircraft had a tendency to burst into flames when hit. In the air war that was so prevalent in the South Pacific, the Japanese soon discovered that even though their fighters could out-fly and outmaneuver slower American aircraft, a quick burst was all it took from the Americans to literally vaporize the Japanese. ", "I have an MSc in Materials science and the research group I was attached to did some work with analysing paints by Raman and Infrared Spectroscopy. (non destructive analysis methods)\n\n", "Even though I believe that History is properly a humanity, I think having a good knowledge of social science methodologies is wonderful. Sociology is a great area of knowledge to develop for social or cultural historians and is fairly interesting. Being able to work with statistics is valuable as well. As someone who has a heavy interest in legal history, understanding both economics and sociology. History has such a multi-disciplinary nature that almost any knowledge from another field could aid understanding and research.", "I think there's an important distinction to be made between:\n\n* Being conversant with the methodologies, theories, or facts of another discipline\n\nand\n\n* Using the methodologies, theories, or facts of another discipline to do the work of history\n\nYour examples are all the latter. But many of the examples given by others are of the former.\n\nI'm an historian of science, so I naturally have to be somewhat interdisciplinary in the sense that I have to know some of the science involved in my history. So when I'm working on, say, topics in the history of physics, I sometimes have to talk to physicists to make sure I understand what my historical actors are talking about.\n\n(E.g. I have worked on the history of inertial confinement fusion classification in the 1970s. So knowing why declassifying the direct-drive laser-plasma interactions of a bare sphere of DT was considered less sensitive than the laser-plasma interactions of indirectly-driven ablation is a must, and I have to know it well-enough to explain to others. For non-physicists, practically all of that last sentence is well outside the realm of \"common knowledge.\" In order to make sense of it, I've spent a lot of time reading around the physics of the topic and talking to physicists to make sure I'm not mangling it.)\n\nBecause my work also overlaps with the field of \"science studies,\" I also am in contact with anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and legal scholars at times. Occasionally even an economist! \n\nBut whatever I do with these other people, I don't do history _like they would_. I don't write history _like an anthropologist_ or _like a sociologist_ or, god forbid, _like an economist_. I am an historian first of all, and while I sometimes mine these other fields for insights (the anthropology and sociology of science have both been important to my work), I don't use their methods whatsoever.\n\nI suspect my situation here is _not_ uncommon. In science studies it is not rare to find the line between historian and anthropologist blurred for fairly contemporary topics, but other than that I think it is pretty unusual for an historian to really use the methods of non-historians _in the way the non-historians would._"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2oowj4", "title": "Europe is becoming greener; what's going on here?", "selftext": "[Landscape changes of current-EU from 1900 til now.](_URL_0_)\n\nGif from r/gifs, I can see surburbanisation in the UK in the 30s-50s, and NL reclaiming land, but everywhere else seems to be becoming less settled, with less farmland, and more forested. This goes against what I thought was happening (though the rainforest reports might be skewing these expectations of europe).\n\nIs this gif/map to be trusted? If it is, is there a single pattern going on here, or it is many patterns, or is there no patten?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2oowj4/europe_is_becoming_greener_whats_going_on_here/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmpfdnf", "cmpfwo7", "cmpfybp", "cmpjhq7", "cmpltjw", "cmprbcj", "cmpv8vy"], "score": [9, 30, 7, 12, 8, 2, 3], "text": ["For Scandinavia at least, a significant portion of the regrowth in forests can be attributed to the shift away from using wood for heating to other fuels such as coal and natural gas.\n\nI'm still trying to remember where I read this, so give me a little while hunting down the source", "Another aspect to consider - especially in regard to Sweden - is the retention forestry model. In basic terms, instead of clearing every part of a forest during a harvest, some parts are preserved: single trees [dead and living], patches and strips. The goal behind that is to preserve the biodiversity of the area and to allow the ecosystem to still function. It also allows the forest to replenish itself over time. \n\nA study from 2007 noted that the number of living trees in Swedish forests have returned to 1955 levels, after a fall in the 1970s and 1980s. \n\nThis type of forestry has been practiced large-scale by Sweden for over 25 years. It's reflected towards the end of the .gif above by the increase of the rate of green over Sweden. \n\nThe change towards the retention forestry model came about as concerns over environmental damage and climate change increased. Countries like Sweden are very aware of the effects of climate change, as increases in temperature can be pretty dramatically seen on their landscape [i.e. melting glaciers, loss of tundra]. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "I *think* that map may not depict exactly what you think it does, but without knowing the source I can't say for certain. It's titled 'Gross Land Change' which in the scientific speak you'd find among environmental scientists and climatologists, means it would be depicting the change in land use and not depicting the actual land use. Hence giving the illusion that Europe has gotten exponentially greener than it actually has. Though that's not to say Europe hasn't gotten greener as it absolutely has. \n\nAs to why, there are several factors. Europe has been subjected to heavy deforestation for millennia as people cleared land for new settlements, to expand existing ones, or for building or heating. The late 1800s also saw massive deforestation to fuel the industrial revolution, so the start of your gif is close to the minimum forested extent of Europe. \n\nI don't see any decrease in settlement from that series of maps and there certainly hasn't been much, nothing that would register on the scale of that map. To explain the decrease in farmland you need to look no further than farming techniques and yields that have improved drastically in the last few centuries, especially in the 20th century, meaning less cultivated land is needed to feed the population.\n\nThe 20th century saw conservation movements to preserve and expand existing forests and even plant new ones. Stringent environmental regulations mean what might have been a poisoned hillside downwind of a factory is today a thriving woodland. Similarly, what might have been land that was clear-cut by a lumber company in the 1890s was being selectively harvested and actively replanted. One of the few benefits of suburbanization is that it brings lots of trees to areas where there were previously few. \n\nA final factor is globalization. Lots of furniture marketed in the first world, for just one example, will be made with lumber sourced from Brazil or Russia. Even food isn't exempt, 100 years ago you might have been eating Porridge grown down the street for breakfast, now you're eating Bananas from Central America and Oranges from Florida. ", "Forests =/= Wilderness\n\n99% of those forests you can see regrowing aren't truly wild. They are \"farmed\" just like any other crop (with varying intensity) for wood.\nOf course for that business to remain sustainable you have to replant the cut patches after every harvest, and this was indeed a 19th century innovation/paradigm shift, the result of which is visible in that graphic.\nIt's important to note that at the start point (1910) almost no old-growth forest that wasn't cut sometime in the last 2000 years remained in that map, it was all second or third generation forest.\n", "It has one simple reason - the shift from agrarian economy to industrial economy and later economy based on services. People don't need farmland anymore, because there is an abundance of food at low prices, which can also be imported from outside Europe. So the less productive patches of farmland were converted to other purposes - woodlands, parks, reservations etc. ", "To add to the other comments, I can tell you that in the middle of Germany, in hilly regions woodland is almost twice as much worth in revenues as farmland. The demand for quality hardwood is rising, and so do the prices. Hightech agriculture today only makes decent profit when you can put your huge GPS-steered tractors on really flat land.", "[Paraphrasing  &  Translating from a course I followed on deforestation at the KULeuven in 2013, can supply sources if needed]\n\nEver since the invention of agriculture 10.000 years ago, forests have disappeared in favour of crops. The increase in farmland (and consequently the decline of forests) sped up dramatically around the Industrial Revolution, in Europe from ~1700 until it stopped in ca. 1960, in North America it started around 1850 to 1970, in the developing countries this only started after WWII, and continues today.\n\nFrom the start of the Industrial Revolution, there is a clear correlation between rising population and diminishing size of forests. In Europe, starting in 1850, the size of forests started to rise again, which seems strange because population size kept rising too. (In France, forest size doubled between 1850 and 2000, from 12,5% to 25%)\nThere are four reasons for this strange trend shift:\n\n* Fuel switch from wood to fossil fuels\n* Transition from subsistence farming to intensive, market driven farming\n* More import of agricultural products and wood\n* Stricter management of forests\n\nI can elaborate if interested"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/24bpklA.gif"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112713003174"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2eyb9s", "title": "What were the circumstances which led the BBC to report that there was no news on April 18, 1930?", "selftext": "Was it an actual lack of news, or were there other things going on which led to this? I have heard the claim that there was Royal news which they had been asked not to report on and instead of reporting on other things they did this and I would like to know the validity of it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eyb9s/what_were_the_circumstances_which_led_the_bbc_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck4fp25"], "score": [17], "text": ["According to the BBC itself, it was due to government pressure over an interview:\n\n > on the evening before Good Friday, the Home Office was desperate to deny a newspaper account of an interview with the home secretary. It was aware that no newspapers would be published over Easter so it contacted the BBC - to ensure the denial was included in the evening radio news.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nHere they don't give such details, but once more state that it was at the government's doing:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010szlg", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/newswatch/history/noflash/html/1930s.stm"]]}
{"q_id": "3t2yg4", "title": "How is it that Marijuana is considered forbidden in Islam, yet smoking hashish was such a big part of Ottoman and Turkish culture?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3t2yg4/how_is_it_that_marijuana_is_considered_forbidden/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cx2t4gf", "cx3182p"], "score": [213, 18], "text": ["The short answer is that alcohol is specifically named as haram by the Qur'an, while hashish is not. \n\nThe long answer is that modern marijuana prohibition in the Muslim world is based on the simple interpretation that alcohol is haram because its mind-altering properties interfere with your relationship with Allah. Marijuana also has mind-altering properties, which can interfere with your relationship with Allah. Therefore, it is haram.\n\nInterpretations of the Qur'an have changed over the years. The Ottomans had not developed that interpretation at the time, most likely because hashish was used like coffee and tobacco as a parlor drug, not as a means of debauchery.", "Is it actually a big part of Turkish or Ottoman Culture?  I know it's in that movie *Midnight Express*, which is based on a true story, but if I recall correctly, the context of his drug use is as much hippie culture as Turkish culture.\n\nI've read more ethnographies of Turkey than most people and it has never come up in any.  I've lived in Turkey and extensively traveled in Turkey, and it's definitely not a big deal in contemporary Turkey, either.  For instance, look at this post on /r/turkey--\"[Why is using weed so harshly penalized in Turkey and so hard to find?](_URL_0_)\".  That I think gives you a sense of cannabis usage in Turkey.  There are certainly young people--especially secular kids in the big cities--who use it and what not, but as far as I can tell at far lowers rates that Europe or North America.\n\nHonestly, drinking rak\u0131 is a much bigger part of Turkish culture than hash is (and the vast majority of people in the country do not drink alcohol).  Do you have any source that it was particularly popular in Turkey?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/2bmmuc/why_is_using_weed_so_harshly_penalized_in_turkey/"]]}
{"q_id": "76d1vo", "title": "Why did colonial Canada develop an attachment to hockey, compared to the widespread popularity of traditional British sports like cricket, rugby, and soccer in other British colonies?", "selftext": "I realized today that while other former British colonies like Australia and India still have widespread interest in traditional British sports like cricket, rugby, and soccer, Canada does not. Hockey seems to be the sport that has the most widespread interest, and it is not a British sport at all.\n\nWhy is this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76d1vo/why_did_colonial_canada_develop_an_attachment_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwozcls", "doe66v9"], "score": [2, 9], "text": ["This is a very late reply to you, but I hope I can be of some help here. The distinction you are attempting to make here, if we're being honest, doesn't really exist. Canadians did enjoy rugby and cricket, but given that competition between Canadian teams and American teams is much easier to facilitate than between Canada and other British territories, those sports evolved in Canada (becoming football and baseball, respectively) simultaneous to their evolution in the US to facilitate competition across the border. Of note here is the fact that the first international cricket match was between the US and Canada... the players on that US team went on to be instrumental in the creation of baseball and teams playing by newly established American rules cropped up in Canada almost immediately. The league that would become the CFL was called the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union until the 1950s. \n\nSoccer, while now intimately associated with British culture, rose contemporaneously with hockey. The first FA Cup final to draw more 100,000 spectators was in 1901, around the same time that professional hockey became a reality in Quebec and Ontario. The decade between 1906 and 1917 would see the largest influx of British migrants to Canada that there would ever be... these would be people, even in the older generation, for whom soccer fandom was a recent phenomenon and they would be arriving to a country with it's own familiar-yet-unique sporting tradition. In the decades that followed, immigration from the UK to Canada would slow to a trickle at the expense of Australasia... which might go some way, along with the lack overwhelming American influence, toward explaining why popular culture in Australia and New Zealand is more \"British\" than Canada, the connections there are much more recent. \n\nWhile there was some mythologizing about hockey being solely Canadian, the invention of First Nations playing lacrosse on the ice, there is considerable reason to dispute the characterization of hockey as anything other than a traditional British sport. As the name suggests, it is mostly an adaptation of field hockey. Other aspects are taken from shinty, a Scottish game, and hurling, from Ireland. Shinty gives it's name to \"shinny\", a version of ball hockey played throughout Canada to this day. Bandy, another British game, may have also been an influence as is suggested below. If anything, one could argue the game's origins to be a reflection of the British colonial melting pot. \n ", "There is actually quite a bit that looks at the development of hockey in Canada, academically speaking. One theory that has been advocated is that it allowed a means for the middle- and upper-class to express their masculinity, as the modern era (at the time) had removed that outlet for them. While obviously this was something that could be expected of more than just Canada, and indeed was prominent in the UK and other regions (which has also been argued to be a factor in the rise of sports' popularity in this era), Canada had a slight twist: it was a \"frontier\" region, not a settled, civilized place like Europe or even the US.\n\nNow obviously this was not the place for the men living in Westmount in Montreal, where hockey really began to take off, but it was still a part of their cultural depiction as English Canadians (the sport was still heavily segregated among ethnic lines at the time; very English-based). That the region had rather cold winters with ample ice and skating available also contributed, which is why something like rugby (an equally aggressive, masculine sport, for lack of a better term), was not selected. It is also a factor in why hockey didn't really develop in the UK or colonies; there was winters in Britain of course, but it didn't have the coldness or length to allow the proper use of the ice (artificial ice not being widely used until the 1920s in Canada, for example; can't speak for other regions), and lacked the \"frontier\" legacy that Canadian settlers had (even if these \"settlers were living in the Ottawa Valley, a short distance from the national capital).\n\nSome reading on the subject is available in John Matthew Barlow's \"\u2018Scientific Aggression\u2019: Irishness, Manliness, Class, and Commercialization in the Shamrock Hockey Club of Montreal, 1894\u20131901\" and \"Brutal Butchery, Strenuous Spectacle: Hockey Violence, Manhood, and the 1907 Season\" by Stacy L. Lorenz and Geraint B. Osborne. Both I believe came out in separate journals (I know \"Brutal Butchery\" did, as it's a personal favourite article of mine), but they are also collected in *Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War* edited by John Chi-Kit Wong. Wong also wrote *Lords of the Rinks: The Emergence of the National Hockey League, 1875-1936*, the first part of which may shed some more detail on the subject (it certainly looks at the development of organised hockey in Canada in this era, but I can't say more as I don't have it on me). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3pauqe", "title": "Why were nightcaps used and when did the practice die out?", "selftext": " ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pauqe/why_were_nightcaps_used_and_when_did_the_practice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw4wiqc", "cw4xs71"], "score": [52, 38], "text": ["Are we talking about the clothing that goes on your head, or the drink served after dinner?", "A large part of it was just a lack of central heating in a lot of homes prior to the 20th century. Night caps are very effective for keeping warm, but not usually necessary these days. \n\nThere's more to it, though. A history teacher of mine once told me they served a secondary purpose. He claimed that oily hair products like pomade were very popular for a time in the 19th century and nightcaps were used to keep bed sheets cleaner. I followed up on it and according to *Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History* by Victoria Sherrow (p. 323) the explanation is essentially correct."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5pi0r6", "title": "Didn't the fact that Romans viewed Germanic tribes as barbarians bother Hitler?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5pi0r6/didnt_the_fact_that_romans_viewed_germanic_tribes/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcrggb3"], "score": [71], "text": ["The Nazis took a lot of their information about Germanic tribes from a short book by the Roman political historian Tacitus called *Germania*. In this book, Tacitus uses the people of Germania as a foil to expose the decadent moral failings of the Roman people. The barbarians live simple lives, he writes, but they're virtuous; they have no cities, but instead they have good family values; every man does his duty and fights in the army; etc. Tacitus is making an argument something like the 'noble savage' interpretation of indigenous peoples that was pushed in the Enlightenment: they're not civilized, but they have preserved the basic natural virtues that the corruption of civilized life has stripped away from us. Nazis read Tacitus as a literal ethnographic account (rather than the polemical, political tract it actually is), and they found in its pages seeming proof that their ancestors had been simple and barbaric, but also as a consequence virtuous, manly, and above the corruption of the Mediterranean peoples. That was a good thing that made their 'race' strong.\n\nBy the 1930s, there was more generally a strong trend among many historians of the late Roman empire that emphasized the degeneracy of the Roman people. The empire was corrupt, soft, full of sexual and other moral vices, and had lost the strength and virtue that made it great during the Republic. The Germanic tribes over-ran the empire because they, being simple barbarians, had escaped these degenerating influences. This, again, makes barbarism out to be a virtue rather than a limitation, and ties in well with the Nazi party's emphasis on rooting out 'degenerate' forms for culture (such as music written by Jews or people of color).\n\nKrebs, *A Most Dangerous Book* is a great starting place if you want an approachable but thoughtful discussion of how descriptions of Germanic barbarians in books like Tacitus' *Germania* were re-worked into a Nazi foundation myth.\n\n(I should add that few historians today hold with any of these interpretations of the Roman empire or the barbarians. It is now generally agreed that the Romans and barbarians shared many cultural elements, that the late empire was vibrant and innovative rather than degenerate, and the breakup of the western empire into 'barbarian' kingdoms had much more to do with politics than with cultural differences between barbarians and Romans. The old Nazi ideas of pure barbarians overthrowing degenerate Romans simply don't hold up in the face of the evidence that survives.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5eysob", "title": "Did people in China resort to cannibalism during the reign of Mao?", "selftext": "I've stumbled upon a [question on History Stackexchange](_URL_2_), I quote:\n\n > I have often heard and read this, but I wonder if credible sources can support these claims. I even heard stories of merchants selling human flesh and children under 12 sold to be eaten. I read about this in \"comprendre le pouvoir\" by Noam Chomsky and in _URL_0_; there's a letter in which Albert Fish talks about a friend of him who went to China and developed a taste for human flesh because merchants were selling it everywhere.\n\n...that got me curious. The most upvoted and accepted answer over there is yes, but it's based on the impressive historical sources like The Guardian or _URL_1_. I guess the quality of this subreddit have spoiled me, but I choose to interpret that as no answer at all. There's another \"yes\" answer based on somewhat more reliable source \"Mao,The Unknown Story\" by Jon Halliday but still being no historian I cannot verify if what Halliday says is history or just sensationalism.\n\nSo the question is, did it happen, and how common/significant was it? I mean cannibalism still happens in developed countries in our day because there is always that one sick psycho, so I'd assume it could have happened in Mao times as well, or any other times for that matter. But was it more common than that, due the famine?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5eysob/did_people_in_china_resort_to_cannibalism_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dagfsc8", "daggowu"], "score": [65, 54], "text": ["While the bulk of my knowledge lies in Chinese literature rather than history, I can provide some insight (although not the concrete answer you're looking for).\n\nLu Xun's Diary of a Madman is one of the most influential texts in communist China after the little red book. The premise is that a man begins to see the words \"eat people\" between the lines of Confucian texts. It was one of the main works criticizing the old culture, fueling its fall and eventually the Communist revolution. Revolutionaries of all stripes were profoundly influenced by Lu Xun, and it was essentially required reading in the early days of Communist China.\n\nMany in Mao's China saw the parallels, and Lu Xun was used as a disguised critique of the CCP to the point that this foundational work was eventually banned.\n\nThe point is, that while cannibalism may have occurred, it is likely overblown due to the symbolic significance of that particular act in revolutionary China, as any critic could use it as a semi-coded shorthand for a degenerate society.", "Short answer: Somewhere between 20 and 43 million people died in China during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.  Did, at some point, people cannibalize?  **Absolutely yes.  It is well documented.** \n\nTwo sources on cannibalism in Modern China are the classic, but potentially overdramatized *Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China* by Yi Zheng, and Donald S. Sutton's academic paper *\" Consuming Counterrevolution: The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, China, May to July 1968\"*, published in 1995.  Note that Sutton uses Zheng's accounts as a prominent source in his paper as well.\n\n**The Statistics**\n\nIn his book, Zheng (who, in 1968, is observing the Guangxi province as a Red Guard stationed in Wuxuan County) lists that in Wuxuan County itself, \"one hundred and several tens\" were victims to cannibalism.  The official government number is 64.\n\nIn Guangxi Province as a whole, Zheng estimates that 100,000 people ate human flesh in Guangxi in the early summer of 1968 with a total victim count of 1,200; however, Sutton contests this figure as arbitrarily high.  Zheng goes into gruesome detail (as qtd. in Sutton 1995 from Zheng 1993: 96):\n\n >  Fifty-six had their heart and liver cut out; 18 were completely consumed (down to the soles of their feet), 13 had their genitals eaten, one was decapitated after being eaten, and 7 were actually cut up while they were still alive.\n\nZheng includes a list detailing the precise locations in Wuxuan County of the location of the attacks, which Sutton includes in his paper as a map (I can PM anyone the PDF if interested).\n\nFor example (copying from Sutton's table of victims):\n\nDate | Place | Victims | Type | Methods | Parts Eaten | How Disposed |\n---|---|----|----|----|----|----\nMay 4 | Tongwan | 2 Tans | Struggled | Shotgun | All flesh | Distributed\nJune 18 | Wuxuan | Wu | Struggled | Beaten | Heart, liver, thigh | School Banquets\nJuly 10 | Mashan | Diao | Fugitive | Shot | Heart, liver | Hot pot by Militia\nJuly 17 | Sanli | 2 Liaos, 2 Zhongs | Struggled | Clubbed | All flesh | Eaten by 20-30 at Brigade HQ\n\nPretty gruesome, eh?\n\n\n\n**The Cannibals**\n\nIt is interesting to note that both Zheng and Sutton describe the Wuxuan cannibalism as not an act of desperation due to starvation or famine; in fact, essentially all of the cases were perpetrated as acts of political vengeance.  \n\nAs Guangxi province and Wuxuan especially objectively one of the most brutal sites of Cultural Revolution infighting, the rival Party leaders encouraged their supporters and local intelligentsia (everyone from fiery Red Guard youth to old women to schololteachers), over a six week period, to attack political enemies and consume them.  \n\nThe killing of political rivals through cannibalism was seen as the ultimate punishment: it combined all aspects of archaic Chinese punishment (which were brought back in full during the Cultural Revolution): the victims were denied the filial obligation to ancestors to keep the physical body in one piece; the victims were paraded about like the comical satire of bad behavior; the victims, guilty of high treason, were ridiculed and eventually reduced to simple pieces of flesh and meat. \n\nA particularly succinct example (taken from Sutton):\n\n  > A variant was the parade of body parts. Thus, after the\n military defeat of the Small Faction, Zhou Weian, its captured leader, was\n executed and his head and legs taken first to Luxin village as a sacrificial\n offering at the memorial meeting for two of the Big Faction members and then\n to the county seat for theatrical use in a cruel catechism with his pregnant\n widow (Are these your husband's head and legs? Was he a bad person? Is this\n your husband's thigh bone?)\n\nPerhaps Sutton puts it best: \"The popular sense of justice required that punishment fit the crime and that no punishment was severe enough for an old feud...Cannibalism was an extension of the same idea.  To chop up, cook, and masticate was still more complete way of offending bodily integrity, depriving the enemy of humanity by reducing him to the status of a comestible.\"\n\nOh, by the way, eventually the Cultural Revolution ended and the new reformist government took power after the ousting of the Gang of Four.  The cannibals were punished by anything from fourteen years in prison to expulsion from the Communist Party.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["tuersenserie.org", "RFA.org", "http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/33909/did-people-in-china-resort-to-cannibalism-during-the-reign-of-mao"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1g6dh0", "title": "Were left-handed knights forced to switch to their right hand?", "selftext": "I know this question may seem a bit mundane, but it's something I'm very curious about, being a left-handed person myself. I know that during the Medieval Period there was a lot of superstition regarding left-handedness- did this pertain to the military arts as well? If so, I would imagine that left-handed knights were put at quite a disadvantage.\n\nI hope this isn't too trivial! And if this had been answered before, please let me know!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g6dh0/were_lefthanded_knights_forced_to_switch_to_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cah9mx6", "cahakwb", "cahbfki", "cahbw2n", "cahuuah"], "score": [57, 21, 4, 9, 5], "text": ["A lot of people make up a lot of broad statements based off of modern recreations, old wives tales, or stuff based off of \"some guy they know\". \n\nAt the end of the day, any advantage is mixed with disadvantages, and it is largely impossible for us to really know \n\n---\n\nHowever, we can make some educated guesses, but first it requires a basic understanding the mindset of medieval combat. We can best get this by reading the sources, and probably the best descriptive source on this is George Silver Paradox of Defence (1599) - while not strictly medieval, it is good example of the mindset that existed then. \n\nIn Paradox, Silver argues (passionately) that the most important aspect for a warrior is defence - because without defence you will find it impossible to both serve the King and come back alive. \n\nWhat impact this has on fighters? That's a good question. As others have posted, in modern recreations being left handed has some form of advantage. However, in modern recreations your life isn't on the line, nor are you training for mass combat against people who's intention is to murder you. It is in this space where being a left hander would probably provide as many disadvantages as advantages. Namely, it will be harder to create strong defence against right handers, as well as making it more difficult to fit in mass combat. \n\nTo understand why, this requires a basic understand of Medieval Martial arts: One of the most deadly blows that exists in medieval combat is named as \"the down right\" by George Silver (Paradox of Defence 1599), but it is common in /every/ European Martial Arts by other names. I'll use Silver's term because I English is my natural language and it is descriptive enough for laymen. \n\nGenerally speaking, down right shots come from either above your head or from the shoulder area: \n\nWoman's guard (right shoulder) - _URL_1_ \n(_URL_2_)\n\nThe roof (above the head) - _URL_4_\n(_URL_5_)\n\n* You could probably note that these positions aren't unique to Europe. You see them all over the place. \n* Also, this includes shield combat but I'm going to focus on Longsword manuals because they are the most well known techniques that are suitable for knightly combat. \n\nBecause this shot is so pervasive it is is important that the patient agent (the defender) can create cover against it. Normally, a right handed Patient Agent does this by covering this line of attack - either with their shield, or with their sword. \n\n_URL_0_\n(_URL_3_)\n\nThis defence is pervasive in any field of Fence (European or otherwise). In Silver's terms, it would be creating cover on the Inside Line, but for the terms of this debate it it creates cover against the down right. \n\nIn the case of a left handed fighter, his sword would be on the left shoulder, or primed to follow a down left course). This makes creating this cover much, much harder. From the natural position on left shoulder, he makes it very hard to respond to a fighter with the initiative and stay alive. \n\nIn shield knightly combat, it also means that the only tool that the patient agent (defender) has against down rights is to create cover with their weapon, leaving their shield to create binds and attack. \n\nIn non-shield knightly combat, any advantage (like being able to overbind and grapple from odd angles) are lost by having awkward defence control from down rights, at least in the sense of creating a true cross against an opponent of an opposing hand. Yes, this is true for both parties, but it makes it tremendously more difficult to create appropriate cover - the basic goal of Knightly Martial Arts.  ", "While we appreciate people's good intentions, please don't engage in idle speculation as a top-level comment. There is no need to \"fill the void\", if you don't really know the answer and are not ready to back it up. Someone knowledgeable will come along in a little while.", "Wow, okay, so... I came here thinking I could find something, maybe even a tidbit of interest, man was I wrong. I found several yahoo answers, a very questionable wiki answer and a wikipedia page about bias against left handedness. Thinking maybe scholarly articles about historical left handedness would mention something to take me in the right direction I promptly couldn't find any. As this is probably my google-fu failing me I have a follow up question:\n\nWhat evidence do we have besides word connections in certain languages that attitudes in Medieval times connected left-handedness with the devil? ", "Interestingly (late medieval) [Clan Kerr](_URL_3_) from Scotland is linked to favouring the weapon in the left hand during battles.\n\nFor that reason they have at least one castle with [stairs favouring left-handed defenders](_URL_1_) (click on \"left-handed staircase\" just left of the map center). I do have the idea they flipped the photo, since it shows a clockwise(=normal) rather than a CCW staircase. Even the map shows a CCW-turning staircase.\n\nAdditional sources:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_", "I would say no, and offer this as evidence:\n\n > This position of the sword is called Coda Lunga; it is very good against the lance and any other handheld weapon\u2026 Bear in mind that this guard counters all the blows both on the mandritto and the riverso side, and is usable against right- or left-handed opponents. We will now see the plays of Coda Lunga, from which you always parry as I have described in the first illustration of the guard.\n\nThis is from Fiore dei Liberi, the second-earliest treatise on Western European martial arts, detailing sword, dagger, unarmed, spear, and mounted combat dating to about 1400.\n\nSince he addresses the topic of facing a left-handed adversary, I would imagine that you could be expected to face left-handed swordsmen."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/pxEbXVB.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/bSenyHw.jpg", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de%27i_Liberi", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/I.33", "http://i.imgur.com/Sv1cy3I.jpg", "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Joachim_Me%C3%BFer/Longsword"], [], [], ["http://books.google.nl/books?id=HY_x01AMFqAC&amp;pg=PA105&amp;lpg=PA105&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=QEs00ksM58&amp;sig=8t2Li8fFhqWCY8UO6XyK_632Jd8&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=Due4Ucr0CtSZ0QWmh4HYDw&amp;ved=0CC0Q6AEwAw", "http://ferniehirst.com/castlegrounds.htm", "http://books.google.nl/books?id=1jSOLUCiKnIC&amp;pg=PA2&amp;lpg=PA2&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=CbXUNvrBO_&amp;sig=sAsn75GUwjMUDnl7ntbMuWqbnH8&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=3e64UfuoC_Cd0wWyk4GoDw&amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwBQ", "http://www.scottish-places.info/families/familyfirst99.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "d0aapv", "title": "The Wagon Fort tactics used by the Hussites seemed to be incredibly effective, fighting back 5 crusades. But after the Hussite Wars those tactics seem like they were not widely used at all. What caused such an effective tactic to fall into disuse?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d0aapv/the_wagon_fort_tactics_used_by_the_hussites/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ez94r8t", "ezabcmw"], "score": [59, 21], "text": ["At the time, firearms and artillery were rather slow to load and not particularly accurate. Just like crossbowmen, they tended to work the best when defending behind a wall, so that the gunners could be protected while reloading.  The Hussite *Wagenburg* was an ingenious solution to the problem: if guns work best defending a castle, make mobile castles. The Hussites could also change tactics, as at Kutna Hora, where they identified the weakest part of the Catholic line encircling them, used massed firearms to break through, escaped and retreated to a better location and set up another *Wagenburg.*\n\nActually, the *Wagenburg* did see use elsewhere,  after the Hussites were conciliated in 1434.  They were used in the Battle of Turnau in 1468, and were described in later military textbooks, like Philllp von Seldeneck's  *Kriegsbuch (* circa 1480). Seldeneck recommended an army on the march form up a *Wagenburg* when it encamped, to create a defensive position.\n\nBut the strength of a *Wagenburg* was greatest against the typical armies of 1420, infantry armed with pikes and swords, mounted knights with lances and swords, and archers. When gunpowder technology improved after about 1450 to the point where artillery could actually be aimed and could work at longer ranges,  the *Wagenburg* suddenly became just another fort that could be hammered and subdued.", "I\u2019d like to make the argument that Wagenburg tactics didn\u2019t die out after the Hussite Wars but rather were extensively employed in Western Eurasia until the eighteenth century. The initial source of Wagenburg tactics were Czech/Bohemian mercenaries who were quickly employed by various European masters \u2013 for example, Wladyslaw II of Poland hired thousands of Bohemian mercenaries for the Thirteen Years War (1454 \u2013 1466) against the Teutonic Order, and the Polish hetman Jan Tarnowski employed Bohemian mercenaries and their wagons for his campaign in Moldavia. His lopsided victory at Obertyn over a larger Moldavian army in 1531 was due to the employment of a wagon fort bolstered by artillery; similarly, the Hungarian general Janos Hunyadi employed 600 wagons operated by Czech mercenaries in his campaign against the Ottomans in 1443 \u2013 1444. \n\nThe Czech wagons were captured by the Ottomans after their victory at Varna and the Ottomans quickly adapted a form of Wagenburg tactics called Tabur Cengi (camp battle). In this variation, the wagon fort composed of artillery and firearms-equipped janissaries would be screened by light cavalry or skirmishers and flanked by heavy cavalry on both sides. The skirmishers would bait opponents into the range of the guns of the wagon fort where the enemy would then be devastated by the combined volley of artillery and small arms fire; the cavalry on the flanks of the Ottoman formation would then encircle the opponents and annihilate them. The camp battle won several decisive victories such as Chaldiran, against the Safavids, in 1514 and Mohacs, against the Hungarians, in 1526. A then-minor Timurid prince, Babur, adopted the Tabur Cengi or destur-i-Rumi (The Roman Method) with the assistance of Ottoman advisers and he would win two famous victories at Panipat (1526) and Khanua (1527) which would create the foundations of the Mughal empire. \n\nWagenburg tactics were also prevalent in Eastern Europe, especially in sparsely populated Ukraine and Southern Russia. As there were no easily accessible supply depots or population centers to draw resources from for military campaigns, armies were accompanied by large wagon trains. For example, Vasily Golitsyn\u2019s campaign against the Crimean fortress of Perekop in 1687 required a supply train of 20,000 wagons. In 1660, the Russian general Vasily Sheremetev\u2019s army had 3000 wagons accompanying them. In an environment teeming with cavalry (whether Polish, Cossack or Tatar), sheltering the infantry and artillery behind the wagons proved to be an effective deterrent to mounted attack. Gillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan, in his *A Description of Ukraine*, noted that: \n\n >  \u201cIn the field, I have myself observed units of at least five hundred Tatars several times, who attacked us in our tabor, and even though I was accompanied by only fifty to sixty Cossacks, the Tatars could do us no harm; nor could we harm them, since they kept beyond the range of our firearms.\u201d \n\nThis highlights the defensive advantage of the Wagenburg while simultaneously demonstrating the static and cumbersome nature of the formation. It also wasn\u2019t a secretive or swift method either. Huge convoys of wagons threw up a great deal of dust which pinpointed the march of the army to any enemy scouts. Muddy roads, flooded terrain and steep hills could impede the progress and formation of a wagon fort; for example, Sheremetev\u2019s army lost eighty wagons to a Polish attack while climbing a steep hill and a thousand wagons were lost to the Poles while crossing a marsh and yet despite these losses, Wagenburg tactics allowed the Russians to, as their Polish opponents conceded, \u201cflee from us like a wolf baring its teeth, not like a rabbit.\u201d The persistent Polish-Crimean Tatar army finally cornered the Russians at Chudnov. This encounter resembled a siege more than a battle with the Polish bombarding the Russian positions with artillery while the Crimean cavalry prevented Russian foragers from bolstering their dwindling stores and countered the Cossack cavalry attached to the Russian army. Hunger, miserable weather, defections in the Russian army and several failed breakout attempts finally forced Sheremetev\u2019s surrender. \n\nGradually, the Russians moved away from these tactics in the eighteenth century as they colonized and consolidated their positions in Ukraine and Southern Russia; this process was supplemented by the building of magazines to store provisions which reduced the need for huge supply trains. Evolutions in military armament and tactics such as the socket bayonet, infantry squares and less cumbersome anti-cavalry devices such as the \u201cFrisian horses\u201d (a portable wooden frame with numerous attached spears) and stakes diminished defensive utility of the wagon. The great weakness of the wagon fort was that it had limited offensive capability. If an enemy refused to engage, as in the case reported by Beauplan, all the infantry could do was wait; certainly, the infantry could leave the confines of the fort to mount an attack but this meant abandoning the defensive advantages of the wagons and becoming vulnerable to counterattacks (as seen at the battle of Lipany), ; the Ottomans and Mughals attempted to address the static and defensive nature of the wagon fort by using skirmishers to lure enemies into the range of the guns and then following up with devastating attacks by heavy cavalry and mounted archers. This of course assumed a supremacy in cavalry; if the cavalry was neutralized, the wagon fort could be sieged and destroyed (as seen in the case of Vasily Sheremetev\u2019s disaster at Chudnov). Men armed with bayonet equipped firearms (and before that, pikes) could both resist cavalry and attack decisively. While the Wagenburg could ward off cavalry, it was vulnerable to a determined infantry attack \u2013 perhaps the earliest demonstration of this was during the Landshut War of Succession (1504-1505) where landsknechts successfully stormed a Czech wagon fort after it had repelled a cavalry attack. Later, the Austrians and Russians would learn how to storm Ottoman taburs with a combination of artillery and infantry or dismounted dragoons (as seen for example, during the battle of Zenta). \n\nSources: \n\nAgoston, Gabor. *Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire*\n\nBrian Davies. Gulai Gorod, Wagenburg and Tabor Tactics found in *Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800*\n\nBiederman, Jan.  *L'art militaire dans les ordonnances tch\u00e8ques du XV e si\u00e8cle et son \u00e9volution: la doctrine du Wagenburg comme r\u00e9sultat de la pratique.*  M\u00e9di\u00e9vales, No. 67, Histoires de Boh\u00eame (Automne 2014), pp. 85-101"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "372l5g", "title": "Why are letters written by American Civil War soldiers so well worded and articulate even though the majority of soldiers weren't very well educated?", "selftext": "I've been reading some letters sent home to families or lovers of Civil War soldiers and I'm astounded by how eloquent and sophisticated they are. From my understanding most of these soldiers barely had any formal education, the majority being farmers or laborers, but they wrote so beautifully. Can anyone give us an understanding of why this is so? \n\n[Here's a link to some good examples of Civil War era letters written by soldiers.](_URL_0_)\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/372l5g/why_are_letters_written_by_american_civil_war/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crj6i4i", "crj6q7f"], "score": [42, 62], "text": ["Could someone check out the literacy rates from the era? Maybe all of the letters were well-written because the only literate people were well-educated?", "\"Writing beautifully\" seems to be a fairly subjective opinion - you could ask if the writing seems beautiful because of the poignancy of the situation: that the men writing could be killed before the letter arrived etc.\n\nThere's also the fact that historians will be apt to select letters that are noteworthy for some reason, either because of the quality of the writing or because the letter-writer supports some salient point of the historian's thesis.  So, the letters that you see are more likely to be the \"highlight reel\"; there could be plenty of dross that isn't worth digitizing.  \n\nHowever:\n\nThe USA, especially the North, was actually a pretty decent place to live if you were white - by the standards of the mid-19th century.  James McPherson goes into quite some detail on this point in his seminal history of the Civil War, *Battle Cry of Freedom*: IIRC the only places with better literacy rates than the Northern USA at that time were Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.  There was also very much a political awakening, especially by Northern soldiers, who voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln in 1864, and so a lot of them would have been reading Douglass and Greeley etc, and they'd definitely have read Lincoln's speeches when they were published.  Improving one's own vocab and writing skills after being exposed to more literary stuff is a well-attested phenomenon."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://spec.lib.vt.edu/cwlove/"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "29jx4x", "title": "do historians, anthropologists and archeologists have any major disagreements about the past?", "selftext": "are there big conventions for all three professions? when you write a history thesis or dissertation, do you anxiously watch the news for new archeology finds that might invalidate your theories? When do theories graduate into generally accepted knowledge?\n\nEdit: Thank you, this is fascinating stuff. Big thanks to mods for an awesome subreddit.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29jx4x/do_historians_anthropologists_and_archeologists/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cilu1jv", "cilz2za", "cilz9s6", "cilzuey"], "score": [12, 7, 5, 17], "text": ["In the United States (I don't know about elsewhere) Archaeology is considered a field of Anthropology. Furthermore, Anthropology is broken into the other disciplines of Biological (Physical) Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Linguistics.\n\nBeyond that, even within a sub-discipline like cultural anthropology, there are many disagreements on how research should be conducted and the paradigms used to interpret data.\n\nI can't speak to historians (so maybe I shouldn't even be answering here) but, yes, there are disagreements, not just among the three groups you listed, but within them as well.", "If I could recommend a classic article on this subject, from ethno-historian (and trained anthropologist) Jan Vansina:\n\nVansina, Jan, \u201cHistorians, Are Archaeologists Your Siblings\u201d, History in Africa, 22 (1995), 369-408.  \n\nAfter Vansina\u2019s article was posted online to H-Africa, the archaeologist [Robert Bradshaw responded] (_URL_0_ J.shaw.html)", "There are constant disagreements about historical facts and that's part of the process. Historians work with imperfect tools in a field where its near impossible to 'prove' that something happened. We have to look at the primary sources, see if we can figure out what the facts are and argue those facts to peers in a comprehensive and articulate manner. A good historian will do all that and then try to explain the broader context and importance.\n\nI don't know if there are conventions but scholarly discussion like what I think you're alluding to occurs in publications and research journals. There's always a steady flow of theses (thesises?) that get reviewed by peers (AKA peer review). If a theory holds up to scholarly scrutiny then it becomes accepted. When a theory's argument grows stronger as new evidence emerges over time then it generally graduates into common knowledge.\n\nAnd as for your second question I haven't written a historical thesis so I can't say what it's like to have your arguments invalidated. I'm sure there's disappointment but if a historian can see the bigger picture of their field  they'd probably be accepting of it.", "I am a recent graduate with degrees in both History (Early Modern) and Anthropology (Archaeology) and I think I can speak somewhat to this question.\n\nHistorians, as their name suggests, are primarily concerned with \"historical\" sources that being sources that are written records of past events. When we say \"pre-historical\" what we mean is a period before records were kept. An anthropologist, and archaeologist in particular, is concerned primarily with physical culture. Whether it is artwork, architecture, or any other physical manifestation of a society. Effectively the role of an archaeologist is to collect, catalogue, maintain and interpret physical culture vis-a-vis its provenance.\n\nBoth disciplines rely upon eachother to produce a more nuanced, and accurate, view of historical societies, but generally are held apart. Many historians prefer to work solely with texts and have no experience on archaeological digs. Similarly many archaeologists deal exclusively in the analytically and taxonomic nature of their study and pay little attention to the context of their studies.\n\nThere is an intersection of these two fields called \"Historical Archaeology\" which informs the search and interpretation of physical culture with known written sources. A perfect example of this discipline would be the recent exhumation of, the now confirmed, body of Richard III. The dig site was chosen by interpreting numerous sources that pointed to a particular chapel as the burial site of the King. In turn they dug a number of slit trenches around the known foundations of this chapel and were able to determine the likely area of the graveyard. This was all accomplished through the integration of both disciplines.\n\nAs to you question about conflicting theories and interpretations. Yes there are a tremendous number of conflicts within history and archaeology alike. Competing methodologies often build camps around particular historical events and fight over interpretation and semantics. This should come with very little surprise given the nature of all academia. Unfortunately academic disagreements are typically so esoteric and specific that they can be easily ignored by the lay-person. \n\nOne glaring example is the growing movement within the US history community to no longer refer to the \"American Revolution\" as a revolution at all. The foundation for this argument is based upon what constitutes a revolution, the technical definition among historians, and how the American revolution could possibly be considered one. There is a growing consensus among modern historians that the American \"revolution\" was more a civil war or uprising because it was effectively maintaining a status quo within the colonies, but that is neither here nor there.\n\nWhat is important is that consensus within the historical community is not always what is accepted knowledge. Accepted knowledge, and this is coming from my anthropology side, is what a society chooses to believe about itself and others. Often times it is not accurate, or even factual, and when we discuss history our Accepted Knowledge is rarely correct. It takes years of concerted effort by historians to steer the massive weight of public consciousness away from inaccurate interpretations and towards more factual, or atleast accepted, conceptions of the past.\n\nSome good news is that historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists are cooperating more and more. As interdepartmental study is becoming a major force in education I think we can expect more students to graduate with a much greater breadth of knowledge.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/africaforum/Roderick"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "66kn2f", "title": "Why does Germany have 'Free Cities' and 'Free States' etc, instead of a standardised system? Is it a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire or is it a more modern arrangement?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66kn2f/why_does_germany_have_free_cities_and_free_states/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgjy7sw"], "score": [48], "text": ["Today, both free city and free state are pretty much nomenclature, meaning that they pretty much are a name only, comparable to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is also called Commonwealth because it features in their constitution but it has no practical impact on how Massachusetts functions vs. other states of the US that are not a commonwealth. The Free State of Bavaria, Saxony or Th\u00fcringen do not differ in their status within the German federal state than Brandenburg or Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. And what sets apart the Free Cities Hamburg and Bremen is that they are states made up of one (in the case of Bremen two) cities like Berlin.\n\nAs has been mentioned in this thread the title of Free City indeed carries over from the HRR: They were cities that were not under the rule of any particular lord and did not owe the Emperor taxes or soldiers (unlike the Reichsst\u00e4dte, which were under direct tutelage of the Emperor). While both the end of the HRR and the Napoleonic wars ended the existence of most of these free cities (or in the case of Frankfurt, its annexation to Prussia in 1866), the former Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and L\u00fcbeck remained what can be classified best as city states and as such joined first the Nord German Bund and later the German Empire as sovereign entities.\n\nIt's important to understand that Germany, even with a central state arising with the Empire in the 1870s, was still a strongly federal structure in the sense that Wilhelm might have been German Emperor but there still was e.g. the king of Bavaria who enjoyed quite some authority in his lands. When the Empire ended in the German Revolution in 1918/19, most of the state entities that made up Germany under the common constitution (sort of like the states of the United States constitute the federal entity), they became \"Free States\", meaning republics and not monarchies. Free State as well as \"Volksstaat\" (people's state), which was also used were distinct social democratic / socialist titles that were used to denote the new form of government that originated with the people. Kurt Eisner when he declared the Munich Soviet Republic also used the term \"Free State\" for Bavaria.\n\nThe Weimar Republic was also a strongly federal state, made up of different constituent states. This was only ended by the Nazis, who got right of the states per se as political entities, keeping them only as administrative entities, and who introduced a strong central state in Germany. With the end of Nazi rule, the Allies did not establish a German central state with one central government. Rather, the first political entities that the Allies allowed in Germany were the federal states. These federal states then formulated one constitution, the Grundgesetz, under whose precepts they joined the German Federal Republic. Hamburg and Bremen e.g. were with the argument of their long history as city states able to establish their sovereignty as federal states within that context while L\u00fcbeck gave that up and remained as part of Schleswig-Holstein.\n\nBavaria also chose the label Free State because when it was re-founded as a political entity by the American occupation in 1945, there still was the discussion if it would become a monarchy. In fact, there even was a party agitating for re-establishing the monarch in Bavaria. While the American occupation forbade said party, in order to quell such aspirations one and for all, a popular referendum was held where the populous voted on anew constitution for the state that explicitly referred to it as a free state rather than a monarchy. It was accepted with over 70% of the popular vote and so the Free State of Bavaria was born as part of the Federal Republic.\n\nA slightly similar process occurred in the early 90s when the former states of the GDR joined the Federal Republic. The Grundgesetz explicitly stated that further states could join the Federal Republic, which was the basis for how the GDR could become part of the FGR legally. The FGR did not annex the former socialist country but rather, the constituent states voted to join the FGR. Within that context to denote the new form of government as \"real\" republics, both Saxony and Th\u00fcringen chose to denote themselves as free states.\n\nIn that sense, there is no real difference between German states calling themselves Free States of Free Cities except in the name itself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4d6a9m", "title": "In Irish (Gaeilge) the common reply to hello \"Dia is Muire duit\" literally means \"God and Marry be with you.\" How did this develop and what was the common response in pre-Christian Ireland?", "selftext": "Edit: Sorry typo in the title, Mary not marry", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d6a9m/in_irish_gaeilge_the_common_reply_to_hello_dia_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1obbaa", "d1of05k"], "score": [17, 6], "text": ["It's not marry, its Mary, and the the response to that is Dia  is Muire is P\u00e1draig duit, which adds in St. Patrick. ", "You may be interested in this AskHistorians thread from 2013:\n[\"Dia dhuit\" meaning 'God be with you' is the Irish word for hello, how did Irish people greet each other before Christianity arrived?](_URL_0_)\n\nThe general consensus seems to be \"we just don't know.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dbxg6/dia_dhuit_meaning_god_be_with_you_is_the_irish/"]]}
{"q_id": "8myvo9", "title": "How did a wealthy town on the coast smaller than some peoples backyards become it's own country? (Monaco)", "selftext": "I doubt they have ever had the means to set themselves out militarily so surely it's some kind of economic quid pro quo with France or something? No idea, please enlighten me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8myvo9/how_did_a_wealthy_town_on_the_coast_smaller_than/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dzt0q66"], "score": [6], "text": ["Not to discourage other answers, but here is the [FAQ on why European microstates are still around.](_URL_0_)\n\nHowever, there hasn't really been an indepth answer on Monaco specifically, so hopefully someone will add to this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_the_micro-nations.3A_how_have_they_survived.3F"]]}
{"q_id": "3fmqp4", "title": "When and where did the practice of frying food first develop?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fmqp4/when_and_where_did_the_practice_of_frying_food/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctqsc4x"], "score": [5], "text": ["Clarification question: Do you mean deep frying or cooking in oil/fat?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "22jxfm", "title": "Did medieval colleges have what we today would consider electives, if so what are some examples of them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22jxfm/did_medieval_colleges_have_what_we_today_would/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgns3la"], "score": [134], "text": ["I'm going to preface all of this by saying that every University was different, and that as time passed Universities tended to develop rather individualised traditions in different countries. If I have overlooked any special examples, I do apologize.\n\nGenerally, no. Scholasticism, the governing philosophy of early Universities, taught the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. The first three were called the *Trivium* and made up the curriculum of a Bachelors Degree. The *Trivium* was seen as preparation for studying the more difficult *Quadrivium* (the last four subjects). Once a student had completed the *Quadrivium* they were considered ready to teach at a University level, and granted a Masters Degree. Unlike modern Universities, there weren't exactly majors or minors, and in the early stages of the University there weren't individualized departments. \"Faculties\" of Law, Theology, Medicine, and other subjects gradually materialized.\n\nSo instead of choosing a major, fulfilling its requirements, and then taking interesting electives on the side like we do now, medieval students had to first choose a University that specialized in whatever subject they were interested in. For example, Paris was well-known for theology, Bologna was well-known for Law, and Salerno was well-known for Medicine. At University, students sometimes chose their own professors and paid them directly, or sometimes they were assigned professors and paid tuition to a central authority. The caveat was that they could only really study the Liberal Arts.\n\nThat being said, medieval intellectuals were much less confined by disciplinary boundaries once they took their Masters than modern scholars are. A scholar with enough experience and respect could research, think, and write about almost whatever they wanted. \n\nNOTES: Paul Oldfield \"The Kingdom of Sicily and the Early University Movement\"\nPeter Denley \"Medieval Italian Universities and the Role of Foreign Scholarship\"\nA.B. Coban \"Decentralized Teaching in the Medieval English Universities\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2742xt", "title": "[Meta] To source or not to source?", "selftext": "After having several posts downvoted recently for not being sourced, despite them being very basic or elementary facts, makes me want to seek further clarification. Not only from the mods but the subreddit itself.\n\nIn academia it is generally accepted you don't have to show a source for every single claim or fact. It is more for controversial or obscurbe things, basic dates and facts about a period are taken as granted (e.g. William the Conqueror being a Norman and invading England in 1066).\n\nShould I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nAlso I have repeatedly been told to show a source for my personal interpretation of sourced facts. How is this possible? I thought reasoned interpretation based off sourced facts would be fine. Or am I only allowed to parrot the work of scholars who have came before me?\n\nI also often see stuff upvoted, so assumingly be \"correctly\" sourced, that actually only links to some shoddy bbc or blog article. Or they have put in lots of dates and figures. Or a very general reference of some secondry source, often \"introdcutory\" material to a subject. \n\nIf the standards of the subreddit is to exceed the quality of most academic work when it comes to sources and refrences then that is fine by me. But can we have the rule enforced a bit more strictly. \n\nOr altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly. Assuming most of us are historians or amateur historians I don't see the problem with slightly more generealised summarys of things that are common knowlege to anyone with a passing interest.\n\nTL;DR Where do I draw the line with refrencing? Even stuff that my proffesors wouldn't have considered poorly refrenced has been downvoted on this subreddit. Do I need to show proof for every single fact?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2742xt/meta_to_source_or_not_to_source/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chx79r9", "chx81fi", "chx82v9", "chx9gd5", "chxcqxa", "chxemjl", "chxj48n", "chxy6pb"], "score": [42, 4, 24, 5, 5, 2, 2, 3], "text": ["Upvotes  &  downvotes are not necessarily indicative of how well an answer stays within the rules; I regularly downvote and report answers which lack depth, are parroting wikipedia, or are plain wrong. These answers sometimes have many upvotes, despite the request to \"*Upvote informative, well sourced answers*\".  Unfortunately, not everyone with an upvote button sticks to that guideline. The number of votes is often more an indication of the visibility of an answer than the quality of it. My advice would be: don't worry too much about the votes on your own answers. If you gave the best answer you could, and it was insightful and in-depth, there's not much else you can do. \n\nAs for the sources: provide sources where and when you can, certainly if someone asks for them. If it's a well-known fact which you don't think needs sourcing, and you can't find a source, just state that. But remember that not everyone knows all well-known facts, and that being able to point them somewhere where they can learn more about it would be helpful.", "In academia the people responding to questions and writing papers are known in field of study and have spent time in education learning the subject. On the internet it could be anyone that answers a question. Having a source to back something up helps to make sure that it's the people with knowledge that are answering.\n\n\nI have sat and thought to myself \"I know the answer to that\" but haven't been able to get a source in time or at all and while I'd love to answer more questions I am not academia it's all amateur and I'd rather not take the risk of telling someone something that I cannot 100% backup.\n\n\nBig difference in reading a response in a paper or book from Dr. AA Smith than a reply to a question on the internet from XXBIGCANSXX even if they do share the exact same content.", "I don't think your postulation on what gets upvoted is an accurate reflection of reality.\n\nThe citation rules on this sub are nowhere close to an academic level of rigor. The rule is this: if you state a fact, be prepared to give a source for it. This is not just because people don't believe you; it's also because people want to learn more about the subject. If you can't do this without recourse to wikipedia, then you don't have the level of expertise to be posting on the subject in the first place.\n\nIf you have questions on why particular posts might have been viewed as problematic, I would happily look at links either here or via PM.", " > Should I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nIn some ways yes, because expertise in one area doesn't make you an expert in another and what counts as a \"basic fact\" varies quite a bit from field to field and even educational system to educational system. Part of the point of this subreddit is also to provide answers to people without training in that specific subfield. ", " > After having several posts downvoted recently for not being sourced, despite them being very basic or elementary facts, makes me want to seek further clarification. Not only from the mods but the subreddit itself.\n\nI can't see these, since you say you deleted them.\n\n > In academia it is generally accepted you don't have to show a source for every single claim or fact. It is more for controversial or obscurbe things, basic dates and facts about a period are taken as granted (e.g. William the Conqueror being a Norman and invading England in 1066).\n\nAs has been said, this sub is not academia. That doesn't mean you need less or more sources. However, in the sub, you don't typically need a source for \"everything\", at least in the experience of answers I've seen.\n\n > Should I treat posts on this subreddit more like I'm talking to an alien who knows nothing about history and source every single fact?\n\nNo, I can't see why you'd need to. You should provide a rigorous amount of information and provide references if you want to avoid people asking where they can find more/your information, you don't have to source it all straight out of a book. However, you're probably *not* being asked for sources for facts that \"everyone knows\". If everyone knew them and they were basic fact, then you wouldn't be asked for a source. If they're \"easily findable through Google\", then you're not providing the depth they're likely looking for, and the academic rigor expected. I would encourage you to [re-read the rules in this regard](_URL_0_), as they go into the question of \"Depth\" that might be giving you some trouble.\n\n > I also often see stuff upvoted, so assumingly be \"correctly\" sourced, that actually only links to some shoddy bbc or blog article. Or they have put in lots of dates and figures. Or a very general reference of some secondry source, often \"introdcutory\" material to a subject.\n\nI have already asked to see some of this.\n\n > If the standards of the subreddit is to exceed the quality of most academic work when it comes to sources and refrences then that is fine by me. But can we have the rule enforced a bit more strictly.\n\nI don't think the standards are anywhere close. Further, as has been mentioned, upvotes are not correlated with the rules of the subreddit.\n\n > Or altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly. Assuming most of us are historians or amateur historians I don't see the problem with slightly more generealised summarys of things that are common knowlege to anyone with a passing interest.\n\nThat is what the subreddit is doing, when it downvotes answers that it doesn't believe are sourced or in-depth enough to satisfy the question. That is the subreddit populace's \"self-moderation\". Now, I'm not saying they're right. A good answer can, on occasion, be downvoted because it doesn't *seem* correct, because there's not enough depth or because it doesn't account for alternate opinions and interpretations that a more-sourced and more in-depth answer provides in the same thread. But the sub self-moderates by downvotes, and the rules have little to do with it.\n\n > TL;DR Where do I draw the line with refrencing? Even stuff that my proffesors wouldn't have considered poorly refrenced has been downvoted on this subreddit. Do I need to show proof for every single fact?\n\nUnfortunately this is very anecdotal. What is your major/focus? That may explain why some rigors are different.", " >  Also I have repeatedly been told to show a source for my personal interpretation of sourced facts. How is this possible? I thought reasoned interpretation based off sourced facts would be fine. Or am I only allowed to parrot the work of scholars who have came before me?\n\nNo, of course not. Although, if people are calling you up on advancing your argument then it is not their issue but yours, as you are clearly not either making A) a compelling case; or B) sign-posting your thinking process. Both of which I'm sure your tutors would not be happy with!\n\nIf someone is asking you to back up an interpretation the absolutely worst thing to do is claim it is impossible (because it suggests you cannot explain or justify your interpretation). This is where a familiarity with the primary sources and the ability to explicitly include them in a response is essential. If your interpretation is almost exclusively founded on the secondary material then I *would not* recommend offering a 'reasoned interpretation', as you will not have done the requisite research of your own which is necessary to set out a balanced and informed interpretation.\n\nThis is why, for the most part, I keep within the secondary literature unless it's a topic I'm very familiar with such as [Joan of Arc](_URL_0_), [medieval Wales c.1090-1284](_URL_1_), or my flared topics - although those are comfortably broad, especially the 'Medieval Europe' bit! ", "I've had my share of requests for sources, but it's kind of hard if you've just written a 5 paragraph entry, and someone says \"Do you have any sources?\"  Can we ask that requests for sources be more specific?\n\nOtherwise I look on the difficulty of writing an acceptable article as part of the price we pay for having a high quality subreddit.\n", " >  Or altenatively can we relax the rule and allow the subreddit to self-moderate slightly.\n\nI want to just restate the \"official\" position of the mods on sources since there seems to be continuing misconceptions about it. The rule is, has been for a very long time, and will be for the foreseeable future, that sources are encouraged but **not** mandatory, unless you are challenged. That is, we won't remove a post because it isn't sourced unless you are asked to give a source (by anyone, not just a mod) and refuse.\n\nI think this is clearly stated in the rules and several other places; if not, please do tell us how we can improve.\n\nMy impression is that the sub has a whole has come to expect a greater standard than that specified by the rules. It is self-moderating in the sense that people tend to be much harsher with their downvotes than we are with removing posts, at least when it comes to sourcing. There's little we can do about that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_answers"], ["http://redd.it/25ppkb", "http://redd.it/240phs"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "28tr80", "title": "Why did Eisenhower send federal troops to allow the 'Little Rock Nine' to go to school? What did he gain?", "selftext": "I understand how troops were *needed* to force the integration but what did Eisenhower gain from it? I mean it was before his re-election and it seems to me to be a good way to loose votes in 1950s America\n\nWas it personal conviction? Was there something his administration gained from it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28tr80/why_did_eisenhower_send_federal_troops_to_allow/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciegovu", "cieo71n", "cies1gt"], "score": [92, 2, 5], "text": ["Eisenhower's personal conviction was that blacks deserved equal rights but it was the president's job to uphold the law, not make it. He has been glorified and criticised because, despite being on the right side of history, he was an apolitical military man uncomfortable taking strong positions. A book aimed at non-specialists I found insightful is called Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.\n\nAs to why he did it, this was one episode in a much larger saga. Governor Faubus of Arkansas called in the national guard in defiance of a court order, claiming \"blood will run in the streets\" if they admitted blacks. What followed set the stage for so-called massive resistance (closing schools) in Virginia and George Wallace standing in the school house door in Alabama. Eisenhower knew that. For Faubus, when he finally allowed the students to attend, it was a test case of his own. He could rile up whites with the prospect of total desegregation (which wasn't on the table yet), watch violence ensue, and say, \"Told you so.\"\n\nEisenhower called his bluff. With the students' lives in danger, he decided to send in troops. [NPR helps elaborate](_URL_0_), shedding light on your latter question:\n\n >  \"What I remember at Ms. Bates' house is that you had all of this drama going on, but we were still teenagers. We were worried about how we were going to look getting into the jeep. Why couldn't we have two jeeps, instead of one. And Daisy said: 'Look, this is a very important moment. The fact that the president of the United States has sent the United States Army here to escort you into school means that this government is finally serious about school desegregation.\"\n\nThis was a moment of strength for the president, outside the racist voters of the south, who still voted Democratic anyway. Eisenhower showed desegregation was a battle he was willing to fight. \n", "I would like to add just a years prior Eisenhower allowed the governor of Texas, Allan shrivers, to prevent Mansfield high school from desegregating because he wanted Texas' electoral votes, though i doubt he really needed them. He also gave Texas rights to the tidelands over the federal government so it could suggest Eisenhower had some alliance with shrivers. I believe Orville Fabus was just part of Eisenhower being tough on the early attempts to defy desegregation. ", "It is also important to point out that Faubus was directly ignoring a federal court order to integrate Little Rock's schools, and Eisenhower (being the Chief Executive of the federal government) had to show the supremacy of the federal government. To allow integration to be stalled in the face of a federal mandate because of the whims of a state governor would've damaged Eisenhower's credibility, especially after Eisenhower and Faubus met face to face about the crisis and Eisenhower thought it was resolved.\n\nAs a side note, last summer I went to Little Rock to work on a living memory project about the Little Rock Nine, where a group of educators (including myself), interviewed several people who experienced the painful integration of Little Rock's high schools, including a few of the Little Rock Nine themselves. It was an incredible experience."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14563865"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5dd3vm", "title": "JFK  &  LBJ seem like completely opposite personalities. How well did they get along working together?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5dd3vm/jfk_lbj_seem_like_completely_opposite/", "answers": {"a_id": ["da3xag8", "da3z1nt"], "score": [110, 90], "text": ["Not so well. In Robert Caro's last LBJ volume he talks about the relationship in detail. LBJ saw JFK as a lightweight in the Senate. But JFK saw the value in having Johnson on the ticket because oil-rich Texas was a crucial fundraising state for Democrats. Once in the Whitehouse JFK basically ignored Johnson and essentially treated Bobby Kennedy as his Vice President. Caro writes that during the run up to the Cuban missile crisis JFK solicited Johnson's opinion and was horrified by what he considered Johnson's irresponsible hawkishness. Their relationship got so bad that many believed Johnson was going to be removed from the ticket in 1964 in favor of then Texas governor John Connally.  ", "**Not well.**\n\nObviously, Robert Caro's multi-volume series is the ultimate history of LBJ's life and service. You should start there, and the fourth volume, which covers Johnson's interactions with Kennedy, has much of what you're looking for.\n\nThe relationship between Kennedy and Johnson stretches back to the U.S. Senate, when both worked together. Johnson had been in Congress since 1937 and in the Senate since 1949; Kennedy only started serving in 1953, following the '52 elections. \"Now, this young man I appointed to the Foreign Relations Committee claims he knows more about foreign affairs than I do,\" Johnson said during the 1960 Democratic National Convention. (Caro, *Passage of Power*, p. 106)\n\nThat 1960 convention got heated between Kennedy and LBJ, who was also seeking the presidential nomination. Johnson raised \"the Catholic issue\" and Kennedy's health problems, while Kennedy's backers whispered about Johnson's 1955 heart attack. \n\nJohn Kennedy himself appears to have a much more positive view of LBJ than almost any of Kennedy's supporters did \u2500 in particular Bobby Kennedy, who was LBJ's most implacable enemy in the White House. But John Kennedy was the one who picked Johnson as vice president to balance the ticket (Johnson was a sure bet to deliver Texas and a door into several other Southern states) and his campaign went along with it.\n\nOnce elected, however, Kennedy's staff and supporters ridiculed Johnson behind closed doors. These messages reached Johnson, who \u2500 particularly after his time in the Senate \u2500 had long ears. Bobby Kennedy was a particularly vocal foe of Johnson. Jeff Shesol's *Mutual Contempt* is a good book on their relationship.\n\nFurthermore, Johnson was frustrated by the dead-end nature of the vice-presidency. He had given up a strong position in the Senate only to find himself sidelined by the Kennedy administration, which didn't really have a use for him after the election. LBJ wasn't one of Kennedy's close advisers; Bobby Kennedy was practically the shadow vice president.\n\nIn recorded interviews from 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy said her husband and Bobby Kennedy had discussed strategies for 1968 to prevent Johnson from running for president, and there's been ample discussion that Kennedy was seriously considering dumping Johnson from the ticket in 1964 in favor of someone like Texas governor John Connally. Kennedy's assassination changed all those plans."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4mtamh", "title": "\"A Lanister always pays his debts\" Did powerful houses/Families/Royalty have catchphrases that were commonly known or popular?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mtamh/a_lanister_always_pays_his_debts_did_powerful/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3y54tt", "d3yoh2h"], "score": [96, 33], "text": ["The short answer is yes, and you can look up \"heraldic motto\" for the full list of each house. Some of these have endured and are still fairly well known. For instance, the Order of the Garter founded by King Edward III of England has for motto \"Honi soit qui mal y pense\", a french saying (roughly translated meaning \"shame on he who  sees evil in it\". This motto is still very well known in french society, and sometimes used in everyday conversation. \n\nOther heraldic mottos :\n\n- Nutrisco et extinguo, \"I feed and extinguish\", Fran\u00e7ois I of France\n\n- Nec pluribus impar, \"not inferior to many\" (meaning superior to almost all), used by Louis XIV, XV  &  XVI\n\n- and since this is Reddit : Absentis lumina reddit, \"the moon illuminating the earth\", for Marie-Louise-Gabrielle of Savoie, wife of Phillipe V king of Spain.", "The Spanish Habsburgs had a famous family motto: Plus Ultra, or \"Further Beyond.\"\n\nAccording to ancient myth, during the trials of Hercules, he traveled as far as the Straits of Gibraltar (known in Antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules), which were inscribed with the motto Nec Plus Ultra, or Nothing Further Beyond. The implication was that there was nothing of interest in the open ocean and that venturing out further was death.\n\nEmperor Charles V, in his role as King Charles (Carlos) I of Spain, made Plus Ultra his motto, reflecting Spain's ambitions over the New World.\n\nTo this day, the phrase Plus Ultra is on the flag of Spain.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nCheck out the Pillars of Hercules on either side of the Spanish crest."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Flag_of_Spain.svg/1280px-Flag_of_Spain.svg.png"]]}
{"q_id": "2v3jie", "title": "A recent post on TIL claims that practically all alphabetic scripts, including Latin, Arabic, Tibetan, Hebrew and Korean, are ultimately descended from Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "I am referring to [this](_URL_0_) post. The main source is [this](_URL_1_) wikipedia article, which in turn cites \n\nGoldwasser, Orly (Mar\u2013Apr 2010). \"How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs\". Biblical Archaeology Review (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society) 36 (1). ISSN 0098-9444. Retrieved 6 Nov 2011.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2v3jie/a_recent_post_on_til_claims_that_practically_all/", "answers": {"a_id": ["coe7jyi"], "score": [42], "text": ["This is going to be short, but the general point is that, yes, of the scripts you have mentioned, there are in fact fair justification for considering them as derivative from a single parent script, at least through influences if not direct development. Each of these can be linked back to Proto-Sinaitic which it in turn derived from hieroglyphs. Does that mean that the connections are certain and free from any potential criticism? No, but we can still be fairly certain of their relatedness.\n\nThere are of course detractors, such as is found in the other comment about hangeul. However this comment is supported neither by the history of the script nor by the governing bodies which would have something to gain by giving such support, and as such can be ignored with reasonable degrees of confidence. There's simply no reason to believe hangeul was *not* based on 'Phags-pa.\n\nRealistically, based on the currently accepted views within the field regarding the development of orthographic systems, there's absolutely no reason to believe the different writing systems about which you are asking were not based ultimately on a single common system, however unintuitive that may seem."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2v3du3/til_practically_all_alphabetic_scripts_including/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Semitic_alphabet"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32vt16", "title": "Where was Haile Selassie of Ethiopia during WWII?", "selftext": "I understand he was exiled during the invasion of Italy into Ethiopia. I also had heard he had traveled to the Caribbean, and quite possibly Jamaica during this time. \n\nA Jamaican acquaintance had very firmly stated that Haile Selassie's first visit to Jamaica was in 1966, years after WWII had ended. \n\nI've tried researching this but can not find any clear answers. Can any history buffs here provide the answer I;m looking for? Thanks! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32vt16/where_was_haile_selassie_of_ethiopia_during_wwii/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqfc03x"], "score": [7], "text": ["He went into exile in May of 1936 - first to Jerusalem to prepare his case to the League of Nations, who were located in Geneva, Switzerland, then immediately to England, where he stayed for something like five years, mostly in Bath. I didn't know this before, (and I know a little about the man) but I also took a look at his wikipedia article, which claims that he also spent a lot of time in Worthing, Wimbledon, and Malvern. But that's wikipedia, so...\n\nAnyways - he returned to Ethiopia in 1941 after Britain's North Africa campaign poured troops and resources into the region in a successful bid to extricate it from the Italians. \n\nI know nothing about him visiting Jamaica early on and considering the crazy shit Ethiopia was going through, and the fact that a major component of Selassie's exile was to try and convince the countries of Europe to step in and use their military might to rein in Italy, I can't imagine why he would've traveled to the Caribbean. Rastafari was born in Jamaica without his direct intention, around the time of Selassie's coronation...basically he is looked at as the fulfillment of Garvey's famous quasi-prophecy - \"Look to Africa, for there a black king shall be crowned.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3foujq", "title": "I've always heard of NATO plans to defend the Fulda Gap from the Soviets during the Cold War, was there a Soviet plan to stop NATO from rushing east in the same manner?", "selftext": "Another way to look at it - were there NATO ground plans to be the aggressor in this scenario?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3foujq/ive_always_heard_of_nato_plans_to_defend_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctqvawk", "ctr3bub"], "score": [17, 18], "text": ["Very much interested in this too. Also, where there any feasible NATO first strike options against the Warzaw Pact?", "Yes, there was significant power concentration in the area to stop a NATO assault. In East Germany, the area was not called Fulda Gap, but instead \"Th\u00fcringer Balkon\" (Thuringian Balcony), emphasizing the role of Thuringia as the most western region of the Eastern Bloc.\n\nThe Thuringian Balcony was important for NATO because taking it could significantly shorten the front line in a conflict as well as provide elevated positions against soviet counter attacks.\n\nUp until 1990, strong soviet contingents were stationed in the region. HQs in Nohra and Weimar commanded four divisions and six brigades of the 08th Soviet Guards Army. \n\nAs an example, the 39th Guards Motorized Rifles had seven regiments in Ohrdruf, Gotha and Meiningen. They were under arms at all times and ready for combat in a very short time to defend themselves against the (as suspected) American divisions. \n\nThey had support from strong rocket and artillery brigades from Arnstadt as well as Gotha and Ohrdruf. \n\nThis was the Southern NATO route, the Northern Route was less protected by soviet troops, but instead focused on heavy NVA (Nationale Volksarmee, Army of the GDR) presence. \n\n[See map here [GER]](_URL_0_)\n\n\nSoviets probably knew about the NATO plans, as evidenced by a German examination of  soviet maneuver \"October storm\" from 1965, where German officers concluded that it showed similarity to NATO plans Bercon Charlie. \n\nSource: Agency of Military History Research (Milit\u00e4rgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt), Potsdam, Germany.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://media401.zgt.de.cdn.thueringer-allgemeine.de/008B6044_F535331EE8891FC2C52C3ED88866AFF6"]]}
{"q_id": "4i98oh", "title": "A Labour official (UK) recently stated that the Jews were the\u201cchief financiers\u201d of the African slave trade. Is there any truth to that?", "selftext": " > The two latest Labour officials to be suspended rehashed some of these conspiracy theories, but also threw some new ones into the mix. Jacqueline Walker, the vice-chair of the national steering committee for Momentum, the hard-left advocacy group that brought Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to power, was suspended after she was revealed to have labeled the Jews the \u201cchief financiers\u201d of the African slave trade.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIs there any truth to what she said? Or is it just nonsense?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i98oh/a_labour_official_uk_recently_stated_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2w9xc2"], "score": [112], "text": ["It's absolute nonsense, and something of a popular anti-Semitic trope in some radical black nationalist circles (ironically, it's also becoming popular with neo-Nazis), and is now apparently being taken up more broadly in some far left circles. It has its origins largely in the 1991 book *The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews*, published by the Nation of Islam, which is a work of grotesque psuedoscholarship that simply does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny. I have answered a question on the exact scope of Jewish involvement in the slave trade before [here](_URL_0_), which I'll reproduce below in quote boxes:\n\n >  Well, the slave trade was a massive international enterprise; we have evidence of about 35,000 slave voyages that occurred between 1500 and 1866, and though we don't know how many ships were involved because their names often aren't recorded and others are known only by estimation, clearly you need a lot of people and a lot of ships to pull that off. So within that operation, you're of course going to get involvement of Jewish labour and finance; that's an inevitability. On the whole though, Jewish involvement is entirely in line with their representation in the population; there is no disproportionate rate of investment or participation on the part of Jewish people.\n\n >  For example, from 1715 to 1765, we have evidence of only 377 slaves who were brought from Africa to New York on ships owned by Jewish accounts or financed by Jewish capital; that's less than 1% of the total slaving activity in that period. The largest area of Jewish involvement seems to be in the trade of slaves out of Jamaica onto continental North America, where Jewish investment accounts for 8% of all traffic there before the slave trade is abolished by Britain; but this is an exception rather than a rule, and in other contexts Jewish involvement is virtually non-existent. In importing slaves to Jamaica for instance, only 0.4% of all slaves were transported on Jewish ships. The broad pattern is one of minimal Jewish involvement in the slave trade and especially in the trade coming out of Africa. In the Caribbean, we also generally find - with the exception of Suriname (where there was disproportionately high Jewish investment in sugar) - that when Jewish families and estates own slaves in the colonies themselves, they own fewer slaves than their Christian counterparts.\n\n >  So if we were to take the Jewish involvement out of the equation, and assume that no-one had filled the gap of Jewish involvement, we would see only the tiniest reduction in the volume of the transatlantic trade. Jewish people simply were not involved in the slave trade in any meaningful way, as either distant financiers or as ship operators; whilst it is important to acknowledge the role of every agent in the slave trade and slavery, as a whole Jewish involvement is quite ancillary to the story.\n\nEli Faber's book *Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight* (1999) is a superb rejection of the idea that the Jews were the driving force behind the slave trade, and is essentially a direct response to the nonsense peddled in the 1991 National of Islam book; such is the lack of support for the idea in academic circles that some reviewers were confused as to why Faber had bothered to write a book disproving something that no-one in academia believed in the first place!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/201885/labour-officials-suspended-after-claiming-jews-were-behind-african-slave-trade-israel-behind-isis"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40fh93/howwhy_did_black_nationalist_groups_adopt/czjnfm9"]]}
{"q_id": "2wyraw", "title": "Why are most American high school students required to learn the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns?", "selftext": "A very unscientific sample among my friends reveals that, without exception, every one of us learned about these three columns. No context to it, just that Doric columns have the square cap, Ionic have the scroll, and Corinthian are the really fancy ones. Why on earth did we all have to learn that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wyraw/why_are_most_american_high_school_students/", "answers": {"a_id": ["covdwuv", "covjwf6"], "score": [2, 14], "text": ["I actually never learned about that for some reason and I went to high school in America. I cant really answer your question but Im guessing the reason for learning it does **not** actually help students understand the different Greek groups in Achae, Thessaly, Macedonia, Ionia/Attic etc. and how they all differed other than the way they built their columns.\n\nWhat state did you go to high school in? ", "CommodoreCoCo's response is excellent, but I would also add a few other points:\n\n1) To expand on Comm. CoCo's mention of Washington, a great deal of American architecture, in particular civic architecture, is designed on neo-Classical architectural principles. You can see [here](_URL_0_) just a few examples of the classical orders in the architecture of Washington, D.C.: Doric columns are found in the Capitol's Crypt and the Great Hall of the Supreme Court; the Old Senate Chamber of the Supreme Court contains Ionic columns; the Supreme Court building is built on the principles of the Corinthian order. Thus, knowing about the Classical orders can be a great help in understanding current American architecture, not to mention identifying important American civic buildings.\n\n2) I'm not sure any American high school students are actually *required* to learn the differences between the orders, although I may be wrong. It's likely that you and your friends, by virtue of being friends, come from similar socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, etc. backgrounds, and so would have been exposed to broadly similar educational programs. Of course I could be wrong, and if anyone is an expert on the American high school curriculum, I would love to hear from them.\n\n3) I doubt think anyone around here will disagree with me if I say that, all other things being equal, knowing the difference between the three Classical orders is preferable to not knowing them, just as knowing (nearly) anything is preferable to not knowing it. I would argue that just about anything you've come out of high school knowing is a net gain.\n\n4) Also, as an aside: the curly-cue \"scrolls\" on the Ionic capital are known as \"volutes,\" and they may be stylized representations of plants (perhaps clovers, like the Corinthian represents acanthus leaves), or even cushions to protect the \"shoulders\" of those poor columns forced to hold up a a heavy temple roof for all eternity. I favour the latter explanation purely for its delightfulness, not really for any evidence-based reason. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/architecture-columns"]]}
{"q_id": "7yc6gc", "title": "Since the right to keep and bear arms is tied to the need for \"a well-regulated militia,\" have there ever been attempts to legally bind gun ownership with conscription?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7yc6gc/since_the_right_to_keep_and_bear_arms_is_tied_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dufkmo1"], "score": [18], "text": ["This may cover some of your query; /u/FatherAzerun gives the background to what \"well-regulated militia\" meant historically: _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ossb5/the_united_states_second_amendment_starts_with_a/"]]}
{"q_id": "cxkqq6", "title": "Why did the English language never develop a regulatory body like the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise or Accademia della Crusca?", "selftext": "Many languages have organizations which regulate their development, but English does not. Why is this the case? Where there ever serious pushes in the past to create one, and if so, why did it fail?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cxkqq6/why_did_the_english_language_never_develop_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eypw38z"], "score": [14], "text": ["There have certainly been English reform movements throughout history, but it is curious how this didn't lead to a centralized institution like French with the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise. While \"Why didn't ____ happen?\" questions [can be tricky to answer](_URL_0_), I'll try to shed some light on the various ways people have tried to modify English throughout history (in no particular order), and how successful their attempts were, and maybe along the way we'll get an idea of why it never developed a regulatory body.\n\nEnglish is, in my personal non-professional opinion, a dumpster fire of a language for a variety of reasons, including but certainly not limited to its strange spelling rules\u2014a result of many migrations and conquests against and by Anglo-Saxons over the course of many centuries, accumulating a variety of rules and vocabularies based on the affected languages, and exacerbated by the fact that there was no standardized spelling rules until the printing press and later dictionaries really kept things somewhat consistent, though that's a whole separate series of lectures\u2014so it's no surprise that people have pushed for somehow simplifying it. There have been a lot of people pushing for spelling reform to make the letter-to-phoneme ratio more consistent and easier to keep track of. For example, Ben Franklin [proposed a new phonetic alphabet](_URL_2_) that removed letters that were confusing or redundant (e.g., replace \"c\" with a \"k\" or \"s\" depending on the sound it's making) while creating letters for sounds that don't have their own letter. Similarly, there is a legendary comic proposal commonly attributed to Mark Twain (though also attributed to MJ Shields) of a multi-year plan to improve English:\n\n > For example, in Year 1 that useless letter \"c\" would be dropped to be replased either by \"k\" or \"s\", and likewise \"x\" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which \"c\" would be retained would be the \"ch\" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform \"w\" spelling, so that \"which\" and \"one\" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish \"y\" replasing it with \"i\" and Iear 4 might fiks the \"g/j\" anomali wonse and for all.\nJenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez \"c\", \"y\" and \"x\" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais \"ch\", \"sh\", and \"th\" rispektivli.\nFainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.\n\nAnother instance of proposed spelling reform, which went in the opposite direction, was that of scholars trying to make English more scholarly. While a lot of English's romance vocabulary comes from French (as a result of the Norman conquest of England), a decent chunk comes directly from Latin, as well as from Greek, and so a number of 16th-century scholars tried to make English more Latin/Greek by adding silent letters to words to resemble their origins. The [*Handbook of Simplified Spelling*](_URL_4_) (1920) explains that \"debt\" used to be spelled as \"det\", but \"[\u2026] *b* came to be inserted into *debt* by those who deemed it important to trace the origin of the word directly back to the Latin *debitum*, rather than through French *dette* (early modern English *dette*, *det*).\"\n\nThere have been a decent number of other spelling reform movements, which you can look at [here](_URL_3_). But none of these were appeals to actual organizations with the power to control the language. They were all essentially attempts to tell speakers of the English language directly to do something different. What about an actual institution?\n\nSomething I'll briefly note: governments definitely promote language to some degree, to create some harmony and consistency nationwide, but there are also a lot of versions of languages; one may become the dominant, thus being viewed as the \"correct\" way to speak that language. Looking at America, which evolved from British colonies, of course they are going to speak English: the Founders corresponded in English, they wrote the founding documents in English, and all the first citizens of the new country already spoke it.\n\nThere were pushes to institutionally modify it. In an [1820 letter](_URL_1_), scholar and writer William Cardell talks about his desire to have what he calls the American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres, whose purpose is \"to harmonize and determine the English language ; but it will also, according to its discretion and means, embrace every branch of useful and elegant literature, and especially whatever relates to our own country.\" Cardell believed that by having a regulatory body, we could promote consistent and therefore quality literature and other forms of writing within America, strengthening the nation as a whole. Obviously, this plan failed. If other people attempted\u2014which I imagine some people did\u2014they clearly had no success either.\n\nWhy didn't an English regulatory body ever catch on? Again, it's hard to say, but I have my suspicion: English was definitely influenced by America and its attitudes, and America has a very democratic, free-market approach to everything. The English language took a similar route: rather than let a governmental body regulate it, the people controlled it with their usage of the language. Like I said, a lot of people proposed ways of how to use the language; some of these ideas caught on, and others didn't. When dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and Oxford came out, they popularized rules that became the \"correct\" ways of using English, and those rules stuck. Early standardization was largely influenced by Samuel Johnson's dictionary that was published in the mid-18th century, not long before the American Revolution. People didn't need an institution to regulate the language, because the language was regulating itself\u2014maybe stupidly, but it was still independent and autonomous. Pretty much all linguists subscribe to descriptivism over prescriptivism, which means that language should be defined not by how it is *supposed* to be spoken, but by how it *does* get spoken. The rules are fluid and ever-changing; having someone track the changes and keep everyone up to date works, but having someone stop the changes doesn't. It ignores reality in an attempt to maintain a false, romanticized version of cultural history and tradition, and in the process attempts to destroy the evolution of that history. I don't think English speakers actively thought about it like that, but intrinsically followed this approach of essentially going with the linguistic flow and if they thought change was needed, do it themselves, rather than wait for a government."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awq55c/should_this_sub_allow_why_did_x_not_happen/", "https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.052_0465_0467/?sp=1", "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/benjamin-franklins-phonetic-alphabet-58078802/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform", "https://archive.org/details/handbookofsimpli00simprich/page/n13"]]}
{"q_id": "4nvywp", "title": "What sort of padding would a Norse Man wear under his mail, and under his helmet, when he went Viking?", "selftext": "I haven't been able to find a lot of material on this, so I thought I would ask here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4nvywp/what_sort_of_padding_would_a_norse_man_wear_under/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d47orm2", "d47wwiq"], "score": [4, 10], "text": ["This is a website run by Viking age interpreters- I've found that interpreters often have an incredible combination of scholarly expertise and practical experience because they actually make, wear, and work in the clothes to recreate the experience of people in the past. There aren't many sources here, but it's an excellent primer on terms and concepts if you'd like to look deeper. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is another source for interpreters and reenactors (there are subtle differences between the two, mostly related to the degree of study and dedication to accurate experience), and this one provides contemporary source citations:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIt is probably reasonable to assume, even given the lack of period sources, that the under-mail garment was similar among the Norse as in other areas of medieval Europe- a shirt-like creation with at least two layers, possibly quilted and/or stuffed with a buffer material like wool, and possibly with a leather outer layer to provide waterproofing or additional layer of protection under the mail. Over the undergarment and mail, it was common to wear an overshirt like a Norse kyrtle. Kyrtles, surcoats, jupons, and tabards are all related garments with similar functions. ", "Okay, so, as far as our sourcing goes, the answer is 'probably but we only have a 13th century text to suggest that they did' which is really the answer to a *lot* of viking-age Scandinavian history.\n\nThe family sagas (which deal with the viking age) are all written several hundred years after the fact, and concern themselves less with the practical day-to-day of life in early medieval Scandinavia, and more with the politicking and adventuring of a few wealthy and famous Icelanders.\n\nAs far as actual evidence goes, most of the saga heroes who wear armour do so on the continent or in England, and do so in the company of professional warriors, so it would be reasonable to assume they're wearing some sort of padding below their armour. That said, though, the padding itself doesn't need to be particularly thick as it would also be rather uncomfortable to wear. Likely, mail was worn over a thicker overgarment worn over regular clothing, but it wasn't padded armour by any stretch.\n\n*Konungs skuggsj\u00e1* mentions, in Ch. 37, that a gambeson of soft linen is the chief armour onboard ships and should also be worn beneath mail, but given that it's described as 'soft linen,' rather than 'firm' (which is a differentiation made later) it's not likely that it was a particularly dense garment."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/clothing.htm", "http://www.vikingage.org/wiki/index.php?title=Jacks_and_Gambesons"], []]}
{"q_id": "d1s65e", "title": "Media Mondays: Kingdom of Heaven", "selftext": "Hi everyone! We've decided to reform the Media Monday a little to create the critical analysis we hope for in these posts.\n\nThe media in question will now be picked by an expert flair who will lead the conversation with a top-down expert post. This guarantees that we get at least one amazing post for each submission, and leaves nobody bored - if they wanna post, all they need do is ask.\n\nWe will also try to do a new topic each week (so long as we have experts free and willing to write them), everyone is free to ask questions in the comments, and anyone can write their own expert comments (so long as they meet AH standards).\n\nThis week we are looking at the film 'Kingdom of Heaven', and the medieval world and Crusades in popular media.\n\nI\u2019m going to try my best to avoid nit picking the movie. It wouldn\u2019t be the best use of my time, and a certain amount of minor errors in a major blockbuster movie is hardly unexpected nor unwarranted. Actual history is complicated and fiddly, some things need to be simplified away for a movie to provide entertainment within a reasonable amount of time (although Kingdom of Heaven does stretch the limits of what \u201creasonable amount of time\u201d might mean). That said, before I get into the bulk of my post I do have a few nits I just cannot not pick. I\u2019ll also mention here that I\u2019m basing my write-up on the Director\u2019s Cut of the film \u2013 the significantly better version in my opinion \u2013 and not the version that was originally released in cinemas.\n\n* The opening text of the film, as well as Liam Neeson\u2019s character\u2019s status as a younger brother, is based on a myth that the primary motivation for the Crusaders was younger brothers looking to make their fortune. Jonathan Riley-Smith convincingly argued years ago that this was not the case, going on Crusade was ridiculously expensive and generally unprofitable \u2013 it was primarily an activity for elder sons or wealthy nobles themselves, not their poorer relatives.\n* Guy is weirdly obsessed with Balian\u2019s status as a bastard son and keeps acting like no one in France would ever tolerate a bastard rising to such a high status. It\u2019s barely been a century since William the Bastard conquered England and made himself a king, and his descendants still rule Normandy.\n* At the end of the movie Tiberias/Raymond says that he\u2019s going to retreat to Cyprus, but Cyprus didn\u2019t belong to the Crusader States until after Richard I\u2019s invasion at the start of the Third Crusade \u2013 why isn\u2019t he retreating to Acre or Tyre, much closer cities that actually belonged to people he was allied with?\n* Saladin\u2019s army is supposedly 200,000 men, which is like come on, that\u2019s way too big.\n\nPetty gripes aside, what I want to actually focus on is the main characters of the of the film, especially Balian and Sybilla. Most of the rest of the characters are just exaggerated versions of their historical selves \u2013 something that makes sense in the context of this being a film for entertainment and not a historical documentary. Reynald is more of a villain, Saladin is even more wise and merciful, Raymond (called Tiberias in the film, apparently to reduce confusion between him and Reynald) is even more sensible and careful, etc. The only one of these characters that arguably gets badly mistreated by the film is Guy de Lusignon. Guy doesn\u2019t exactly have the greatest reputation with historians, but no scholar would be half so cruel to poor Guy as this film is. I\u2019m certainly no Guy apologist, but his portrayal in this film is brutal, poor Guy never gets a break. There are fairly extensive historical debates around his competence vs. that of Baldwin IV and the extent to which both monarchs attempted to make the best of a rather difficult situation, and while I don\u2019t know of anyone who would put Guy on their list of Top 5 Medieval Kings, he certainly wasn\u2019t as awful or pathetic as the film shows him as.\n\nAs I said, most of the characters are just exaggerated versions of what you\u2019d find in a pretty standard history of this period, but Balian and Sibylla deviate so significantly from their historical versions as to effectively just be fictional characters who happen to have the same name as historical figures.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBalian of Ibelin, our protagonist, represents the greatest deviation from his historical counterpart in the film. We don\u2019t have a ton of personal information on Balian of Ibellin, he\u2019s a figure who exists as an important player in the events of this period but he\u2019s never the star, so we tend to only come across him when he\u2019s having a direct impact (e.g. in his defence of Jerusalem against Saladin). This (relative) lack of information \u2013 particularly with regard to his personality, hobbies, etc. \u2013 means that the film has a lot of freedom in how it could portray him. That said, somehow Kingdom of Heaven manages to get just about everything about him completely wrong.\n\nIf you haven\u2019t seen the movie, the short version is that Balian is a village blacksmith in France who is secretly the bastard son of the local noble\u2019s younger brother, but he has no knowledge of his noble heritage up until his biological father \u2013 Liam Neeson \u2013 comes to collect him and bring him back to the Holy Land where he has made himself an important noble in his own right but has no heir. Stuff happens, Balian murders his jerk of a half-brother (a priest) over the brother\u2019s treatment of Balian\u2019s dead wife (a weird sub-plot about suicide and infant mortality\u2026) and flees to join Neeson who is then murdered by the local Duke\u2019s men, leaving Balian as the inheritor of the lands in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. None of this is true of historical Balian \u2013 he was a legitimate child born in the Holy Land and raised in that environment. He was a member of the very influential if not hugely powerful Ibelin family, and he was actually the youngest son (he had two older brothers).\n\nThe film is absolutely obsessed with the idea that Balian is a blacksmith. Film Balian is a master of literally every aspect of medieval smithing: he makes fine decorative silver, weapons, siege engines, works on the cathedral, and also does standard village blacksmithing stuff. No historical smith was a master of this vast a range of specialities, it makes no sense. This carries on into the rest of the movie, though, as we see Balian using his knowledge of engineering and science to improve his lands near Jerusalem (which is distinctly lacking the impressive Ibelin Castle, where the \u201cof Ibelin\u201d in his name comes from) and just generally being a really wise guy who\u2019s ahead of his era (sometimes too far ahead, like when we see him discussing building what sounds a lot like a star fort, a type of fortification that only really becomes optimal after the adoption of gunpowder weaponry). As an aside, the bit where Balian improves his lands with his magical engineering skills is a bit white saviour-y\u2026\n\nIn general, Balian is portrayed as the Wokest Crusader That Ever Lived, an arguably perfect hero with no existing allegiances or obligations because he\u2019s not from the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and therefor able to offer a Fresh Perspective on the whole issue. This allows the film to do whatever it wants with him, but to some extent I think undercuts the movie as a whole. Balian\u2019s breaks with the King Guy and other decisions feel a lot easier because he\u2019s only just become invested in this conflict, it would be a lot more impressive for someone raised in this system who we know has a clear dog in this fight to make the decisions he does. It also goes against the actual historical tendencies, the Western Europeans who lived in the Crusader States were by and large more tolerant of other groups than the Crusaders who arrived from Europe looking for infidels to kill. This was a consistent conflict between the participants in the major Crusades and the \u2018natives\u2019 they were supposed to help. A tolerant native Balian pushing back against a newly arrived Guy would be a much better approximation of these relationships \u2013 and be closer to the actual true relationship Balian and Guy had. The movie sort of adopts this perspective (excluding Balian) without seemingly intending to. The main villains Guy and Reynald were both born in Europe (albeit for Reynald that was a good few years before, he\u2019d been in the Holy Land a while at this stage) while Raymond (called Tiberias) and Baldwin IV represent the tolerant \u2018native\u2019 crusaders.\n\nI know I said that Guy is probably the most mistreated character in Kingdom of Heaven, but it may actually be Sibylla. Sibylla was a highly motivated and competent woman living in a period of time that didn\u2019t give women a lot of access to power. The ways in which she exercised political control \u2013 especially after her brother Baldwin\u2019s leprosy diagnosis meant that the future line of the kingdom would pass through her \u2013 is fascinating, but also effectively obscures her true opinions from ones she expressed to achieve a goal (or, as is the case for all women in power, from those opinion assigned to her by historians who didn\u2019t approve). The Sibylla shown in Kingdom of Heaven deviates sharply from what we understand of her historical counterpart in a way that makes one of the Kingdom of Jerusalem\u2019s most interesting queens a lot more boring and problematic.\n\nOne thing that I think is interesting in Kingdom of Heaven is that to some extent I think they do get Sibylla right: at points throughout the film (especially near her introduction) she seems to show significant political savvy and a desire to be her own woman not controlled by all the men around her. What the film does from there, though, is honestly pretty terrible. Her motivation degrades to just wanting to be on the throne, nothing more than a desire for power, and this reaches its weirdest moment when she poisons her son Baldwin in the wake of discovering he has leprosy like her brother (in real life, Baldwin V was crowned king but just died of natural causes while still a child). To some extent the film frames this as her not wanting him to suffer, but even more it gives the impression that this is done to secure her own power or something? I don\u2019t know what they were going for here, it\u2019s a terrible plot decision that makes her a way less empathetic and likeable character \u2013 nobody is pro-infanticide.\n\nThe real problem with Sibylla is her romance with Balian. This is the only part of the movie I genuinely loathe. For one, we lose the interesting historical plot around historical Balian\u2019s actual wife^(1) but even worse it undermines Sibylla as a historical figure and a character.\n\nSee, here\u2019s the thing, while historical Sibylla may have had an affair (with Balian\u2019s brother actually), she was also pretty much the only person in the Kingdom of Jerusalem who consistently had Guy\u2019s back! The movie is reasonably accurate in it\u2019s portrayal of Baldwin IV periodically trying to end Sibylla\u2019s marriage to Guy, even though Baldwin had actually arranged it, but it was Sibylla who consistently stuck by Guy even when the nobility was opposed to him acting as regent \u2013 first for the sick Baldwin IV, and then later for the infant King Baldwin V. In the wake of Baldwin V\u2019s death, whoever was married to Sibylla was in line to be the next King of Jerusalem and the nobility wasn\u2019t in love with the idea of that being Guy. It was agreed that Sibylla could take the throne on the condition that her marriage with Guy be annulled (something similar had happened to her father Amalric). Sibylla agreed on the condition that she could pick her new husband with no room for objection from the nobility. They agreed, she and Guy had their marriage annulled, and Sibylla picked Guy to be her \u2018new\u2019 husband, a move that the nobility had no power to stop but was not particularly warmly received. Now, whether Sibylla genuinely loved Guy or just saw him as the best political tool for her purpose is kind of irrelevant, she showed a consistent loyalty to him that is the exact opposite of what Kingdom of Heaven portrays.\n\nI can appreciate a desire to strip down the extreme complexity of medieval politics \u2013 as well as the erasure of all the other children these people had, seriously Sibylla had a bunch of daughters we never see \u2013 but having Sibylla be the exact opposite of her historical personality in service to a kinda crappy romantic sub-plot is an awful decision and one that I think hurts the movie as a whole in addition to being bad history.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy final thoughts on Kingdom of Heaven going to push us a little past the 20 year rule, but I think it\u2019s an important point so I\u2019m going to stick my neck out a bit. Kingdom of Heaven is a film that has to be seen as a product of its time. It was conceived and produced in a post 9/11 world where America was waging two wars in the Middle East and a nebulous War on Terror. The main themes of the film are very much a reaction to this backdrop, and to the cultural debate of whether Islam and Christianity could coexist peacefully. The film\u2019s core thesis is essentially that the core religions are compatible, and there are good people on both sides, but there are also fanatics who desire nothing more than discord and destruction. This idea helps to make sense of the ways in which several characters are exaggerated \u2013 i.e. Saladin and Baldwin IV\u2019s almost saintliness and tolerance versus the violent madness of Reynald and Guy \u2013 and also creates one of the weirder thematic issues with the film.\n\nKingdom of Heaven can\u2019t decide whether the Crusaders (or at least some of them) were religious fanatics unable to see past their own narrow interpretation of their religion, or greedy secularists who would ignore many of the tenants of their own religion in the search for wealth. This can create some really disjointed themes, where the Templars and their associated villains are simultaneously violently religious and utterly greedy, but without any meaningful exploration of why they would be like that. Their motivation is a hot mess, basically, and I think that\u2019s the result of the film trying to have its cake and eat it with regards to making a commentary on religious fanaticism while also trying to portray Crusading as an act of greed that doesn\u2019t represent an immutable eternal war between Islam and Christianity. They\u2019re trying to thread a difficult needle and they don\u2019t fully succeed.\n\nFurther Reading:\n\nThomas Asbridge *The Crusades*\n\nChris Tyerman *God's War*\n\nJonathan Riley-Smith *The Crusades: A Short History* and *The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading*\n\nAnne Marie Edde *Saladin*\n\nPaul Cobb *The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades*\n\n^(1) Short version, Saladin gave Balian safe passage to take his wife from Jerusalem, but when Balian reached Jerusalem the populace begged him to stay and defend the city, so he requested permission from Saladin to stay and Saladin granted it, the Sultan even had Balian\u2019s wife escorted to safety in a different Crusader city. It\u2019s a great little anecdote! Also, Balian\u2019s wife was Sibylla\u2019s step-mother - Balian was her second husband \u2013 which makes the romantic sub plot kind of creepier if you know that\n\nEdit: Made some minor corrections because crusader lineages are complicated and I got some wives confused.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d1s65e/media_mondays_kingdom_of_heaven/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ezpu821", "ezpvx95", "ezpx84t", "ezpz9qy", "ezq9q4o", "ezqp39u", "ezqz4c0", "ezr8rs4", "ezrsotq", "ezryt2o", "ezslvrb", "ezu6en7", "f12nys7"], "score": [16, 9, 17, 9, 8, 44, 11, 6, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Does Balian-as-blacksmith have any historical foundation, or is it more just shoehorning the protagonist into an Everyman-But-Not-Really box?", "Just as a movie discussion. I completely disagree with you that Sibylla was portrayed as power hungry or that she killed her son to secure her power. I don\u2019t see that at all and I\u2019ve watched this movie dozens of times.", "Very nice write-up, Valkine.\n\n >  It also goes against the actual historical tendencies, the Western Europeans who lived in the Crusader States were by and large more tolerant of other groups than the Crusaders who arrived from Europe looking for infidels to kill. This was a consistent conflict between the participants in the major Crusades and the \u2018natives\u2019 they were supposed to help. A tolerant native Balian pushing back against a newly arrived Guy would be a much better approximation of these relationships \u2013 and be closer to the actual true relationship Balian and Guy had.\n\nGiven the post-9/11 backdrop/themes of the film, one has to wonder if the above reversal of context was made on purpose in order to align Balian more closely with the role (or perceived role) of the U.S. in the events of the time - ie both Balian and American forces traveling from the west to the Middle-East.\n\nAny thoughts on the clothing, armaments, and sets used in the film? I've heard anecdotally that the set design and costuming departments on this film made a lot of effort to be historically accurate, but no idea how true that really is.", "What kinds of historical errors actually ruin a film for you, as opposed to simply viewing it as some \"unrealistic\" details?  Personally, I am a nurse, so I am used to seeing ridiculous medical scenarios and incorrect devices and treatments in film and TV. But it happens so often that it rarely bothers me.", "I love this film. I never saw it as attempting to be a completely historically accurate film. But at least it's not as offensively inaccurate as Brave heart.\n\nThe original cut (Ridley's director's cut) before fox butchered it is a great film. Absolutely beautiful, Scott really paints beautiful pictures.", "While a lot of Ridley Scott's directorial choices are made in a post-9/11 context, I always feel like the writer, William Monahan, gets overlooked as an influence on the overall style of the film. In the commentary track, he says his main source was Steven Runciman, who was a very famous and important historian of the crusades. His 3-volume \"History of the Crusades\" is incredibly influential, and a great read, but it was written in the 1950s and it's now very, very out of date. The movie ignores 50 years of scholarship, which seems like it probably wouldn't be a big deal, right? History doesn't change, so what does it matter? But it does! Our understanding of what happened in Jerusalem in the 1170s and 1180s has changed a lot, thanks to the aforementioned Riley-Smith, Joshua Prawer, Peter Edbury, etc. \n\nRunciman was famous for thinking the crusaders were the absolute worst bunch of bastards who destroyed his beloved Byzantium, and he concluded that the crusades were \"a sin against the Holy Ghost\", so he clearly had a bit of an idiosyncratic approach. You can see that influence, I think, in the way certain crusaders are depicted, as Valkine noted (the incompetent Guy, the noble Saladin, Reynald the total psychopath). But actually, if Monahan had followed Runciman more closely, it might have been a more interesting movie. The parts that follow Runciman's history almost word-for-word are the best, I thought - specifically, the scene with Reynald's execution, and most of the siege of Jerusalem, including the meeting between Balian and Saladin. (Actually those follow the original medieval sources very closely, but here they are filtered through the way Runciman wrote about them.)", "Thank you so much for this post! I\u2019ve had a question on my mind about this movie for years: \n\nIn the opening scenes, Liam Neeson\u2019s band of crusaders consists of fighting men from many different regions (the Lombard, the Berber/Moor character, and the Hospitaller, etc.) Is there any historical evidence that small bands of knights such as this were so ethnically or culturally diverse or is this another example of our modern \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d seeping into the script?", "I actually did two conferences to show how *Kingdom of Heaven* displays a westernian aesthetic (I mean a cinematographic aesthetic borrowed from classical Western movies) \\^\\^ I'll answer questions upon that perspective to any interested person ;-)", "This movie will always have a place in my heart - I had the score on repeat while writing a senior thesis on medieval English literature. I did my best writing to the Battle of Kerak!\n\nGreat write-up - thank you!", "I watched it recently, and had a few questions, if you'll indulge me:\n\n\\- is the film's treatment of suicides truthful?\n\n\\- would a Hospitaller knight have medical skills, or is this a stretch? I'd assumed the knights were weapons experts and other people of the order were the medical practitioners.\n\n\\- a bloke brushes his teeth with a twig and some soap(?). would this be common?\n\n\\- Godfrey's German is very 'Germanic', in the sense that he fits Roman-era or Viking-era stereotypes - a big blond long-haired beserker with axes. Did Germans of the First Crusade Period still retain noticeably old Germanic cultural traits, or were they largely identical to other West European cultures like the English and French?\n\n\\- Godfrey's party seem to carry portable shelters - would this be the case, or would they more likely sleep on the ground, or at an inn?\n\n\\- is Godfrey's knighthood ritual shown in the film based on reality?\n\n\\- everyone seems to be armed and armoured 90% of the time, even at court (where two factions draw weapons on one another). Surely they put on armour and weapons when they needed them? Seems a hassle to walk around dressed like that.\n\n\\- is Baldwin's mask based on any reality?\n\n\\- Salahdin's execution of prisoners at Hattin seems odd. He does a little ritual with a cup of ice, he plays a little ruse with a sword and a knife, he personally executes people, and his men construct large piles of heads. Surely this all too theatrical, and he'd simply get an executioner to kill them and be done with it?\n\n\\- half the soldiers wear a blue surcoat that seems to be representative of Jerusalem - is this a knightly order, heraldry, or just the film showing who the good guys are?\n\n\\- were the Knightly Orders as involved in politics, or as fanatical, as shown? It seems as if everyone is in an Order besides Balian and the King.\n\nAnything you're comfortable in answering is appreciated.", "I like the movie. But I've always wondered: If the real Balin of Ibelin made the speech to the people of Jerusalem about how they should not hang on to the sins of their forefathers and the hatred that resulted, and that neither and both Christians and Muslims had claims to Jerusalem, how would the speech likely have been received?", "I really like this new format. Are you still planning to do the AMA's, roll it up into one, or just stick with a more expert analysis?", "I'm pretty late to the party here,  and I might be highly biased, as Scott is a favorite of mine, and the movie has a special place on my shelf. I tend to be picky when I catch inaccutacies that my limited research finds, but aside from the lazy inaccuracies you mention, I don't have much of a problem with the film for a simple reason: It's portraying fiction in a real life setting/or based on real events. It alters characters for story and thematic purposes, but tries to stay truthful to the setting. At least that's my take.\n\nIn my mind, the characters are mostly fictious, especially Balian, who is essentially an invented 'new' character that's given the name of his real life counterpart present at these events. He isn't in his 40's or from a peasanr background, and his lands in the levant seem minor. I think that Balian is a good story tool to present thr epic to us in a more journey form. You get a character that is forced to adapt and be involved in conflict hr'd rather stay away from, rather than being an acclimatized crusader who has clear motives in the conflict. This constructed character is what allowes the themes to play out.\n\nDespite characters being exaggirated, and certain things simplified or crossed over, the mood and the atmosphere is what makes it amazing in my opinion. To my perhaps naive eyes, it captures the honor bound system of truces and agreements from one hostile lord to another, and hints that the 'Holy Land' wasn't quite a black and white conflict between two religions (post 9/11 themes and modern viewpoints aside still hold some value). It may also be inspired by the later 3rd crusade and the dealings between Richard I and Saladin. I guess what I'm trying to say is it captured the essence of the setting, despite exaggirations and outdated views, and then spun a nice fiction around it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1shhoq", "title": "Why was Alcatraz closed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1shhoq/why_was_alcatraz_closed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdxn8uj", "cdxrkpn"], "score": [12, 68], "text": ["Okay, why does this say I have two comments but I don't see any?", "A prison facility built on an island in the middle of a salt water bay is neither logistically easy to keep supplied (especially given that this is a busy port), nor economically frugal to keep maintained, and operational. \n\n\n\nSomeone, or a lot of someones, figured it'd be cheaper to build a facility that was accessibly by land / road, while not necessarily being much less safe for Joe Public. \n\n\n\nAnd a lot of someones in the Joe Public sector probably were less than excited about looking out across the majestic San Francisco bay to see Angel Island, the Golden Gate Bridge and then....see a prison. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8rym1d", "title": "I'm an American-born defector to the Soviet Union living in Moscow in December 1991. What happens to me once the Soviet Union dissolves? Do I go home to America?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8rym1d/im_an_americanborn_defector_to_the_soviet_union/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0vk25n"], "score": [14], "text": ["Are there any legal obstacles to returning? Absent a formal renunciation of citizenship, does such a person retain it?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4z1rt0", "title": "Is the mayan godess of suicide Ixtab legit ?", "selftext": "I've been interested lately in the pre-columbian history of Latin America, especially about the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayas and Aztecs. I've bumped randomly while reading a webcomic on a mention of a Mayan godess of suicide. So I've searched and found the wikipedia page. Ok. Then, I've started reading a book about the Maya writing system, where the gods where mentioned. And she wasn't. When I've typed \"Ixtab\" into Google Images, most images that popped up where... Modern. Whereas when you type \"Ach Puch\" (Or God A) or I dont know, Kukulkan, you have a shitload of various representations.\n\nSo, this is my question: Is this godess legit, or is this some kind of misenterpretation gone mainstream ?\n\nThanks for any answers !", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4z1rt0/is_the_mayan_godess_of_suicide_ixtab_legit/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6sg3ro"], "score": [85], "text": ["Ix Tab is probably not a real goddess. [Here's a good little abstract specifically addressing the question.](_URL_3_) For those unwilling to click, I will summarize: there is no Maya goddess of suicide, and reference to her can be traced to the writings of Spanish bishop Diego de Landa immediately post-contact. \n\nLanda was a resident of Yucatan 1549-1579 and in his latter days the Bishop of Merida. He was a primary chronicler of Maya civilization directly post-contact. He is also a controversial and (to me, at least) repulsive figure, as in 1562 he burned every piece of Maya paper writing he could get his hands on -- and this was just about every codex still in existence. Everything Landa has done for our understanding of Maya writing, he undid a thousand times when he burned the original codices.\n\nAs for the iconography associated with the modern-day legend of the \"suicide goddess,\" let's take a look!\n\n[This is the panel](_URL_1_) of the Dresden Codex which features the image commonly credited online as \"Ixtab.\" \n\nThe image appears in the Dresden Codex on page 53b. [Here is a link to the full online version of the codex.](_URL_4_) More to the point, here is a link to [the section of interest.](_URL_2_) This part of the codex is sometimes called the Eclipse Table, as it has long been thought to contain astronomical data. It seems to span a recorded or projected 33-year period, including the dates of multiple putative astronomical events. [(Source.)](_URL_0_)\n\nThe picture on 53b shows a Moon Goddess hanging by her neck from a sky band, the Maya visual convention for the sky. The Moon Goddess does appear to be dead; her eyes are closed, and her body is spotted in a way similar to the body of the Death God seen above her in 53a. Alternatively, she may be an unconscious captive. Given the placement of this Moon Goddess within the Eclipse Table, it seems reasonable to say the \"dead moon hanging in the sky\" is a reference to lunar eclipse. The \"hanging\" element is not so much about the method of death as it is about connecting the dead moon to the sky bar above. Accordingly, while images of graphic demise are common in Maya art, death by hanging is iconographically all but absent (see first reference). \n\nSo from where did we get this association of the hanging Moon Goddess with suicide? Probably from the depths of Diego de Landa's brain. Suicide by hanging is a much more common image in the Spanish culture Landa hailed from than it is in the Maya culture he was chronicling. I think the perception that this goddess has hanged herself is most likely just a Spanish misreading of Maya iconography. \n\nI am not at all an expert, just a hobbyist, so I will gratefully accept any corrections to my rambling if an expert sees fit to stop by."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0001910/Beck_William_E_200712_Mast.pdf.pdf", "http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--HaQagvHPkA/UNN5G11HIvI/AAAAAAAANY0/RBZWahFtg1Y/s640/dresden-codex-maya-goddess-ixtab.jpg", "http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/pdf/5_dresden_fors_schele_pp46-59.pdf", "http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/content/63/1/1.abstract", "http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/dresden.html"]]}
{"q_id": "761bto", "title": "I've heard that Che Guevara took pleasure in personally executing prisoners with a pistol. Is this true?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/761bto/ive_heard_that_che_guevara_took_pleasure_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dobmhni"], "score": [7], "text": ["I'd be interested in seeing where you heard this. As far as I understand, Che had indeed executed a lot of people, but that he took pleasure from it is propaganda stemming from the very vocal Cuban ex-pat community in the US. This claim seems to go against his character as evidenced by his own writings and from the testimonies from people who knew him or met him. Nelson Mandela famously said that he should be an example to every freedom-loving human.\n\n/u/ainrialai gave a very thorough response to a similar question some years ago:\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lt4rb/was_it_the_truth_behind_the_critical_controversy/cc2l75x/?context=10000"]]}
{"q_id": "4kticm", "title": "When/why did Protestants abandon the term Mass for the Eucharist?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kticm/whenwhy_did_protestants_abandon_the_term_mass_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3hws9t"], "score": [31], "text": ["This question doesn't really have an answer, or at least, not *one*. Luther is quite content to maintain the term Mass for his vision of the evangelical Eucharist/communion-containing ceremony (see *Deutsche Messe*, 1526), within his/what will become the Lutheran understanding of the sacrament and, of course, in German. The Reformed protestants (Calvinists et al) and early Anabaptists use Lord's Supper or Christ's Supper from an early date, in concordance with those two (very different!) general understandings of what a religious service should look like and the theology of communion. \n\nA good illustration of rhetorical divergence can be seen in how Luther and Calvin consider the traditional/Catholic Mass. Luther describe it as \"the abuse of the Mass,\" suggesting an institution that has been corrupted and needs fixing. On the other hand, Calvin in his *Institutes* writes of \"the abomination of the Mass.\" He directly addresses the labeling, explaining that the term Mass probably denotes specifically the idea of pagan sacrifice and can only refer to the Catholic belief that it is the actual body and blood of Christ. *Supper* on the other hand is biblical."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "f4um8n", "title": "Why do Tamil and Korean share so many cognates and other shared words", "selftext": "I find this interesting and I was discussing it on a language learning subreddit because we were discussing language origins and how they evolved. I speak tamil and was once speaking to my grandfather in it at the Seoul Airport when once of the security guards said that I speak very good Korean. Initially I thought this was just funny and a coincidence, but I was surprised to see that there are numerous words which are similar or identical between the two languages, including the words for I, Mom, Dad, Grass, Fight, etc. \n\nI can\u2019t rule out that this is coincidence, and upon some reading (the wikipedia article for the Dravidian-Korean language theory, lol), it seems like people have noted and proposed similarities but no historical link exists to justify the theory\u2019s accuracy. \n\nSo are these similarities simply coincidental, or is there some historical link between Dravidian India and Korea that exists? Moreover, if the link does exist, why and how did these languages develop similarly? If it doesn\u2019t, why do they have this much coincidence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f4um8n/why_do_tamil_and_korean_share_so_many_cognates/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fhw4zwp"], "score": [48], "text": ["The similarities are coincidental. It is not unusual to see chance similarity between unrelated languages, especially in shorter words.\n\nThe way we compare languages in historical linguistics is by using the **comparative method**. The comparative method is quite simple to explain, but it takes a lot of time and training to learn to use it properly, because it's very easy to abuse its power and get weird results, like a link between Korean and Tamil. The method itself works by looking at **regular** and **recurrent** sound correspondences. Let's break that down.\n\nRegular means that in two or more languages, the correspondence is always the same. So for example, English /\u03b8/ corresponds to German /d/ in word-initial position:\n\n|English|German|\n|---|---|\n|three|drei|\n|thunder|Donner|\n|thistle|Distel|\n\nThis is regular, and we would expect this correspondence to hold for all cognates between the two languages. You can't have /\u03b8/ corresponding to /d/ in one word, but then /f/ in another without an adequate explanation.^1\n\nRecurrent means that the correspondence should occur multiple times within the dataset. This is usually the biggest problem with long-range comparisons like the one you mentioned. All too often, many \"correspondences\" appear only once, in which case they might as well be completely random.\n\nAnother very important detail is that **all sounds have to be accounted for**. Quite commonly in these fringe theories, they only compare a part of a word and just disregard the rest. That is a huge methodological flaw, and greatly increases your chances of finding a connection where there isn't one (which I guess is the point for people who abuse the comparative method like that). If you say there is a fused affix in the root, you must prove that the affix indeed existed and was productive. You cannot just lop off half a word (or even a single sound) willy-nilly, that is not how the comparative method is used.\n\nAnother thing pertaining to the Korean-Tamil hypothesis but also quite common in other such comparisons. Tamil is uncontroversially part of the Dravidian language family. When comparing language families at a higher level, we only compare data from reconstructed proto-languages, and not from daughter languages. Why? Because there are 80 languages in the Dravidian family (according to Glottolog), and that hugely increases the probability of seeing a chance resemblance if you can just cherrypick words from any language in the family. Imagine if you're comparing two families with over 1000 languages each, you'll have chance resemblances left and right. So if a language is demonstrably and incontrovertibly part of a larger linguistic family, you compare your data to the proto-language, not the daughter languages.\n\nLastly, semantics. You have to be *really* careful where word meanings are concerned, because that's another way to hugely increase your chances of finding random noise and attributing meaning to it. When you're first comparing two languages (or language families), you look for words with **identical** meanings, which also have regular and recurrent correspondences in all of their sounds. Only after a plausible connection is established and the sound correspondences worked out, you can allow for a limited amount of semantic shift, assuming that all sounds correspondences are regular. If you skip this step, you're allowing almost anything to be compared. You should see some of the mental hoops people jump through to justify a connection. Not too long ago when answering a similar question on r/linguistics, I went through a linked article where the author was comparing the words \"salmon\" and \"to fly\". Their explanation? Well see, when salmon spawn, they travel upriver, and sometimes jump through shallows, and this jumping gives the appearance of flying. So basically, if you do not control for semantics, it's a free-for-all where anything goes.\n\nReal historical linguistics is boring. It relies on meticulous analysis and most new discoveries are pretty \"duh!\". There are people who cannot resist the temptation of being the first to make a great discovery, and do not mind abusing the comparative method to do it, which of course invalidates all their efforts.\n\n_______\n\n1. You can have different correspondences in different environments (e.g. word-initial, between vowels, after a stressed vowel, etc). Sometimes you come across seeming exceptions, which may be explained through lexical borrowing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "264j36", "title": "Why are skulls so popular in Mesoamerican art?", "selftext": "I read that early Mesoamerican societies viewed the skull as representing life as well as death. Perhaps it's just difficult for me to wrap my head around, but celebrating skulls as a symbol of life seems like a difficult leap to make. Is there any more to it than that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/264j36/why_are_skulls_so_popular_in_mesoamerican_art/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chnpcjc", "cho9vjn"], "score": [20, 2], "text": ["We see the skull in a variety of contexts across cultures and periods of Mesoamerica. As such, it has a variety of meanings.  I did just read a great chapter (1) about the [*tzompantli*](_URL_1_) \"skull racks\" often seen on Mesoamerican ball courts: it talks about their symbolic role in the cycle of resurrection, which involves, as you said, both life and death.\n\nOur best version of this resurrection cycle comes from the Popol Vuh. In it, Hun Hunaphu and his twin challenge the lords of the underworld to   a ballgame. They lose, and are decapitated and dismembered. Hun Hunaphu's head is placed in a dead calabash tree, which then grows the first fruit. He later spits into the hand of the young moon goddess, impregnating her. She gives birth to the more famous, second set of Hero Twins: Hunaphu and Xblanque. They again challenge the lords, first losing and facing decapitation, but their heads are replaced with gourds from the same calabash tree. Through trickery they defeat the lords of the underworld. In earlier versions of the myth, they then restore Hun Hunaphu, as the Maize God, to life. \n\nHow is this represented in the archaeological record? The Maize God's ressurection is often seen in [Maya art](_URL_3_). (Note the central skull.) Disjointed human bones can be found buried beneath ball courts. Ballcourt markers also often feature a quatrefoil pattern [(see here, pg. 28)](_URL_2_) that represent a portal between worlds. In creating the tzompantli, what one may call skull *trees*, the Mesoamericans were representing this myth of resurrection.\n\nAnother perspective (2) on *tzompantli* is that they were simple expressions of power, at least for the post-Classic Maya. Classic Maya [monuments](_URL_0_) showed a city's ruler capturing an elite from another city. Both captive and captor have an array of names and titles. If they defeated someone important, they wanted to show just how important they were, since that makes them look all the better. In later times, this form of propaganda became less personalized- hence the *tzompantli*.\n\nIf you've got any specific examples of art you were interested in, I'm sure I or someone else could help you.\n\n* 1: Ruben Mendoza, \"The Divine Gourd Tree: Tzompantli Skull Racks, Decapitation Rituals, and Human Trophies in Ancient Mesoamerica\" in *Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians*\n\n* 2: Virginia Miller,  \"Skeletons, Skulls, and Bones in the Art of Chichen Itza\" in *New perspectives on human sacrifice and ritual body treatment in ancient Maya society*", "Your question focuses on early Mesoamerican art, but when you look towards more modern Mesoamerican expressions of skulls, it ties into religious beliefs and particularly folk religious beliefs quite a bitt. The skull carries death with it, and death is a powerful force in life. It provides protection in all forms, grants favors, and is petitioned for blessings or even revenge. A perfect example is the representations of Santisima Muerte/Holy Death in Mexico, which is a folk saint represented by a human skull or full skeleton dressed in robes or often a wedding dress. The lore around her says she's a Mesoamerican death deity basically in disguise (Mayan, I think). Her presence isn't feared, though she is appointed considerable power.\n\nI hope this isn't too far afield for your question!\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/CMHI/detail.php?num=8&amp;site=Yaxchilan&amp;type=Lintel", "http://www.americanegypt.com/feature/cities/img/chichenimages/tzomp.jpg", "http://www.caracol.org/include/files/chase/Holden09.pdf", "http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya_hires.php?vase=1892"], []]}
{"q_id": "1krr73", "title": "Why didn't Middle Francia (Lotharingia) evolve a distinct cultural identity and language like West Francia (French) and East Francia (German) did?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1krr73/why_didnt_middle_francia_lotharingia_evolve_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbrzr25", "cbs1v4d", "cbs427j"], "score": [22, 3, 16], "text": ["Northern Lotharingia was divided between East and West Francia very shortly after becoming independent, as it was almost completely indefensible, the northern part of which eventually evolving into what is now the Netherlands. The level of distinction between modern Dutch and German culture is largely a matter of perspective.\n\nSouthern Lotharingia, which was not immediately conquered by either Francia, became the medieval Kingdom of Italy, before eventually being conquered and divided by the Holy Roman Empire, consisting primarily of the East Francian powerbase.", "Middle Francia suffered from difficult and non defensible boundaries, difficult and fragmented communications routes, and different cultures.  It is quite remarkable that so much of it remained for so long, and so much remains today.  Still existing remnants are Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Monaco and  San Marino.  A powerful remnant in the Middle Ages, ( now vanished) was Burgundy.\n\nI think you could say that distinct cultural elements and languages still remain after all these centuries, though those cultures are not as uniform or strong as French or German.", "If we discount Italy, which we all acknowledge as having a distinct cultural identity and language(s) separate from the rest of Middle Francia, you'll [see from the map](_URL_1_) that both West Francia and Middle Francia overlap former Roman areas, whereas East Francia does not.  \n\nCombined with the written vernacular evidence from the [Oaths of Strasbourg](_URL_0_), this explains why the regions of west of the Rhine developed a Romance language whereas East Francia developed along a Germanic one: they evolved from the existing languages of their respective region.\n\nAs for Lotharingia, something you have to keep in mind is that the reason for the unusual division of the three Francias is because Charles, Lothair, and Louis were each given a piece of the central Frankish heartlands along the Paris - Rhineland axis (in order for each to continue being a political player in that central region), as well as the outlying regions where they had the strongest base of support.  \n\nBecause of this, the unusual division along that Paris-Rhine corridor was particularly artificial for Middle Francia.  Combined with its short life span (approximately 30 years), it's pretty easy to see why it didn't develop a distinct identity, whereas the West Francia / East Francia division became permanent into the modern day after the death of Charles the Fat.\n\nFor those who would argue that Dutch and Belgium are distinct identities, I would say they did not coalesce as identities explicitly because of the short existence of Lotharingia.  They either existed before Carolingian conquest, or developed afterward.\n\ntl;dr - Frankish Lotharingia (non-Italian) was artificially demarcated, and too short lived to form a distinct identity like West Francia and East Francia later did.  \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_strasbourg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Partage_de_l%27Empire_carolingien_au_Trait%C3%A9_de_Verdun_en_843.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "xvpuf", "title": "Wed. AMA on the Middle Ages: Carolingians to Crusades ( &  Apocalypse in between)", "selftext": "Hi everyone! My pleasure to do the 2nd AMA here. \n\nI'll keep this brief but my particular research areas are the early and high European Middle Ages (roughly 750-1250 CE), though I teach anything related to the Mediterranean World between 300-1600. I'm particulary interested in religious and intellectual history, how memory relates to history, how legend works, and justifications for sacred violence. But I'm also pursuing research on the relations between Jews and Christians, both in the Middle Ages and today (that weird term \"Judeo-Christianity\"), and echoes of violent medieval religious rhetoric in today's world. In a nutshell, I'm fascinated by how ideas make people do things. \n\nSo, ask me anything about the Crusades, medieval apocalypticism, kingship, medieval biblical commentary in the Middle Ages, the idea of \"Judeo-Christianity,\" why I hate the 19th century, or anything else related to the Middle Ages. \n\n**Brief note on schedule:** I'll be checking in throughout the day, but will disappear for a time in the evening (EST). I'll check back in tonight and tomorrow and try to answer everything I can!\n\n**EDIT:** Thanks for all the questions. I'll answer all I can but if I miss one, please just let me know!\n\n**EDIT (5:11pm EST):**  Off for a bit. I'll be back later to try to answer more questions. Thanks!\n\n**EDIT (9:27pm EST):** I'm back and will answer things until bedtime (but I'll check in again tomorrow)!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xvpuf/wed_ama_on_the_middle_ages_carolingians_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5pzahs", "c5pzh13", "c5pzjgl", "c5pzmlq", "c5pzoa1", "c5pzrk2", "c5pztzr", "c5pzyq1", "c5pzz4e", "c5pzzjs", "c5pzzs0", "c5q03gc", "c5q06bx", "c5q0act", "c5q0fg3", "c5q0kua", "c5q0qkh", "c5q0sl3", "c5q0tt4", "c5q0ul5", "c5q0um0", "c5q0yea", "c5q0zn0", "c5q169x", "c5q17df", "c5q1brx", "c5q1c1q", "c5q1iru", "c5q20k4", "c5q22ru", "c5q231h", "c5q2446", "c5q264s", "c5q2800", "c5q3rgb", "c5q6knr", "c5qgu1j"], "score": [45, 23, 14, 3, 13, 3, 8, 3, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 6, 3, 13, 4, 12, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 8, 6, 3, 3, 13, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2], "text": [" > why I hate the 19th century\n\nArrow to my heart\n\n\nWhy do you hate the 19th century?", "How differently were perceived/justified the crusades against the Albigeois/Cathars compared to the retaking of the Holy Land from the Muslims? Was it simply unacceptable for a territory, viewed as rightfully ~~Catholic~~ *catholic*, to be occupied by heretics?  ", "What degree of autonomy did the lords of France have in the Middle Ages? I've seen it suggested both that they were practically Kings within their realm - absolute rulers within their territory that owed little to their Kings except military service when called - and contrary opinions that this is highly exaggerated.\n\nDid this vary from vassal to vassal? The Dukes of Aquitaine held nearly half of France at one time while others would have held far less - I imagine they didn't both hold the same amount of power. How did this progress from the relatively weak monarchy of the early Capetians to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV (I'm sorry that this is out of period for you, but I'm sure that much of the consolidation of power into the monarchy happened long before him)?", "thanks very much for doing this AMA is nice to get free rein to ask a lecturer (i presume?) questions on the crusades. I have plenty, but to start with, where do you see crusade research going in the future, in regards to specific areas?\nAlso do you think there is any room left for research into the development of papal use and justification of crusade? I'm thinking particularly of ad hoc expansion of the crusading idea by Innocent III among others.\n\nedit: clarity", "I'm curious if you could comment more on:\n\n > how memory relates to history, how legend works\n\nThose sorts of things figure prominently in my own research (at least in my conception of where my research will go), and I'd love to hear more on what you work on there, who you're reading, etc.  Thanks!\n", "My knowledge of Jewish history, especially in relation to Christianity, between the Roman Empire and the high middle ages is limited. When did Jews leave Italy after being brought there by the Romans, how were they viewed by Dark Age Christians, and where did they spread to by the time Constantinople collapsed?", "What do you consider the most important event that occurred during the Middle Ages?", "At what point did the manorial system become common place in france and burgundy?  How did it differ from what came before and after it?  Was the working on the lord's demesne what differeniated a manorial system from simple sharecropping?", "What I would really like to know is whether their short span in the Levant opened Europeans up to the market for Chinese goods. I know it is a bit much to expect that merchants from across the Old World actually made the journey across the old silk roads by themselves, but if anything, I would expect at least one tortoiseshell comb or a silk gown to turn up somewhere.", "Can you explain how the relationship between Jews and Christians (in Europe and in the Levant) changed as a result of the Crusades?\n\nIf I recall correctly, there were pogroms on the way to at least one Crusade, but I also remember reading that Jews and Christians coexisted fairly well in the Holy Land.\n\nDid becoming more acquainted with a group which was much more of an \"other\" - the muslims - change European Christians' views of Jews in Europe?", "Here is a weird question for you: Do you know of any material that discusses the wine making techniques of the cistercians during the period of time that you cover?", "How did commune towns fit into the fabric of feudalism?  Were communes (such as Beaune) still the territory of some lord or were they totally independant once they got a charter?  Did the inhabitants of communes owe any feudal obligations to anyone?", "Could you tell us anything about the music during your period of study? Composers/ how it fit into society, etc?", "Just how backwards (economically, technologically, demographically and militarily) was Western/Northern Europe compared to the Near East and the Middle East at that point in time? How would Southern Europe have compared to either?", "Ohh thank you for doing this! I just have two questions :D\n\n1. How did the Carolingans enforce the sword-export ban? I'm wondering how this ever be efficient considering the rampant smuggling in our technologically advanced time.\n1. Was this ban one of the reasons of why swords became prestige symbols?\n\nThank you in advance ;)", "* 1) I did some cursory reading on the formation of the German State in the Industrial Era, and it talks a lot about pre-existing notions of \"Germanness.\"  To what extend did a German identity manifest itself throughout the period of your expertise, and what secondary effects did these constructs of identity have on the other political powers of Europe at the time?\n\n* 2) I've heard that the Crusades were actually a strong contributing factor for modern banking (what with departing crusaders leaving gold with Italian goldsmiths).  How accurate is that idea?  If inaccurate, what would you say in correction?  If accurate, how did the \"rise of the goldsmiths\" in economic prominence affect the political and social landscape?  Was there resistance to it or was it welcomed?\n\n* 3) What ideas were brought back from the Near East that had a profound impact on the societies of the crusaders?  Were they generally seen as foreign, or happily assimilated?", " > justifications for sacred violence\n\nWoot! Alright, I did a somewhat lengthy paper on Jon Hus. How do you think the Holy Roman Empire should have reacted after his death? Obviously his death was a bit of a screw-up on the Cardinals' parts, but could the whole Revolution have been avoided somehow? Was this a case of justified sacred violence?\n\nAlso, when you define something as sacred violence, do you base it on the expressed motivation of the aggressor? Or do you discount the sacred origins of a violent act when they're clearly secular motivations behind the action as well? \n\nAlso regarding heresy--how doctrinally informed would the average peasant (or whatever) have been? In other words, how susceptible would the population have been to heresy?", "When Hilaire Belloc wrote that the Middle Ages was a brave social experiment in human equality, is that totally crazy or just partially? Can there be at least some merit in this sentence?\n\nWas there a \"besieged city\" mentality around say 750, Vikings attacking from the North, Arab/Berber pirates from the South, Germans and Hungarians from the East?\n\nThe people in the above question felt \"Roman\",  did they still feel like they are defending the Empire?\n\nIsn't Judeo-Christanity just a post-WW2 term created and popularized to combat anti-semitism and elevate Jews into fully accepted members of the Western Civ? I use this term sometimes, but then I say Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman civilization... I find that a good way to say basically \"stuff that determined our culture before we invented modernity\".\n\nSacred violence: were the most well-known heretic massacres (Cathars/Albigens) not primarily because of religious reason but more like because they were also political revolutionaries who threatened the established political-social order?", "I hope this question isn't too broad, but:\n\nAfter doing some family research I found I have a heritage of english knights back in the 1200s to the 1400s. Could you describe the average day for one of these men? \n\nIf this is outside your area, or too broad, don't worry. Just something I've been curious about.", "Was it possible, for a unitary Carolingian empire to survive Charlemagne's death?  Or was it inevitable given the circumstances of that time that it would split into smaller successor kingdoms?  \n\nAlso, how complete was de-urbanization in western europe?  To establish an arbitrary date, I'm thinking 550+, compared to 450 western roman empire.\n\nI have a book from the 1980s on early medieval italy that said at the time there was intense debate as to what constituted urbanization in lombard Italy (and I wonder whether it applied to visigothic spain or frankish gaul), because though there was occupation in former roman towns/cities, there was not trade nor specialization in roles, i.e. they were little more than a cluster of houses inside former city walls.  \n\nWas wondering if that debate was still going on or was settled?", "I'm sorry if this is a broad subject or somewhat outside of your scope, but: feudalism.\n\nI had an excellent French history professor upon a time who talked at great length about French history during *all* periods, and how France affected the nations around it. As such I understand feudalism in England, the Iberian peninsula, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. I'm mainly curious as to the other nations of the world during the Middle Ages.\n\nPopular culture paints a lot of other nations during this time period as feudal. Hungary, for example, as well as Poland and Croatia are frequently portrayed as strongly feudal states, but just how feudal were they, and how did they get to be that way? France affected the nations around it with the Carolingians and their collapse, not to mention the Normans later on (etc.), but how much of an effect did they have on these other states in their development? If France or French culture didn't \"do\" it, how exactly did these states get to be feudal (note that I don't expect an essay, just a brief explanation would be great), and how similar in their feudal structure were they to our traditional Western feudal states?", "This is only slightly directed completely toward history but, if you're familiar with Anne Rice novels, how accurate is she with the time periods that she writes about that are also a part of your expertise?\n\nI've read that she researches very thoroughly as she writes and I've always been curious as to whether or not it is true. ", "How were the Crusader States able to survive as long as they did? Were they able to field an army by drawing from the local Muslim population, or were they forced to draw from European recruits? If the later is the case, how was this adequate for them, considering that the Crusader States stuck around nearly 200 years in the Middle East?", "To what extent did the Mongol invasions of the middle east contribute to the fall of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottoman empire? I always felt like there was a link. ", "As far as people believing that the end of the world would happen in 1500, what were people's reactions like? Did people regard it more as how we view the Mayan's 2012 apocalypse, or was it much more serious? How seriously was the Church involved in urging people to repent?", "Why do you think that western conquest failed during the crusades? ", "How (and if) did the Cluniac reforms effect things like the Lateran Council and views on priestly celibacy? What was the relation between ascetic monastic movements and the call for greater asceticism among diocesan priests? ", "Right, simple enough question:\n\nHow did war in the context of 'between recognisable-ish political entities' actually work? \n\nBeen playing too much CK2 lately, but also just looking at Irish history, you've got Vikings, Irish and Normans, all of whom live in the same place, adopt the same culture, etc. Why do they fight? And who fights? Is it going to be Leinster and Dublin fighting Munster, or, will it be the McMurroughs and the Ivarssons fighting the O'Briens? Is it all based on ties to individuals in authority, or to those authorities as concepts? \n\nTo put it slightly more effectively, would you be loyal to the Monarch or to the specific Queen/King/Duke/Count/Baron or what? ", "Not really a history question, but one about you:\n\nHow do you know these things? University studies, personal study, etc.? I'm not doubting you at all, but I'd just like to know how one becomes qualified in this (or similar) fields. Also, what kind of work do you do?", "Here's a less academic one, so feel free to put it on the bottom of your list:\n\nIf you ever read medieval fiction and/or fantasy (anything from Lord of the Rings to A Song of Ice and Fire), do you ever find yourself unable to get over certain impossibilities/improbabilities?  Do you ever suppose that a character with plan X could have drastically changed the storyline, by virtue of being more realistic?\n\nCounterfactually, if you could have prevented one political event (natural events like the plague being off-limits), within your field of study, keeping in mind the second-and third-order ramifications of the change you would make, what would you change?  And if your answer is the crusades, what if that were off-limits?", "I am thinking about reading \"The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England\"...  Is there a good book out there that provides an overview of the Middle Ages to the average Joe?  I am really interested in how people actually lived and what they experienced, rather than what country X did to country Y, and I have had a hard time finding books that really go through the lives of common people.\n\nI am hoping the time travellers guide will provide this (seems it will do the trick based on reviews) but I am wondering if there is anything else out there.", "Glad to have you here!\n\nI have a question that's rather trivial compared to some of the ones already asked, but it's mine and I'm sticking to it.\n\nWhat can you tell me about Abul Abaz, the elephant delivered to Charlemagne as a gift from the Caliph of Baghdad?  The Wiki article is rather brief on the matter, and Jeff Sypeck's *Becoming Charlemagne* (which is, I regret to say, the only book I've yet read on the subject) doesn't treat it at any great length.\n\nThe idea of walking an elephant from Baghdad to Aachen over the course of a couple of years is just amazing to me, and I'd love to know more about this remarkable adventure.", "1. Why did the Fatimids not attempt to strengthen their garrison in Jerusalem, even though they know the crusaders are coming?\n\n2. How accurate are the contemporary reports of the massacre in Jerusalem after it was taken by crusaders?\n\n3. How did feudalism work in the Kingdom of Jerusalem? Did the lords hold more or less power than they did in, say, France, or the Holy Roman Empire? What about the grandmasters of the various military orders, how much power did they hold, compared to the king of Jerusalem?\n\n4. It is generally believed that Jews in the middle ages were better off under Muslim rule than under Christian rule. How truthful is this view? When parts of Iberia conquered by Christians from Muslims during the reconquista,  did the Jews generally become significantly less well-off? How were Jews treated under Crusader rule?", "Hey man, so cool of you to do an AMA much appreciated.  \n\nMy question has to do with Charlemagne, specifically the tail end of his reign.  It's my understanding that for most of his life he was the archetypal Warrior-King, fueling his empire by conquest and bringing the axe down on anyone in his path.  However, I know that in the last few years of his life he spent most of his time isolated in his palace at Aachen; so much so that his commanders had begun to grumble and the economy shriveled somewhat for lack of warfare to stimulate it. \n\nSo my question is, am I reading too deeply into just a natural consequence of age when I wonder if Charlemagne was taking philosophical stock of his life and lamenting a reign punctuated by violence; a la Marcus Aurelius? I figure I'm probably just grasping at straws, and he was winding down his golden years cold chilling with some biddies in the hotspring, so I thank you in advance for taking the time to humor me. ", "Something that always confused me. The First Crusade was (at least on the surface) an attempt to retake the Holy Land from Muslims, but the Muslims had been occupying the Holy Land for centuries up to that point. Why all of a sudden did Europeans decide that the time was right for conquest, when they seemed to tolerate it for 400 years up to that point?", "Some historians think that Christianity is the worst thing that happened to the Europe in the Middle Ages because there were a lot of crusades, holy wars, church took much money from poor villagers and citizens and so on. Do you agree with them?\n\nAnd have you read Harry Harrison's Hummer and Cross books? If you did, are they historically correct?\n\n\n\nPS sorry for my English.", "I know the Islamic world (Ummayad and Abbasid caliphate; Ottoman Empire) was for many centuries much wealthier and scientifically and culturally open and advanced compared to western Europe during the middle ages. But now it's the reverse, or at least there's the perception that the Islamic world is anti-modern, religiously intolerant, xenophobic, impoverished. What the heck happened? Or, how have medieval scholars explained this?\n\nAlso, I read an article in history class that said the renaissance never really happened or that it distorts our picture of the \"middle ages?\" this blew my mind. What is it talking about?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5ajdfy", "title": "Why did the sons of liberty decide to dress up as Indians during the Boston tea party? Did they actually think no one would see through their disguise or was it intended to be a political statement?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ajdfy/why_did_the_sons_of_liberty_decide_to_dress_up_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9i3g28"], "score": [17], "text": ["I read a great analysis of this recently in the book \"Playing Indian\" by the historian Phil Deloria. I can't find the chapter online but I have a pdf copy if anyone wants to read it - I highly recommend it. This is my understanding of the argument:\n\nThe use of native-looking costumes by the colonists is drawing on long-standing traditions of both celebration and political dissent throughout European history. Going all the way back to ancient Rome and through the medieval era (probably starting way earlier, I would guess) the practice of inversion was common. So for example, during Saturnalia celebrations, medieval feast days, carnival/mardi gras and such, the servants would dress up as lords and the lords would wait on them. Or the kids of the household would tell the adults what to do, people would cross-dress, some random person dressed as a priest, etc. In some way a social norm or role was being reversed. Think of this happening while there are huge parties in the streets. \n\nSo on one hand, this practice of inversion - which you could find in one form or another in every culture\u2019s celebrations (Halloween comes to mind) - fucks with the social order of the society, because you are switching roles of class/gender/religious role/etc which are usually very strictly enforced. At the same time you're also *reinforcing* the social order just by the fact that the inversion only happens at a very specific time for a very specific reason. Like \"haha, isn't this ridiculous! it's totally backwards and strange and weird and would never normally happen without consequences!\"\n\nOkay so then the political dissent part. I\u2019m not too familiar with this part of history but if anyone knows more I\u2019d be interested to know. Basically, in England access to land and game was controlled by the landed nobility, and hunting by \u201ccommon\u201d folk was forbidden by the Game Laws. However, for centuries there was this kind of unofficial agreement between most nobles and the poachers, where if the latter would be discreet/reasonable in their hunting then the Game Laws wouldn\u2019t be enforced against them. A key point here is that poachers practiced \u201cblacking\u201d as part of the discreetness thing - they paint their faces black and hunt at night to avoid being identified. \n\nBut then, after the English civil war the forests were owned more by the new rich, or essentially the bourgeoisie. They have an economic interest in profiting off the land rather than just a hereditary claim like the nobles, so they come down hard on poachers of any kind to protect those resources. As a way to resist this, the poachers start organizing and \u201cblacking\u201d together as a political act of protest. If a landowner was especially cruel in their enforcement of the Game Laws, groups of poachers would all get together in disguise and go vandalize the house or humiliate the owner in some way. This form of dissent was called \u201cmisrule,\u201d btw, and it\u2019s a tradition that gets carried over to the colonies. \n\nAnyways, so basically what Deloria is getting at with this is that you have to understand both the traditions of inversion during celebrations and misrule as protest to understand the Boston Tea Party. Because the line between celebration and dissent is often blurred, and one could (and often did) switch to the other in any of these situations. You tend to think of the BTP as more strictly political, but the other commenter on this thread said they were probably drunk, so I think it fits.\n\nAlright so applying this to the colonists in particular: Deloria (who is the son of the legendary native scholar/activist Vine Deloria, which I think is relevant) is using the Boston Tea Party to make a larger argument about the relationship between the English colonists and indigenous peoples. In order to protest against the Crown, the colonists had to adopt their own distinctive American identity to separate them from their British origins. By adopting a native identity, they're reinforcing their ties to the land that they\u2019re occupying. To them being native represents freedom, seemingly endless land to explore and settle (and game, I might add), and basically everything boundless in opposition to the tight constraints of British land and society. \n\nBut there\u2019s also a colonial racist element to this as well, because again, the practice of inversion is supposed to strengthen the division just as much as it challenges it. So while these dudes might dress up as native peoples in the night to destroy property, there\u2019s an implication that they would never do something so savage and destructive in the light of day because they\u2019re good and civilized colonials. Adopting this caricature of an \u201cIndian\u201d allows them to express themselves in ways that would be unbecoming to their everyday lives. The point is, \"blacking\" was considered a significant political act in itself and there are complex reasons that these colonists chose these costumes rather than just the standard disguise. \n\nPlus, when it comes to actual encounters with native peoples, the colonists were waging a war on the frontiers and murdering/taking land, using all sorts of justifications like that they were managing the resources in a more efficient and civilized (European) way, unlike the \"savages.\" So it\u2019s this uneasy relationship where the colonists will identify with native peoples to protest the British, and then identify with the British to subjugate native peoples. And Deloria basically says that this contradiction is a key part of understanding the insecurities of the early American identity - and one that arguably is still playing out today.\n\n**TL;DR: The colonists dressed up in their interpretation of native attire to separate themselves from and oppose the British while reinforcing both their ties to the American continent and their authority over native peoples (in a more indirect way). It was both a political act and a disguise, which has precedent in English history as a political act in itself.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4aodg7", "title": "Where does the surname \"Holland\" in the USA come from? Does it imply they came from the Netherlands?", "selftext": "So I have heard the surname \"Holland\" a lot in in the USA. You would think this would mean it indicates that they are from the Netherlands. But I never hear this last name in the Netherlands. So i was wondering what this surname means in the USA and where it comes from.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4aodg7/where_does_the_surname_holland_in_the_usa_come/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d127n83"], "score": [21], "text": ["Reaney and Wilson, 3rd ed., _A Dictionary of English Surnames_,p. 235, col. 2, says\n\n >  **Holland, Hollands**: Begmundus *de Holande* c975 LibEl (Ess); William *de Holaund* 1246 AssLa.  From Holland (Essex, Lancs, Lincs).\n\nSo they derive it from any of three towns in England.  (The odd abbrevs. after the dates are the sources, indexed in the front.)\n\nOf course, that only pushes the problem back: where did the *place names* come from?  I don't have a geographical source book, but I can find out from a friend on request.\n\nI do want to warn in general that speculation about names is unreliable.  For example, I was expecting it to be a descriptive byname in origin, \"someone from the Low Countries\", but that's apparently wrong.  I might have expected the towns to have been named from the Low Countries, maybe because they had a lot of settlers?, but note that one was in Lancashire, which is almost as far from the Low Countries as you can get and still be in England.  Reaney and Wilson often note place-name derivations (\"dweller at the ford by the steep bank\", \"so-and-so's farm\"), so for all I can say now, the origin might be a case of \"don't know; it just was?\".\n\nAs for not seeing it in Holland: the purpose of surnames was to distinguish this William from that William in the same place by some distinguishing property, like father's name, place-name, occupational byname, descriptive byname, or whatever.  For a community in Holland, what would be the point of adding \"of Holland\"?  In a village in Holland, for example, almost everyone would be from Holland.  \n\nThe counter-argument to that last is that **England** is attested in England by Reaney and Wilson (p. 156, col. 1), which puzzled even them: they discard a possible derivation from *ing-lang 'meadowland'* and say \"The reference must be to the name of the country, a surname which appears curiously out-of-place in England, v. ENGLISH\".  (More sanely, English is derived just below from the tribe of Angles as opposed to Saxon, native English as opposed to French-origin, or to English in predominantly non-English areas like Wales, the Danelaw when it was Norseish, southern Scotland, ...)\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1mnj3g", "title": "What musical instruments would commoners in medieval europe have owned?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mnj3g/what_musical_instruments_would_commoners_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccb0ugr"], "score": [26], "text": ["In medieval Russia I'd vote for different kinds of flutes ([svirel](_URL_2_), [pyzhatka](_URL_0_), [overtone flutes](_URL_1_)). Maybe also [birch trumpets](_URL_6_), and related [single-reed](_URL_8_) and [double-reed](_URL_5_) instruments. Many of the flutes were made of reed or hollow tubes of rind (e.g. that of [red elderberry](_URL_9_) bushes), which rendered them very fragile, so new instruments were made every year (in the fall and spring respectively). But this same quality also made them very inexpensive.\n\nAlso obviously you'd had some percussion, such as buben (a simple tambourine), and lots of wooden percussion of all sorts.\n\nInterestingly, string instruments were apparently rather expensive. In medieval Russia you'd get a kind of a harp ([gusli](_URL_4_)), and a type of rebec/lyra bow string instrument called [gudok](_URL_7_), but both of them were used by professional musicians. Gudok is associated with more low-key music (see [Skomorokh](_URL_3_)), while Gusli (both types) were associated with high-key ballad-style incantations. I don't think they would be normally owned by commoners.\n\nInterestingly, there were no lutes in medieval Russia. All supposedly \"Russian\" lutes, such as domra and balalayka are a much later invention (17-19 c.). Edit: grammar."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyzhatka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalyuka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svirel", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skomorokh", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gusli", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szopelka", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimirskiy_rozhok", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudok", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaleika", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus_racemosa"]]}
{"q_id": "5aqhh1", "title": "How did the ballet \"The Nutcracker\" become \"for kids?\"", "selftext": "My city's leading mommy blogger just published a list of ALL the available productions of *Nutcracker* this season in the larger metro area, and it got me to thinking about how weird that is. It is unique for being one piece of art performed regularly in every major US city... that I wouldn't dream of going to myself without the requisite accessory, small antsy humans in dress-up clothes. There's no comparable opera or Broadway musical. Tchaikovsky presumably didn't compose the thing in the hopes that someday it would help sell little red velvet dresses and tiny bow ties. What happened to make it Baby's First High Art Performance? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5aqhh1/how_did_the_ballet_the_nutcracker_become_for_kids/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9iofzt"], "score": [34], "text": ["As a follow up question:\n\nMy quick google search (based on a hunch) tells me it wasn't a huge, successful piece until George Balanchine produced it in 1954. How much of its success could be attributed to Disney's Fantasia, released in 1940?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5yvzk4", "title": "Why was the US caught so unaware during the battle of the bulge if they had cracked top level German communications?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5yvzk4/why_was_the_us_caught_so_unaware_during_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["detghb0"], "score": [186], "text": ["Although the German high command still considered the Enigma cipher machine secure, they did suspect heavily that the Western Allies were using signal analysis (i.e. studying the frequency or size of intercepted signals to glean information on German intentions) and human intelligence from agents in occupied territory to aid their understanding of upcoming operations. So during the leadup to the Second Ardennes Offensive the Germans sent no signals over radio, but sent individual messengers with orders. Couple this with almost all preparations being prepared on German soil meant there would be very few leaks of human intelligence. The Germans even gave the operation a defensive sounding code name: Die wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine). \n\nSo the Germans went out of their way to mount a surprise offensive, and the Americans (and Brits for that matter) fundamentally underestimated German capabilities and intentions. The American 12th Army Group was sending officers on leave and preparing to dig in along the front for the winter after the debacle of Operation Market Garden failed to get the Western Allies into Germany. The only divisions in reserve on the whole Western Front were the Airborne Corps consisting of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The Allies had no idea the Germans had been able to assemble such a collection of armor, had the fuel reserves to mount an offensive with them, or would dare to mass their armor together in the face of total allied air superiority. \n\nThe Germans managed to gather armor and fuel by starving the Eastern and Italian fronts, stockpiling as much as possible, and running the whole operation on the barest of shoestrings with armored columns being expected to capture Allied fuel and ammo dumps for resupply. The Germans were only able to supply two day's worth of supplies for an all out offensive, and if the timetable was even slightly disrupted the chances of reaching Antwerp were virtually nil. To counter Allied air supremacy, the attack was to be mounted in fog and snow when allied fighters would be grounded. \n\nIn the event, the offensive was a shambles despite success the first day. The Germans had little trouble breaking through the weak American front across from them: the four American divisions were either green or had just come out of a nasty battle in a nearby forest that left them depleted and needing reinforcement. One - the first incidentally - of several important communications hubs on the way to the Meuse river was Bastogne, which possessed seven roads in and out of town. Hastily occupied by a brigade of the 10th Armored Division and the under supplied and lightly equipped 101st Airborne Division, the German 5th Panzerarmee threw almost all its strength against Bastogne but failed to either defeat the Americans or force their surrender which totally disrupted the German left flank of the advance. The 6th SS Panzerarmee on the right was checked by Americans and a few Brits dug in along heights to the north if St Vith, and was forced westward *away* from the Meuse where it too was to be checked when the 2nd Armored division met the 2nd Panzer division and fought them to a standstill. \n\nMeanwhile, the weather cleared and Allied fighters began to hunt down every German tank they could find. The ever energetic Patton had already pulled his third Army out of an eastward attack, and with startling rapidity turned them 90 degrees toward north and set off on a new attack towards Bastogne where the 101st Airborne was successfully holding off a Panzerarmee by itself and kindly brought them supplies to go over to the attack. Hitler declared there would be no retreats from ground gained, and Patton said to Bradley (I paraphrase) the kraut has stuck his head in a meat grinder and I've got my hand on the crank. \n\nAt no point, despite the total initial surprise and the confusion sewn in the rear areas by German commando operations, was the offensive seriously likely to succeed. The conditions were too poor, the Germans to shaky logistically and the American Paratroops too stubborn to let the Germans pass.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2tq6ng", "title": "Who was the first person killed by a gun?", "selftext": "I tried searching a few different keywords and did an askhistorians google search but came up with nothing.\n\nThanks for doing what you do!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tq6ng/who_was_the_first_person_killed_by_a_gun/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co1bsan", "co1gjio", "co1t7ng"], "score": [72, 21, 2], "text": ["To expand upon the question, there are plenty of definitions of what people consider a \"gun.\"  So I might split it into several questions, on the off-chance someone can better answer one over the other.\n\nWho (or when) was the first person killed by a...\n\n* Gunpowder-based projectile\n\n* Handheld (small arms) gunpowder-based projectile\n\n* Gun that uses rounds (i.e. self-contained shells with gunpowder, bullet, and ignition mechanism)\n\n* Automatic weapon\n\n\"Who\" might not necessarily mean a name, but maybe which kind of person (e.g. civilization, year, social status)?", "As others have said it is hard to tell what specifically it is that you are asking, but if you are asking about the first assassination by firearm I can tell you that.\n\nIn Scot land James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray was assassinated in 1570 by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. James Stewart was the regent for James VI of Scotland, but at this time Scotland was engulfed in a civil war. James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was a supporter of Mary of Guise (the opposition to the infant James VI), so when he found an opportunity to fire at him with a carbine from his uncles home, he did so, fatally wounding James Stewart. \n\nSources: (It is hard to find any definitively reliable source, but there are many different sources that agree.)\n\nAntonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots, pp. 339, 486\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nIf anyone has any definitively reliable sources, a reply would be greatly appreciated, along with any corrections.\n", "Remember, for a long time (in Europe at least) the only guns were siege weapons. So it's unlikely that anyone would record which unlucky 13th-century foot soldier was the first to be crushed by a flying cannon-boulder. And that's not even considering China, which had had gunpowder rockets for quite a while at that point."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.maryqueenofscots.net/people/lord-james-stewart-earl-moray-regent-scotland/", "https://artemisiasroyalden.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/day-in-history-james-stewart-is-murderd-in-the-first-recorded-assassination-by-a-firearm/"], []]}
{"q_id": "3quaui", "title": "Did Alexander the Great's notion of a campaign to free or avenge the Greeks have any impact on Greek mercenaries serving the Persian Empire at the time?", "selftext": "Alexander the Great's campaign to topple the Persian Empire seemed to have a great deal of propaganda supporting it. On multiple occasions he is said to be doing it to free the Greeks, or to get revenge on the Persians for Xerxes' campaign. How did this message impact Greek mercenaries in the armies of Darius and his satraps? It appears that Alexander encountered a few Persian forces of which Greek mercenaries played a large part, so was his notion of a panhellenic crusade really even effective, or did it just attempt to provide justification on his end?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3quaui/did_alexander_the_greats_notion_of_a_campaign_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwit5m1", "cwj2r9p"], "score": [2, 7], "text": ["Tack on question. How Greek was Alexander's empire exactly and how did his Macedonian heritage influence it? What roles and functions did the other Greek city states and peoples fulfill in Alexander's empire?", "Alexander was particularly harsh to Greek mercenaries and he even killed a large portion of them following his victory over them at the Battle of Granicus. This harsh treatment is said to have stiffened resistance against Alexander as Greek mercenaries under the Persians did not want similar treatment. Alexander also forced cities that surrendered to him to pay the same tribute that the Persians demanded so many Greeks that did convert to his side didn't see him as a saviour as they were treated similarly (or worse) than the Persians had treated them. It is also well documented that Alexander didn't like any of these conquered Greeks to object to his rule and he was not scared to intervene in local politics to enforce his will."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2w2udd", "title": "Why, in the United States, do we refer to judges as 'Your Honor'?", "selftext": "What are the historical links from today to hundreds of years ago regarding that reference? How far back does it go?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2w2udd/why_in_the_united_states_do_we_refer_to_judges_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["conhe28", "cons7jj"], "score": [30, 10], "text": ["Dates back to at least 1551\n\n_URL_0_\n\n >   With possessive adjective and freq. with capital initial, as Your Honour , etc.:  (a) a deferential form of address for any person of higher rank or status (now rare, chiefly regional in later use);  (b) a title of respect or form of address for a person holding a particular office, esp. that of court judge.\n\nso i'm guessing it derives from the ancient form of addressing superiors which got applied to english offices, especially the bench but it seems from the OED definitions (more via link) that this concept of honor was widely used and over time got narrowed down. \n\nhigh quality dictionaries like the OED are really an amazing resource that the internet hasn't been able to quickly and easily replace. ", "It should be noted that not just Judges are accorded the title. Virtually every elected or higher level government position is accorded the title \"Honorable.\"\n\nThat Includes President, VP, Senators, Representatives, Anyone appointed by the President and Confirmed by Congress (So Secretaries, Deputies, Under Secretaries and Directors of the various Agencies) Governors, State Legislators, Mayors, US Attorneys, and US Marshals.\n\nIn fact there are many more people who have the title who are not judges then who are. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/88227?redirectedFrom=your+honor#eid1534112"], []]}
{"q_id": "45lc22", "title": "Why did Albania withdraw from the Warsaw Pact in 1968?", "selftext": "My history textbooks were always really vague about this. They just threw in a sentence at the end of the Prague Spring about them withdrawing following the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It never said the reason, but I assume the Prague Spring had something to do with it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45lc22/why_did_albania_withdraw_from_the_warsaw_pact_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czz5xph"], "score": [16], "text": ["Although the invasion of Czechoslovakia is the straw that broke the camel's back, there are even more underlying reasons for Albania withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact.\n\nOne of the larger and more general reasons for it was the Sino-Soviet Split, or a split in ideology between differing communist parties. The majority of the socialist world sided with the Soviet Union, however 4 countries did not, 2 of these (North Korea and Yugoslavia) were neutral, while 2 of these were Chinese leaning, one of these being China itself, while the other being Albania.\n\nHoxha, leader of Communist Albania, was a Maoist, which was distinctly different from the standard Marxism-Leninism that the majority of the Warsaw Pact was, and Hoxhaism, the political ideology that came from Hoxha, is considered a distinct form of Maoism.\n\nAlbania sided with China in almost everything, and even purged their own members of government that were known to be pro-soviet. The Soviet Union condemned Albania for this and eventually cut off diplomatic relations in 1961.\n\nChina's influence in Albania grew even larger because of aid to Albania and Albania acted as the People's Republic of China's spokesperson to the UN (before the United States allowed shifting the seat of power from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China). This, again, didn't sit well with the Soviets and further increased tensions.\n\nAnother thing about communism you must know is the idea of revisionism. A revisionist is someone who \"revises\" the ideology of Marx. This is a big no-no in communism. Being called a revisionist is one of the biggest insults in the communist world. With that being said, one of the main ideas of Hoxha is that the only \"true\" communist countries were the Soviet Union until Stalin's death, Albania, and China. The rest were revisionist scum.\n\nAfter Khrushchev's death, the new Soviet leadership tried making promises to Albania, however it soon became clear that they didn't want to make the landscape more favorable to Albania.\n\nWhen the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, Albania decided it was the best time to leave the Warsaw Pact, however it was a long time coming.\n\nNeedless to say Brezhnev didn't really think of it as a big issue and never did anything to try to bring them back."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7o88dz", "title": "Atat\u00fcrk reformed and secularized Turkey. He changed many things to differentiate the new Turkish republic from the fallen Ottoman empire. He, for example, changed the alphabet, abolished the Caliphate, etc. Why did he stick with the obviously non-secular Ottoman flag, then?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7o88dz/atat\u00fcrk_reformed_and_secularized_turkey_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ds7rbpd"], "score": [105], "text": ["I'm not entirely sure why the flag is \"obviously non-secular.\" The star and crescent's association with Islam is because of the Ottomans, not the other way around, and is a Turkic symbol. See for example these previous threads on the matter:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you had some other idea as to why it's obviously non-secular perhaps you could elaborate?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rm5ap/why_did_the_crescent_and_star_become_symbol_of/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24d72l/why_is_the_star_and_crescent_considered_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "2hvclz", "title": "British artillery could have shot at Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo but Wellington refused the opportunity and said \"It is not the business of commanders to be firing upon one another\". Why did he say this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2hvclz/british_artillery_could_have_shot_at_napoleon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckwg8d8"], "score": [100], "text": ["There was a similar controversy during the Civil War in which an artillery barrage ordered by General William T. Sherman killed Confederate General Leonidas Polk (in fact, Polk was cut in half by a shell). Sherman goes to deliberate lengths in his memoir to say that this was not intentional but simply meant to scatter the cluster of officers who were observing his troops. As I think your question implies, this is somewhat strange considering the strategic advantages inherent in killing the leader of your opposing troops. You would think he would claim credit for it! \n\nI would venture to say that aside from the general notions of honor and military protocol prevalent among military elite at that time, another part of it is that leaderless troops aren't exactly *good* for anyone, even for their opponents. The chaos and the disorder that go along with such an event do not necessarily make for decisive victory, can lead to slaughter and uncontrollable troops, nor always settle the conflict as it needs to be settled. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2by8f1", "title": "Which is the oldest standing army in the world?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2by8f1/which_is_the_oldest_standing_army_in_the_world/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cja4h77", "cja7qi6", "cja8c3y", "cjaef3d"], "score": [98, 16, 11, 2], "text": ["I don't know about the oldest army but I know the oldest unit is the [Pontifical Swiss Guard](_URL_0_). The unit was founded on 22 January 1506 as the bodyguard of the Pope and to protect Vatican City. It is now 508 years old. ", "Could someone explain to me what is meant by a 'standing army'? I understand that it means they are always in the army, even in times of peace, but I've heard that these 'professional armies' didn't appear in Europe until relatively recently. Why wouldn't Roman legionnaires or the like be considered part of a 'standing army' if they signed long (I think 8 year) contracts?", "I think we need to concretely define \"standing army\" for this.  \n\nFor example, I think we can all agree that the current US army constitutes a standing army, at least in part.  Troops live on bases with the rest of their unit, their weapons are housed within the base complex, etc\n\nIt becomes a little more nebulous when we bring up off base housing.  Now the troops are living away from their weapons and units.  Their full-time job is \"soldier\" though, so they are available for military duties at all times.  \n\nThe national guard might also fit the bill.  Like off base housed troops they live apart from their unit and weapons but they have a rank in the organization and an established route to activation with gear awaiting them on a moments notice.  They have other work, however, and while they can be pulled away from that at any time, economic considerations temper the state's ability to respond with them instantly.\n\nNow we get into militia groups which are rather like the guard.  Again, rank structures persist even in periods of inactivity and equipment is maintained.  Personal ownership of weapons is more common.  Heavy weapons are less common.  \n\nNow, finally, we are to the kinds of units we can all agree are not standing armies.  These are the ones that exist only on paper, perhaps with a professional officer corps, which are created out of whole cloth during a mobilization.  Perhaps not institutionally, but at least personally, the vast majority of the combatants in most pre-modern wars fall into this category.  \n\nWhere on the continuum are we talking?  \n", "This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_0_). These poll-type questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. \u201cMost\u201d, \u201cleast\u201d, \"best\" and \"worst\" questions usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. If you'd like, you may PM /u/caffarelli to have your question considered for an upcoming [Tuesday Trivia](_URL_1_) thread."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard#Pontifical_Swiss_Guard"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia"]]}
{"q_id": "5fdtkq", "title": "We often see Native Americans in paintings from Early Colonial America smoking pipes. Was this a regular pastime or is this a stereotype?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fdtkq/we_often_see_native_americans_in_paintings_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dajyjdo"], "score": [21], "text": ["The answer to this question is a little from column A and a little from column B. Dependent upon the culture in question individuals could smoke. Among the Mandan of North Dakota tobacco was reserved for elder males and specific ceremonies, whereas individual Creek could smoke and did so from less ornate clay pipes. However, the deep ceremonial role of tobacco in many Native American cultures meant pipe smoking became an essential aspect of negotiations, including the debates surrounding peace, war, and trade. Paintings from Colonial America often depicted European-Native American interactions surrounding peace or trade, those meetings would, by tradition, be authenticated by tobacco smoke.\n\nTobacco was cultivated in Mesoamerica more than three thousand years ago and spread to both North and South America quickly thereafter. To generalize greatly, tobacco held deep ritual and spiritual significance throughout the Americas as well as being used for medicinal purposes. In North America a special type of ceremonial pipe style and usage developed. A stone [bowl](_URL_3_) was carved from a soft material, often [pipestone](_URL_2_), and then attached to a [longer stem](_URL_1_) that was adorned with decorations signifying the unique purpose of the pipe (peace, war, trade, etc). Other pipe styles could be used for everyday affairs, but a ritual known as the calumet evolved around this unique ceremonial pipe form.\n\nBy the time the French explorers ventured into the heart of North America the shocks of contact were already reverberating across the continent. The French, following their allies west during the Huron/Wendat displacement, encountered other nations displaced by the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois expansion of the [Beaver Wars](_URL_5_) when they ventured along the great waterways of the Eastern Woodlands. In the Southeast the Indian slave trade out of the Carolinas likewise caused the migration, disruption, and eventually the coalescence of previous distinct nations into new, powerful confederacies. Into this world of upheaval, of refugees and new migrants attempting to carve out territory in a new land filled with different languages and dialects, the calumet ceremony became crucial.\n\nAs Calloway states in *One Vast Winter Count* \"for Indian people, peace meant more than a lack of conflict or ending hostilities; it was a state of being that required a positive assumption of moral duties\" (p.237). Smoking the calumet and participating in the ritual dances associated with the ceremony allowed participants to enter the proper mindset, reminded participants of their responsibilities, and soon developed into a prerequisite for negotiation. Marquette wrote\n\n >  There is nothing more mysterious or respected among them... It seems to be the God of peace and of war, the Arbiter of life and death.\n\nAnd Perrot said this about the calumet among the nations of the Great Lakes...\n\n >  The calumet halts the warriors belonging to the tribe of those who sung it, and arrests the vengeance which they could lawfully take for their tribesmen who have been slain. The calumet also compels the suspension of hostilities and secures the reception of deputies from hostile tribes who undertake to visit those whose people have been recently slain by theirs. It is, in one word, the calumet which has authority to confirm everything, and which renders solemn oaths binding. \n\nTo a rapidly changing, often violent, world the calumet offered a way to signify peace. Travelers could use their pipe as a passport to guarantee safe travel through others' territory. The ceremony turned, if only for a time, strangers into kin and enemies into friends (Calloway). Anything worth saying, worth doing, worth remembering was marked by the smell of pipe smoke.\n\nThe French, understanding the vital importance of the ceremony to their hopes of traveling unmolested, seized upon the ritual and may have been partially responsible for it's spread across the interior of the continent. By the late 1600s the calumet was an essential preface to negotiations from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Great Plains. In 1682 La Salle encountered the ritual among the Quapaws and the Caddos as he made his way south. By the time of English colonial expansion away from the Atlantic seaboard the importance of the calumet ceremony was solidified for many in the interior of the continent. Painters, and [later photographers](_URL_0_), recognizing the ceremonial importance would include pipes with images of Native Americans, especially during important occasions like Benjamin West's 1766 [*The Indians giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet*](_URL_4_)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.oldsantafetradingco.com/assets/site-images/sitting-bull-with-pipe.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:Peace_pipe.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:MissPipe1.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_pipe#/media/File:Black_hawk_calumet.jpg", "http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-896&amp;storyId=1-9-14", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars"]]}
{"q_id": "6bqp6c", "title": "\"Why did the chicken cross the road?\" How did the motives of this transient fowl become such a fascinating subject of inquiry?", "selftext": "The Wikipedia article says it appeared in The Knickerbocker magazine in 1847, but offers little in the way of explaining it's spread throughout pop culture.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6bqp6c/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_how_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhpmwgw"], "score": [21], "text": ["Folk sayings and the origins of colloquialisms are notoriously hard to know the history of - many of the reasons why they became popular have been lost to time either because people either didn't record them, or because the records have become lost. It could be that the joke was originally the catchphrase of a popular comedian, or that it spread in playgrounds, or that it comes from a magazine or newspaper that is no longer extant, or at least no longer easy to find. Trying to figure out the origin of such a joke is probably like trying to figure out the origin of some modern dank meme with access only to the archives of the *New York Times* - I mean, the New York Times has probably discussed Pepe by now because of politics, but would they have bothered discussing those six panel \"what I do\" \"what I think do\" \"what my parents think I do\" (etc) memes? Probably not.\n\nNonetheless, if you look at the phrase 'chicken cross the road' on [Google ngrams](_URL_6_), there is a spike circa the 1850s, which doesn't show up in search for me, but which could be a version of a quote from [an 1848 edition of *The Knickerbocker*](_URL_1_):\n\n >  \"There are \u2018quips and quillets\u2019 which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: \u2018Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you \u2018out of town?\u2019 Do you \u2018give it up?\u2019 Well, then: \u2018Because it wants to get on the other side!\u2019\"\n\nThere's a variant of the joke in [an 1872 edition of the *Sydney Mail*](_URL_7_), which was a now discontinued weekly edition of the *[Sydney Morning Herald](_URL_0_)*, which [the website of an etymologist, Barry Popik](_URL_4_), suggests may have first come from the San Francisco Bulletin:\n\n > Why should not a chicken cross the road? It would be a fowl proceeding.\n\nGoogle ngrams suggests that the early 20th century is when references to the joke start noticeably increasing. One reason for this, perhaps, is that early automobile drivers had a genuine problem with chickens crossing the road when their cars came nearby. I get the sense reading the snippets that the writers mentioning these issues are bemused about the pre-existing joke.\n\nTake a reference in the early automobile trade magazine [*The Horseless Age*, which has a 1905 article](_URL_2_) saying that:\n\n > A cash prize is now being offered for the correct solution of the question, \"Why does a chicken cross the road?\" and its practical application. The prize is offered by a French automobilist to the French agricultural societies for a breed of chickens which will not cross the road every time an automobilist approaches\n\nSimilarly, [*American Hay, Flour And Feed Journal* in 1912](_URL_3_) has someone complaining that: \n\n > Autos shoot all over the Corn Belt during July to September and furnish the chickens with a daily life gamble. You understand the saying, 'Why does a Chicken cross the Road' for the first time after a few country trips. The chicken will be perfectly safe on one side of the road, but he will be alarmed and seized with a desire to flap over to the other side right in front of your machine.\n\nOn a different tack, [*Life* magazine, in 1912](_URL_5_), also mentions the question with a much more obviously satirical tone, presumably making fun of the Bourbon Democrats of the time: \n\n >  ...a question which has puzzled the economists and biologists for decades. The resolution which was introduced by Congressman Bourbon, is as follows:\n\n >  *Resolved*, That an international commission be formed to investigate the question: 'Why does a chicken cross the road?' and be it further\n\n >  *Resolved*, That said commission be fully empowered to dig as deeply into the matter as possible.\n\nElsewhere in the early 20th century, *The Gideon* in 1914 calls it an 'ancient conundrum', while a writer in *The American Angler* in 1921 complains about 'an occasional crazy chicken' on the road while driving, again prompting said ancient conundrum. \n\nThese quotes all, I suspect, suggest that the joke is quite well known at this point in America, without furnishing much clue of how exactly it spread. Perhaps *The Knickerbocker* really *was* the first to use it, but the subtext of that quote does seem to be that the joke was already well-known at the time. \n\nGiven the context of a lot of these early quotes, it might be that the joke particularly gained popularity because of the rise of automobiles (or that Google's corpus of books is quite possibly missing several 1800s references to the joke). Chickens being interrupted by a loud, fast moving, vehicle clearly evoked a sort of 'fight-or-flight' response, and it seems that the nature of their flight response was not particularly good for the chicken's health in the age of the automobile.\n\nPerhaps this also somewhat explains the point of the joke, which might have been lost on the writer from the *Knickerbocker*: chickens apparently did seem to be crossing the road mostly to get themselves killed and thus find themselves in another plane of existence: 'the other side'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.smh.com.au/", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3MQGAQAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA283&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+street%22&amp;lr=&amp;as_drrb_is=b&amp;as_minm_is=0&amp;as_miny_is=1700&amp;as_maxm_is=0&amp;as_maxy_is=1899&amp;num=100&amp;as_brr=0&amp;ei=cI2YSt_8LZXszATQmeXUDg&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q=%22chicken%20cross%20the%20street%22&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HSDmAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj-r9_U4fjTAhUEv7wKHbsIDCI4ChDoAQgtMAM", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Q9gwAQAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj-r9_U4fjTAhUEv7wKHbsIDCI4ChDoAQgpMAI", "http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_joke/", "https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vYE4AQAAMAAJ&amp;q=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;dq=%22chicken+cross+the+road%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi1oPLM4PjTAhWJVrwKHX-9C_w4ChDoAQghMAA", "https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chicken+cross+the+road&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cchicken%20cross%20the%20road%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cchicken%20cross%20the%20road%3B%2Cc1", "https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ftIQAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=P5MDAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=7347,6098909&amp;dq=chicken-cross-the-road&amp;hl=en"]]}
{"q_id": "921wff", "title": "What was the urban life of the Cahokia Mounds like?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/921wff/what_was_the_urban_life_of_the_cahokia_mounds_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e32om0z"], "score": [21], "text": ["I asked [a different question about Cahokia](_URL_0_) a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but there's some info in the top answer from /u/Reedstilt and more in comments further down that might be insightful. I'd especially direct you to /u/RioAbajo's remarks in [this comment chain](_URL_0_d0183e1) about what it means to call Cahokia a city."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wfq9/one_of_the_most_impressive_cities_in_the_medieval/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45wfq9/one_of_the_most_impressive_cities_in_the_medieval/d0183e1"]]}
{"q_id": "7jcalh", "title": "Why did the Southern German states join the North German Confederation and not stay independent like Austria, or join Austria-Hungary with whom they had previously been allied with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7jcalh/why_did_the_southern_german_states_join_the_north/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dr6e22e"], "score": [7], "text": ["Pan-German sentiment (calls for a unified German people under one nation, Greater Germany) had been increasingly pronounced throughout the 19th century. This fomenting idea was one of the factors contributing to the 1848 revolutions that swept through the many German states. Although ultimately the revolution was a failure, this idea continued to simmer and grow in both popular sentiment and various intellectual circles. \n\nMeanwhile the state of Prussia itself was rapidly emerging as one of the Great Powers. Its geographical location in the Rhineland, access to abundant waterways and fertile plains allowed it to industrialise rapidly, compared to the more Alpine Austrian Empire. As a result Prussia could successfully form an economic and social hegemony over the other smaller German states. (the earlier German confederation was formed as a trade alliance actually, which Prussia began to grow more and more predominant over)\n\nPrussia was also a militarily powerful country. Sandwiched between the French Republic to the West and the Russian Empire to the East, the German states could rely on an alliance with Prussia in the event of war with either. Frederick the Great and his legacy was instrumental in transforming Prussia into one of the great military powers in Europe after all. As it was oft quoted \"other states have an army, but Prussia was an army with a state\". \n\nThe Austrian Empire consisted of numerous other diverse ethnicities, like Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and others. This did not sit well with the Pan-Germanists who wanted a Greater Germany, consisted mainly of Germans. Prussia on the other hand WAS predominantly German (save for the significant Polish populations in the Eastern regions after the 1795 partitions of Poland)\n\nNot only that but the Austrian Empire's strategic defeat in the Austro-Prussian war, it was clear who was the pre-eminent power among the German states. Whilst some of the states (like Saxony) actually fought on the side of Austria and against Prussia the outcome of the war made it certain who was the winning horse. The Austrian armies were made up of numerous ethnic minorities speaking various languages and it made military coordination exceedingly difficult. Not only that Austria was overall not as well coordinated and had a reputation of being technologically inferior.   \n\nBut the largest factor that led the southern German states to join the North German confederation was actually the Franco Prussian war. The southern German states have a long historic enmity with the French, and when the Franco-Prussian war broke out they   joined the Prussians and successfully won the French in various battles. \n\nBismarck had always been a shrewd negotiator and he succeeded in uniting the German states in the war effort and convincing the South Germans to put aside their differences and support unification and solidarity. Events culminated in the unification of the Southern German states with the North German confederation and most famously of all, the declaration of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace in January 1871. \n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6zms60", "title": "When the west roman empire fell, were there any romans from the fallen empire that (tried) to move to the east-roman empire?", "selftext": "I am thinking about the idea of a tv show about a roman soldier just after the fall of the roman empire who is struggling with the fall of the relative safety of the vast roman empire. He then tries to reach the Byzantium empire, hoping to find some stability there, moving through Europe falling apart. I was wondering, is there any documentation of people who haven actually tried, or even suceeded, while doing this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zms60/when_the_west_roman_empire_fell_were_there_any/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmxawh9"], "score": [39], "text": ["I'm afraid this answer might be a bit unsatisfying. The collapse of the Western Empire did not happen very suddenly. The Goths had been within the empire for roughly a century and the Vandals about 70-80 years there were no Romans alive when the west \"fell\" that could likely remember a Time when some germanic group or another wasn't \"squatting\" on Roman territory. As often as not these groups were administering Roman territory for the imperial government and fighting on behalf of the Empire as they were fighting with it. Even in 476 when Romulus Augusts was deposed and Odoacer became king of Italy, it wasn't all that different from the Visigoths or Franks whose kings were nominal subjects of the Emperor and administered the provinces on the emperors behalf. Odoacer would even mint coins in the Image of the ex-western emperor Julius Nepos until Nepos' death, though we would let Nepos return to Italy..in fact for the next couple centuries the western kingdoms would continue to Mint coins displaying the image of the Eastern emperors. So the western empire didn't just disappear one day, to the perspective of someone living at the time. \n\nThe educated elites would be most likely to know about they changes going on around them than your average poor farmer but the difficultly if travel for people and information and the long amount of time that can take, nevermind the potential unreliability of that news might have meant that the further away from Italy you got the less even an educated Elite might know for certain. Plus the wealth of the elites in ancient times was in land, so even if Theuderic the Frank shows up at your door and says; \"hey pal, half your Empire is gone and you're gonna be paying your taxes to us now,\" you can't just trade your land in for a chest of coins and ride off for Constantinople. For poor Publius the cobbler in Tolouse he might not even know that anything had changed, Sure he was paying the goths taxes, but the coins still have the emperors face on them, and besides he'd been paying the Goths taxes for as decades as far as he can recall. The Gallo-Roman Aristocracy, their Iberian counterparts, and the Italian Senatorial class all  for the most part just made accommodations with their new Germanic overlords and went on with their business. We do hear that under Justinian some Italian senators and other elites fled east, but this was due to the devastation from the Gothic wars which ruined Italy far more than the \"fall\" of the West 70 years earlier.\n\n\nsources:\n\"The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians\" Peter Heather\n\n\"The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization\" Bryan Ward-Perkins\n\n\"Byzantium: The Early Centuries\" John Julius Norwich\n\nI've probably left out a couple good sources too and I'm sure there might be a few salient examples of western \"emigres\" but nothing really springs to mind, and I'm happy to be corrected, I've been up for 19 hours as I type this."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2g82xd", "title": "What is the best guess about what happened to the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes?", "selftext": "There's a story that the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes was sold to a Jewish merchant, who basically hauled it away for scrap. Did this really happen? If so, do we know anything about this merchant or what he might have done with the remains? If not, do we know what actually happened? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g82xd/what_is_the_best_guess_about_what_happened_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckgozup"], "score": [27], "text": ["It is likely that never happened, as all other sources of this statement can be traced back to The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, who stated that an invading Muslim army tore down the statue, cast it down and sold it to a Jewish merchant of Edessa who loaded the bronze on 900 camel but in all likely hood it most likely was none existing at that stage of time due to an earthquake in 226 BC, where the statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but the oracle of Delphi made the Rhodians afraid that they had offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it.\n\nThe tale of the Jew and Muslim army destroying it possibly originated as a metaphor for Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the destruction of a great statue, and may have been seen have as evidence for the coming apocalypse.\n\nSource: The Arabs and the Colossus. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3rd ser. L.I. Conrad."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2mdht4", "title": "What happened in the period around 400 b.c.?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nThe upper graph shows populations vs. year and the lower graph shows the relative growth. I was wondering what was causing the hump at 400 b.c. in the lower graph.\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mdht4/what_happened_in_the_period_around_400_bc/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm3as6b"], "score": [39], "text": ["The graph cites a broken link to the US Census Bureau.  A few minutes of digging led me to [this table](_URL_0_).  As you can see, the only number for 400 BCE is from Biraben, whose numbers are higher than the McEvedy and Jones numbers the table depended on before.  Biraben numbers often are the upper limit, but according to the rules of the table if only one number is given, it is automatically made the lower limit.  That would throw off a line graph of the lower limits, which is possibly what the graph you linked used (but the scale is useless).\n\nSo I'd say a noncritical Wikipedia editor just took what they had and ran with it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev%C3%B6lkerungsentwicklung#mediaviewer/File:World-pop-hist-de-2.png"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php"]]}
{"q_id": "1xph7k", "title": "Is there any evidence that King George VI pushed the scandal that led his brother, King Edward VIII into abdicating the throne?", "selftext": "I know that conventional wisdom and Wikipedia say quite the opposite, but I was wondering if there is evidence that King George directed the whole thing, so that he could be king. \n\nMy question comes from that scene in the film, \"The Kings Speech,\" when King Edward accuses his brother of pushing him off the throne. I don't recall the exact words used in the film. \n\nPerhaps I'm watching too much \"House of Cards\". \n\nSo I'm asking the experts. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xph7k/is_there_any_evidence_that_king_george_vi_pushed/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfdsrmh"], "score": [15], "text": ["I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest this, most of the push for abdication came from the government rather than the Royal Family (who typically stay out of politics anyway).  George VI had no interest in being King and was terrified of speaking in public.  In his diary he writes: \"\"When I told her [Queen Mary] what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child.\".  The movie is quite accurate in its portrayal of him being a reluctant King, but takes a few dramatic liberties and accelerates the timeline.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "by6rbi", "title": "East Asia Panel AMA: ask our flairs questions and be answered!", "selftext": "Welcome to the **East Asia flair panel AMA**! A team of flaired users specializing in topics in or related to East Asia will be on hand to answer your questions about the region, its people and its history.\n\nEast Asia, commonly defined as encompassing China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, usually Manchuria and sometimes Mongolia and Tibet, has never been a single homogeneous entity. Across up to 12 million square kilometers it would be impossible not to find marked differences in landscape, language and lifestyle, which even today can often be overlooked from a Western point of view. Arguably the only serious attempt at Pan-Asianism ended in flames in the 1930s and 40s, and even in recent years there has been no dearth of causes for enmity between powers and between peoples.\n\nYet alongside such divisions, there have also been connections, both within the broader region and further afield across the globe. For quite a while, East Asia was largely united by a common standard of writing, and at many times people have been able to travel quite freely between its various landmasses, be they merchants, pirates, political exiles or simply travelers and tourists. Across the steppe and the seas, people, goods, ideas and knowledge from East Asia have flowed out to the wider world, and those from the wider world have flowed back into East Asia.\n\nIn the many millennia of East Asian History huge changes have occurred in many areas. Looking just at the last 1000 years, we see effects from the Mongol conquests in the 13th century, to the Columbian exchange in the 16th, to the appearance of Western imperialism in the 19th, and of course, a whole host of endogenous developments, be they religious, cultural, political or socioeconomic. There have been continuities too, of course, and sometimes quite resilient ones. For one, the physical geography has for the most part been pretty constant, outside of course the regular course changes of the lower Yellow River.\n\nWith this panel we hope to shed a little more light, to the best of our abilities, on one of the most prominent and yet often least popularly understood regions of the world. We're all ears for questions, and hopefully, you should be all ears for answers!\n\n\n--- \n\nOur Panelists today are:  \n\n/u/bigbluepanda \thas the least worst knowledge of the evolution of the military within pre-modern Japan, of which the majority of questions fall into the Sengoku period.\n\t\n/u/buy_a_pork_bun\tSpecializes primarily in the Vietnam War and the Chinese Civil War. That said he is more than happy to discuss the nature of Tokugawa judicature, the transition of power towards and away from Meiji, the CCP, Japanese colonialism, and Chinese ethnography from Tang, Song, and Qing. Somewhere in the vaults is a fuzzy memory of the utilization of military equipment in the Pacific theater and in the Korean War and probably a few tidbits about the vehicle of Japanese legitimacy from Fujiwara onwards.\n\t\n/u/Cenodoxus\twas originally training as a medievalist, but started researching North Korea because she understood nothing about the country from what she read in the papers. After several years of intense study, now she understands even less. Her previous AMAs on North Korea and Korean history for /r/AskHistorians can be found [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_).\n\t\n/u/churakaagii \tis about as niche as you can get for the English language, especially as an amateur in the history game: She got into history through her love of Okinawa, and trying to figure out how and why her heritage language and culture is in a zombie state. On /r/AskHistorians, this has largely turned into answering questions about Japan from very specific times that were relevant to Okinawa, e.g. the tide of Western colonialism in East Asia during the mid-to-late 19th century, or the pre-WW2 Imperial period.\n\t\n/u/cthulhushrugged\tspecializes in the Early  &  Mid-Imperial Eras of China, in particular, the political, military, economic, and ethnic histories of the Qin, Han, Tang, and Song Dynasties (and the periods of civil war bracketing each). He's also thrilled to wax poetic about the Mongols and Genghis Khan (and more broadly the border states and peoples surrounding China), why invading Korea and Vietnam overland are horrible ideas, and the Pacific Theater of the 2nd World War.\n\t\n/u/_dk\tis an avid reader of East Asian history with an interest in the Three Kingdoms period of China and the maritime situation in East Asia during the 16th century, a time of pirates and the Portuguese.\n\t\n/u/EnclavedMicrostate \tspecialises in Qing Dynasty China, primarily from 1796 to 1912, with a particular emphasis on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-64) and its broader context. He'll also be happy to discuss the Opium Wars, 19th century Sino-Western relations more broadly, and questions more generally about the later Qing Dynasty and its own domestic and imperial policy.\n\t\n/u/JimeDorje\tis the local historian specializing in all things Tibet and Tibet-related, focusing on indigenous Tibetan historiography, the intersection between Sangha and State-formation, and the development of Tibet, Bhutan, and other Himalayan states from the Imperial period, to the development of Buddhist theocracies, and their absorption into 20th Century Statehood. He's happy to discuss all things historically Tibetan, Buddhist, and Himalayan.\n\t\n/u/keyilan\tis an historical linguist specialising in East and Southeast Asia. In addition to the historical development of the languages of Asia, he is also interested in historical language planning and policies, particularly in Taiwan and Korea under Japanese occupation, and also minority language rights. Beyond linguistics, areas of interest include Hakka studies, China in the 19th century, and Chinese diaspora communities around the world, with an emphasis on the Chinese Exclusion Acts and anti-Chinese sentiment.\n\t\n/u/KippyPowers\tspecializes in the Philippines, with interests spanning precolonial, colonial, and modern, with a particular interest in social history and language and cultural politics. Secondary interests include modern China and Taiwan (particularly late Qing Dynasty to now, and yes, he and u/EnclavedMicrostate do love to have fun dialogues on this period together) and modern Viet Nam (in particular the 20th century). In both cases, again, he has a great interest in social and cultural history and is always very excited to discuss them.\n\t\n/u/lordtiandao \tworks on the institutional, military, and fiscal history of the Song-Yuan-Ming period, focusing on the Mongol conquest and its impact on state employment of personnel and state capacity. He's also interested in the study of nomadic state formation, military mutinies in the Ming dynasty, and Ming policy in Northwest and Southwest China. He's happy to discuss the politics, military, institutions, and finances of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties.\n\t\n/u/LTercero \tfocuses on Japan's Sengoku period, in particular, the socio-political climate which drove the military conflicts and general upheaval of 15th-16th century Japan.\n\t\n/u/ParallelPain\tloves all history, but focuses on Japan, specifically the Sengoku era, due to the influence of NHK's historical drama. With only a bachelors in history, he'd like to call himself more of an \"educated-amateur\" than a professional historian, but loves diving through the primary sources in search for answers, which often cause him to take longer to write even short answers, even by /r/Askhistorian standards. That is, if he didn't give up altogether.\n\t\n/u/ParkSungJun\toccasionally contributes points about organizational structures and institutions in Imperial Japan, Republican China, and other parts of Asia, Europe, and North America. In addition, he moonlights as an economic historian in commodity markets both past and present.\n\t\n/u/Spiritof454\tis an American Chinese history PhD student researching the late Qing and the Republican period from a perspective of economic and business history.\n\n**Reminder from the mod team: our Panel today is consisted of users scattered across the globe, in various timezones with different real-world obligations. Please, be patient, and give them time to get to your question! Thank you!**", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/by6rbi/east_asia_panel_ama_ask_our_flairs_questions_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eqdlbwf", "eqdq0p5", "eqdq4cn", "eqdtqe4", "eqdxwwh", "eqe5nq5", "eqe6fyq", "eqe6xol", "eqe9oeu", "eqea5yy", "eqeajv8", "eqedtd6", "eqekgau", "eqerl1z", "eqessn7", "eqetrtu", "eqezkuj", "eqf3kll", "eqf6s3z", "eqfkvnu", "eqg2nr5", "eqgl5x0", "eqsyik1", "eqtx2r1"], "score": [11, 4, 4, 5, 14, 10, 11, 12, 3, 12, 3, 9, 11, 7, 6, 6, 4, 4, 7, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I'd like to kick it off with a question regarding Japan: \n\nI\u2019ve been told that after reverse engineering the Portuguese arquebuses (was it Sam Hawley\u2019s *Imjin War*?) the Japanese organized their armies according to the gunsmith from which the weapons were made. European armies were made up of heterogenous units of soldiers who couldn\u2019t trade ammunition or equipment due to the plethora of gunsmiths in Europe, while Japan had only four, and a central command with Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Am I totally off the mark? And if this is correct, what more can you tell me about these four gunsmiths? Where were they? How large were they? What happened to them after Hideyoshi died? Were they controlled really as strictly as it sounds?", "How did adoptions in the late Han and Three Kingdoms period of China operate? Was it a very regulated and legal process?", "I've heard Qing emperor Kangxi (regined 1661-1722) had an impressive cannon making program.   \n\nWhat can you tell me about me this? What kind of cannons did the Qing make? Who made them? How did they compare to european cannon making of the same period? Did they ever use them and how did they preform?", "How did the Mongol military establishment adapt in order to successfully conquer southern China, which had previously foiled steppe conquest dynasties?\n\nFW Mote says that Ming governmental and military institutions took a lot from the Yuan, while the Qing represented something of a break - to what extent is this true? \n\nThe Imjin War in Korea would become dominated by siege warfare and infantry battle - why did cavalry not play a larger role? Was a lack of cavalry part of the reason for Japanese failure?\n\nTo what extent can the failure of the Qing to modernize successfully and avoid the end of its dynasty be laid at the feet of the Taiping Rebellion, as opposed to fiscal issues or lack of governmental will?", "Hello! Thanks for the opportunity for an interesting panel. I have a couple of questions in mind, but I'm on a train, so maybe it's a bit too incoherent. But here goes.\n\n1. To my knowledge, *wakashu* (adolescent boys) were subjects of sexual/erotic interests of adult men in pre-Meiji Japan. How did the dynamics play out? Were boys simply an object of desire that eventually needs to be weeded out (not sure what a more appropriate term is) as the men grow older and realize their duty to their family (wife, kids), similar to how *ghulams* - young boys - were treated in Abbasid Caliphate? Was it possible for men to love their boys like they love their concubines? I think my bigger question is, how were \"male love\" and \"homoerotic sexuality\" (if such thing existed) performed in pre-Meiji Japan?\n\n2. To follow question number 2, how did the criminalization of same-sex activity in the early Meiji era (to accord to Western norms) affect Japanese idea of sex(uality) and love?\n\n3. How did Western colonialism influence the idea of \"(becoming a) modern man\" in the area you study? In Indonesia, the \"myth of lazy native\" was common in 19th century. The myth goes: Non-Western natives are lazy, irrational, and inefficient. Natives are not disciplined and succumb to superstition. To become a \"modern man\", \"primordial\" identity has to be worn off. One has to aim to be like the Westerners (in terms of fashion, intellectual pursuit, even imagination of 'development' and 'industrialization').\n   * Mostly interested in Japan, as today Southeast Asians often take Japan as a prime example of \"a blend between modernity and traditionality\". I wonder how did Japanese conceive themselves on this issue. But I'm also interested in knowing the other too.\n\nThank you again for the chance!", "Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated for a Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. He\u2019s since been a huge advocate for world peace via Engaged Buddhism and was banned from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam until 2005. Aside from his general religious attitude and his religious activities, which I\u2019m pretty well aware of, why was he nominated for the Prize? \n\nWhat did he do, Gandhi-esque or otherwise, to earn so much recognition as an activist for peace during the Vietnam War?", "1) Did the Qing Dynasty follow the Sinocentric view of the world? It's generally accepted that for most of history Chinese dynasties have seen themselves as the center of the universe, and all other peoples to be barbarians on the periphery. The Qing Dynasty though, seems to have been less Sinicized than other dynasties, both \"Chinese\" and \"foreign\" (e.g. Yuan, Jin, etc.). So then did the Qing see themselves as the center of the universe, like the Chinese dynasties before them?\n\n2) When did giant pandas become an iconic creature of Chinese culture? They don't seem to be featured very much in pre-modern Chinese art.\n\n3) What do we know of \u738b\u7384\u7b56, a Tang diplomat who was attacked by an Indian king, and lead a combination of Tibetan and Nepali troops in a successful counterattack, capturing said king and bringing him back to China? Did he even exist? I can't find much about him.\n\n4) Does it make sense to think of China as being part of Greater India or the Indosphere, since China was heavily influenced by Indian religion, architecture, etc? I originally saw the point being made by an Indian nationalist, so I suspect the assertion.\n\n5) When did China encounter the Indian numerals system? What did they think of the system, compared to their own?\n\n6) With the exception of Zheng He's treasure fleets, Chinese dynasties never really seemed to have been naval powers. Is there a reason for this?\n\n7) Zheng He's treasure fleets is said to have brought many soldiers on their trip. Were they ever used for combat? Were they expecting to have to fight any groups on their trip?\n\n8) Abe no Nakamaro was a Japanese member of one of the missions to Tang China. He stayed in the country and passed the civil service examinations, becoming an administrator. What do we know about his life in China? How did he pass the very difficult civil service exams despite starting studying years behind Chinese students? Was he unique, or were there many foreign (Japanese or others) examinees and administrators in the Tang bureaucracy?\n\n9) Looking at the list of Japanese missions to Tang China, it seems like many of the ships were lost or shipwrecked. Just how dangerous was the journey from Japan to China in this period? What technological advances did sailors make that made this trip safer in later years?\n\n10) What happened to the war brides from Japan taken to America after WW2? How did they acclimate to American society? Did they ever try to return to their homeland? What happened to their descendants?", "I've posted this question in the sub before and gotten no answer but here goes:\n\nWhat was the Taiwanese government's reaction to the United States recognizing the One China Policy? Did it come as a shock? Given the political relationship between US-Taiwan-PRC today, it seems surprising that the US would have done this. Was there ever the possibility of recognizing the two entities as separate, discreet states?\n\nAs a follow-up, how did the Kuomintang evolve into the major Taiwanese party more sympathetic to the PRC today? You would assume given their history of animosity and anti-communism they would be more vociferous in their opposition.", "The Wu dynasty of the three kingdoms period was ruled by the Sun family, and it seems that other dynasties names were unrelated to the ruling family, so how did Chinese dynasties get their name and why are they called dynasties if the ruling family\u2019s name have nothing to do with it?", "How much is known about the earliest Chinese dynasty - the Xia? Among that information how much of it comes from more archeological sources versus secondary accounts from later writers? How much of what is known is history rather than mythology?", "Is there significant evidence of East Asian exploration in the Americas or Oceania prior to Columbus?", "To my knowledge, the Khitan script and language remain undeciphered, despite a larger corpus than other deciphered or partly deciphered languages, what barriers are their to its decipherment and have there been any recent developments?", "I don't know if this is within anybody's wheelhouse in particular, but I would like to know more about the history of celebrating the Duanwu Festival (which was just yesterday!) Here in Taiwan I've read a lot of pop-history articles about how Duanwu represents an appropriation of Chu culture and customs by the northern \"China proper.\" So it got me curious about when Duanwu became a holiday celebrated across all of China, and how and when did Qu Yuan become associated with the holiday?", "Questions I have regarding Korea: \n\n* Is there any good English-language work that covers the Korean War from the Korean Perspective? I\u2019ve read a few good ones that primarily focus on American/Soviet relations, MacArthur\u2019s conflict with Truman, and the negotiations with the North Koreans/Chinese. I\u2019m really curious about the decisions Syngman Rhee had to make, the experience of Korean (South, but North would be interesting, too) soldiers, and possibly the decisions that Korean commanders had to work with.\n\n* What do we know about the Korean Population from the Imjin War to the 20th Century? I\u2019ve been repeating what I learned from the museum at Hwaseong in Suwon about how the population was cut nearly in half, and was still barely recovering when Hwaseong was under construction in the 1770s.\n\n* King Sejong\u2019s Hall of Worthies, so I\u2019ve been told, made an in kind taxation system based on yearly rainfall tied to a province\u2019s rice output. How was this calculated?\n\n* Why is invading Korea overland a bad idea? Seems like the Mongols did just fine. (Are they the exception?) In my understanding of Korean history, really it just seems like the Japanese were the ones with the real problem (invading over sea).\n\n* The *Sparrowhawk*\u2019s visit to Korea in the 1680s allegedly found a Korea \u201cpreparing for war.\u201d The Koreans were happy to have some more westerners to make guns and were, again, allegedly, preparing to invade Qing China and reestablish the Ming. Is this\u2026 accurate? The war, as far as I can tell, never came to be. Did they have a Ming candidate in waiting Targaryen-style to restore to the throne?", "Questions I have regarding China: \n\n* I read that the last Ming pretender landed on Taiwan and set up shop for a few decades before dying/relenting. Was there already a Han presence on the island that he could claim rulership over, or was he intruding on aboriginal turf?\n\n* Van Schaik writes briefly about mid-T\u2019ang Chang\u2019an culture when the Tibetan delegation visited to request a royal marriage. He writes that there was a bit of a Turco-mania going on, with young men cutting meat with their swords, wearing furs in the nomadic style, and portraying dawdles and trinkets they acquired from the western market. All of it logically made the delegates from Tibet celebrities for a brief time. How true is this concept of mid-seventh century Chang\u2019an? How well documented is this Turco-mania?\n\n* James Michener\u2019s *Hawaii* involves a few scenes which are\u2026 rather ambiguous about what\u2019s actually happening. Part-sexual assault, part-coercion, and part-indentured servitude is involved in a rather aggressive labor market transferring large amounts of Chinese laborers to Hawai\u2019i. Was this accurate? Were a lot of Chinese laborers moved around the world like this, or was it just for dramatic effect?\n\n* What was the Ming policy in northwest and southwest China? As far as I can tell, they pretty much left the area (Tibet for the most part) alone. Tibet seemed key to their horse trade, especially while the Mongols could be unreliable trading partners what with holding an emperor hostage and threateningly naming one of their Khaan\u2019s \u201cDayan.\u201d I know that today the historic policy is that the Ming never gave up control of Tibet and point to the handing out of titles (at least two cases of \u201cTai Situ\u201d), conferring of official seals (notably the Karmapa Lama). Although I can\u2019t find any specific incidents from Tibetan histories that I\u2019m looking into of a lot of Tibetan contact with China in this period in any significant capacity. Trade and raid, yes. But a broader policy I\u2019m pretty fuzzy on. The Tibetans themselves had dynastic changeovers to deal with (Phagmodrupa, Rinpungpa, and Tsangpa). What did the Ming think?\n\n* The Imjin War has been called the Ming Dynasty\u2019s \u201cSwan Song.\u201d That the counterattack against Hideyoshi\u2019s invasion was so devastating to the Ming finances that they never recovered. What exactly happened?", "Ok, two more. One on Mongolia and one on the Philippines: \n\n* Jack Weatherford (I know, I know) tells a good story in *Secret History of the Mongol Queens* alleging that Dayan Khaan was a direct descendant of Chinggis Khaan. Indeed, he goes so far as to imply that he was the last *legitimate* male descendant with a claim to the Great Khaan\u2019s legacy and crown. Is this right? Given Temujin\u2019s fecundity, I find that hard to believe. But was Dayan Khaan regarded as such? Was Manduhkhai Khaatuun using this idea for her own purposes or was it generally acknowledged that this was a true bloodline?\n\n* Just learned about Suyat. Any interesting translations out there? I\u2019m becoming interested in Philippines history lately.", "What was life at the frontiers of China like? A lot of books I've read focus primary on warfare or imperial conceptions of borderlands and frontier regions, but very little on what kinds of cultural interactions, religious beliefs etc you would see in communities there. Perhaps it is a limitation of the sources, but I'm interested in comparing it to the many works on Sicily, Iberia, Jerusalem, Hungary etc. \n\nI am mostly interested in the Song/Liao/Jin/Yuan empires, but any help is greatly appreciated!", "This would be a Philippines-related question:\n\nEscolta used to be the business capital of Philippines during the Spanish and American colonial Eras before Makati. What led to this shift in the base of economic power?", "For the panel...\n\nWe hear a lot about the Columbian Exchange across the Atlantic, but how did the initiation of a truly global transfer of people/goods/foods to and from the Americas influence life on the other side of the Pacific?", "Historiographical/state of the field question(s):\n\n & #x200B;\n\n1. Is there any kind of rethink happening in light of the ongoing anti-Western academic crackdown in regards to how accepting Western historians should be of Chinese secondary scholarship? Or in regards to how we should see Western scholarship conducted under the aegis of \"engagement\" policies designed to coax China into joining the liberal world order? I'm thinking of pieces like Peter Lorge's *The Asian Military Revolution* which blames the \"peaceful China\" myth solely on Western racism without at least acknowledging the contribution the PRC government might just maybe have made via things like the \"China's peaceful rise\" propaganda campaign. (To be clear, racism was definitely a big part of this phenomenon, but I don't think it accounts for everything.) \n2. How is the field dealing with older, particularly subaltern-focused, histories of things like the Opium Wars and Hong Kong's relationship with the UK as PRC nationalism becomes more blatantly a part of the present-day picture? Are we looking at a potential re-evaluation of these topics from the ground up? Or are certain works that seem to push the Beijing narrative just being looked at askance? Is there a PRC/everyone else (US, EU/UK, Taiwan, HK, etc) scholarship credibility gap developing? \n\n & #x200B;\n\nI understand these might be hotbutton issues, so if anyone wants to PM me an answer, I would definitely understand.", "Hi, thanks to everyone on the panel, it's been a fascinating look into history. I have a question for /u/buy_a_pork_bun \n\nI read recently that at the beginning, or perhaps shortly before the long march, Mao stashed two of his children with sympathetic local farmers, the logic being that the children likely wouldn't survive the ordeal they were about to undertake. And this in spite of the fact that the reactionary forces pursuing them were expected to exact harsh reprisals against the local peasants. [The book I was reading](_URL_0_) said Mao never found the children.\n\nMy questions are, when did Mao begin looking for his lost children, and when (if ever) did he stop? Did he reference them in later years, and did he ever link his later controversial agrarian policies with the fates of his lost children?", "Since at least the Tang dynasty, different colours of ceramics were valued differently in China. Celadon for instance was valued more highly than typical brown ceramics. \n\nSo how did a ceramic maker decide where to build a kiln, or what type of kiln to build, in order to get the desired colours and quality? Nowadays we know that minerals, temperature and oxygen levels influence the result, but how did the Chinese work out all these factors, and well enough to plonk down considerable investment into a large kiln?", "@ /u/lordtiandao\n\nFrom what I\u2019ve read, state formation generally goes in hand with religious justification: the king is the high-priest, or is a sacred king. In any case, he\u2019s very important and above the rest of men.\n\nIs it the same with nomads? Are khans considered to be supernaturally above the rest of men? How do khans justify their rule?\n\nMaybe my question is naive, still, I\u2019m interested in the similarities and differences of nomadic state formation compared to that of sedentary societies\u2019.", "Little late to the party but maybe somebody will still answer this. How do you see job perspectives in the field of East Asian studies and East Asian history? I am a german undergrad student in my final year and i was always kinda looking to go into technological or social history in a european conext but i spend the last 2 semesters in Korea and will have a 3 month internship in Tokyo soon. The thought of focusing more on Asia (or east asia) in grad school crossed my mind but i am hesitant. Any go for it or dont go for it advices? I have very basic language skills in Korean but nothing that d be sufficient to actually work within these languages - i am aware that d have to change."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c29lu/wednesday_ama_north_korea/", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lzdnx/panel_ama_korean_history/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://books.google.com/books/about/Mao_s_China_and_After.html?id=YpV7vbvclfgC"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "c3h1wz", "title": "There are a number of famous \"Lonely Mountains,\" such as Mt. Fuji or Mt. Rainier. Did J.R.R. Tolkien ever visit any of them? If not the real world, was there a literary or mythical inspiration that he drew upon to create Erebor?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c3h1wz/there_are_a_number_of_famous_lonely_mountains/", "answers": {"a_id": ["errqnq3"], "score": [106], "text": ["One of the most hated interview questions among authors is what in their published works was \u201cinspired\u201d by real life. The novelist Jonathan Franzen likes to tell the story of a writer who sarcastically answers such questions with percentages.\n\n >  \u201cIs your new book inspired by your life?\u201d\n\n >  \u201cYes, 26 % of it.\u201d*\n\nThe point is that a writer\u2019s work is entirely dependent upon her life, knowledge and experiences. But even the writer may not be able to decisively pinpoint something in her work and say \u201cthis chapter was inspired by my own life but this chapter came from my imagination\u201d.\n\nIn the case of J.R.R. Tolkien, his life and writing are extremely well-documented. He left copious notes behind and his friends and family have been willing to talk to researchers and biographers. For instance, Tolkien admits the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings \u201cowe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme\u201d and that Bilbo and the Dwarves\u2019 journey in the Misty Mountains was inspired by his own experiences hiking in Switzerland.\n\nOther aspects of his work have been directly linked to real-world counterparts, such Beorn\u2019s house which has been decisively traced to Hrolf Kraki\u2019s Hall. Tolkien\u2019s illustrations of Beorn and his dwelling are unmistakably copied from a \u201cNordic mead-hall\u201d published by his friend E.V. Gordon in An introduction to Old Norse.\n\nThe Lonely Mountain was originally called the Black Mountain in early drafts of The Hobbit. The first maps Tolkien drew of the area showed that it was not quite lonely \u2013 in fact, it was probably loosely connected to a mountain chain at its north-east corner or to the Iron Mountains, the home of the dwarf Dain and his kin. This idea is retained somewhat in his published maps and text, although the Mountain\u2019s solitary nature became much more prominent as the Hobbit narrative developed. \n\nThe prime role of the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit is the home of the dragon. In Tolkien\u2019s writings dragons are drawn from a tradition depicting them lying on mounds of treasure in prominent lairs. This is the case with Beowulf\u2019s dragon, Sigurd\u2019s Fafnir, as well as \u201cearly Silmarillion\u201d dragons like Glorund.\n\nThe bad guys in Tolkien\u2019s writings at this stage tend to have major heights for their strongholds, including the Necromancer\u2019s castle and Sauron\u2019s tower in the Luthien myth (Sauron is named Thu at early stages). This idea survived into the Lord of the Rings with the Dark Tower in Mordor and Saruman\u2019s Orthanc in Isengard. In the case of dragon's, they are depicted as more of an animalistic or natural power, so they are in prominent natural landmarks like mountains instead of built landmarks such as towers.\n\nSo the dragon lair needs to be prominent, and no height is more prominent than a volcano. Was the Lonely Mountain a volcano or inspired by a real-life volcano? One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is Tolkien\u2019s own [drawings](_URL_0_), which depicts a noticeable crater at the top. \n\nWhat kind of mountain has a crater, unless it is a volcano? Case solved, right? Well, maybe not. In the published text no crater is mentioned.\n\n >  Only its high peak could they see in clear weather, and they seldom looked at it, for it was ominous and dreary even in the light of morning.\n\n >  There far away was the Lonely Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale.\n\nSo what conclusions can we draw? John D. Rateliff has a good point to make regarding the geography of Tolkien\u2019s world. Tolkien was writing a legendary history.\n\n >  The \u2018legendary\u2019 part is worth stressing, since Tolkien was writing fantasy, not pseudo-history or pseudoscience\u2026 This liberates him from any obligation to make the details of his setting consistent with \u2018what geologists may say or surmise\u2019\u2026\n\nSo what is the decisive answer? How much of the Lonely Mountain was inspired by mythical or real-life places? \n\n26% of it, of course. ;) \n\nThere is a huge wealth of great material regarding Tolkien and his works, but in regards to this question I drew heavily upon John D. Rateliff\u2019s two-volume The History of the Hobbit.\n\n* Note: I don't recall the actual percentage Franzen says in his joke, but the actual number is irrelevant in regards to how much of a writer's work is \"imaginary\" or \"real\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/a/a3/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_The_Lonely_Mountain.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "4jrj8n", "title": "Why does only Britain use a FPTP voting system in comparison to the rest of Europe?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4jrj8n/why_does_only_britain_use_a_fptp_voting_system_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d39i1ge"], "score": [22], "text": ["PR systems are only meaningful with organized political parties.  The House of Commons is hundreds of years older than political parties in the modern sense, but once parties arose FPTP automatically fostered a two (dominant) party system for whom any move to PR was contrary to self-interest.  The constitutional provisions for lower parliamentary houses on the Continent are all far younger. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6qw8he", "title": "AMA: South Sulawesi, 1300-1800", "selftext": "A short introduction: I'm /u/PangeranDipanagara, this subreddit's most active Southeast Asia expert. I am not a professional historian, but I *have* had a deep interest in the history of Indonesian societies for some time. This is my first AMA, hope I don't mess it up and it turns out to be at least somewhat interesting. \n\nNote: Due to living on the other side of the earth as most of you folks, I will probably be asleep from around 11 AM EST to 7 PM EST. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want and I'll get to them in the morning (evening EST).\n\nE: Going to bed now. See you tomorrow!\n\nE: I'm back!\n\n---\n\nThe peninsula of [South Sulawesi](_URL_1_) is an oft-neglected corner of eastern Indonesia. After all, it is significantly smaller than West Virginia, its GDP is around that of Rhode Island, and it harbors no tourist magnets like neighboring Java or Bali. The only modicum of attention the area ever receives on this site is for having a gender system that seems peculiar to Western eyes, and [to which Redditors show an astonishing lack of respect.](_URL_0_)\n\nYet the peninsula has one of the most diverse histories in Indonesia. South Sulawesi's history is first and foremost a narrative of change. It was a time and place when simple rice-farming chiefdoms became, within just three hundred years, \"sophisticated, literate polities with a working knowledge of ballistics and the Galilean telescope.\" But on the darker side, it was also a time and place when the little peninsula exported as many slaves as the largest West African slave ports.\n\nSouth Sulawesi's history is also a tale of old customs standing their ground in the face of unremitting change. In this deeply Muslim land, \"third gender\" shamans blessed pilgrims to Mecca, the nobility regularly elected women as rulers, and the *I La Galigo*--a pre-Islamic epic that is one of the longest works of literature in the world, far longer than even the *Mahabharata*--was recited. And despite all that had changed between 1300 and 1800, people in the peninsula held by the values that glued their society together: *siriq* (self-worth) and *pesse* (sympathy).\n\nAnd South Sulawesi's history is finally a story of resistance and perseverance--a story of a great king asking the Dutch if they were \"of the opinion that God has reserved these islands, so removed from your nation, for your trade alone,\" a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.\n\nThis AMA is about that history.\n\n\n# A very brief history of Early Modern South Sulawesi\n\nTo help with any readers introduced to Sulawesi or Indonesian history for the first time, a very brief ( > 3000 character) synopsis of this AMA's topic. Gross generalizations will be unavoidable.\n\nMost of the kingdoms that mark South Sulawesi's Early Modern history emerged as agricultural chiefdoms focused on intensive rice-farming around 1300, though newer research is pushing up the dates into the 13th century. Many of these polities were probably loose confederations of villages; others had hereditary chiefs with claims to divine descent but with limited power. There was no writing and no bureaucracy to speak of.\n\nFrom the 15th century onward and increasingly in the 16th century, agricultural intensification and the growth of foreign commerce propelled the stratification and territorial expansion of chiefdoms. Writing was adopted around this time as well. By the mid-1500s most of the peninsula had been united by the kingdom of Gowa with its fertile rice fields, great foreign trade, and incipient bureaucracy.\n\nGowa completed its unification of South Sulawesi in the first decade of the 1600s with its formal adoption of Islam and its conquest of its neighbors under the justification of spreading the new faith. Supported by immense volumes of trade--its capital and main port was home to more than 100,000 people--Gowa then embarked on a rapid campaign of overseas expansion and created the largest maritime empire in eastern Indonesian history. Yet Gowa's hegemony was short-lived; in the Makassar War of 1666-1669, the Dutch East India Company allied with South Sulawesi rebels to shatter Gowa's power. \n\nThe leader of said rebels, Arung Palakka, indirectly ruled the entire peninsula as a most faithful ally of the Dutchmen until his death in 1696. His successor proved unable to carry on his legacy, and South Sulawesi's 18th-century history is marked by great wars as no kingdom proved able to gain dominance over the peninsula. Not even the Dutch--who maintained a few forts here and there following the Makassar War--could maintain control, and indeed the VOC (Dutch East India Company) steadily lost authority in the 18th century.\n\nBut the century was not all doom and gloom. Literacy seems to have expanded, although almost no research has been done on this. South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system. Some people went southeast and made regular contact with Australia; others went northwest and founded a long-lasting Sulawesi-derived dynasty in the heart of the Malay world.\n\nIn the year 1800, despite the wars and the slave trade, South Sulawesi remained a vibrant center of indigenous civilization. Indeed, it would remain so for a century *after* 1800 until 1906, when the Dutch colonial government extinguished the last independent kingdoms on the peninsula. But that is beyond the scope of our AMA.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6qw8he/ama_south_sulawesi_13001800/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl0f3fn", "dl0f64w", "dl0f8j0", "dl0fefl", "dl0h6dw", "dl0hjx9", "dl0if55", "dl0ijjp", "dl0iw87", "dl0lahc", "dl0m156", "dl0nr0m", "dl0obg8", "dl0pg54", "dl0s75n", "dl1i5te", "dl1jwei", "dl1svn7"], "score": [15, 12, 12, 22, 5, 8, 2, 8, 5, 8, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 7, 2, 4], "text": ["Thanks for doing this AMA.\n\nWhere are the archives and records for this period found? How extensive are they and what condition are they in?", "What was South Sulawesi's relationship with the Spice Islands and with the spice trade?", "What would a South Sulawesi army, say one of Gowa, look like? What type of weapons and armor are used, how much cavalry is there, how would the soldiers have become soldiers?", " > South Sulawesi traders and warriors took to the seas in unprecedented numbers, supported by indigenous Indonesia's most sophisticated credit system. \n\nCould you expand on this?", "With the mass adoption of writing, has anyone done research/what do you know about the literature/literary culture? What sort of things were people writing, etc. What sort of oral tradition was there before that?\n\n", " > a story of exiles founding kingdoms two thousand miles away and of sailors toiling the long routes to Australia.\n\nWhat were the Sulawesi sailors doing in Australia?", "The Gowa state was centered in South Sulawesi, right? Were Palakka and his rebels coming from within the Sultanate, or were they sort of peripheral players (if that makes sense)? What instigated the rebellion, and how did Palakka/Dutch rule differ from the Sultanate?", "In your synopsis, you say that literacy seems to have expanded during the upheaval of the 18th century.\n\nWhat form does literature take in that century? Is it written in Arabic or Malay or another language? Was there a locally developed writing system, or would they be using an arabic ajami, or roman letters?", "What was 18th-Century South Sulawesian society like? Was it mostly rural, or were there urban centers? What were those urban centers like?  Were populations mostly coastal, or was there significant settlements in the interior? How \"deep\" would Dutch/Western culture have penetrated? ", "You mention that women could be elected as rulers. What do we know about gender roles outside the ruling class? Could women participate in activities like trade or were their economic activities limited to domestic production?", "A few questions about the slave trade: who were they selling, and who were they selling them to? Are there still coherent diaspora communities?", "You mention agricultural intensification in the 15th and 16th centuries. What crops were grown, and in what way did agriculture change in this period?", "Thanks for doing this!\n\n1) According to wikipedia, between the 15th to 19th centuries, South Sulawesi served as the gateway to the Maluku Islands. What do we know about relations between South Sulawesi and Maluku? Were they mostly economical/ focused on trade, or was there also cultural exchange taking place?\n\n2) Do we know of European reactions when encountering female rulers? For example regarding the Bugis ruler who led a revolt against the Dutch at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (which might have been perceived of as unusual in this region). ", "Do the people of Sulawesi have any record of large volcanic eruptions? How did something like the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, or the 1257 eruption of Samalas affect institutions and life in general on Sulawesi (or other large eruptions if those are outside your scope)?\n\n Do they have cultural traditions about how to respond to volcanoes and tsunamis? Could people farm that year? Did governments survive the crisis? Were their religious implications? Did the disruptions aid or disrupt Dutch or Portuguese imperialism?", "I am curious about the internal relations between different groups within Sulawesi. My understanding is that on much of the Indonesian islands a very complex dynamic emerged between the upland groups and coastal groups, like the Dayak and Banjar of Borneo. What sort of internal relations were there in Sulawesi?", "How did South Sulawesi's states relate to the other peninsulas of the Island? To the interior of the center? Looking at the geography of the Island I would assume a lot of transportation was by sea.", "Great post. My question is: what was the relationship between the Indonesian kingdoms in Sulawesi and the Siamese kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya or the Khmer kingdoms? Were there trading missions or diplomatic relations and envoys between Indonesia and the mainland Indochina? ", "This has been a super fascinating read, thanks. I know you've listed a lot of sources but are there any great introductory books on either South Sulawesi or South East Asian history in general that you would recommend for further reading?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cgkr3/til_the_bugis_people_of_indonesia_recognise_5/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sulawesi"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1m15fv", "title": "Are there any pieces by well-known artists that are generally considered \"bad\"?", "selftext": "I apologize if this isn't the proper subreddit to discuss art/music history.\n\nToday, I read [this article](_URL_0_) about the Van Gogh Museum identifying a new painting by Van Gogh, and it made me wonder: Are there any world famous artists (be they painters, composers, sculptors) who have pieces that are widely considered as \"bad\" or at least much worse than the rest of their work? It seems like all pieces in an artist's body of work typically receive some sort of acclaim regardless of their actual artistic merits. I understand this is a highly subjective question, but I assume that there would be some examples that showed a lesser execution or failed attempt at a derivative style.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m15fv/are_there_any_pieces_by_wellknown_artists_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc4u7k1", "cc4uq07", "cc4vpl7", "cc4vykd", "cc4x21b", "cc5f4ok"], "score": [81, 24, 7, 6, 39, 4], "text": ["[Wellington's Victory](_URL_0_), written by Ludwig van Beethoven, could count. Written to commemorate the Duke of Wellington's Victory over Joseph Bonaparte (NOT his more famous victory over a different Bonaparte), it was pretty popular in the aftermath of the victory but also drew criticism for being...well...not very good, certainly not as good as the rest of his music. It did make him boatloads of money though.\n\n\nAlthough, responding to criticism, Beethoven apparently said \"What I shit is better than anything you could ever think up!\"", "Rothko's early expressionist work, such as this; _URL_1_\n\nThat's the kind of trend I've found with artists regarding this topic. Bad at style X and move into style Y and are much better.\n\nMy source is the Simon Schama doc regarding Rothko. Not sure in which part, but it's there. _URL_0_", "I think that's fairly common although such pieces by for instance painters, of course still sell at good prices (but no where near their more famous works). Van Gogh is said to have drawn/painted more than 2,000 pieces and most of them still exist, yet, his early works sell for a fraction of his much more famous late paintings. I remember an auction a few years back of a dozen or so early Van Gogh sketches. They sold for between 1,000 and 5,000 US dollars a piece if I remember correctly. That also means, that for the price of the average living room sofa, you can actually acquire an original Van Gogh. It's not going to be Der Stern Nacht or something with sunflowers though :)", "I can think of a few examples in literature. \n\nJean-Paul Sartre wrote a trilogy of novels called \"Les Chemins de la libert\u00e9\" that have received little to no attention by scholars. They're frankly as odd to read as Ayn Rand, in that he's trying really hard to illustrate a philosophical theory in fiction. It's hard to say something is \"bad\" but this could very well fit the bill.\n\nNabokov translated Pushkin's Eugene Onegin in the 1960s, a translation that was generally considered to be terrible. Nabokov seemed to believe that the book could not be translated, so he made an English version that was clunky, non-rhyming, and obscure. \n\nFlaubert wrote a sort-of poem called \"The Temptation of Saint Anthony\" that, after he finished the first version, his friends told him to throw in the fire. He continued to work on it for the rest of his life, but it never really took off the way any of his other work did. ", "I think it's important to differentiate between an artist's juvenilia, which can often be mediocre, and a mature work that's just not up to snuff. Wellington's Victory is an example of the latter, as has been suggested.\n\nThere are a number of instances where a composer's early operas are seen as clunky or otherwise not very good- both Verdi and Wagner are examples of this, with  the former's Oberto and Un giorno di regno being widely regarded as promising but uneven, and the latter's Die Feen never being performed and Das Liebesverbot being withdrawn after one performance. \n\nIn literature, the poetry of James Joyce is regarded as competent but not worth much acclaim, and his play Exiles is regarded by some as a failure. Joyce's first book of poetry isn't quite juvenilia but also not mature either, and Exiles, while mature, is early. ", "Do modern musicians count? There are several artists who are widely considered to have declined in quality over time. Johnny Cash's work in the years before *American Recordings* was released are generally agreed to be bad. Bob Dylan's *Knocked Out Loaded* and *Down in the Groove* were very poorly received."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/arts/design/new-van-gogh-painting-discovered-in-amsterdam.html?_r=0"], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington's_Victory"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ8AIIAgYpg", "http://www.galleryintell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Rothko-3.png"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "dudihe", "title": "In the new Netflix movie \"The King\" about King Henry V of England and the battle of Agincourt, would the Dauphin of France have really died the way he did?", "selftext": "I'm not real knowledgeable on this part of the world at this time in history, so I looked it up and the Dauphin wasn't even at the battle, so I know the movie is making stuff up here. BUT, *would* a king simply let the common soldiers basically execute the prince of France? Is it in all cases that royalty and nobility were taken prisoner until they could be ransomed off or could a scenario like that of \"The King\" have realistically happened?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dudihe/in_the_new_netflix_movie_the_king_about_king/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f77ka9c"], "score": [37], "text": ["I suppose you could say that there are two separate questions here, one being whether common soldiers might be permitted to kill high nobility on the battlefield, and the other being whether or not they would be allowed to kill a member of the high nobility after the battle had ended, which is essentially the situation at the end of the movie. The need to answer both questions comes from a number of different sources describing Agincourt as the battle where chivalry died in the mud, suggesting that it was substantially different from all previous battles and that the killing of greater nobles was something unusual at the time.\n\nWhile it's certainly true that the ideal was to take knights and other nobles for ransom, both out of a sense of a shared \"club\", if you will, and out of financial incentives, this hides a very pragmatic face of battle. If it was impractical to take someone prisoner, either because they were actively fighting you or because your army was outnumbered, then you simply killed them, whether they were a peasant or a king. There were also some special occasions, such as when fighting traitors or against a bitter enemy, when a king might declare that no prisoners were to be taken. Both the French and English declared this at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt and, although many high ranking prisoners were taken during the late stages of all three battles, on the whole the death toll among the nobility could be quite shocking. \n\nAs an example at the Battle of Crecy, king John of Bohemia, the duke of Lorraine and the counts and lords of Alencon, Flanders, Blois, Harcourt, Salm, Rosenberg and Saint-Venant were all killed, in addition to perhaps as many as two thousand lesser lords and knights. More interestingly, we know of at least four prisoners who were killed after Crecy during a dispute over who had captured them. The details aren't provided beyond that but the source, Colins de Beaumont, was quite possibly a witness to the battle and certainly seems to have helped identify the French dead afterwards.\n\nAt Agincourt specifically, three dukes, five counts and nearly 100 other great lords in addition to somewhere around 3600-4000 other knights and men-at-arms. All but two of the major French commanders were killed, along with almost 60% of France's bailiffs and seneschals (officials in charge of Royal justice and administration in a region). The male line of entire families were wiped out, and the region of Picardy was almost devoid of knights and men-at-arms for a generation. This was seen as a great tragedy, but not as something unusual except in scale. After all, large numbers of the great princes (dukes, counts, kings, etc) had been killed at Crecy and Poitiers, so this was nothing new.\n\nWhile we can never be certain how many of these great lords were killed by common soldiers, there was no outrage over the fact that many were, in fact, killed by lower class men. It was a normal part of warfare for the period, and any lament was less for their deaths than for the lack of a chance for higher ranked men to have killed them and gained honour for themselves.\n\nComing back around to the Dauphin and *The King*, had the Dauphin been at Agincourt (he wasn't) and had he shown himself off to Henry after the French had been defeat, Henry wouldn't have ordered his men, whether common or noble, to kill him. The Dauphin was a far too useful political and financial catch to waste by slaughtering him. Even when Henry V ordered the killing of the prisoners (of whom ~700-900 out of 1400-1600 were killed, with ~700 survivors), he deliberately excepted the highest ranking men, such as Arthur de Richemont, the Duke of Brittany. Not only would killing them deny Henry a rich ransom (it was normal for the king to \"buy\" the highest ranked nobles from their captors), but by keeping them prisoner he could minimise the participation of their lands in future conflict. Without their lord to recruit troops, it would be harder to draw men from those counties and dukedoms. \n\nCapturing the Dauphin, the heir to the throne, would have been even better. Not only would he have been worth a king's ransom (almost literally), but by having him prisoner Henry would be removing a moderating factor in the civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and gaining an even greater ability to play each side against the other as he strove to become king of France.\n\n**Recommended Reading**\n\n* *Agincourt: A New History*, by Anne Curry\n* *The Hundred Years' War Volume 4*, by Jonathan Sumption"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1zyljk", "title": "Did the Polish Army really fight on horses against tanks in WW2?", "selftext": "I've heard several stories here. My background is Polish so I have a bit of a interest into Polish history.\n\nI've talked to some old timers about the war and many would say the Polish Army fought the tanks on Horseback, now this may seem ridiculous and maybe somewhat brave, but more or less stupid. I heard from family sources that this horse vs tank, was nothing more than German propaganda in Italy.\n\nI understand Poland was not high in tech during the time, and I could understand using a cavalry to split up infantry, but to ride against a tank? I find that utter nonsense.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zyljk/did_the_polish_army_really_fight_on_horses/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfy5mc3"], "score": [585], "text": ["This is actually a really interesting story.\n\nThe Polish Cavalry was a very high-prestige part of Polish armed forces, and had a lot of history behind them - Napoleon's lancers, Winged Hussars and so on. By 1939, the Polish cavalry were, as mirozi said, highly mobile infantry units really, but were used in the same way as NATO planned to use jeep squads in the event of a Soviet invasion - set up an ambush with anti-tank weapons, knock out a couple of tanks, retire to the next position quickly and set up another ambush etc. \n\nThere were even examples of the Polish cavalry divisions bringing the Panzers to a dead stop, for example the [Battle of Mokra](_URL_0_).\n\nThe \"charging tanks with cavalry\" myth seems to have originated in a specific incident on the first day of the invasion, the [Skirmish at Krojanty](_URL_1_).\n\nAlthough trained as mobile anti-tank/dragoon units, Polish cavalry retained the sabre, just in case. On 1 September, the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans were covering a retreat when they spotted a unit of German infantry resting in a clearing. Colonel Mastalerz decided to take them by surprise and ordered a sabre charge of about 250 cavalry. The charge was successful and the German infantry - who can't have been expecting cavalry with sabres charging them - dispersed into the trees with heavy casualties.\n\nAt that point, some German armoured cars appeared and laid into the cavalry, causing some casualties (including Col. Mastelarz) and driving the rest off.\n\nIn the aftermath, the German casualties were cleared away and the Poles left, and some neutral war correspondents were invited to come and see, and told that the cavalrymen had been killed while charging at tanks with sabres.\n\nThe story circulated rapidly, not only among the German and sympathetic presses (to whom the moral of the story was supposed to be *Look how stupid and backward the Poles are - we're doing them a favour by bringing German civilisation*), but also in the British and French presses, who swallowed the story whole, but there the moral was *Look how suicidally brave the romantic Poles are - isn't this just the sort of people we should be supporting*.\n\nThen, after the war, the Communist Polish government, eager to seize on anything that would make the pre-war government look bad, perpetuated the myth, with the moral now being *Look what the old capitalist government did for you - forcing soldiers to face Panzers with sword and lance!*\n\nIn other words the same, fake, story has been repeated by fascist, democratic and communist sources each to serve their own narrative of the invasion if 1939.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_mokra", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirmish_of_Krojanty"]]}
{"q_id": "5br6q5", "title": "Did the Warring States of China speak compatible languages? What about the Three Kingdoms, or the Northern and Southern dynasties? Are the modern Chinese language areas related to previous dynastic borders?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5br6q5/did_the_warring_states_of_china_speak_compatible/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9rhkur", "d9s20hw", "d9snayg"], "score": [26, 4, 5], "text": ["The victor of the Warring States, Qin Shi Huang, was famous for being the person who truly \"unified\" China by dictating that the whole country must use the same width gauge for carts (and therefore roads), and the same script for language. This enabled the centralised bureaucracy which he envisioned. Naturally, that means that before him, each region would speak their individual dialects. Note that he unified the *writing*, not the spoken language, which is why, even to this day, China is host to dozens of different dialects which all share the same writing system, but are almost as different as Western European languages are from each other. The most familiar example would be Cantonese, which is as understandable to a speaker of Mandarin as French would be to a speaker of English, even while the writing is 95% identical. \n\nTo anticipate follow-up questions, the Qin dynasty script is almost still readable by modern Chinese speakers. They look [archaic and weird](_URL_1_) compared with [modern script](_URL_0_) (left), but one could still make out some characters that have survived 2500 years nearly unchanged. \n\nIt follows that during the Three Kingdoms and Northern and Southern States periods, the script was already unified, and therefore any piece of writing could be read across the length and breadth of China. I am not completely familiar with the spoken dialect during those times, but there would be a dominant \u5b98\u8a71 (guan hua, \"official speak\") spoken in the capital and by officials, which changed with the dynasties who liked to move the capital around a lot. Modern Mandarin is technically a northern dialect favoured by the Manchus of the last dynasty, Qing. \n\nSorry if this is a rambling answer, since I'm not specifically a linguistic expert, but have studied Chinese history a fair deal and pieced together this reply from bits and pieces of what I know. ", "During the Warring States the large southern state of Chu spoke a non-sinic language. (_URL_0_) The other Zhou states spoke a form of Chinese with no obvious dialectical differences. I don't know about later dynasties but I assume that in the Northern and Southern dynasties the north received influences from Steppe languages and the literate elites of the South spoke (good, proper) Chinese. ", "I think you'll find this article interesting:\n\n\"Vernacular Languages in the Medieval Jiankang Empire\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt goes into the different spoken Sinitic languages of the Southern Dynasties:\n\nThe most prestigious was that spoken by the literate elite at the capital, Jiankang, which descended from the language spoken around 4th century Luoyang and had been carried south by the elite families fleeing the chaos of that era. This was consider by them as the proper way to speak. By the end of the Northern and Southern period this language/dialect had apparently diverged sufficiently from that in the north that northerners could be mocked for their uncivilized speech:\n\n\"At  that  time  among  Ru  scholars  who  had  come  from  the  north  there  was  Cui  Ling\u2019en,  Sun  Xiang,  and  Jiang  Xian;  they  all  assembled disciples and gave lectures, but their nunciation and phrases were crude and clumsy; only Guang\u2019s speech and arguments were pure and *ya*, not like a northern \nperson.\"\n\nThe northerners didn't have much good to say about the southerners either:\n\n\"Although Qin urvivors and Han convicts mixed in using some civilized speech,  nonetheless  the  difficult  languages  of  Min  and  Chu  cannot  be  changed\"\n\n\"The  officials  of  the  central  plains  exclaim  that  Jiangdong  people  (i.e., the southerners)  are  all  acting  like  badgers,  and  said  they  were  akin  to  foxes  and  badgers.  As  for  the  Ba,  Shu,  Man,  Liao,  Xi,  Li,  Chu,  and  Yue  [peoples]:  their  languages  are  as  dissimilar  as  the  sounds  of  birds  and  the  cries  of  fowl,  their  preferences all as different as those of monkeys, snakes, fish, and turtles.\"\n\nWu language originated as a blend of Sinitic and the native languages of the Wu and Yue states of the Spring and Autumn era. This was the native speech of the Jiangdong era, including the native southern elites, and was the language spoken at the Wu court during the Three Kingdoms era (the Sun clan were themselves natives of Wu) As such it also enjoyed a certain prestige.\n\nAnother spoken language was that of Chu (here Chu is used in a late Warring State sense, i.e. the Huai region) As quoted above it was considered by northerners as quite barbaric and bird-like, possibly due to having more tones than northern languages. To them this was a language of country bumpkins, but these bumpkins included most of the soldiers and generals in the South's Northern Headquarters army, including the founders of the Liu Song and Southern Qi dynasties.\n\nThere were many other dialects and languages as well, but evidence these are much more slim"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Chenzihmyon_typefaces.svg/1280px-Chenzihmyon_typefaces.svg.png", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script#/media/File:XiaozhuanQinquan_sized.jpg"], ["https://www.umass.edu/wsp/resources/chu/lexicon.html"], ["http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp250_jiankang_empire.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "4i8seu", "title": "Is it commonly accepted that Alexander Hamilton was lovers with fellow soldier and aristocrat John Laurens?", "selftext": "I just came across this piece and was wondering what historians in general think of Hamilton's letters to Laurens. _URL_0_\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i8seu/is_it_commonly_accepted_that_alexander_hamilton/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2wk7z0"], "score": [5], "text": ["Am reading [Ron Chernow's \"Alexander Hamilton\"](_URL_0_) currently, and as in your linked article, he presents the facts and adds a bit of context and makes the same conclusion as your linked article does:  \"Of course, we\u2019ll probably never know for sure. \".\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.queerty.com/was-founding-father-alexander-hamilton-bisexual-his-letters-suggest-so-20140704"], "answers_urls": [["http://bulkbookstore.com/alexander-hamilton-9780143034759?gclid=CjwKEAjwpLa5BRCTwcXS6_rpvC4SJACTDQMM-DyyVixIVPLRz0rZJniS9tlO25TvrlJ5Bjoc9UrhJBoCGajw_wcB"]]}
{"q_id": "10dy38", "title": "Hey r/AskHistorians! I'm an illustrator doing a portrait of Boudica of the Iceni for an exhibition. Anyone have any pointers on what she would have worn? (x post r/history)", "selftext": "I know she probably would have worn a torc and possibly a fur cloak with a celtic brooch, but beyond that i'm stumped! And I'm not even sure if that's correct! Any pointers would be much appreciated!\n\nEdit: you guys are amazing! I'm so thrilled with all the information you've proffered, thanks so much! I'll post here with my final so you guys can see how it goes! Thanks again :')\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10dy38/hey_raskhistorians_im_an_illustrator_doing_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6cp6po", "c6cpe8p", "c6cph0x", "c6cpt2z"], "score": [67, 4, 24, 27], "text": ["There's some controversy over whether Boudica was a real historical person or whether she was a mythological figure (a bit like an early, female  King Arthur.) _URL_0_ \n\nAssuming she did exist, she would most likely have dressed like a typical Celtic noblewoman. \n\nYou have some poetic licence here since we've barely more than Roman written accounts for how the costumes themselves were assembled (google image for jewellery as much survived) but your 'fur cloak' idea alone sounds way too crude. The Celts were renowned for their textiles, the upper class had imported linens and silks as well woollen and fur garments and they had elaborate weaving and dying techniques which the Romans had to import since they couldn't recreate them. Even the poorest celts would have worn loosely woven garments, probably woollen ones and the richest celts would have had closely woven silk or linen garments, complete with embroidery and an optional fur trim. \n\nDon't think 'cave woman' think 'these people wore clothes so nice they were sought after by rich Romans.'\n\nInterestingly some of the surviving archaeological evidence shows that the Celts were able to produce tartan/plaid cloth so you can totally use that.  \n\n_URL_1_ ", "Accounts of her refer to very long red hair and a \"multi-colored\" dress, which could have meant the plaid-like weave that did exist then (please note that the modern Scottish kilt is a creation of the Renaissance and does not have its roots in antiquity. Sorry Mel Gibson). Celts often fought nude or nearly nude, and almost always with bare feet. I would think Boudicca would have been sleeveless and her hemline would not fall far below the knees. ", "Here's a paper by an undergraduate student of Art History: [\u2018Celtic\u2019 Clothing \\(with Greek and Roman Influence\\)from the Iron Age-a Realistic View Based on What We Know](_URL_0_). It has lots of pictures of surviving bits of textile and other apparel and some reconstructions.", "You may want to ask /r/fashionhistory if you don't find your answer here. :) Good luck!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://suite101.com/article/the-evidence-for-the-historical-boudica-a309102", "http://ua-huntsville.academia.edu/heathersmith/Papers/1544116/Celtic_Clothing_During_the_Iron_Age-_A_Very_Broad_and_Generic_Approach"], [], ["http://ua-huntsville.academia.edu/heathersmith/Papers/1544116/Celtic_Clothing_During_the_Iron_Age-_A_Very_Broad_and_Generic_Approach"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ypawy", "title": "London Club Culture", "selftext": "I've been a fan of the Sherlock Homes series for most of my life and the stories continually reference a fictional London club called the 'Diogenes Club'.  London clubs are also mentioned extensively in 'The Long Firm', which is set in the 1960's. I would be interested to know the answers to the following questions.\n\n1) What exactly were these clubs ? \n\n2) How did one join ? \n\n3) What were the costs of membership ? \n\n4) Do many of these clubs still exist ?   \n\n5) Were there clubs for all social classes at this point in history or just the wealthy ? \n\n6) Was this culture unique to London or did other major European cities have gentleman's clubs ? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ypawy/london_club_culture/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfmntb1", "cfmnv56", "cfmqh8n"], "score": [21, 3, 10], "text": ["1. Large club houses, usually highly luxurious, complete with bars, restaurants, billiards rooms, smoking rooms, and guest bedrooms.\n2. Each club typically has it's own requirements, which have shifted over time. The Oxford and Cambridge Club is for graduates of Oxford and Cambridge University, The East India Club was originally intended for officers and civil servants who had served the East India Company. Today it recruits from recent graduates of Britain's elite \"public\" schools (i.e. private schools.) There is also usually some mechanism by which the children of members can become members.\n3. Varied from club to club and the type of member. Younger and older members usually pay less, as do those who aren't residents of London.\n4. Yes they very much still exist, which is how I'm able to answer this question.\n5. Class in the UK is separate from a question of wealth. These clubs are a bastion of what the British call the \"middle class\" but the middle class in Britain can refer to a billionaire so long as they don't have a title. The aristocracy have their own club affiliations. Then there are political clubs. There's even \"alternative\" members clubs for those involved in the arts and entertainment like The Groucho Club: _URL_1_\n6. They are extensive throughout the United States (virtually every Northern City has a Union League. New York and Boston, in particular, have many) and in Anglo/American expat communities around the world, but while the continent certainly it's share of fraternal organizations and salons I don't know of any non-English speaking countries where this took off in the same way.\n\nedit: in reference to class there are also the working men's clubs: _URL_0_", "I can answer question 4)\n\nThere are still numerous clubs still active, including the Savile Club: _URL_1_ and the Caledonian club: _URL_0_.\n\nThere is a list of London gentlemens' clubs on Wikipedia that you might find interesting: _URL_2_\n\nEDIT: CptBuck has covered everything in depth anyway.\n", "I highly recommend:\rMilne-Smith, Amy. London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late Victorian Britain. New York: Palgrave, 2011. \rit addresses many of these questions as well as how clubs contributed to gender norms of \"the gentleman.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_men%27s_club", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Club"], ["http://www.caledonianclub.com/", "http://www.savileclub.co.uk/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_London's_gentlemen's_clubs"], []]}
{"q_id": "6kpeyj", "title": "Why did Jefferson's \"Let's make thousands of tiny one-cannon gunboats instead of a few giant ships\" scheme fail?", "selftext": "See title. Seemed like a creative idea when I read about it, but it was apparently vaguely \"unworkable\". Why is that?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kpeyj/why_did_jeffersons_lets_make_thousands_of_tiny/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djoc7mc"], "score": [80], "text": ["There's a saying that a military prepares for the *last* war it fought. Such was the case with the United States. The experience at Tripoli taught America's naval and political leaders that gunboats could be effective in harbor defense. Navy Secretary Robert Smith, however, knew that gunboats alone would not be sufficient to meet America's defensive needs in the first decade of the 19th century. He asked the federal government in 1806 to provide for frigates, ships of the line, then gunboats for harbor defense.\n\nSmith ran into a political buzzsaw: Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, a \"fiscal superhawk\" (to use a term from *Six Frigates*) who asked whether Smith's requested naval expense would cause more problems than it solved. While Smith had Congressional support, he was only able to wrangle funds for seaport fortifications and gunboats in April 1806. The same appropriations legislation limited the number of standing naval personnel; if gunboats were to be built, they would be operated by the equivalent of naval militia, by and large.\n\nA year after Smith garnered $250,000 for gunboats, Jefferson asked Congress for $1 million more to build 200 additional gunboats. Congress complied with enough money to build 180.\n\nThere were multiple problems with the concept, to quote *Six Frigates*:\n\n > \"As the first gunboats were launched and placed in service, criticism mounted. They were wet, cramped, and uncomfortable. It was often difficult to recruit full complements of seamen to man them. Officers took the first opportunity to be transferred into a frigate. Then a Norfolk gunboat capsized and sank in six fathoms of water, Stephen Decatur dryly asked a fellow officer: 'What would be the real national loss if all gunboats were sunk in a\nhundred fathoms of water?'\"\n\nThe critics were, of course, right. Gunboats were ineffective in anything but a flat calm. They were incredibly fragile, usually sinking under a single shot from a larger vessel. They were difficult to man and operate \u2500 it was much more efficient to use the same number of crewmen on a frigate \u2500 and they were much more expensive than planned. Congress had expected each gunboat to cost about $5,000. The true cost was almost double that. \n\nCongress authorized the construction of 278 gunboats between 1805 and 1807, but only 176 were built and still fewer were placed into service. The gunboat program was abandoned after Jefferson left office. It was a complete failure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "93x9ho", "title": "I am a Chinese scholar from a poor background who just passed his imperial exam. What is my future path like? Will I be obstructed due to my poverty? How meritocratic is the system?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/93x9ho/i_am_a_chinese_scholar_from_a_poor_background_who/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e3gmnqx", "e3hmdpb", "e3hreki"], "score": [15, 8, 24], "text": ["I didn't wanted to specify a time period for fear that the question may be too specific. If it's a concern, we can fix around 1000 AD.", "As a sort of follow up, how likely was someone from a poor background to have the opportunity to take or pass the exam? Was literacy preventative enough, or was an at least \"middle class\" (to use a perhaps anachronistic term) background a prerequisite? \n\nEven if that were the case I imagine OP's general question would still apply regarding the treatment differences of the nobility/wealthy and less advantaged exam takers. But I would be curious to know the extent to which imperial exams were feasible to much of the population. ", "Depending on what level of exam the person just passed. During the Song dynasty, around 1000 AD, there were three levels of examinations. Regional, provincial, and court. Also there are martial and arts, depending on what exam you participated the results differ. If you rank at the very top, you'd be invited to participate the court exam under the direct supervision of the emperor himself. Passing the court exam can make someone over night from poor peasant to prime minister.  Lower rankings might get you some employment opportunities at local bureaucracies. After the emperor Yingzong's (1065AD onward) reforms of the examination system, all exam participants who passed court exam would be issued government positions, regardless of ranking.\n\nAs far as Song dynasty's exams are concerns, it is very meritocratic. Several improvements were made to ensure fairness also traveling and food stipends were handed out to traveling and poor exam participants. The emperor Yingzong also issued decrees such as double blinded exams, the exam taker doesn't know who the marker is and the marker can't see the name of the exam taker because the name is sealed. So the exam taker can't find the right person to bribe, and exam marker can't abuse their position through nepotism.  \n\nTotal amount of people passed the exams during the Song dynasty was around 40k out of an adult male population of more than ten million. So the competition is fierce. If you have reached that level of scholarly prowess, opportunities will most likely to find you without your worries. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1x5tpn", "title": "Was it possible to fake your death during a battle and escape afterwards?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x5tpn/was_it_possible_to_fake_your_death_during_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf8j4yb"], "score": [3], "text": ["The thing to keep in mind is that throughout most of human history, playing dead was terrible idea.  Reason-being, up until the 20th century, looting corpses was generally considered legal foraging.  (Up until the 20th century, pillage was frequently a stated incentive for a soldier.)  Once the losing side was driven off, the fallen would be stripped naked by the victors and their assorted camp followers.  Also worth mentioning, ripping teeth from the fallen was a common practice up through the Victorian-era, as they could be resold for dentures.  Good luck playing dead through that.  Unless you're a wounded officer/noble worth a ransom, there was no incentive not to finish you on the spot.\n\nThat being said, I can think of some modern US examples.\n\nThe D-Day paratrooper on the St. Mere Church is a pretty famous story, immortalized in the book/movie The Longest Day.  The planes took so much AA that the paratroopers were scattered everywhere from early drops and evasive manuevers.  Two squads ended up dropping literally in the middle of the German occupied town of St. Mere Eglise.  Private John Steele's chute got caught on the church steeple.  When he attempted to cut the risers, he fumbled and dropped his switchblade.  His weapon would have been in an inaccessible duffle bag.  So he did the only thing he could and played dead, having to watch the rest of his squad get hunted down and killed.\n\nThe classic book The Longest Day was written as pop history and is a very fun read.  The movie also has aged fairly well, so long as you're comfortable with how WW2 was depicted on the silver screen prior to Saving Private Ryan.  The 505th RCT also maintains a pretty good history page that does PVT Steele good justice.  TIL, that Steele was actually the oldest man in his company at 32 and doubled as the company barber: _URL_3_\n\nIn Vietnam, there were quite a few lone suvivors of catastrophic near ambushes.\n\nIn OPERATION HICKORY, 18 May 1967, an infantry platoon was pinned by a battallion-sized element of NVA.  Realizing they where doomed, the PL called 155mm on their position.  The NVA overran them and took their position.  When relief came the next morning, they found only eight survivors who had successfully played dead and were stripped of belongings.  It's worth mentioning that this action was the beginning of a Presidential Unit Citation for 1/4 BCT.\n\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n\nThe POW's SPC McMillian, SGT Davis, and SGT Calloway were captured while unsuccesfully attempting to play dead.  Their accounts were told in \"Survivors\" by Zarin Grant.  On 10 MAR 1968, their observation post came under fire and the did not have a radio.  While evading incoming mortar fire, they were separated from their unit and walked into the line of an enemy machinegun.  Calloway was badly wounded and they tried to hide.  Eventually they exhausted their ammo and were captured while trying to play dead.  Luckily the NVA had recent order to take POW's as negotiating chips.  Calloway died of wounds that night.  Davis and McMillan spent the next five years getting tortured in a variety of POW camps in both North and South Vietnam.  On a positive note, Davis would retire as a Command Sergeant Major in 1997 (!!!) after finishing a 30 year career with the US Army.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_5_\n\nThere are various loose anecdotes about this being done in Vietnam.  Particularly chilling was a 2010 obit for a deceased Marine vet:\n\n\"As a Marine on the front lines, Mr. Cruse saw most of the men in his platoon killed, his family said.\n\nViet Cong ambushed Mr. Cruse and men in his division as they crossed a mine field. Mr. Cruse took shelter behind the body of a Viet Cong soldier who had just been killed, said nephew Jeffrey Dovan, who is now a Marine.\n\nWhen the gunfire stopped and the Viet Cong were checking for survivors, Mr. Cruse successfully played dead.\n\nMr. Cruse, who lived in Vietnamese villages and dressed like the local people to blend in, later had a difficult time coping with what he had experienced.\n\n\"He had issues with helicopters,\" his sister said. \"It was bad for a long time, with the flashbacks.\"\"\n\n_URL_6_\n\nOne unusual outlier, on Christmas, 1969, CPT Marshall and three other men were enroute to a Christmas party outside Saigon when their jeep was ambushed.  The only man alive, he held his breath as they looted his corpse.  The dog piled the bodies and lit them ablaze with gasoline.  Luckily Charlie did't watch the bonfire as CPT Marshall was able to crawl out from the bottom. \"I could smell the burning flesh.\"\n\n_URL_4_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/d/d016.htm", "http://members.tripod.com/msg_fisher/puc.html", "http://members.tripod.com/msg_fisher/battle-1a.html", "http://www.505rct.org/album2/steele_j.asp", "http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&amp;dat=19691228&amp;id=Z05AAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=tfIFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=3631,381848", "http://www.veterantributes.org/TributeDetail.php?recordID=1716", "http://articles.philly.com/2010-09-14/news/24974768_1_sister-viet-cong-vietnam-war"]]}
{"q_id": "1ixvel", "title": "Why is Paris a popular city for peace negotiations? Why are there over 20 treaties of Paris?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ixvel/why_is_paris_a_popular_city_for_peace/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb95e4n", "cb95wac"], "score": [123, 63], "text": ["This doesn't seem to be anything unusual for a European capital. According to Wikipedia:\n\n[25ish in London](_URL_1_)\n\n[10 in Madrid](_URL_2_)\n\n[6 in Lisbon](_URL_0_\n\n[9 in Berin](_URL_3_)\n\n[12 in Vienna](_URL_4_)\n", "France was, for an extremely long time, (basically between the decentralization and decline and the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages and the rise of Spain in the early renaissance with the final conquest of Granada, and then from the decline of Spain in the Thirty Years War until the rise of Britain and Russia with the fall of Napoleon) the preeminent military power in Europe, winning the vast majority of wars that it fought and signing a great many treaties in its capital. Even the HRE, which you might think, with its massive size would be the power to beat, was mostly decentralized and fought many more wars within its borders than without, and as individual states instead of a group.\n\nNot only that, but for a different very long time, primarily after the Reformation (when Church Latin started to lose its prior universality for some reason), French was also the lingua franca of Europe, everyone's second language ~~(which is why it's still called the lingua franca)~~. Catherine the Great of Russia even made French the language of her Russian court in her quest to modernize.\n\nBasically, France was a huge, powerful and influential deal in Europe for an extremely long time, and it makes sense that so many treaties were signed there, just like in London, because so much of Europe's history turns on the whims of the French. And where else are the French going to sign their big treaties but in Paris?\n\nEDIT: [Correction.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon_(disambiguation)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Madrid", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Berlin", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Vienna"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ixvel/why_is_paris_a_popular_city_for_peace/cb9ef62"]]}
{"q_id": "83qnz1", "title": "How exactly did the Aztecs distribute the cacao bean as currency? Did the state have a monopoly on bean production? Were bean farmers the richest people in the empire?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/83qnz1/how_exactly_did_the_aztecs_distribute_the_cacao/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dvk7yk0", "dvkd0cp"], "score": [37, 5], "text": ["So you are right that cacao was used as a currency but don't confuse that with how we might use printed fiat currency today.\n\nTheir value was relatively small, but they were particularly useful for the markets of the time. They had value because they could be used to make hot chocolate and culturally they were understood to be a useful standard for small value transactions. They were used inside and outside the Aztec Empire.\n\nSure cacao growing communities had them in ready supply, but mechanisms of taxation and market economies moved cacao beans out of those communities and into wider circulation.\n\nCacao beans were not the only pseudo-currency, bolts of cotton cloth were used similarly and had a much greater value. The best way to think of either cacao or cotton cloth is as a form of change that could be used to balance transactions. Sure cacao could be used in a pure exchange for something small, but they were just as often used to balance transactions of other items. Say you needed obsidian blades but were selling fine pottery. The value of the blades might exceed that of the pottery so you add a bag of cacao beans to match.\n\nThe value and utility of cacao beans lasted for decades after the Spanish conquests. For various reasons colonial Mexico was always cash poor (not enough specie in circulation) which made extensive use of credit and pseudo-currencies like cacao essential for regular commercial transactions. The Spanish even established a formal conversion rate to specie currency. The rate in 1555 was 320 beans to a Spanish silver peso (piece of 8), or 40 cacao beans (a *zontle*) to a real (1/8 of a peso). By the end of the century it was up to 800 beans to a peso or about 100 to a real. For context, an indigenous day laborer would have made about one real a day. So in other words a small bag of beans 40-100 was about one day's pay for an unskilled laborer.  \n\nHere is a Spanish language article on cacao as a currency in both precolumbian and postconquest periods:\n\nAranda, L. \"El uso de cacao como moneda en la \u00e9poca prehisp\u00e1nica y supervivencia en la \u00e9poca colonial.\" In XIII Congreso Internacional de Numism\u00e1tica, vol. 2, pp. 1439-1450. 2003.\n\navailable as a pdf [here](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: source\n\n", "I was actually just about to post something sort of similar. I'm not sure it'd be better off as it's own post or mee asking as a follow up question .\n\nBasically, I was curious how the goods and \"money\" from tribute intersect with the goods/\"Money\" from Pochteca in terms of the overall economic picture/Aztec (I say Aztec as in the overall hedgemonic empire, since I know tribute was also owed to Tlacopan and Texcoco and was also divvied out to other cities at times as well) economy. Were there any other facets to the Aztec economy besides these two? \n\nAdditionally, I was curious about how the logistics of tribute worked. I know the Mexica had a fairly complex, bureaucratic government, so I assume that this was equally complicated and involveed a variety of civil officials. The [wiikipedia page](_URL_0_) lists titles known as Petlacalcatl, Huecalpixque and Calpixque as officials involved with this process. \n\nIf I should have this be it''s own post(s), let me know. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-mecd/en/dms/mecd/cultura-mecd/areas-cultura/museos/mc/actasnumis/volumen-ii/edad-moderna/El_uso_cacao_como_moneda.pdf"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire#Schematic_of_hierarchy"]]}
{"q_id": "16llc2", "title": "Is there an official US list of countries which first recognized the United States of America?", "selftext": "Hello, my first post, I tried searching for this and couldn't find anything here. Google isn't that helpful either except there seems to be some consensus that Morocco is the first country to officially recognize US independence as a sovereign nation (Dec 20 1777):\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThough according to this quote, France officially recognized US independence a few days earlier (Dec 17 1777):\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd this link asserts that the Netherlands officially first \"recognized\" US independence in that it recognized the US naval ship Andrew Doria flying the new US flag in November 1776 (near the bottom of this link):\n_URL_2_\n\nMy question is simply this: is there an \"official list\" of countries which first recognized the United States of America that, for the lack of a better word, the US itself officially \"recognizes\"?\n\nThank you in advance!\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16llc2/is_there_an_official_us_list_of_countries_which/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7x6yst", "c7x9b8e", "c7xf37z"], "score": [33, 8, 2], "text": ["Looking for an official list? Go to the official source: [the US Department of State Office of the Historian](_URL_0_).\n\nAccording to that source, \"Morocco recognized the United States on June 23, 1786\" and \"France recognized the United States as an independent state on February 6, 1778.\"", "I heard that Dubrovnik sent a merchant to the US in 1776 and by that was the first to recognize it.\n\nCan anyone confirm?", "I dunno if this counts as anything but trivia, but Denmark was the first to salute an american flag.\n\n >  Denmark and The Netherlands were the first countries to salute the Grand Union flag, when gun salutes by American ships were returned by officials in the West Indies in late 1776: on Danish St. Croix in October, and on Dutch St. Eustatius in November. (Though later, the better documented St. Eustatius incident involving the USS\u00a0Andrew Doria is traditionally regarded as the \"first salute\".) France was the first country to salute the Stars and Stripes, when a fleet off the French mainland returned a gun salute by Captain John Paul Jones commanding USS\u00a0Ranger on February 14, 1778.\n\n(From Wikipedia)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1777/december_17_1777_43318.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93United_States_relations", "http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question87572.html"], "answers_urls": [["http://history.state.gov/countries"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1q9wqr", "title": "Would 18th century warships pick up sailors from sinking ships?", "selftext": "For instance, if the British navy and French navy had a naval battle and several ships on both sides sunk would the victor mount rescue operations to save the sailors who abandoned ship?\n\nWould they save their enemies as well?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q9wqr/would_18th_century_warships_pick_up_sailors_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdassyz", "cdatlbn"], "score": [33, 24], "text": ["First, you should understand that in the Age of Sail it was far, far more common for ships to be boarded and captured than to be sunk. Ship actions were fought at close quarters and officers and crew would share in prize money if a captured ship was brought into service. This was a major incentive that prevented firing into a ship to totally destroy it.\n\nAnd another thing is that sailors at this time could very rarely swim. Since ships were most often lost in storms, when rescue was impossible, the ability to swim was looked on as a liability. Much better to get your inevitable drowning over with quickly.\n\nSailors who survived a ship's grounding and breaking up would sometimes be rescued by boats sent out from land or from ships further off the coast. \n\nBut in the rare case when a ship was sunk and sailors were still afloat, clinging to flotsam, they would of course be picked up if possible. If not for common humanitarian motives, then at least for the possibility of intelligence.\n\nEdit: *In the great naval battle of Trafalgar, only one French ship was destroyed, compared to 10 captured, along with 11 Spanish ships captured to none destroyed.*\n\n*Navies also had no incentive to teach swimming to their crews because crews, when in home ports, were confined to their ships to prevent running. The ability to go over the sides and swim to shore would have wrecked havoc with a navy's ability to keep ship's numbers up to the required levels.*", "As I recall from Frederick Marryat novels, every attempt was made to save ones own sailors. In addition the enemy was rescued as well, when possible, to encourage reciprocation.\n\nI consider his novels as a decent source as they were written in the 1800s and Marryat was a British naval officer. \n\nIn that era, prisoners were routinely traded so one needed to collect them to get back ones own captured comrades. Officers were \"paroled\", given freedom of movement with the understanding that they would not try to escape until they were exchanged.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "922dfy", "title": "How much of a co-ruler was Theodora (500-548) to her husband Justinian (482-565)?", "selftext": "So in my classics class this last spring semester we read *Secret History* by Procopius and talked a lot about Justinian and Theodora. It was clear that Procopius didn't have many nice things to say about the couple, *especially* Theodora. One of my favorite little anecdotes was during the Nika Riots, I believe, where Justinian proposed fleeing for safety, and Theodora basically told him off in front of everyone saying that he could leave if he chose, but she was staying right where she was. I want to know, was this story actually true? And how much of an empress was Theodora really?\n\nThank you guys in advance  < 3 I truly love this board. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/922dfy/how_much_of_a_coruler_was_theodora_500548_to_her/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e332r1l", "e336rpn"], "score": [6, 15], "text": ["According to JJ Norwich\u2019s book \u2018The Early Days\u2019 Justinian saw her very much as his equal from the beginning and sought her council regularly. He also suggests that he was regularly acting on her suggestions and was largely under her influence. If it wasn\u2019t for her giving him a massive speech (as you alluded to) about how she\u2019d rather die in the purple than give it up in exile he most likely would\u2019ve been deposed at the riots of Nika (532) and this story is very much true. This event alone says enough about how much of an co-emperor she was \n\nPS: Absolutely fantastic book would very much recommend for an overview/ introduction to late antiquity/ early Byzantium ", "So, Theodora is one of those subjects where pop-history has a consensus that actual history doesn't. To be frank this pop-historical consensus is made by cherry picking good things from sources and discrediting anything negative. For example, the same source that mentions her as a ruler, perhaps even better than Justinian, also accuses her of murdering her own children so Justinian wouldn't set her aside. Setting aside what this says about her character, that action clearly implies Justinian had more power in the relationship. The justification for including the former and not the latter is that the latter is slander and the former is reporting a true fact because... well, it's not actually justified.\n\nYou brought up two common ideas: that she was a co-emperor and that she prevented Justinian from fleeing the Nika Riots. The idea she was a co-emperor has two pieces of evidence. First, from artistic representations where she was often portrayed more prominently than ministers, and sometimes equally prominent with Justinian. While this is unusual, it wasn't unprecedented and doesn't directly imply a specific title. What is known, though, is that it was often Justinian who was commissioning these pieces and that it actually became *more* common after her death.\n\nThe other piece of evidence is a mention by Procopius that she was crowned as his equal. This could mean she was raised to that title. It could also mean that Justinian didn't force her to make symbolic acts of submission and had her crowned rather than treating her as simply a consort. Considering the lack of coins and inscriptions using the title, it's likely he meant the latter. Even Procopius never describes her as acting as his equal or exerting direct authority the way a co-emperor would. There are some historians who do believe it's literal but the weight of evidence is that, while she was highly influential on her husband, Justinian was really the one in power.\n\nSecondly, the Nika Riots. Again, the specific story and speech is mentioned in only one source: Procopius. And we have no reason to believe Procopius was actually at the meeting. The language Procopius uses in describing Theodora is very clearly meant to evoke Sejanus, right down to using a Greek version of Sejanus's famous title 'socius operis'. And like Sejanus, Theodora is described as setting her own policy, thwarting her partner, starting reigns of terror, and taking on imperial powers. The incident might have happened but it serves an invective and paralleling purpose in the work.\n\nThe fact that Justinian is considering fleeing is cowardice since he still has his armies. That Theodora needs to encourage him to even fight for his throne is a clear insult to Justinian. It implies Justinian and his ministers are weaker and more cowardly than his wife. That, along with the excessive butchery of suppressing the riot along with the executions of innocents at Theodora's insistence, makes her a callous butcher and is another accusation of murder. (Side note: As to her being co-emperor, you might also note her famous speech begins with her saying that she doesn't usually attend the council of ministers that runs the state...) This also parallels Drusus and Sejanus' purge of Pannonian mutineers, comparing the couple unfavorably.\n\nSo while the incident might be real, the account we have of it is perfectly constructed for a specific literary purpose. And Procopius is not above manufacturing incidents wholesale.\n\nSourced from all three works of Procopius (*The Secret History*, *The Wars of Justinian*, *The Buildings of Justinian*), *The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian*, *Women in the Byzantine Empire*, and *The Secret History and Propaganda*.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "aypy79", "title": "Is there any historical evidence of Jesus referring to himself as the son of God?", "selftext": "having heard of gnostic christianity and the idea that Jesus did not believe himself to be a God, I was just wondering if there was any non-bible source of him making the claim. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aypy79/is_there_any_historical_evidence_of_jesus/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ei2ndyg", "ei310p6"], "score": [70, 4], "text": ["One of the few extra-biblical accounts of Jesus comes from the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus:\n\n\u201cAbout this time there lived Jesus, a wise man \\[if indeed one ought to call him a man.\\]  For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such  people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the  Greeks. \\[He was the Christ.\\]  When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing  amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the  first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him.\u00a0 \\[On  the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of  God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about  him.\\] And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.\u201d\n\n(The bracketed portions come from the Greek Translation; the 10th century Arabic translation does not include them) This one section of his work has cased quite a bit of controversy, with some scholars believing it to have been tampered with or completely fabricated. However, very few works outside the Bible quote Jesus directly, and, as of right now, the Gnostic's and other Christians must content themselves to the Bible.\n\nSources: \n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n [_URL_2_](_URL_2_) \n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n(edit):  formating changes", "I have a related question. I read somewhere that there is only one historical mention of Jesus by any other society alive at the time and that was found to be plagiarized. Is this true? Did no one around the world,outside of the immediate area, know about Jesus?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://josephus.org/testimonium.htm", "https://carm.org/regarding-quotes-historian-josephus-about-jesus", "https://www.britannica.com/biography/Flavius-Josephus"], []]}
{"q_id": "3ciuyx", "title": "Did ancient forms of mass entertainment have the ancient equivalent of advertisement? For example, did the Roman coliseum have something like banners from sponsors hanging in it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ciuyx/did_ancient_forms_of_mass_entertainment_have_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csvyuql"], "score": [47], "text": ["You wouldn\u2019t find banners or signs proclaiming \u2018Try Lucius\u2019 olive oil!\u2019 or \u20189 out of 10 gladiators prefer Marcus\u2019 fish sauce!\u2019. However, in a sense these mass spectacles were advertisements for their sponsors. \n\nThese games were paid for by rich men and magistrates, and they made sure that the populace knew who was picking up the bill. Normally the sponsor would be present at the spectacle and would stand and acknowledge the cheers (or jeers) of the crowd. This was a way to show that he was concerned about the well-being and happiness of the people. This was advertising his worth as a leader.\n\nIn the Republic different magistrates or candidates would put on these shows almost as a form of campaigning for office. So much money was spent that various laws were passed to try and reign in the extravagance.\n\nDuring the Empire the emperor was the best-known sponsor, either directly or indirectly \u2013 such as paying for games in the names of the consuls. Out in the provinces local elites paid for local shows, sometimes on their own and sometimes with the help of the emperor.\n\nRich men were expected to do this, as it was part of their civic responsibility. They were supposed to be magistrates and bestow such largesse on the people, but not all of them did it voluntarily. They could get out of it for various reasons, like sickness or being a practicing sophist \u2013 a kind of public speaker who was seen to add value to the community by his rhetoric. Aelius Aristides was one desperately tried to avoid it. Aristides wrote passionate letters explaining that he was a sophist and so shouldn\u2019t be forced to hold an office and spend much of his wealth on the public.\n\nA good overview is Eckart K\u00f6hne\u2019s Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "42gqg6", "title": "What is the origin of bullfighting in Spain?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42gqg6/what_is_the_origin_of_bullfighting_in_spain/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czm3yfj"], "score": [2], "text": ["Consult Adrian Shubert's \"Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight\"\n\n_URL_0_;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://global.oup.com/academic/product/death-and-money-in-the-afternoon-9780195144123?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp"]]}
{"q_id": "c3iof8", "title": "How did the Merovingian kings, so powerful under Clovis, become so irrelevant as to be overshadowed by the Mayor of the Palace?", "selftext": "Perhaps my thinking is influenced by fiction but it seems incredible to me that a line of kings who claimed descent from a literal god (Merovech) could become so powerless as the Merovingians became. Could anyone shed some light on this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c3iof8/how_did_the_merovingian_kings_so_powerful_under/", "answers": {"a_id": ["errw1aw"], "score": [80], "text": ["So, here's the thing, we tend to think of kings as some sort of all powerful monarch whose very word was law, when honestly absolute monarchy was not particularly common in medieval Europe.  There's some debate, but most put the era of absolute monarchs as not really starting until the 1500s at the earliest.  \n\nIn any case, the Merovingian kings were not absolute monarchs.  On the contrary, the Merovingians power waxed and waned largely based on military might and political acumen.  Take Clovis himself, at the start of his career he was the young ruler of a reasonably sized group of warriors, but he still needed allies from other warbands to make any real progress in gaining wider control of the area.  Of these king-chiefs (in the scraps of writing we have about the time they are called regulus or petty kings instead of rex) all of the ones which we have lineages to cite some legendary godlike ancestor.  That was part of the complex web by which they justified their authority.  So Clovis being the descendant of Merovech was probably not unique.  In fact, both of his major Frankish rival kings Ragnachar and Chararic, may have been relatives of Clovis.  I believe the jury is still out on Chararic.  \n\nSo, from the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensium (which for the record is written some 300 years after the events taking place) we can get a view of what was going on, though because of the time gap may be a bit flawed.  We see Clovis realizing that even with his military might he could not control the population without making some concessions to the religion of the land he ruled: Christianity.  He took a Christian wife, and later converted.  This shows another tension within the Merovingian power structure.  The king taking these steps in some ways shows that the church has at least some power over him.  The legitimacy that was once granted by the semi-legendary relative is now in the hands of the church.  \n\nBut this caused a ripple out effect among his warriors.  Many did not like this Christianization and sided with other more traditionally pagan kings.  One of which was Ragnachar.  His fate reveals another intricacy of the Merovingian power structures.  The kings ruled with their warriors so long as they could control their warriors.  And to control warriors you must give them things to fight, prove that you are an adept commander, and distribute wealth to your followers accordingly.  \n\nNow the records have a fun story about Ragnachar being miserly with his gifts and Clovis bribing his warriors to abandon him with armbands that he claimed were gold, but were really gold-plated bronze. In any case there was a battle, Clovis decisively won and Ragnachar was killed.  There's a different probably more accurate account of Ragnachar's defeat without the whole fake gold armband trickery.  But after his defeat, Ragnachar's own warriors offered him up to Clovis.\n\nIn either case, the important points to note are that the king must appease his warriors.  Their loyalty is fluid, if they feel unrewarded they will abandon their king.  But the king must also show strength, and deal with these unruly warriors harshly should the need require it.  It was a delicate balancing act and Clovis handled it marvelously.  \n\nEnough about Clovis himself, let's look at after he died.  Well his kingdom was split between his sons.  This, as one might expect further weakened the position of the king and the brothers made war against each other and vied for power.  So the idea of making war against the royal family was not really outside of anyone experience.  \n\nNow let's get to the last of Clovis' line.  Childeric III was famously deposed by his majordomo Pepin the Short.  How did Pepin grow so powerful?  Well, for the starters, being the son of a great commander does not necessarily make one a great commander.  Many of Clovis' descendants were not up to the task of fighting battles and navigating the politics of ruling under the power of the church while appeasing your warrior class.  The position of mayor of the house was originally something of a managerial position for lands the king directly held.  But from the turmoil of the Merovingian rulers wars, the position became hereditary and gained increasing power over the distribution of wealth and for particularly weak kings even commanded battles.  \n\nThen we get to Pepin's father, Charles Martel.  Martel was one of those warriors unsatisfied with the rule of the royal family, and fought several wars against them until the king was forced to give him the title of mayor of the house.  Charles then set about the long work of doing everything a king was supposed to do.  He won victories, he defended the church, he distributed wealth to the warrior classes.  When his king died that didn't really stop.  Charles was so powerful he got to appoint the king he wanted.  And at the end of his life he didn't even bother to do that.  There was no king for four years, with Charles mostly just running things as though nothing had happened.\n\nBy the time Charles died, his son Peppin the Short was ready to take up the reins from his father.  Peppin was clever, he distributed the wealth, he ran the battles, he made political ties to the church.  Another king does get appointed, finally, but only because the sons of Charles were fighting for control and Peppin wanted a real king to add legitimacy to his position.  \n\nOnce the king served his purpose, and Peppin defeated his brother there wasn't much a point for him anymore.  Peppin spoke with the pope, who really needed the assistance of a powerful military leader at the time, to secure the alliance with the Church to depose the Merovingians.  Then he got himself elected by his own soldiers who he paid.  Then he continued to lead these men in battle and distributed their loot accordingly.  And so the transition is completed.  \n\nThe power of the Merovingian throne rested far more in the political leaders ability to balance the keys to the throne rather than things like lineage.  Canny mayors of the palace realized this and over the years took control of those important keys and in turn made the king irrelevant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3u1y82", "title": "After glancing through all the Jared Diamond rebuttals on this sub's FAQ, it seems as though geographical determinism is largely discredited. But I don't understand how that can be the case, what else is there?", "selftext": "Every rebuttal mentions culture and ideology, but those don't just spontaneously appear.  There has to be some causal series of events that brought forth said culture.  Wouldn't the root of that causal chain be geography?  Is my interpretation broader than the intended meaning of the term?  Because otherwise I do not see how one could argue against the idea.  Are all historians dualists?  Where is the culture coming from if not environmental stimuli?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3u1y82/after_glancing_through_all_the_jared_diamond/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxb8tov", "cxbabye"], "score": [10, 94], "text": ["Not an answer but an auxiliary question: has Diamond ever addressed any of the criticisms towards his work?", "I had a similar conversation with a friend yesterday. I don't like to tie myself down to anthropological theory, but I'm certainly against Environmental Determinism (Diamond isn't purely an environmental determinist, but near enough that I'll be using be shorthanding his theory that way here). If you twist my arm, I'll generally side with Historical Particularism or at least something akin to that. It's anthropological theory for those who don't like anthropological theory!\n\nThe basics of Historical Particularism are these:\n\n* Each society is shaped by its own unique history.\n* That history includes environmental factors, yes, but also interactions with neighboring peoples, the appearance of innovators (technological, philosophical, artistic, etc.), the response to those innovators, the occasional bit of dumb luck, and so on.\n* Human societies are too diverse and influenced by too many factors for a simplistic Big Picture theory to accurately account for all variables.\n* To understand a human society, you need to closely examine that society specifically and delve into its unique historical circumstances.\n\nOther people will likely have their own frameworks to work with, but in general the thing that sets them apart from an Environmental Deterministic view is the value placed on human agency. \n\nDiamond makes a big deal about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the idea that environmental differences between Eurasia and the Americas determined the outcome of that event. But there are plenty of moments leading up to the Fall of Tenochtitlan where the decisions of individuals shaped the course of events. Years before Geronimo de Aguilar had been shipwrecked in the Yucatan. By the time Cortes arrived, Aguilar was one of two survivors. Luck spared him from diseases and the choices of his captors spared him from execution / sacrifice. His own choices led him into Cortes' service as a translator, while Gonzalo Guerrero (the other survivor) chose to ally himself with the Maya. Without Aguilar serving as the first link in the daisy chain of translations, Cortes' expedition would have been crippled. For Cortes himself, he was tasked with establishing a trading port on the coast of Mexico only; he chose to venture further and seek his fortune through conquest rather than trading. The Tlaxcala leadership chose to spare the Cortes and his men when they had them on the ropes, opting against the advise of their general, in order to turn the Spanish loose against their Aztec enemies. Ixtlilxochitl II chose to ally himself with the Spanish to settle an old grudge and overthrow his brother for control of Texcoco, removing one of the Mexica's primary allies from the picture before the siege of Tenochtitlan. I could go on, but you get the idea. History pivots on choices like these, and they're not subject to the predictions of environmental determinism."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "ft0gi8", "title": "AITA for losing my temper with my husband?", "selftext": "My (35F) husband (45M) and I have had a pretty difficult road to happiness. He started pursuing me while he was still married, but he was really serious about our relationship \u2013 it took seven years for their divorce to go through, but it definitely wasn\u2019t for lack of trying on his part! Not only did he have to break things off with his first wife, he went through some major shifts in his way of living and was forced to choose between making a new, happy life with me and keeping ties to the Pope, Catholic countries/people, and his ex-wife\u2019s powerful family. His life is definitely better now, though, and I think a lot of those people weren\u2019t good for him anyway. We share so many interests and a lot of passion!\n\nBut things have been kind of rocky. I\u2019ve never been able to get on with his daughter from his first marriage, for one thing. Probably not too hard to guess why. A lot of people who don\u2019t even know us are badmouthing me all the time, and blaming me for everything unfortunate that happens in the kingdom. I\u2019ve had several miscarriages, which really troubles my husband as he\u2019s always wanted a son. (Don\u2019t get me wrong, he loves our daughter, who is just like a little version of him.) And lately I\u2019ve noticed him looking at and flirting with my ladies in waiting \u2013 one in particular \u2013 which has led me to lose my temper and instigate some knock-down drag-out fights.\n\nIt\u2019s just all so *stressful*. But my husband is really ticked off with me, and there\u2019s definitely something going on with some of his councillors \u2013 I\u2019ll come up to them talking quietly and then they all shut up when I get close. AITA? Am I being too hard on him?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ft0gi8/aita_for_losing_my_temper_with_my_husband/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm6ai3c", "fm6f4e6", "fm4aqit", "fm4e4eu", "fm4q4ib", "fm53tfq", "fm5eai9", "fm5mx1c"], "score": [6, 6, 31, 43, 7, 13, 6, 3], "text": ["ESH, only polyamory can save this marriage. Except for you, you're not allowed to have any polyamory. STOP LOOKING AT THAT LUTE PLAYER.", "ESH I know you\u2019re just trying to have some fun and didn\u2019t mean to hurt anyone.  But you gotta expect if a man cheats WITH you, he\u2019ll also cheat ON you.  Sorry, not sorry.  Don\u2019t lose your head!", "NTA - sounds like you all have been thru a lot.  Don\u2019t lose your head over it, Anne!", "So let me get this straight. You broke up his first marriage and now you're pitching a fit every time he looks at another woman?\n\nESH (besides the kids of course). Sure your husband's being a jerk for openly flirting with other women, but you can't be surprised when your whole relationship started as an affair.", "NTA. Imean, what were you meant to do?", "YTA. I think your husbands first wife posted as well. Poor Catherine is in bits because of you!", "NAH--sounds like a rough time all around! You mentioned your husband has \"councillors\"--like therapists? Have you thought about seeing one together? I'd hate to see people losing their heads over these kinds of squabbles if it can be avoided.", "ESH, enjoy your puunishment... the worst PL team in London naming their stadium after you\n\nAs for why he's an AH... it's obvious, isn't it?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "27a34i", "title": "Were xwedodah marriages (nuclear incest) really a common occurence in Zoroastrianism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27a34i/were_xwedodah_marriages_nuclear_incest_really_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chysx1r", "chzfu6u"], "score": [25, 6], "text": ["In the videogame crusader kings 2, zoroastrian characters are able to marry their close relatives. Was this common in real life? Did every level of society engage in it or was it just the nobility? Also, what is the basis for such unions being seen as sacred?", "[This article is ridiculously extensive with references, although it may be biased, does seem to be comprehensive.](_URL_0_) It warns that there is very limited information on the extent of this practice, and that the term may *also* apply to cousin-marriage in some sources, which is not uncommon at all for the period. As that article concludes (emphasis mine):\n\n >  The actual practice in historical times, **which is difficult to deny,** should also be seen in the context of the Zoroastrian world view, where the cosmic battle between good and evil during the period of Mixture, in which mankind finds itself, is conducted on three levels: by the deities in the other world; by the sacrificers, who provide the link between the two worlds; and by humanity in this world.  **Thus, the behavioral prototypes provided by the gods and the priests (including the kings) may have been interpreted literally and led to the extension of the practice among royalty (the king being also the high priest) and, to an unknown extent, in the population in general.**  Modern Parsi scholars, being more concerned with how they were seen and judged by Muslims, Hindus, and Christians, in their discussions of xw\u0113d\u014ddah, do not seem to have considered this particular aspect of their religious traditions.\n\nI hesitate to belabor the point, because the article is pretty darn informational. There is a huge, huge section on the mythological basis which should tell you everything you could want to know. To what extent really depends on who and where. It happened among the royalty, but there's not much information about commoners."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marriage-next-of-kin"]]}
{"q_id": "1p0xak", "title": "Did sharks really follow slave ships on their journey across the Atlantic to feed on bodies thrown overboard?", "selftext": "I saw this stated on the PBS show \"The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross - With Henry Louis\". Is there evidence that this actually occurred and if so how well was it documented?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1p0xak/did_sharks_really_follow_slave_ships_on_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccxrlj8", "ccxrphr", "ccxudqn"], "score": [36, 5, 2], "text": ["As it is usual with many sensationalist statements: it depends.\n\nSharks, by their nature, are not smart enough to recognize a slave ship from any other and follow it *on purpose*, *knowing* that something *will* fall out of it. I know that that is not what the statement says but it is the image it immediately conjures. Of sharks flocking to a slave ship as soon as it leaves port and following it for the duration of its travel.\n\nSlavers did cram their ships beyond capacity because it was cheaper to write off human loses in one travel than it was to make several trips to Africa and back with les people and a 100% survival rate. This /(_URL_0_)/ is a famous depiction of how space was allocated in a slave ship. As any other person that died aboard, slaves would be buried at sea. Sharks have a powerful sense of smell (the usual way of fishing them is to throw pieces of meat from a moving boat to bait them) and could be seen feasting on a body soon after it was thrown overboard. Since slave ships threw out *many* bodies, it could give the appearance to those on board that sharks were actively following the ship.", "I am not a historian, but have been interested in this ever since I heard about the oceanic white tip shark being the most deadly shark to humans due to the habit of tailing ships and eating up shipwrecked sailors\n\n\nquotes from [the oceanic white tip entry in wikipedia](_URL_0_): \n\"the oceanic whitetip, the most common ship-following shark\"\n\"When whaling took place in warm waters, oceanic whitetips were often responsible for much of the damage to floating carcasses.\"\n(source: Leonard J. V. Compagno (1984). Sharks of the World: An annotated and illustrated catalogue of shark species known to date. Vol. 4, Part 2. Carcharhiniformes. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. pp. 484\u201386, 555\u201361, 588. ISBN 92-5-101383-7.)", "I cannot imagine that there is any acceptable hard evidence for this beyond a few crew logs stating \"Them sharks is back 'gin today\".\n\nHaving said that, I don't really doubt that animals would \"follow the food\".  Sharks are largely indiscriminant eaters and their regular prey is dead or wounded fish (and they don't care if they killed it themselves).  However, to the best of my knowledge sharks are not migratory animals.  They are where the food is, within a certain range.\n\nI would find it easy to believe that some ships, during particularly high period of mortality, would be followed by packs of predators that snacked on tossed bodies.  However, the idea that a shark, or group of sharks, would intentionally stick with a ship to continue feeding as they traverse the Atlantic is pretty far fetched."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://0.tqn.com/d/africanhistory/1/0/p/I/SlaveShipBrookes.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_whitetip_shark#Behaviour"], []]}
{"q_id": "1ym528", "title": "What measures were taken to prevent President Reagan from divulging state secrets due to his Alzheimer's disease?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ym528/what_measures_were_taken_to_prevent_president/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cflyth2", "cflytta"], "score": [19, 4], "text": ["Federal records archivist here.  We can't know the answer to that for sure, we aren't privy to details of Reagan's medical privacy.  Most classified topics concern technical details of aircraft and weapon design, or other things that would hardly ever come up in conversation unless you were at work.  It's unlikely that it was ever an issue, and if you've ever been around an Alzheimer's patient, you know they say a lot of things that aren't true and don't make much sense, sadly.  If it did come up by some chance, the family would just sign a non-disclosure form, probably.", "Maybe the moderators will let it pass, but this question technically violates the 20-year rule (Reagan was diagnosed in 1994, and your question would concern events in the years after that). \n\nIt's an interesting question, though. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7ij58v", "title": "Who wrote the book of revelations?", "selftext": "It would seem that traditionally john of patmos and the apostle john were thought of to be the same person. But more recently that they are probably not.\n\nBeale in his short commentary on revelation says it was most likely john the apostle due to the authors authority in the church and that it was highly unlikely that any other could john could have written it.\n\nHowever Leonard Thompson in his book of revelation commentary states that early thinkers such as Dionysus of Alexandria states that it cannot be john the apostle due to his stylistic and linguistic changes compared to the gospel.\n\nEssentially what im asking is if there is any kind of consensus about the authorship of the book of revelations ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ij58v/who_wrote_the_book_of_revelations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqzoftd", "dqzqje7", "dr08hoz"], "score": [13, 41, 3], "text": ["I recommend that you ask this question on /r/AcademicBiblical, where you will get a good intro to the (rather uncertain) modern theories on its authorship and dating. It's a bit on the basic intro side, but they tend to welcome those kinds of questions.", "No, there's no consensus, but the theories are much less complicated than for other New Testament books. They boil down to perhaps 4:\n\n1. John the Apostle\n2. Another John\n3. Someone not named John.\n4. The book is a composite work.\n\nView 4 is popular for some other biblical texts, but not widely held for Revelation. Beckwith's classic 1919 *The Apocalypse of John* surveys compositional views of the 19th and early 20th century. A more recent advocate of a compositional view would be someone like J. Massyngberde Ford who sees it as a product of a circle of followers originally associated with John the Baptist.\n\nView 3, that the work is pseudonymous, runs into all the usual arguments over pseudepigraphical writings. It's argued against by another classic commentary, R.H. Charles *The Revelation of St. John* (1920). There are good grounds for continuing to reject pseudonymity - unlike other apocalypses, the author claims no ancient figure to give authority to their text, indeed they simply self-identify as \"John\". Calling oneself \"John\" if, say, one's name was actually \"James\", doesn't serve any purpose. You'd expect a pseudonymous text to identify himself *at least* as John *the Apostle* or some other authoritative figure. \n\nIn essence, view 3 is problematic because it doesn't tell you anything. If someone unknown whose name isn't John writes a book under the name \"John\", this differs very little from some unknown person whose name *is* John.\n\nThat brings us back to 1 and 2. It's important to remember that the text doesn't identify the author as John the Apostle. And, it's important to recognise two other factors - (1) the author of the fourth gospel never self-identifies as John the Apostle either, and (2) even if you decided that John the Apostle wrote Revelation, that doesn't necessitate that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John either.\n\nA typical contender for another John, at least a known 'John', is 'John the Elder', mentioned by Papias in a fragment in Eusebius *Ecclesiastical History* 3.39. But it's not even certain that Papias was trying to distinguish between two Johns. In effect, attributing it to John the Elder is based on a very thin slice of data.\n\nThompson is quite write that as early as Dionysius of Alexandria in the mid-3rd century there were questions about the style. Revelation's Greek is quite different from the Gospel of John, and in itself it's very odd (and the subject of its own set of debates - was the author a second-language speaker, does he make grammatical errors on purpose, etc.). That said, Dionysius was also trying to demote the book because it was being used by his theological opponents in the local area. Anyway, everyone recognises that stylistically there are significant differences between Revelation and GJohn, though there are other aspects of similarity (the Exodus-Moses motif, christological titles and patterns, and certain vocabulary items prominent in both books).\n\nWho wrote it? We don't know and there's no consensus. The majority of scholars, I'd say, settle into a position that is \"someone named John\", which is what the text of the book tells you anyway.\n\n", " >  It would seem that traditionally john of patmos and the apostle john were thought of to be the same person. But more recently that they are probably not.\n\nI just wanted to chime in to say that, while it is traditional to identify John of Patmos and the Apostle John, it would be a mistake to say that it's a modern thing to doubt this identification.\n\nIndeed, during the first centuries the identity of the two authors was seriously disputed. Part of this dispute is that several early Christians (before the solidification of the canon) didn't think that the Apocalypse was an inspired text - and these Christians obviously, believing the text to be apocryphal, had no issue in pronouncing the author to be either an impostor, or a name whose name happened to be John by pure coincidence.\n\nThere's examples found, and I'll mention two that come from Eusebius' Church History.\n\nIn the first, he's relating the writings of Dyonisus of Alexandria, a [Bishop-Pope of Alexandria](_URL_0_), [Book 7 chapter 25](_URL_1_).\n\n >  \"Some before us have set aside and rejected the book [of Revelation] altogether, criticising it chapter by chapter, and pronouncing it without sense or argument, and maintaining that the title is fraudulent. For they say that it is not the work of John, nor is it a revelation, because it is covered thickly and densely by a vail of obscurity. And they affirm that none of the apostles, and none of the saints, nor any one in the Church is its author, but that Cerinthus, who founded the sect which was called after him the Cerinthian, desiring reputable authority for his fiction, prefixed the name. [...] But I could not venture to reject the book, as many brethren hold it in high esteem.\n\nAt this point Dyonisus analyses the Apocalypse, to conclude that:\n\n >  Therefore that he was called John, and that this book is the work of one John, I do not deny. And I agree also that it is the work of a holy and inspired man. But I cannot readily admit that he was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, by whom the Gospel of John and the Catholic Epistle were written. For I judge from the character of both, and the forms of expression, and the entire execution of the book that it is not his. For the evangelist nowhere gives his name, or proclaims himself, either in the Gospel or Epistle. [...] Moreover, it can also be shown that the diction of the Gospel and Epistle differs from that of the Apocalypse. [...] I do not deny that [the writer of the Apocalypse] saw a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy. I perceive, however, that his dialect and language are not accurate Greek, but that he uses barbarous idioms, and, in some places, solecisms. \"\n\nWhether you accept Dyonisus' method and conclusion or not (it's worth reading if you are interested.), this letter documents two sort of ancient attitudes on the Apocalypse: those who thought it was an entire fraud (whom Dyonisus disagrees with) and those who accept the text as holy, but don't accept John as the author (Dyonisus himself).\n\nIn the second example, Eusebius is relating the words of Papias. In his writings, Papias mentions two different Johns - the apostle, and \"Presbyter John\" (John the Elder). Eusebius picks on that and says:\n\n >  It is worth while observing here that the name John is twice enumerated by him. [...] This shows that the statement of those is true, who say that there were two persons in Asia that bore the same name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which, even to the present day, is called John\u2019s. It is important to notice this. For it is probable that it was the second, if one is not willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Revelation, which is ascribed by name to John.\n\nIn a rather convoluted way, Eusebius relates the two Johns in Papias to two tombs in Ephesus (which were also discussed by Dyonisus, and it is no coincidence), and that while the first John is the evangelist, the second John is the presbyter: and that one might \"not be willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Apocalypse\".\n\n____________________________________________________\n\nSo, anyway, there has been controversy about the book of the Apocalypse... basically ever since the Apocalypse was written. It was a minoritarian view, but there were Church fathers who weren't at all convinced by the argument that Apocalypse John and Gospel John were the same."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Dionysius_of_Alexandria", "http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.xii.xxvi.html"]]}
{"q_id": "4gbovj", "title": "What was the icon of Paris before the Eiffel Tower?", "selftext": "The Eiffel tower has represented Paris in countless contexts, but what was used before 1889? Was it Notre Dame?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4gbovj/what_was_the_icon_of_paris_before_the_eiffel_tower/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2giypb", "d2gobqx"], "score": [47, 29], "text": ["Looking at medieval times, philosopher John of Jandun wrote his *Treatise on the Praises of Paris* in 1323 and singles out three buildings for praise: the Notre Dame Cathedral as you mentioned, the Conciergerie, and the Sainte-Chapelle. All three buildings are on the Ile de la Cite so I think this island in its total could be considered the icon of Medieval Paris\n\nI think you could also make an argument for the Sorbonne as a major icon of Paris. Back in the Middle Ages I definitely think you could consider it the intellectual capital of Medieval Europe in terms of the thinkers it produced in this period.", "I am not a historian, but I am fascinated by your question and have been reading about it all morning when I should have been doing other things. I will present a brief synthesis of my findings and my -- again, *non-professional* -- conclusion, which is...\n\nTL;DR: There was no \"icon of Paris\" before the Eiffel Tower.\n\nFirst and foremost, I recommend Roland Barthes' 1979 collection of essays *The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies*, which helped shape my thinking on this question quite a bit. The first essay in the collection is about the Tower. He begins by summing up the same position you take in your question:\n\n >  The Tower is ... present to the entire world. First of all as a universal symbol of Paris, it is everywhere on the globe where Paris is to be stated as an image; from the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn't made, somehow, in the Tower's name, no schoolbook, poster, or film about France which fails to propose it as the major sign of a people and of a place: it belongs to the universal language of travel (3-4).\n\nNow, to sum up his argument about the Tower, allow me to quote this excerpt from the collection's first essay on the eponymous landmark:\n\n >  This pure -- virtually empty -- sign [the Tower] -- is ineluctable, *because it means everything*. In order to negate the Eiffel Tower ... you must, like Maupassant, get up on it and, so to speak, identify yourself with it. Like man himself, who is the only one not to know his own glance, the Tower is the only blind point of the total optical system of which it is the center and Paris the circumference. But in this movement which seems to limit it, the Tower acquires a new power: an object when we look at it, becomes a lookout in its turn when we visit it, and now constitutes as an object, simultaneously extended and collected beneath it, that Paris which just now was looking at it (4).\n\nSo not only is the Tower, through its height, geographical placement, and aesthetic, constantly seen (indeed, Barthes notes that \"you must take endless precautions, in Paris, not to see the Eiffel Tower; whatever the season, through mist and cloud, on overcast days or in sunshine, in rain -- wherever you are, whatever the landscape of roofs, domes, or branches separating you from it, *the Tower is there*\" (3).) but it unifies all of Paris under its gaze. Moreover, this is its only real function. Built as the entrance to the 1889 *Exposition Universalle* in Paris, the Tower was quickly criticized as [\"useless and monstrous\"](_URL_1_) in the famous Artists' Petition, published in the Parisian newspaper *Le Temps*. To ascend it, to look down on Paris from above, was to coordinate \"the city into a kind of nature; it constitutes the swarming of men into a landscape, it adds to the frequently grim urban myth a romantic dimension, a harmony, a mitigation; by it, starting from it, the city joins up with the great natural themes which are offered to the curiosity of men: the ocean, the storm, the mountains, the snow the rivers\" (Barthes 8) Barthes goes on to say: \n\n >  To visit the Tower, then, is to enter into contact not with a historical Sacred, as is the case for the majority of monuments, but rather with a new nature, that of human space: the Tower is not a trace, a souvenir, in short a culture; but rather an immediate consumption of humanity made natural by that glance which transforms it into space\" (8). \n\nThe Eiffel Tower is the icon of Paris, then, because it *is* Paris.  That is its function -- perhaps not its original intention, but nonetheless the Tower (which \"attracts meaning, the way a lightning rod attracts thunderbolts\" (Barthes 9)) has become metonym and icon for the city.\n\nI would contend that none of Paris' other famous structures or monuments do the same thing as the Tower, though the obvious contender is, as you suggest, Notre Dame. After all, in his liberetto *Les mari\u00e9s de la tour Eiffel*, Jean Cocteau has his characters proclaim [\"The Eiffel Tower is a world, like Notre-Dame. It is the Notre-Dame of the Left Bank.\" \"It is the Queen of Paris.\"](_URL_0_) It was started in the time of Charlemagne and, as /u/VaughanThrilliams (great name) said, it was picked out for its prominence and splendor pretty much as soon as it was built. Seeing it today, Notre-Dame is still spectacular, and it definitely is *one of* the icons of Paris -- but it is not, nor was it ever, *the* icon in the way the Tower is (and in the way your question situates it).\n\nPrior to the construction of the Tower, I think that Paris was an icon in itself -- it was, as Walter Benjamin famously described it, \"the Captial of the Nineteenth Century\" -- the paragon of fashion, industry, arts, and culture of all kinds. Inasmuch as the Eiffel Tower, the largest structure in the world when it was first unveiled, the gateway to an international event designed to showcase art and human achievement, *is* Paris (an empty signifier, Barthes' lightning rod of meaning), it has entered into popular culture vernacular as shorthand for the city itself. Nothing before could have done that. Nothing before it was so thoroughly magnificent yet ambivalent, so thoroughly the place where it stood, as to warrant iconicity of the same magnitude. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=AKggnnC0TssC&amp;pg=PA166&amp;lpg=PA166&amp;dq=%22Notre-Dame+of+the+Left+Bank%22+the+queen+of+paris&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=K0PQuJKuX-&amp;sig=SfzvmEPo3Xd2Rd0qSvnzpsxZXe0&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwibqJjZlKrMAhUBHh4KHWukDQIQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&amp;q=%22Notre-Dame%20of%20the%20Left%20Bank%22%20the%20queen%20of%20paris&amp;f=false", "http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/02/24/gustave-eiffel-beyond-tower"]]}
{"q_id": "86g33o", "title": "I\u2019ve read in multiple places that there\u2019s no official foundation date for Oxford University but that teaching has gone in there since 1096. Why did people choose Oxford as a center of learning and what happened in 1096 to be important enough to record?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/86g33o/ive_read_in_multiple_places_that_theres_no/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dw5gjr7"], "score": [21], "text": ["Unfortunately, the sources don't have that much more to say than \"There was teaching at Oxford around 1100, and then at some later points.\" \n\nThe *universitas* or guild consolidates when a group of students (usually Italy) or teachers (northern Europe) banded together and sought corporate legal privileges, which seems to have happened in Paris, Bologna, and Oxford sometime around/a little before 1200. Before that, \"higher education\" for potential bureaucrats and clerics alike meant a group of students flocking to be instructed/lectured to by a famous master. Usually the support for this would come through locating near a famous monastery or based at a cathedral church--including the chance to pick up some extra money instructing monks, for example. So that is what we are dealing with at Oxford before the 13th century: individual masters gathering students around themselves.\n\nThat \"earliest evidence\" of teaching at Oxford is frustratingly vague. A [series of letters](_URL_0_) by the French/Norman canon Theobald of Etampes (outside Paris), dated to around 1100, has two where he describes himself as \"magister Oxenfordiae.\" That is, *master at Oxford.*  It's mentioned elsewhere that he lectured to both secular clerics and to monks, but there's not much to be said about individual tutoring or in-depth programs of study. The next reference to an Oxford master is Robert Pullen in the 1120s, from the *Oseney Abbey Chronicle*.\n\nOxford doesn't necessarily fit what we might consider the \"ideal\" for a potential high medieval university town. It didn't have the cathedral church--far from it! Oxford wasn't a diocesan seat until the 16th century; that was Lincoln, and Lincoln and Oxford were...kinda rivals at the time, in fact. And while there were plenty of monasteries--the earliest references to settlements at \"Oxneford\" are convents--the controversialist letters of Theobald as well as later mentions of lecturing to diverse audiences and (apparently) the eventual legal statutes of Oxford University suggest that the early masters were *not* basing themselves out of a convent.\n\nWhat Oxford did have going for it was location: it's very conveniently situated on the Thames, near but not in London. It was definitely an up-and-coming city by the time Theobald arrived: a castle built just to its north became a stop on the English royal *iter*; both Richard I and John were born there during the king and queen's travels.\n\nIt's possible that the lack of domination by either a great monastery or a diocesan cathedral was a financial benefit for Oxford's masters. In addition to Theobald, mentioned as lecturing to regular and secular clergy alike, late in the 12th century Gerald of Wales makes a similar claim for himself. (He also mentions lecturing to lay people, which is fascinating). But this has to remain speculation."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://archive.org/stream/patrologiaecurs40unkngoog#page/n383/mode/2up"]]}
{"q_id": "68jwfl", "title": "If the use of magic was seen as heresy in the Catholic church, why was Merlin, a renowned wizard, seen as a good and admirable figure from the Arthurian legends?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/68jwfl/if_the_use_of_magic_was_seen_as_heresy_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgz9l2q", "dgzp740"], "score": [111, 65], "text": ["sorry if this is against the rules, but sort of a side-question, challenge of the basic assumptions of this question:\n\nwas Merlin even viewed as a \"wizard\" in the sense that we think of him today?  I feel like a lot of people's conception of Merlin today might come from the Disney Sword in the Stone movie which portrays him as a sort of crackpot always casting spells and doing \"magic\".  But, I read most of Book 1 of Le Morte d'Arthur and in it, I believe the only real \"magic\" that he does is at the very beginning he turns Arthur's dad into a likeness of Arthur's mom's husband so that he can bang her.  After that, it seemed liked all Merlin really did was tell the future (Arthur would come to him for council and Merlin would say \"blah blah blah is going to happen and this person is going to fight this person and the result of the battle will be this person is going to die\")  \n\nBasically, I wonder if the question should be: was he even viewed as a \"wizard\" (and what did that mean back then - also no time is specified so when?) and was he even viewed as \"good and admirable\"?  because the OP makes the assumption that he was but maybe the Catholic church was anti-Merlin.  \n\nI think a better question would be: What was the Catholic church's stance on \"magic\" during the popularity of Arthurian legend (medieval time period) and how was Merlin viewed in the eyes of the church and the general populace?  ", "[1/2]\n\nLancelot is the great tragic hero of the Middle Ages--the Knight of Hearts, *defined* by his love for the woman he can never permanently have. Gawain is the chivalric warrior par excellence, the greatest knight of the Round Table. And yet, in the early 13C *Quest of the Holy Grail*, one volume of the cycle that basically codifies the 'full' story of King Arthur and his knights, Lancelot spends the whole book doing penance for his adultery, spiritually divorcing himself from his defining characteristic, and still doesn't truly reach the Grail. Gawain doesn't have any opportunities to prove himself worthy. No, boring AF Galahad, Perceval, and Bors plod through their quest and receive the Grail-vision victory. Court-based \"Fanfction\" writers all over Europe take Gawain off on his own riotous adventures of ladies and war--while the rewrite and consolidation of the overarching tale works even *harder* to make everything a Christianized spiritual quest. Thomas Malory in the 15C, of course, will have none of this, thus reifying Lancelot and Guinevere's romance as the beating heart of Camelot.\n\nThe point is, western medieval Europe loved Arthur and his knights, and so the stories mattered. Because they mattered, people fought over them--both in and out of the texts. The presentation of Merlin throughout later medieval Arthuriana is a fantastic illustration of the tensions in play amidst changing social ideals of order, purity, and Christian orthodoxy.\n\nMerlin has both an in-universe and meta-literary backstory when Geoffrey of Monmouth drops him into his rough outline of the Arthurian saga in the 12th century. Geoffs had a bit of an obsession with the legendary wild man who evidently walked around spewing prophecy to anyone with a pen, in fact--he translated a book of prophecies attributed to Merlin from Welsh into Latin before composing the *Historia*, and followed it up with a separate biography of just Merlin.\n\nGeoffrey's new and improved backstory for Merlin already starts to show some of the tensions over supernatural power acting in the world. He borrows part of a biography of yet another legendary character--and then twists it completely. Instead of being a teenager with an unknown father (who turns out to be an ordinary Roman), Geoffs lets one character interview another as to Merlin's parentage. Merlin's mother implies the father was some sort of spirit in the *shape* of a young man, and Vortigern's advisor-sorcerers generally agree it was a demon. This is hearsay, this is supposition, it allows Geoffrey to avoid the question of the relationship between his prophet and magic, his prophet and demons.\n\nMerlin's magic or \"magic\" in the *Historia* is equally ambivalent. Geoffs certainly implies it--or does he? Are Merlin's \"contrivances\" that enable him to move Stonehenge all by himself, 'merely' physical? How closely were \"medicines\" tied to supernatural rather than natural power in the 12th century imagination? Is Merlin transforming Uther into Gorlois, or just giving him really good makeup advice? And--is the apparent ambiguity to us simply a modern imposition on a 12C worldview that didn't differentiate?\n\nThe popularity of Merlin beyond the developing Arthur tale, and the evident popularity of the character within it, made a serious impact on late 12C and early 13C readers. The first group I'll discuss is, like Geoffs, the scholarly-ecclesiastical elite: Latinate churchmen, at the forefront of crystallizing orthodoxy and stamping out what they label heresy (at this point: basically anything seen to threaten Church power; heretical \"belief\" is kind of a wash in an era where the bishop agreed to let the demon-possessed lady keep preaching and shouting in church until Hildegard of Bingen could get there to perform the exorcism).\n\nYou might think that, with the Church doubling down on Church-ifying and controlling lay belief from the late 12C on, clerics would frown on Merlin and vernacular writers composing romances for the laity would know what sells. Well, as Facebook might say, *it's complicated*.\n\nPerpetual crankypants John of Salisbury made little secret of his distaste for Merlin. John differentiated between contemporary, chosen-by-God prophets like Hildegard and Elisabeth of Schonau on one hand, and misguided diviners (that is, those who sought supernatural knowledge by themselves) of \"futile/worthless authority\" whose false prophetic powers came from demons. But when John criticized Merlin explicitly, he did so in response to a colleague who had cited him authoritatively.\n\nAround the turn of the 13th century, William of Newburgh had even harsher words about Merlin. Writing passionately that no true words can come from the devil, which is Merlin's source *even according to Geoffrey* (in Will's account), the Augustinian jeers:\n\n >  It is plain that whatever things [Geo\ufb00rey] published, writing about Merlin, are lies, made up to gratify the curiosity of those without prudence/virtue.\n\nAround the same time, however, Gerald of Wales thoughtfully placed Merlin's Welsh-pagan roots in the context of the current fad towards Christianizing classical pagan texts and ideas (a time-honored medieval obsession). Gerald pointed out that, for example. pre-Jesus seers like the Sibyl nevertheless prophesied his birth (...roll with it). Orderic Vitalis had gone even further, pointing out that some of Merlin's prophecies had been fulfilled and more would be! God speaks through his saints; surely he has the power to speak through others even in the contemporary world. Still, Gerald must be cagey:\n\n >  ...By what spirit such prophecies are made possible, I do not necessarily say that it is demoniac.\n\nThrough the twelfth century, the general idea of \"King Arthur\" and the Round Table knights grew into a gelatinous, disorganized blob. Around 1200, authors with a keen eye towards what was popular with readers started to work to change that. Among the most important, certainly of those whose (probable) name survives, was one Robert de Boron. Robert is probably best known for weaving the Grail into Arthurian legend not as a mysterious floating dish but as the Holy Chalice/Holy Grail brough to England by Joseph of Arimathea--in other words, a lot of the responsibility for the Christianization of Camelot's questing is on his shoulders. And, or maybe and yet?, his other major passion (at least, to surviving text appearances) was *Merlin*.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4igg7f", "title": "Weird question: What did ancient Mediterranean societies (Rome, Greece mainly, but other answers are welcome too) use as lube?", "selftext": "With the acceptance of queer sex in these societies, I don't really see how that would be going on. Do we know? Did they use olive oil, spit, what? Or are there no sources on the matter? \nThanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4igg7f/weird_question_what_did_ancient_mediterranean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2y4t5h"], "score": [18], "text": ["This was answered in this subreddit already. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aygwa/how_did_people_in_the_past_perform_anal_sex/"]]}
{"q_id": "1givg4", "title": "What goods and services have undergone the most significant price changes in the last 100 years, adjusted for inflation?", "selftext": "I understand that this is a difficult question to answer due to the fact that the goods and services themselves have changed a lot in the last 100 years. Perhaps a better way to look at it would be what percentage of household income was spent on certain types of things.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1givg4/what_goods_and_services_have_undergone_the_most/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cakpacr", "cakplqe", "cakpyr0", "cakqzfh", "cakulua", "cakv7js", "cakwtwm", "cakxg51"], "score": [8, 11, 101, 29, 2, 15, 7, 10], "text": ["If you give me a list of goods you're specifically interested in I'd probably be able to help.", "Well, the obvious answer is to go with something like home computing.  A hundred years ago, it was impossible, 70 years ago it was millions of dollars for any computer, now I've got a *phone* a hundred times more powerful than my gaming PC from 1998.", "Computer storage is probably the most drastic.\n\nThe equivalent of One MB of computer storage cost $411,041,792 in 1957 which would be $3,401,422,026.18 in today's dollars. Today you can get one Mb [not sold individually] for $0.0054.  Which gives a price decrease of 1.59\u00d710^-12 adjusted for inflation.\n\nAnyone please feel free to check my math, I have a headache now.\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_0_ ](_URL_0_ )\n\n\n", "I'm not a historian by any means, but I believe the most likely answers to this question are things that were once common (or legal) and are no longer, or vice-versa. For instance, an [ad for Lloyd's Manufacturing](_URL_0_)* shows the retail price of cocaine toothache drops to be 15 cents in 1885, which looks to be about $3.72 in today's money (averaging the [first](_URL_2_) [two](_URL_4_) inflation calculators on Google). While we can't exactly look up the retail price on such an item these days, I doubt that's anywhere near going rate for such a drug. \n\nLooking at the opposite, something like computer hard drives (as mentioned by LemurianLemurLad) were horribly expensive at first with the first one clocking in at $10,000 per 5 mb in 1956 ([source](_URL_5_)) and the first gigabyte drive costing $40,000 in 1980 ([source](_URL_3_)), which works out to $86,206.90 and $113,636.36 respectively for just the hard drive. Of course, those were likely aimed at corporations, but even then the most expensive drive I could find on Newegg today is an [800gb SSD](_URL_1_) at $3999.99, while an average hard drive will run you a few hundred dollars at most. \n\nA few other things that I put into the calculator showed to be fairly steady. You often hear tales of how Coke used to be a nickel when it came out in 1885 or how cheap gas used to be (seemed to hover around a $.20 in the late 40s/early 50s based on some searches). Converting these to 2013 prices gives $1.22 for Coke and around $2 for the gas. Granted, the gas is about twice that now, but just go back a few years and you're back in that range again. \n\nI'm sure there are tons of other examples, but I'd guess that most would fall into one of these two categories.\n\n*I believe I've read online about this ad, or at least similar ads, being quite valid, but I can't find a decent source on it right now. I know many now-illegal substances started out being legal, and now are not, so the idea behind this is solid I believe, even if this specific example may not be.", "As for services, education is a good example:\n_URL_2_\n\nAs well as Healthcare:\n_URL_3_\n\nSince your question included percentage of household income on certain types of things, Food is actually one of the most dramatic decreases over the last 100 years:\n_URL_1_\n\nThis is obviously a function more of household income increasing, though; many countries today still see similar levels of food expense / income: _URL_0_\n\n", "I want to go back a bit more than a century, but aluminum deserves a mention. It was discovered as a metal in 1825, but until the [Hall-Heroult process](_URL_0_) was developed in 1886 aluminum was *incredibly* expensive. Napoleon III of France had aluminum cutlery for his most favored guests, while less-favored had to make do with gold. The capstone of the Washington Monument was made of aluminum, to show off the wealth of the United States. At the time it was placed there, aluminum had come down in price to the point where it was about as expensive as silver was.\n\n[Here's a source](_URL_1_)", "The Economist had a little look at this for their millennium special issue: you might find [the article of interest](_URL_0_), which looks at the change in prices over the 20th century of a bunch of common goods and services.\n\nAt the top of the list (in terms of real price falls) is a telephone call from New York to Chicago, which cost 1000 times what it does now. Fridges and salt are also pretty high up there; on the opposite end of the spectrum are services that are labor-intensive services that have not seen much substitution of technology for labor (butlers, theatre shows, hotel rooms) or products that now bear excise taxes (alcohol and cigarettes).\n\nYou'll also see some estimates of the fall of prices of goods in the last decade of the century alone, which are tremendously steep for the highest-tech goods/services, and of the fall in quality-adjusted prices associated with past technological revolutions, with the computing revolution beating them all handily.\n\nIf you were to want to think of how to answer this question in general over any period X-Y, I would think you'd want to identify goods/services that were just invented just before X, that were initially targeted at an elite audience (perhaps rich consumers, perhaps researchers or scientists), and that are still around at Y and routinely consumed by broad swathes of the developed world's population: a telephone call fits that description well, as does computing power/storage over the last 50 years.", "Horse manure... in 1900s people paid others to remove horse manure from NYC, but now people pay money for horse manure."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/", "http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm"], ["http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlylehold/5540310839/", "http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167126&amp;IsVirtualParent=1", "http://www.westegg.com/inflation/\u200e", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hard_disk_drives", "http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php\u200e", "http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html"], ["http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/daily-chart-5", "http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/sept/wk1/art02.htm", "http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Articles/Education_Inflation.asp", "http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/understanding_the_cause_of_hea.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-H%C3%A9roult_process", "http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.html"], ["http://www.economist.com/node/457272"], []]}
{"q_id": "33l461", "title": "Why is the name George so common in Greece?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33l461/why_is_the_name_george_so_common_in_greece/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqm5zpo"], "score": [31], "text": ["The name George is of Classical Greek origin. \u03b3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c1\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 means \"farmer\"."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "31vdzf", "title": "Was there anyone in Hitler's High Command that had serious misgivings about invading Poland and triggering the Second World War so soon after recovering from the First? Or was it a unanimous decision to put boots overseas?", "selftext": "I'm aware of the plots to assassinate him and Operation Valkyrie, but I'm wondering more about whether the beginning of the war was apprehensive for some, and if anyone tried to stop it. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31vdzf/was_there_anyone_in_hitlers_high_command_that_had/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq5exbb"], "score": [122], "text": ["The line in the sand for the German Generals was not the invasion of Poland. By then, it was already too late. It was the invasion of Czechoslovakia.\n\nTheir resistance to Hitler's war plans in 1938 and before the invasion of Czechoslovakia were the reason why he used the first chance to get rid of General Werner von Blomberg, then War Secretary and CiC of the Wehrmacht, as well as General Werner von Fritsch, then CiC of the Army, in the so-called [Blomberg\u2013Fritsch Affair](_URL_3_): Hitler blackmailed Blomberg with the latter's much younger wife's past and had his henchman Heydrich disseminate rumours that Fritsch was homosexual. Von Blomberg was pressured into retirement, von Fritsch was transferred and later sought death in combat.\n\nEven after Hitler forcibly retired 16 Generals and transferred 44 more, the head of the German General Staff [Ludwig Beck](_URL_1_) tried to organize his peers against Hitler's war plans. A meeting that took place on August 4th 1938 showed that with the exceptions of Generals Ernst Busch and Walter von Reichenau, the entire General Staff presciently considered a war to be unwinnable and eventually to lead into catastrophe. In particular, General [Erwin von Witzleben](_URL_0_) made plans together with, among others, Generals Franz Halder, Walter Graf von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, Paul von Hase and Erich Hoepner to arrest, imprison and eventually put Hitler before a court in the event of a Franco-British declaration of war. At the same time, [Admiral Wilhelm Canaris](_URL_2_), who was working with Beck and von Witzleben, sent Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin to Britain as his envoy, asking for a British declaration of war in the event of a Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. That declaration would have given the General Staff both the pretext and support for the above-mentioned overthrow of Hitler.\n\nChamberlain's caving-in at Munich however destroyed the German generals' plans. Beck was eventually pressured into retirement, von Witzleben was transferred to Heeresgruppe two and Canaris shifted his efforts to more clandestine means. All of them were and eventually killed after the failed [20 July plot](_URL_4_).\n\nOther Source:\n\nJoachim C. Fest: Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945. Phoenix, 1996 - ISBN 0753800403"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_von_Witzleben", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Beck", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blomberg%E2%80%93Fritsch_Affair", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot"]]}
{"q_id": "3agzvu", "title": "In game of thrones Varys is known as the master of whispers. Essentially the head of an espionage group. How did ancient spymasters manage such networks?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3agzvu/in_game_of_thrones_varys_is_known_as_the_master/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cscp78k", "cscv1be", "csd0ko0", "csd2565"], "score": [40, 31, 32, 29], "text": ["If I can ask a follow up question, Varys' \"little birds\" are loyal to him and him alone, not the current head of state. Is that consistent with organisations like the CIA, MI5/6, KGB etc?", "Sort of a follow-on, but were 'ancient spymasters' even a thing? Did ancient espionage exist in a form similar to modern espionage? If so, would there have been a single person in charge of it?", "This isn't *ancient*, but I'm assuming it's the kind of information you're looking for.\n\nHenry VII was the first Tudor King of England, reigning from 1485 to 1509. He was a justifiably paranoid man. He'd won his crown on the battlefield, and through the years he'd faced multiple rebellions, conspiracies, and insurrections.\n\nThere wasn't just any one spymaster. Instead, Henry's multitude of advisers, in addition to their official roles, collected information for him.\n\nSpies were kept in-line through a variety of methods. There were professional, paid royal informers. When Sir James Tyrrell was arrested, his servant Robert Wellesbourne was the key witness in his trial. It was unclear how long he had been an informant. His family had close ties to Sir Thomas Lovell, who was Chancellor to the Exchequer as well as an informal spymaster.\n\nIn any case, Robert Wellesbourne was granted a half-year's salary of 60s 10d, an extremely generous sum, and continued serving as a spy.\n\nThen there were those spies who worked for free. Sir John Wilshire was sent down by Henry to monitor the books at Calais. He was also expected to cultivate a spy network, keeping a close eye on Henry's exiled enemy Suffolk. Wilshire did so by promising pardons to Suffolk's associates in-return for information.\n\nSome spies didn't have employers. Often times, men came forward to the king with information on their own initiative, either hoping for rewards or just trying to destroy their political rivals.\n\nIn one conversation, Sir Hugh Conway, the treasurer of Calais, complained about disloyalty in the Calais garrison. In response, Sir Sampson Norton told him to talk to the king about it.\n\nConway refused, stating that the king would suspect him of, \"envy, ill-will and malice\" and that he would have, \"blame and no thank, for his truth and good mind\". So many men went forward to the king with information that he had become deeply suspicious of them. Henry's problem wasn't that he had too little information - it was that he had too much. In fact, Henry sometimes personally interrogated suspected traitors. Presumably he wanted to cut through the rumor mongering that dominated his reign.\n\nThe reason we know about Conway's complaints is because one of the men involved, John Flamank reported the conversation to the king. Flamank had gotten into an argument with Sir Richard Nanfan, one of the men present in the discussion, and had decided to inform on everyone.\n\nTo summarize: Henry VII had multiple competing spymasters. These spymasters maintained their networks through official salaries, bribes, or promises of pardons. In addition to these networks, many informants came in on their own initiative. All these different sources of information were used to double-check each other.\n\nSource: Penn, Thomas. *Winter King: Henry VII and The Dawn of Tudor England*. New York: Simon  &  Schuster, 2012. Print.", "First post here. Let me know if I haven't done something properly :)\n\nThe Neo-Assyrian Kings well understood the benefits of using spies and did so on numerous occasions (we're talking 9th to 7th centuries BCE here btw).\nOne example is in the usage of spies in an ongoing power struggle with the Urartians, a kingdom to the North of Assyria that threatened to overtake them as the dominant power in the region.\n\nThe image we have of spies in this particular ancient setting is very reliant on the type of evidence that is available from the period. We have a vast quantity of cuneiform texts from the major Ancient Assyrian cities that record correspondences between the Assyrian Kings and his higher level administrators. It's a bit hard to navigate but I encourage you to have a look at some of them if you want a glimpse at the sort of evidence that survives this period. Large amounts of it can be found online in the State Archives of Assyria series. Because what we see is the what is presented to the King or his central administration, we only get a  glimpse of what was more than likely an extensive network of spies. Only the most important matters deserve to reach the King.\n\nDubovsky talks about information reaching the king in three ways 1. Ambassadors visiting his court, 2. People being sent on independent missions to his court and 3. Through 'provincial information hubs'. These information hubs were managed by his centrally appointed Governors (think Member of Parliament but with full authority over the region) within the empire. So rather than ancient spymasters, intelligence was within the common remit of the provincial administrators within the empire. Outside the empire we have examples of delegates appointed within client kingdoms known as 'Qepu' who would report on the activities within the kingdom. These people could do so in any number of ways. Interrogation of prisoners, paid spies, interception of messengers/ messages, informers etc.\n\nSo what can we take away from this? Both of these positions I've posted were roles within the Assyrian state structure. Any intelligence networks that existed, while they may not themselves have been formalised, entered and followed a similar path to the administrative state hierarchy at the provincial level with the Governors taking on the closest we have to the role of a 'spymaster.'The question then becomes about the loyalties of the state officials to the King and this is something which the Assyrian system also addressed... often by chopping off their gonads.\n\n--Dubovsk\u00fd, P., Hezekiah and the Assyrian spies: reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian intelligence services and its significance for 2 Kings 18-19 (Biblica et orientalia 49), Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006 \n\n--_URL_0_\n\nI also highly recommend this resource for anyone looking to find out about the Neo-Assyrian Empire:\n--_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/corpus", "http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/"]]}
{"q_id": "751u2i", "title": "Why did Luxembourg send 44 troops to the Korean War (out of some 900,000 on the U.S/U.N. side) What did they do? Did they make a difference?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/751u2i/why_did_luxembourg_send_44_troops_to_the_korean/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do3bg5t"], "score": [42], "text": ["Luxembourg was a founding member of the United Nations, being signatory to the original 1942 declaration, so certainly felt some level of obligation to participate in the United Nations military mission to Korea, although pressure from NATO should also be understood as a factor. Although Korea was obviously not covered by the treaty, there was a drive to increase the military abilities of the smaller member nations, and Korea presented a strong opportunity for that to focus on, resulting in most nations contributing to the UN military mission also being NATO countries, or closely aligned. However, being a very tiny country, with an equally tiny military - even with universal conscription - they weren't able to send over a contingent capable of anything approaching self-sufficiency, so their small contingent (smallest of any country in Korea) was folded into the ~900 man Belgian military contribution to the conflict, something not without precedence as Luxembourgian soldiers has been similarly attached during World War II, as part of the Free Belgian forces. As such, the Luxembourgers formed 1st Platoon, A Co. of a joint Belgian-Luxembourg Battalion, which was in turn attached to the US 3rd Division. \n\nAlthough originally outfitted with British surplus, being within the US military umbrella they were reequipped with US hardware. It is hard to say whether they made a *difference* as that is a tough thing to evaluate, but we can say that they did their part, seeing action in a number of engagements, both big and small, and earning multiple US Presidential Unit Citations, the first on Sept. 6, 1951, [reading the following](_URL_0_)\n\n > By decision of the President concurrent with the dispositions of the execution order 9396 (Sec. I, War Department Bulletin 22, 1943) etc. ... , the following unit is mentioned on the daily order as a public testimonial of deserved honor and distinction.\n\n > Citation : The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment of the UN Forces in Korea is mentioned for exceptional execution of its missions and for its remarkable heroism in its actions against the enemy on the Imjin, near Hantangang, Korea during the period from 20 till 26 April 1951. \n\n > The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment, one of the smallest units of the UNO in Korea, has inflicted thirty-fold losses on the enemy compared to its own, due to its aggressive and courageous actions against the Communist Chinese. During this period considerable enemy forces, supported by fire by machine guns, mortars and artillery, repeatedly and heavily attacked the positions held by the battalion but, Belgians and Luxembourgers have continuously and bravely repulsed these fanatic attacks by inflicting heavy losses to the enemy forces. When the Chinese troops had succeeded in occupying positions endangering the liaison with the allied neighboring units, The Belgian battalion with the Luxembourg detachment launched furious counter-attacks with the bayonet. The enemy, surprised by the tenacity of these attacks became disorganised and withdrew in disorder. Finally, the Belgian-Luxembourg battalion withdrew by order of higher authority, evacuated its wounded, was resupplied and requested to be put back in the line. \n\n > Having arrived at the frontline again, numerous enemy infantry and cavalry units were observed heading south. When the enemy was sufficiently close, the Belgian-Luxembourg battalion launched a rain of mortar shells with the devastating effect that its front area was covered with bodies. When the Chinese communists continued to bring in fresh troops in the attack, the Belgian-Luxembourg troops fought a successful delaying battle which enabled the adjoining positions to be methodically evacuated with minimum losses. \n\n > The Belgian battalion with the Luxemburg detachment has shown so much proof of courage, decision and esprit de corps in the accomplishment of its missions during these actions in difficult and hazardous circumstances, that it has to be placed above any other units participating in these actions. The extraordinary courage shown by the members of this units during this period has bestowed extraordinary honor on their country and on themselves.\n\nSouth Korea would add their own Presidential Unit Citation to the Belgian-Luxembourg unit, and a second US Citation would be awarded for actions at Haktanhni in October, and would remain in Korea through 1953, with two KIA, 17 WIA, and having had no men missing or captured.\n\nSource: 'United Nations Participants in the Korean War: The Contributions of 45 Member Countries' by Paul M. Edwards\n\n'Understanding the Korean War' by Arthur H. Mitchell"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://hmc2.pagesperso-orange.fr/en/spotl/korpucs.html"]]}
{"q_id": "5bc3zw", "title": "Historically, do Native Americans on reservations tend to vote in US Presidential and Congressional elections? Do Presidential candidates try to court this group?", "selftext": "I never hear much about this group of potential voters (a group that [didn't technically have citizenship until the 1920s](_URL_0_)). Do they tend to be politically active? Are there elections since the 20th century where Native American voters (or where Native American issues) were prominent? Do politicians historically treat them as if they are a politically active group? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bc3zw/historically_do_native_americans_on_reservations/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9nvmvf"], "score": [194], "text": ["Actually, no. Historically, Native Americans have had low voter turnout rates. And likewise, candidates do not often try to gain the Native vote as opposed to other groups. There are several reasons for this.\n\n**Population**\n\nThe first deals with population. [In 1920, the population of the United States was approximately 106,021,500.](_URL_0_) The American Indian population was between [~244,400 and ~336,300,](_URL_6_) depending on the agency who conducted the census (either the Census Bureau or the BIA). For the natives, this makes up between 0.23% - 0.31% of the U.S. population around the time the Indian Citizenship Act was passed in 1924. With Indians making up so little of the population, there was no benefit for candidates to try and campaign for their vote by the time they were counted as citizens.\n\nEven today, the Indigenous populations of the U.S. make up only [1.7% of the population at best, 0.9% at worst.](_URL_5_)\n\n**Government Prohibitions**\n\nPrior to 1924, some Native Americans did become U.S. citizens. This was accomplished through several means. Certain treaties made provisions for Indians to accept U.S. citizenship if they met certain requirements. Others became citizens once land was alloted to them via the General Allotment Act of 1887. However, this still did not grant them the ability to vote.\n\n[In 1884, a particular case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.](_URL_3_) An Indian man had tried to register to vote in Nebraska, but was denied, even after having renounced his tribal citizenship. When the Supreme Court made its ruling, they decided that American Indians were not covered under the 14th Amendment and they refused them the ability to vote.\n\nDespite all Indians becoming citizens in 1924, many state governments continued to be opposed to Indians being able to vote, particularly those states with large native populations. They worked their way around the 15th Amendment (passed in 1870), which barred states from passing laws that prohibited citizens to vote based on race, by passing laws that targeted natives on reservations, land that isn't under state jurisdiction. Through this method, states like South Dakota denied Indians the right to vote until the 1940s. New Mexico denied Native Americans from voting until 1962.\n\nSo regardless if Indians were looking to vote or not, many of them simply couldn't.\n\n**Voter Participation System**\n\nIn this category, there are a few things that would hinder Native Americans from voting. One big thing is poverty. One analysis from 2012 reports the following:\n\n > Voting experts have found that income is a major predictor of whether an individual is registered to vote.^6  Among the American population at large, 11.5 million low-income Americans are not registered to vote and the registration gap between low-income and high-income citizens is over 19 percent.^7  According to the Census, 12 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives live below 50 percent of the poverty level, and 26 percent live below 100 percent of the poverty line.^[1]\n\nAdditionally, many Native Americans do not have easy access to voting stations. Since a number of reservations were placed in isolated and unfavorable areas when they were established, the natives who continue to live there face difficulties when attempting to vote. [This is made evident even in recent elections in states like Nevada.](_URL_2_)\n\n**History and Culture**\n\nThis section is probably the biggest reason why we see Native American voting turnouts so low and answers if they are politically active.\n\nI don't think it is a big surprise that Native Americans have a huge distrust of the government, whether local, state, or federal. There is a joke in Indian Country about how \"Indians don't sign papers\" or \"remember the last time we signed a piece of paper?\" The general notion is often along the lines of \"Why vote? We [Indians] get screwed over either way.\" The distrust runs so deep that Native Americans have a hard time even voting in their own *tribal* elections. There are plenty of historical reasons as to why this is, but even contemporary reasons. David Wilkins highlights the tension on the state level by saying:\n\n > Although sharing a level of citizenship and land masses, the sovereigns have jealously guarded and been protective of their collective political, economic, and cultural resources. Tribes resent the states' constant attempts to tax and regulate their lands, wages, and industries, and are displease that many states are still reluctant to concede the reality of tribal sovereignty and recognized tribal competence to handle increasing amounts of regulatory, judicial, and administrative duties. States, especially the western states, resent the fact that they lack basic jurisdiction over Indian lands and may not tax those territories without congressional and tribal consent.^[2]\n\nBut native voter participation will vary from place to place, tribe to tribe. Many tribes in the Pacific Northwest are of a more liberal nature from what I have experienced. Plus, many of those reservations are located in urban areas. This offers more voting locations, more societal influence, and chances of decrease poverty. But tribal citizens that hold fast to their traditions often rejecting voting. This is because voting and the structure of tribal governments are not Indigenous institutions. By voting, many natives believe this legitimizes the colonizer's rule and do not want to participate in that, which is understandable. Personally, I avoided voting for a while because of these reasons. It was actually only this year that I decided to vote. The earlier cited report also relays this:\n\n > Attitudes about voting vary among tribes and individuals. While a small handful of tribes express hostility toward voting in American elections, many more are strongly in favor of it. As Jefferson Keel president of the National Congress Of American Indians, stated at the most recent annual State of Indian Nations Address, \u201cAs grandmas on the Navajo nation and young people in Alaska Native villages go to the ballot box this November, they are stand-ing on the shoulders of those who fought hard for that right...Our America is a place where all candidates know that we matter, and America sees it at the ballot box.\u201d^14 According to Wilkins, \u201cMany of the native nations argue, in fact, that from their perspective, voting may be the best and possibly only way to protect their remaining land rights, economic rights to conduct gaming operations, and cultural rights like bilingual education.\u201d^15\n\nSince many Native Americans faced issues that are inherent in their status that do not affect other groups in the United States, the general concept for many Indians is that to be native is to be political. The struggle for sovereignty and the demonstration of that sovereignty conveys a political message even if it is being carried out through different aspects, such as a social movement. What is happening in North Dakota with the Standing Rock Sioux is an example. Another would be the American Indian Movement during the 70s. Since tribal members typically possess dual citizenship, their actions either call into play or effect something in the political sphere. Native Americans are often involved in politics, but it is their own politics, whether traditional or tribal governance. In terms of the American political system, we are starting to see the emergence of a larger politically active bloc for Native Americans.^[1] Younger generations and changing political landscapes have started to change the previously held ideas. Not an abandonment of tradition, but a re-envisioning of where Native Americans should direct their attention in order to improve tribal sovereignty.\n\nBeyond that, I can't go much further without violating the 20 year rule.\n\n**Conclusion**\n\nFor many years even after becoming citizens, Native Americans have faced challenges when it comes to voting, regardless if they wanted to or not. Because of their relatively small population numbers, they are often not large enough to warrant the attention of political candidates like those running for President. However, smaller elections would benefit in doing so because some states have, proportionally speaking, large native populations like tribes in the Southwest U.S.\n\nMany Native Americans are against voting in U.S. elections, but it really comes down to the area and tribe. As for being politically active, that all depends on the context, whether that be personal, local, tribal, state, or federal politics. In the end, though, there isn't really a whole lot of data that has been done on Native American voting patterns until recently, beginning approximately in the 1990s. The first reference to that report I quoted makes note of this in several places and has a reference in its footnotes.\n___\n**References:**\n\n[1] [Wang, Tova. (2012). \"Ensuring Access to the Ballot for American Indians  &  Alaska Natives: New Solutions to Strengthen American Democracy.\"](_URL_4_)\n\n[2] [Wilkins, David E., and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian politics and the American political system. Rowman  &  Littlefield Publishers, 2010.](_URL_1_)\n\n**Edit:** Added in links to the references. Also added a couple sentences to 6th paragraph under \"History and Culture\" and to the conclusion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1920_fast_facts.html", "https://books.google.com/books/about/American_Indian_Politics_and_the_America.html?id=RkF3cGkv5R8C", "http://fusion.net/story/363622/nevada-native-american-voting-rights/", "https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/112/94/", "http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/IHS%20Report-Demos.pdf", "http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes/demographics", "http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/19/how-make-census-count-natives-152802"]]}
{"q_id": "2b1eep", "title": "Was Prester John actually Genghis Khan?", "selftext": "I was listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and he seemed to imply that after a long game of \"medieval telephone\" Genghis Khan's name turned into \"Prester John.\" He certainly was someone who attacked Muslims in the East, and they do sound very similar, but did they sound similar in the tongues back then? Was Genghis really Prester and they had to pretend he wasn't once they found he wasn't Christian?\n\nAlso, is Dan Carlin a good source? The podcasts are very well done and interesting so far but I've only hear 6 or so. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b1eep/was_prester_john_actually_genghis_khan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj0wwlk", "cj0x1m1", "cj1b5e7"], "score": [53, 15, 6], "text": ["I've listened to the whole Wrath of the Khans series of podcasts several times and can say with some degree of certainty that Dan Carlin never makes the claim that the name of Prester John is derived from Genghis Khan. The stories of the mythical figure predate the birth of the historical one, or at least any time when the name could've possibly spread all the way to Europe. It's just that when rumours of the Mongol conquests of the Islamic world started spreading West, a lot of people connected them to this particular legend.\n\nI know Wikipedia isn't held in very high regard on this subreddit, but the [article on Prester John](_URL_1_) is a pretty good one.\n\nThere's a whole [section in the FAQ](_URL_0_) about Dan Carlin that you might want to check.", "As far as if Dan is a good source or not, here is a discussion we had in this sub from about a year ago. _URL_0_ basically it boils down to he is entertaining and hits a lot of the points but isn't the be all end all by any stretch.", "I listened to the whole series, and here's what I got out of it, regarding the \"Prestor John\" subject:\n\n1) The Prestor John myth regarded a supposed Christian kingdom lying somewhere in the East\n\n2) Nestorian Christian missionaries had succeeded in converting substantial groups of Turkic peoples somewhere in Western Asia (I can't recall the name of the peoples mentioned, but I do remember that the Mongols eventually conquered / assimilated them)\n\n3) The Muslim World -- which Christendom was currently at war with -- was suddenly besieged by some power from the East\n\n4) Thus, the Christians jumped to the conclusion that this mysterious invading force was the much-rumored Prestor John.\n\nBut, as mentioned by others, the legend predates Genghis Khan; the Mongols were simply one of a number of identifications the Christians associated the legend with -- India, Ethiopia and North America would all be others.\n\nI have heard lots of theories on the origin of the legend..my favorite is that it was a memory of the Byzantines in Constantinople by those left in the West after the Fall of the Roman Empire in the west."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_dan_carlin.27s_.22hardcore_history.22", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12i31q/dan_carlin_history_or_bunk/"], []]}
{"q_id": "9h2r91", "title": "Why were the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century so much smaller than the Roman armies fielded during the Roman civil wars? How did Belisarius retake the Italian Peninsula with 7,500 men?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9h2r91/why_were_the_armies_of_the_eastern_roman_empire/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ea3jbt7", "e690xds", "e691ek6"], "score": [2, 132, 14], "text": ["If you read the first few paragraphs of chapter 5 of the Gothic Wars 1, which is handily free and online as copyright has expired on H.B. Dewing's translation (see here: _URL_0_ ), then you will see that there were three invasions of Italy, not just Belisarius'. \n\nMundus: \"And he first commanded Mundus, the general of Illyricum, to go to Dalmatia, which was subject to the Goths, and make trial of Salones.\"\n\nThe Franks: \"And he also sent a letter to the leaders of the Franks as follows: \"The Goths, having seized by violence Italy, which was ours, have not only refused absolutely to give it back, but have committed further acts of injustice against us which are unendurable and pass beyond all bounds. For this reason we have been compelled to take the field against them, and it is proper that you should join with us in waging this war, which is rendered yours as well as ours not only by the orthodox faith, which rejects the opinion of the Arians, but also by the enmity we both feel toward the Goths.\" Such was the emperor's letter; and making a gift of money to them, he agreed to give more as soon as they should take an active part. And they with all zeal promised to fight in alliance with him.\"\n\nFinally, Belisarius: \"As for Belisarius, he put in at Sicily and took Catana.\"\n\nBelisarius was essentially invading a country denuded of soldiers, as the Goths were focussing on the North to fight Mundus and the Franks. \n\nIt's worthwhile taking Belisarius out of the spotlight of history at times to really appreciate why he was successful. \n\nSources: Procopius, Gothic Wars 1/History of the Wars V, Chapter five, lines 44-50.", "\"Why were the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century so much smaller than the Roman armies fielded during the Roman civil wars?\"\n\n**Short Answer**\n\nThe Eastern Roman Empire had small field armies during the 6th century because it was almost bankrupt and therefore couldn't afford to raise large armies. \n\n**Long Answer**\n\nI'd like to start by clearing up a common misconception - the overall size of the later Roman army was actually bigger than it was during the times of Augustus and Trajan. Under the reign of Tiberius the army was about 255,000 men - 125,000 legionnaires, 5000 praetorians, and 125,000 auxiliaries. The Roman army of the early 5th century was theoretically about 400,000 men in total, but was understaffed so was probably closer to 300-350,000. The early imperial army was organised into legions, large bodies of thousands of men that regularly fought, whereas the later army was organised into *comitatenses*; fighting units of 1000 men each. Furthermore, most of the later Roman army were the *limitanei*, which were border garrisons who were rarely involved in campaigns. This means that even though the later Roman army was very large, most of its units did not go on campaign, giving the impression that the later Roman army was far smaller than it actually was. Obviously, when the western half of the empire fell the western armies fell with it. Despite this loss, the ERE could still maintain an army of around 200,000 men. I mention this because the Eastern Roman armies of the 6th century were not typical and should not be seen as representative of the Eastern Roman Empire as a whole. \n\nThe reason the size of Roman armies took a nosedive in the middle of the 6th century is as a result of emperor Justinian and his incredible spending habits. Justinian haemorrhaged money. His vast building programmes, expensive treaties with the Persians, and most of all his attempted reconquest of the west bankrupted the empire. The reason Belisarius had only 7,500 men to start taking Italy (he did get reinforcements later in the campaign) was because that was literally all the emperor could afford to spare at that time, and he removed the *limitanei* from the Danube river to create this army. When he invaded North Africa just before this campaign, Belisarius had around 17,000 men, but had to leave half of them behind as a garrison. Procopius' The Wars tells us that Belisarius was almost constantly asking Justinian for more money, supplies and men. Even then, a lot of the men went unpaid and the garrisons of North Africa mutinied in 536 because they had not been paid for *years*. From this we can suppose that the imperial treasury was empty - not in a figurative way, at times it was literally empty and the army couldn't be paid. There was also the first recorded outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 541, which killed about 25% of the empire and further limited sources of tax income and soldiers. According to the chronicler John Malalas, in 553 Justinian attempted a drastic debasing of coinage so he could mint more coins and pay the army, but rioting across the empire followed and the policy was scrapped. In the late 540s and early 550s in particular, the sources paint an almost uniform picture of an empire on the brink of financial collapse because of wars and plague. Justinian probably did have some money left, but the empire was certainly losing money fast. \n\nThis was not helped by the wars in Italy. You say that Belisarius retook Italy with 7,500 men, but in truth he did not have control. In 540 AD, Belisarius entered Revenna, the Gothic capital, and declared mission accomplished. There was then a 13 year war between Belisarius' men and a Gothic insurgency led by Totila. The war devastated the region - when Belisarius retook Rome for the second time (Totila conquered it in 549) he found nobody there; even Rome itself was abandoned by its inhabitants as a result of the war. Even once the Goths were fully defeated in 554, the Exarch of Revenna and the Bishop of Rome routinely wrote to Constantinople asking for money to rebuild - Italy was a money sink. North Africa did not go much better - in the 540s the Moors unified to fight the Romans and the Romans could not pin them down, which meant another protracted war, though North Africa did eventually become profitable. In the 550s and 60s, Avars and Bulgars got in on the carnage and raided the Balkans as far as Constantinople's suburbs. There were supposed to be garrisons along the Danube to prevent this, but the troops had been stripped from them to fight for Belisarius and the empire could not afford replacements. The Long Walls, Constantinople's first line of defence, was completely unmanned and the Avars were able to reach the suburbs of Constantinople before facing any notable resistance from the army at all. The whole episode was farcical and costly, and a focal point of Procopius\u2019 anger toward Justinian. From the 530s well into the 560s, the empire was broke and therefore unable to raise armies. \n\nThe extended territory created by Justinian's reconquest stretched the Roman army even thinner and even more units became *limitanei*. Southern Spain, North Africa, and Italy all needed extensive garrisons which took men away from the mobile field armies. By the early 7th century, the situation had recovered and field armies were once again in the tens of thousands, but never the 70,000 men that was previously typical of major wars (see Vitellius' army during the Year of Four Emperors, or the Roman army that fought the Jewish War). That being said, even during the Last Great War of Antiquity (608-28), a climactic war of attrition between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, Roman armies were always over 20,000 soldiers despite suffering serious losses of territory and men throughout the war. \n\nSources: \n\nMitchell, Stephen. A history of the later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. John Wiley  &  Sons, 2014\n\nCameron, Averil. Procopius and the Sixth Century. London: Duckworth, 1985.\n\nScott, Roger D. \"Malalas, the secret history, and Justinian's propaganda.\" Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985): 99-109.\n\nSarris, Peter. Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian. Cambridge University Press, 2006.\n\nEvans, J. A. S. The Age of Justinian the Circumstances of Imperial Power. London ; New York: Routledge, 1996.\n\nMoorhead, John. Justinian. Routledge, 2013.\n\n\n\n\n", "I answered a similar question about the size of Belisarius' army in Italy _URL_0_ and explain some of the reasons that Justinian may have had for sending Belisarius to Italy with only 7,500 men (and also why those 7,500 men weren't as \"small\" of a force as we perceive them to be). That being said, Eastern Roman armies actually weren't smaller in the 6th century. When Belisarius retook North Africa from the Vandals he actually had around 15-17,000 men with him. On top of this the total strength of the Eastern military at this time was around 200,000 men. As my linked answer explains, Justinian initial sent Belisarius to capture Sicily, and sent a separate army commanded by Mundus to capture Dalmatia, both of which would have allowed the emperor to reinforce Belisarius should the need to do so arise. The size, and composition, of Belisarius' army was most likely a strategic choice that served several purposes. One of these purposes would have been to trick the Goths into thinking that it was just a garrison force heading for Carthage, and that they were simply stopping in Sicily for a short time. Another purpose would have been the added mobility that came with an army of this size that was composed of large number of cavalry. It should also be noted that while the Eastern military totaled about 200,000 men, that these men would not have all been available for the Gothic war. Some of them would have been needed to defend the Danubian border, which was fairly long, and some of course would have been needed along the border with Persia (with whom the Romans had been at war with only 4 years before Belisarius went to Italy). In fact the Persians broke a peace treaty with the Empire in 540, while Belisarius was still fighting in Italy. \n \n\n\nSources:\nWarfare in Medieval Europe, Bernard S. Bachrach and Davis S. Bachrach"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20298/20298-h/20298-h.htm#Page_1"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/96nmcf/when_belisarius_was_sent_to_reconquer_italy_he/e42qc68/"]]}
{"q_id": "1k1jso", "title": "The Byzantine Empire often gets remarkably little attention in the history of civilization. Are there any notable advances in science or culture that can be directly traced back to Byzantine innovators?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k1jso/the_byzantine_empire_often_gets_remarkably_little/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbkheb4", "cbkjl01", "cbkm08g", "cbkobb5"], "score": [2, 29, 68, 76], "text": ["The one that comes to mind is [Greek fire](_URL_0_), however the technology was kept secret and eventually lost.", "I think the way that you asked the question reveals a lot about how Western Civilization is largely a constructed narrative of \"progress,\" and because of this, the Byzantine empire has been largely omitted from those narratives. The contemporary Anglophone narrative of Plato to NATO was developed in western Europe, and drew a line from (maybe Egypt and/or Sumeria to) Greece, then Rome, then the fall of Rome and the \"Dark Ages,\" then the Renaissance (the rebirth of Classical civilization), scientific revolution, Enlightenment, industrial revolution, modernity. In this narrative, the geographical focus is the western Roman empire, and \"progress\" is defined as pretty much whatever things could be identified in the past that most closely resemble what we have now; you've demonstrated with this question that this is basically the education that you've gotten, as you've asked what \"advances\" Byzantium made toward \"culture\" or \"science.\" You're not in trouble or anything, it's just that this is a question that a professional historian would never ask, or at least, not in the last fifty years. \n\nWestern historians, since the Renaissance and right though the last five hundred years, have essentially selected a few groups of people from the past as our \"ancestors,\" and whatever they did that we approve of--or did not do--we take as an \"advance\" or more rarely a kind of retrogression. This suggests that history is a kind of linear progression from the distant past up until the natural, inevitable *now*. The Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium was excluded from that, perhaps due to geography (although that didn't seem to be a problem for the ancient Greeks), perhaps due to its rule under the Ottoman Turks since the fifteenth century. Being \"Muslim\" territory effectively excluded it from the Christian \"we\" that was writing Western Civilization, and thus there was no real need to look at Byzantine history as a source of \"progress.\" This is evidenced by how nonsensical the \"dark ages\" are if we look east of the Adriatic Sea, where things were not particularly \"dark\" at all. But, clearly, narratives of the West haven't done that for several hundred years, so we have no widely known examples of \"contributions\" from Byzantium. \n\nReally, though, these ancient civilizations have not bequeathed some set of progressive knowledge to us. \"Culture\" is not something that \"advances\" or declines, it just is. I'll get some pushback for this one, but I'd argue that \"science\" doesn't do that either. It makes a big deal about *telling us* that it does, since that's one of the ways that science, as a discourse, constructs and reinforces its authority. And, certainly, some forms of knowledge build upon other forms of knowledge; you can't really have modern knowledge of physiology, for example, without chemistry. But, we should be very wary of ascribing to knowledge the idea of \"progress.\" There's no forward or backward, there just is. \n\nSubstantially edited for clarity.", "Quite a few actually:\n\n1. The Cyrillic alphabet:  created by the Byzantine monk Cyril and Methodius in order to spread Christianity to the bulgars. Now used in most of the slavonic states (Russia, Bulgaria, etc)\n\n2. The solidus: this was a gold coin that kept his weight and purity for over 600 years, making it the equivalent of  the dollar or euro for its times. It was used not only in the Byzantine empire, but also in western Europe, the Middle-East and coins have been found even in Scandinavia - mostly due to the norse man serving in the Varangian. Also, when western Europe caught up in technology with the Byzantine empire, the kings would mint coins in the same style : denomination in the front, portrait in the back.\n\n3. The hand grenade\n\n4. Corpus Juris Civilis: or at its knows \"The Justinian Code\" - this set of laws became the foundation of the entire western legal system. ", "Advances, you say? Let's see...we have:\n\n1. Greek Fire\n2. Hand-held Flamethrowers\n3. Flamethrower Ships (Fire Dromons)\n4. Incendiary and corrosive chemical grenades (as well as \"terror\" [scorpion and snake] grenades)\n5. The Klivanion (highly-effective precursor to modern body armor)\n6. Trebuchets \n7. The Solenarion (a kind of Byzantine arrow guide)\n8. The Paramerion (sabre-like weapon)\n9. Inflatable Siege Ladders and other siege curiosities\n10. The Pendentive Dome (see Hagia Sophia)\n11. Improved and tolerant status of women (in regard to other states of the time)\n12. Proto-humanist and realistic art (heavily influencing the Renaissance)\n13. The University (see University of Constantinople)\n14. The Byzantine Suda (a form of encyclopedia) and other lexica\n15. State-run hospitals with separate patient wards and female doctors AND other social services, such as orphanages and alms-houses\n16. State-run primary, secondary, and tertiary schooling for the citizenry\n17. Advanced knowledge and compendia of medicine, herbal remedy, surgery, and diseases which propagated into the Renaissance and beyond\n18. Significant advances in musical composing and notation\n19. Of course, the previously-mentioned Cyrillic writing system\n20. Various studies, commentaries, and arguments of the classical treatises, as well as the preserving of such treatises past the sack of Constantinople via collaboration with Italian traders and Saracen scholars\n21. Advanced civic infrastructure (Constantinople was, by far, the largest city in Europe for most of the Medieval period)\n22. Advanced trade networks and book keeping (which heavily influenced the Italian maritime states)\n23. Various foodstuffs (fruits/salad combinations, several cheeses, specialty breads, confectionaries) appear to be Byzantine in origin, or were at least expanded upon by Byzantine culture. An understanding of the effects of various foods and spices (and the benefits of healthy eating) was documented and explored by several Byzantine authors.\n24. Standardized Military Manuals (Taktika, Strategikon, Praecepta Militaria) ensuring competent generalship and logistics in war\n25. Justinian's Code of Laws, as well as expansions by later rulers, such as Leo VI the Wise still exist in some countries today as the basis for their code of laws. Funny story: Leo VI's *Basilika* Code of Laws was used as a transitional law system for 13 years after the Greeks gained their independence in 1821!\n26. The rules of Byzantine diplomacy (mercy in war, protecting civilians whenever possible, fighting only when all other diplomatic options have been exhausted, etc.) which are covered in many Byzantine rulers' treatises, echo in today's diplomatic relations.\n27. I suppose, to some extent, iconography, especially dynastic icons (such as the Komnenian and Palaiologan Eagles) were expanded upon and highly prominent in Byzantine society\n28. Fashion. Byzantine silks, face veils, robes, and colored, patterned, and other stylish clothing influenced European fashion for several centuries at least.\n29. The women's \"dressing room\" (complete with perfumes, lotions, makeup, and other cosmetics) was highly prevalent in Byzantine society, and again, likely heavily influenced the modern perception.\n30. A form of Divine Right and strongly centralized government (with hints of popular influence) well before other Western powers had firmly established such a system.\n31. The Byzantine Orthodox Church, of course, has still been going strong since AD 313, not to mention the many other breakaway churches that have become autocephalous over the years. A good number of churches of Slavic Christianity owe their creation to Saint Vladimir's baptismal agreement with Byzantine Emperor Basil II. In exchange for the hand of Basil's lovely sister, Anna Porphyrogennita, and a contingent of 6,000 Varangian soldiers (which later became the Byzantine Varangian Guard), Vladimir the Great was required to be baptized as a Christian and baptize the entirety of his people, the Kievan Rus - not a bad deal, right? \n\nThere are many more, but this should be good for now.\n\nYou can read about these advances in some of my previous posts:\n\n[Byzantine Greek Fire weapons](_URL_1_)\n\n[Wonders of Constantinople](_URL_0_)\n\n**And, as always, please feel free to ask questions if you have any!**\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1iyf6e/what_was_the_difference_in_quality_of_life_in/cb9fuub", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ij7ot/what_were_considered_the_most_powerful_weapons/cb504e3"]]}
{"q_id": "7mn014", "title": "How and why is the fourth oldest mosque in the world in China?", "selftext": "The Huaisheng Mosque is supposedly built in 627, during the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime. Did the Muslims really have contact with the Chinese and have Chinese converts that early in their history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7mn014/how_and_why_is_the_fourth_oldest_mosque_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drx3te9"], "score": [8], "text": ["Trade between Arabia and China had been going on for centuries prior to Muhammad's revelations, not just by land, but by sea. It is this sea-going trade that would have delivered early Muslims to Guangzhou. Keep in mind that initially these routes were for trade, not proselytizing, although that would become a motivation in later centuries. \n\nIt's all along this sea route that traders would take to port, where some would stay and marry into the local communities. That's where conversions would take place and children were born, growing a Muslim community; spouses would not be compelled to convert, but children were required to be raised Muslim. \n\nBroomhall states that \u201cit is possible that the Arabs had established a factory at [Guangzhou]\u201d prior to 622 CE, although he does not substantiate that claim. He then goes further to describe date discrepancies of Chinese Muhammad monuments, some claimed to have been installed prior to Muhammad receiving his first revelations from God. \n\nRegarding the date discrepancies, /u/cthulhushrugged touches on the date issues in this post from a few months back covering [What's the earliest mention of Islam in China](_URL_0_)\n\n\nSources:\n\nBroomhall, Marshall. 1910.  Islam in China A Neglected Problem.\n\nChew, Sing C. 2016.  \u201cFrom the Nanhai to the Indian Ocean and Beyond: Southeast Asia in the Maritime 'Silk' Roads of the Eurasian World Economy, 200 BC \u2013 AD500.\u201d"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72mr1r/whats_the_earliest_mention_of_islam_in_china/"]]}
{"q_id": "9skszw", "title": "Who were the \"Diggers\" or True Levellers and where do social-religious movements of this era (16th and 17th centuries) fit in the history of socialism?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9skszw/who_were_the_diggers_or_true_levellers_and_where/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e8qoz9v"], "score": [10], "text": ["Luckily pamphlets written by the Diggers still exist, including [The True Levellers Standard Advanced](_URL_2_), and A Light Shinning in Buckinghamshire, so we know what they thought pretty well. As for what they did, essentially they tried to establish communes on common land, and where suppressed, there is a short overview with sources [Here](_URL_4_). The movement then shifted to less material objectives, and can be regarded as a forerunner of the Quakers.\n\nBut for me the interesting part of the question is how they (and similar groups especially among German Anabaptists) fit into the history of socialism. Firstly they are solidly on the anarchist flank of modern socialism, although the historic use of terms socialist, communist, and anarchist are overlapping and unclear (for instance [Oscar Wilde](_URL_0_) refers to himself as a socialist, yet his views would today make him an anarchist). This could be contrasted with movements like the followers of  Mazdak, who are more aligned with socialism as it is perceived today (being conducted by the state). The Diggers fit quite nicely into the category Christian Anarchism, along with Leo Tolstoy. This grouping can be summarised by: pacifism, egalitarianism, and opposition to the state and hierarchy.\n\nThere is to my knowledge there is no reason to believe first person to use the term anarchist in this context, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (source definitely not take from wiki  John M. Merriman, The Dynamite Club (2009), p. 42.), was aware of the Diggers or influenced by them, although his brand of anarchism (mutualism) differs significantly from the latter use of the term. Reading both [The Conquest of Bread](_URL_1_) (regarded as the anarchist-communist manifesto, written by an atheist) and the Diggers pamphlets, I was struck by the similarity. Both refer to bread extensively, but much more importantly feature the idea of the earth as a common inheritance to all, as well as more general socialist principles and opposition to the state. I therefore think that the Diggers can be regarded as solidly within the anarchist communist school of thought, the main difference being the justification of this desired social order being derived from their theology, rather than material analysis or moral sentiment. Edit: a note on their theology, taken from [The True Levellers Standard Advanced](_URL_2_), the most striking thing to me was the belief that original sin (as in the book of Genesis), was the origin of hierarchy and the start of domination. I think this chimes well with leftist such as Murray Bookchin who effectively makes the same argument in secular terms in The Ecology of Freedom, and with the statement by  Abdullah \u00d6calan that patriarchy (a form of domination) is humanities first great mistake.\n\nIts also worth noting that the Diggers cited the bible extensively, so depending on the amount of historical credence you will allow the book of Acts (and accept their interpretation), they where merely applying a millennium old doctrine  to modern circumstance.\n\nAs to whether they influenced the development of socialist thought historically, rather than simply where they fit into this history, it is hard to tell. Perhaps the ardent atheism of key \"socialist\" thinkers (e.g. [Proudhon](_URL_3_), [Marx](_URL_5_)), would obscure their input historically, although in The Ecology of Freedom, Murray Bookchin clearly favours these kind of groups, and sees them as the ancestors of the modern left.\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/", "https://thebreadbook.org/conquestofbread.html", "https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/winstanley/1649/levellers-standard.htm", "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-god-is-evil-man-is-free", "http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/diggers", "https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "59b6e1", "title": "[Military History] I often hear \"Most military operations in the high-late medieval period consisted of raids and sieges, not pitched battles\" How did raids work?", "selftext": "It's a phrase I often hear, that battles were few. That most conflict consisted of sieges and raids. My question is centered around raids. Since my original perception of medieval warfare comes from games like Total War, I'm biased towards a thinking centered around pitched battles, but I would like to know how raids functioned. How were they different?\n\n* What kinds of raids were there? Were there regional differences?\n* How did medieval raids function? Was it planned or opportunistic? \n* What was the scale? Was it 30 guys on one small town, or 30 guys spreading out over a large agrarian area?\n* What was the target? Was it always civilians, cattle, etc. or did it focus on directly crippling an enemies military operations?\n* Who participated in these raids? The knightly class only? Serjeants and henchmen? A whole army full of farmers? Mercenaries?\n* Did they use horses? Sword & buckler? Torches? Or weapons which is suited in array, like a spear, pike or halberd?\n\n----\n\nFrame of the question: An overall ancient or medieval European or Middle-Eastern focus is good. Spain between 1100-1500 is even better. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59b6e1/military_history_i_often_hear_most_military/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d97fhzp"], "score": [86], "text": ["Yay, something that i know a bit about! \n\nMy area of expertise is the hundred years war (1337-1453) between England and France, so i will draw all my examples from that conflict. Now, to answer your questions in a random order:\n\nThe main purpose of raids during medieval warfare was threefold:\n1: Disrupting the economy\n2: Pointing out your enemy's inability to protect his lands\n3: sustaining your own army without paying for it.\n\nTherefor, the most common (and most effective) raid were large-scale, regional campaigns, where a sizeable army would burn and pillage villages and smaller towns, while castles and fortified towns where left alone. This had the effect of forcing the peasants of the raided areas to flee *en masse* to the larger towns, which, along with the disruption of supplies caused by burning or stealing crops and other resources from the hinterlands, would cause a famine in the affected towns.\n\n A good example of a raid conducted like this would be the *Grande Chevauch\u00e9e* of 1355, Where Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, led an army of 5.000 men from Bordeaux into the counties of Armagnac, Foix and Languedoc, while bypassing the city of Toulouse, where the count of Armagnac had concentrated his army. The English army was able to return to Bordeaux with an extraordinarily large amount of loot, while the count of Armagnac became generally despised in France for not resisting the English army, but in reality, he didn't have a choice, because every time his forces would go near the English, they would place themselves on the top of a hill, or on the other side of a river, where they would have the upper hand if the French decided to attack. This had happened earlier, in 1346 at the battle of Crecy, where Edward III used a raiding campaign to force the French king to attack him while he had an advantageous position atop a hill, and soundly defeated the larger french army. And again in 1356, where the Black Prince led a similar raid from Bordeaux (again), and was caught by a large french army near Portiers, which he also soundly defeated, with the added Bonus of capturing the French King.\n\nAs you can see from the participation of both the English King and the Crown Prince in these raids, there was no social stigma attached to the concept of raiding, and both common footsoldiers and mounted knights and men-at-arms would participate. \n\nThe raid would usually consist of a large main force, with several smaller warbands (30-200 men in each) mainly consisting of mounted troops, would detach from the main force and plunder nearby villages. The army couldn't afford to split too many soldiers from the main force, as it would put them at risk of a counterattack.\n\nAs to the target og the raids, by stealing from civilians, taking cattel and burning crops, they crippled their enemies long-term capabilities to conducting military operations, because of a lack of food and taxes from the villages meant a lack of supplies and wages for the soldiers. \n\nAs in all other medieval warfare, and maybe even to a greater degree, the soldiers used whatever tools they had handy. Burning villages and towns added the cost of rebuilding to the enemys losses, so it was a must. Horses meant that the raiding forces could get away before the enemy could mount a counterattack. As for the weapons used, i don't think there was any explicit preference. \n\nSources:\n The Wars of Edward III, by Clifford J. Rogers\n\nWestern Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, by John France.\n\nTrial by Battle, by Jonathan Sumption.\n\nI hope you could use my wall of words, and i'm sorry if my english is sub-par, but it is not my main language."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ngi1g", "title": "I am a soldier in a 13th century German army that is currently besieging a castle. But the defenders have enough supplies to hold out several months before surrendering out of hunger. What does my day to day live look like in these months?", "selftext": "What are the duties and orders i have to fulfill? \nHow long would my \"work day\" be during the siege? \nAnd what could I do to pass the time and have fun? where there games and contests that took place inside the camp or even brothels to ease the tension among the men? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ngi1g/i_am_a_soldier_in_a_13th_century_german_army_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d43pcd5", "d43ritt", "d44228g"], "score": [30, 53, 9], "text": ["Follow up - We often don't hear what it was like for the defenders during seiges. What would they do, day to day, both soldier and civilian?", "_URL_0_\n\n/u/eeeeeep wrote a great reply to the same question a few days ago", "I'd like to add a cautionary note, if that's alright.\n\nI hope that I may be proved wrong, but I would advise you not to hope for too much specificity in your answer. As /u/eeeeeep did, we can speak in generalities about the high medieval fighting man's experience, but the sort of primary sources that would tell us what their lives were like, what they thought about them, etc, simply do not exist. Chroniclers were exclusively aristocrats or clergymen (or both), and their work focused overwhelmingly on the social elite and their acts. They include a great deal of information on the broad strokes of campaigning - where the armies went, what they besieged, how long these sieges lasted, various comments on deprivations and other general conditions - but less than could be hoped for on the micro level. They weren't awfully interested in the nuts and bolts of tactics, organization, logistics, and all the other things that medieval military historians would sell their eye teeth to know."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4m6x3j/what_did_medieval_soldiers_do_during_sieges/"], []]}
{"q_id": "fdntay", "title": "Why was the sun often depicted with a face in the Middle Ages and Renaissance?", "selftext": "I've been reading the book Cosmigraphics by Michael Benson which goes over the history of depicting space, and as I'm nearing the end it's really striking to me how so many Western depictions of the sun give it a face. \n\nHere's an example by Andreas Cellarius:  [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) \n\nI find this very mysterious. From what I can tell, none of these things mention the sun being any kind of character or being. I've never seen one of these suns talking or anything. So why does it have a face?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fdntay/why_was_the_sun_often_depicted_with_a_face_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fjj181w"], "score": [69], "text": ["This is an interesting question. I don't know of any scholarship on Sun imagery in the Early Modern period (I could imagine a nice research paper coming out of someone willing to parse over a lot of these things). \n\nIt is of note that all of those examples from the 17th century are heliocentric depictions. Early advocates of heliocentrism, especially Kepler but also others, did often imbue their arguments with aspects of Sun-worship, and waxed poetically in anthropomorphic manner about the Sun. Here is Copernicus, from _De Revolutionibus_: \n\n >  In the midst assuredly dwells the Sun. For in this most beautiful temple  who would place this luminary in any other or better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? Indeed, some rightly call Him the Light of the World, others, the Mind or the ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the visible God, Sophocles' Electra calls him the all-seeing. So indeed the Sun remains, as if in his kingly dominion, governing the family of Heavenly bodies which circles around him. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children, the planets, which circle round him. ... The Earth has intercourse with the Sun, and is impregnated for its yearly parturition.\n\nThe notion of the Sun as a God, and notably the Sun as a king, is very prominent in this kind of imagery. Here is Kepler's argument:\n\n >  [The sun] is a fountain of light, rich in fruitful heat, most fair, limpid, and pure to the sight, the source of vision, portrayer of all colors, though himself empty of color, called king of the planets for his motion, heart of the world for his power, its eye for his beauty, and which alone we should judge worthy of the Most High God,  should he be pleased with a material domicile and choose a place in which to dwell with the blessed angels.\u2026\n\n >  For if the Germans elect him as Caesar who has most power in the whole empire, who would hesitate to confer the votes of the celestial motions on him who already has been administering all other movements and changes by the benefit of the light which is entirely his possession? ... \n\n >  [Hence] by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself\u2026\n\nAnd so on and so on. And of course we have rulers who associate themselves with the Sun as well \u2014 Louis XIV, famously \"The Sun King.\" \n\nSo the imagery of the Sun as some kind of king of the skies, looking on the Earth with his light, and maybe even (as Kepler would hold it) being the seat of God himself... this is very common in this period in European writing about the Sun, and extremely common in early heliocentrism, which itself had many explicit references to Ancient sun-worship (e.g., the Pythagoreans). It is largely what drove men like Copernicus and Kepler to be heliocentrists in the first place (only later did they get some evidence for it, and even then it was somewhat ambiguous), in the same way that those who advocated for geocentrism were also driven by aesthetic, religious, or philosophical motivations. But I would note that to my knowledge neither Copernicus nor Kepler ever depicted the Sun in such a grandiose fashion, visually: their hyperbole was strictly verbal.\n\nAnyway, that's my guess: a mixture of reverent anthropomorphic imagery with a visual stylization (\"Sun has a face\") that \u2014 accurately \u2014 reflects the prominence of the Sun in the Copernican worldview (as opposed to the Ptolemaic one, in which the Sun is but another planet)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-celestial-atlas-of-andreas-cellarius-1660"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "38gdmm", "title": "Are there any photos of Omaha beach from the perspective of what the troops would see as they came off their landing crafts?", "selftext": "All of the photos of Omaha beach seem to be after the attack facing seaward or don't show much of what the troops actually saw as they stormed the beach. I feel like a lot of media and film, especially saving private ryan (as accurate as it is acclaimed to be), have skewed my vision of what it actually looked like. \n\nPresent day photographs leave it very hard for me to envision what it would look like at the time. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38gdmm/are_there_any_photos_of_omaha_beach_from_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cruw8l2"], "score": [79], "text": ["_URL_0_\n\nHere's one.  It looks nothing like Saving Private Ryan.  The beach on SPR was too narrow for starters as you can see in this pic.\n\nEdit - Robert Capa took a lot of photos on Omaha Beach but sadly most of his photos were accidentally destroyed during the development process.  Who knows what they would have shown."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "27nwht", "title": "Were there any facial expressions commonly used in the past, that are no longer used now?", "selftext": "It seems that the expressions of basic emotions (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness) are generally universal and pretty much hard-wired into being human, albeit with varying perceptions depending on your location, for example, westerns rely more on eyebrow movement, whereas those towards the east rely more on reading ones eyes. However, were there any expressions that were more common or perceived differently in the past, and adding a little more to the question were there any \"facial crazes\" in the past, such as how we (albeit unfortunately) have \"duckface\" now?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27nwht/were_there_any_facial_expressions_commonly_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ci2vtii", "ci34bcl"], "score": [46, 14], "text": ["There's a new book out called \"Laughter in Ancient Rome\" by Mary Beard, University of California Press, in which she suggests that Romans didn't smile. \n\nThere was no Roman word for smiling, no mention of it anywhere. \nAbsence of evidence is, of course, not evidence of absence. But it would contradict the hardwired idea. \n\nIncidentally, she was taking the idea from Jacques Le Goff who theorised that smiling was invented in the Middle Ages.\n", "[Paul Ekman](_URL_0_) has shown, fairly conclusively in my opinion, that the expression of emotion in the face is universal. In fact, facial expressions evolved for communication purposes. Despite the regular pleading of, 'I am not a mind reader,' human beings evolved to be able to read expressions at a distance. The reason we have white sclera is so that we can see where another person is looking with relative ease.\n\nI think there is an argument to be made about 'display rules' in ancient cultures, but when Romans were reading Catullus one can only guess that they were gut-laughing about a senator brushing his teeth with donkey piss. \n\nThis is definitely a topic where you need to look at the science of expression rather than the opinions of historians. We know something about the evolution of expression and so are more likely to find conclusive answers there.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman"]]}
{"q_id": "1kxnd1", "title": "What led to the downfall of \"big research\", ie Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, IBM Research, etc.", "selftext": "The research done by these companies have, to a very large extent, shaped the modern world as we know it. These institutions were on par with the very best research universities in the world (number of Nobel prizes, publications etc), and while they are still around in present times (either as the same company, or as a derivative company), they are shadows of their former selves.\n\nI'm curious as to the circumstances that led to the fall of such research institutions, because by any metric they should have made their companies fortunes (Printers, GUI, transistors, digital cameras, hard drives, C etc).  Was it just a case of poor capitalization? Was the research too fundamental (_URL_0_ this would be an example of a groundbreaking discovery that i doubt made much money)? Was there a shift in company values?\n\nthanks!\n\nAny books that could be recommended on the subject matter would be appreciated as well", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kxnd1/what_led_to_the_downfall_of_big_research_ie_bell/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbtow28"], "score": [133], "text": ["It's a complicated question. My understanding, from talking to people who have studied this quite a bit (there are people where I work who study this question very directly relationship to industry and physics), is that a few important changes have occurred. One is that these big behemoth companies like Bell and Xerox and IBM underwent significant financial struggles in the late 20th century. That never helps anybody. The other is that around the same time, there is an emergence of what we might label as \"start up\" culture. Scientists at universities were encouraged to take their academic research and commercialize it directly, starting small, speciality companies based around their niche areas. (This is part of a longer movement of \"technology transfer\" in the university system, as well as the [ability for scientists to patent the results of publicly-funded research.](_URL_1_)) \n\nThe combination of these effects means that the big companies no longer feel like it is worth maintaining general R & D divisions, where only maybe 10% of the total work at most will turn into anything profitable for the company. Instead, they simply buy up the start-ups (or their intellectual property) that seem to be the real winners \u2014 they only pay for the stuff that they think is actually going to be useful to them. So they've pushed the general R & D function back to the universities. They care a lot more about the bottom line today than they used to, in part because they no longer have some of the near-monopoly advantages that they used to have, what with increased foreign competition, fragmentation of the markets, and technology disruption, etc.\n\nSuch is my understanding of it, anyway, which is derived mostly from a few talks and conversations. You can see [some of the results of my colleagues' research here](_URL_0_) \u2014 look in particular at \"Part 1\" for a pocket history of physics in American industry in the late 40 years, which discusses some of the corporate changes as well.\n\nI don't know whether this trend applies everywhere; the above is done mostly with regards to the physics industries of the original question. I'm sure biotech and big pharma has their own stories."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.aip.org/history/pubs/HOPI_Final_report.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act"]]}
{"q_id": "3605a3", "title": "Who were the Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan of 1880s/90s Germany?", "selftext": "As a student of American history, I have a wealth of information regarding the modern industrialization in the U.S.  I realize that Germany also underwent rapid industrialization at approximately the same time.  Were there also stand out industrialists that pushed Germany forward?\n\nThanks.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3605a3/who_were_the_rockefeller_carnegie_and_jp_morgan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr9rhwn", "cr9s30j"], "score": [3, 6], "text": ["Albert Ballin worked his way up through the ranks of the Hamburg American Steamship Line (HAPAG) and was so successful at increasing the number of passengers carried by that company on the North Atlantic route, he became the president of the company. Ballin also turned HAPAG into the largest steamship company in the world from 1906 to 1914. Despite being Jewish, he became a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II.  The Kaiser let his great love of anything nautical and the very large ocean liners built by HAPAG overcome what ever anti-Semitism he may have had. In fact, some apologists of Kaiser Wilhelm point to his friendship with Ballin to prove he had no hatred against the Jews. \nSource: \"Lost Liners\" by Robert Ballard   ", "Gerson von Bleichr\u00f6der was the chief banker for the Imperial state and handled Bismarck's own personal finances. Although not nearly as powerful a banker as Morgan, von Bleichr\u00f6der was able to use his connections within the Imperial state to expand his financial interests. \n\nAlbert Ballin was a shipping magnate and head of the lucrative Hamburg-America Line, which was one of the world's largest shipping lines in the late nineteenth century. Ballin also operated as a diplomatic go-between for Imperial Germany and the British. \n\nWalther Rathenau, like von Bleichr\u00f6der, was a German-Jewish businessman who founded  Allgemeine Elektrizit\u00e4ts-Gesellschaft (AEG), an electrical concern. He played a crucial role in organizing Germany's economy during the First World War and became a controversial figure in the early Weimar Republic as he became Foreign Minister. The antisemitic right saw his process of diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union as a part of a Jewish conspiracy to further destroy Germany, leading to his assassination in 1922.\n\nThe Ruhr coal industry created a number of major industrial magnates as coal was the most accessible fossil fuel available for Germany. Louis Baare was the director of the Bochumer Verein and highly respected in Imperial Germany and was a representative to the *Reichstag* and a prominent supporter of the anti-socialist legislation. Emil Kirdorf was another Ruhr coal magnate and lived all the way through the Third Reich, passing in 1938.  Kridorf's Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) was a massive coal concern and Kirdorf was an avid supporter of reactionary politics, supporting the NSDAP in their lean times between the Beer Hall Putsch and the Depression. When he died in 1938, Hitler himself attended Kirdorf's state funeral. Carl Lueg was the head of  Gutehoffnungsh\u00fctte (GHH), a mining and engineering company that grew tremendously after unification. Like his fellow coal magnates, Lueg was a prominent advocate for trade protectionism and also employed industrial paternalism for his workers providing care for his employees (provided they did not strike or have the temerity to vote for the SPD).   \n\nOne of the major differences between German industrialists and their American counterparts was that in the former case they played a much more formalized role in national politics. Although Rockefeller and Morgan were important players in the national scene, they never formally entered into the federal government, unlike figures like Rathenau or Baare. American industrialists actually prided themselves in their relative autonomy from the stat; the idea that the American entrepreneur succeeded without government interference or aid was a powerful myth that surrounded this charter generation of American entrepreneurs. The Germans never really maintained this position and German industrial magnates argued that business and politics were intertwined. This played into long-standing German cultural mores about the social role of economic superiors, called \"Bread-Lords,\" or *Arbeitsgeber* in which employers were accepted to have a leading role over their employees' lives and politics in exchange for fair wages and a measure of social welfare.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "361xy6", "title": "In the Movie \"Hunt for Red October\" The Soviet captain said \"Halsey acted stupidly\". What actions could he be referring to.", "selftext": "I assume that he would be referring to some risk Halsey toke in the Pacific world war 2 theater. Would him as a Soviet commander be more likely to view american historical commanders more unfavorably?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/361xy6/in_the_movie_hunt_for_red_october_the_soviet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr9xkyj", "cr9yjnk", "crab8xp"], "score": [57, 31, 2], "text": ["This was a reference to Halsey's actions at Leyte Gulf where he \"swallowed the bait\" and [attacked](_URL_0_) Ozawa's mobile force of Japan's surviving carriers. This left the Leyte landing  unprotected by the strongest American naval force in the area. This decision has remained controversial among within the Navy andnaval historians  ever since and    Clancy's reference to it reflects this debate.", "The response from /u/kieslowskifan may be correct, as that is Halsey's best-known mistake.\n\nThere are also references in Clancy's book to Ryan writing a book regarding Halsey's actions during Typhoon Cobra in 1944.  Three destroyers were lost and many ships were damaged.  I don't recall the exact excerpt from the text of Clancy's book, but this reference could also be the Soviet captain making it clear that he had read Ryan's book.  That's what I recall, anyway.\n\nIt's not a great source, but the final item in [wikipedia's entry on mentions of Halsey in popular culture](_URL_0_) agrees with my recollection.\n\nI found this online, and it appears to be the text in question:\n\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds.\n > Captain Ramius: [to Ryan] What books?\n > Jack Ryan: Pardon me?\n > Captain Ramius: What books did you write?\n > Jack Ryan: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called \"The Fighting Sailor\", about, uh, naval combat tactics...\n > Captain Ramius: I know this book!\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact...\n > Captain Ramius: Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan...\n > Capt. Vasili Borodin: ...10 seconds.\n > Captain Ramius: ...Halsey acted stupidly.\n\nI don't know if I can say for sure which mistake the captain is referring to, but it seems to me it would either be going after the carriers or sailing into the typhoon.  I know of no other major errors on Halsey's part that Ryan (via Clancy) would be referring to.", "Side question: if Halsey's reputation for aggression to the point of recklessness was already established by May 1942, why did he suggest Raymond Spruance (regarded as extremely conservative) to take over operations at Midway?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf#Halsey.27s_decision_.2824_October.29"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Halsey,_Jr.#In_popular_culture"], []]}
{"q_id": "38dqn8", "title": "Why, with the Maryland-Virgina border, was Maryland (and DC) given control of the entire Potomac River up to the Virginia bank instead of having the border go through the center of the river?", "selftext": "I assume there was some logic to this, but the most I can find is that as colonies both claimed the entire river, and then Virginia relinquished its claim, but no explanation for why they were willing to.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38dqn8/why_with_the_marylandvirgina_border_was_maryland/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crumi5d"], "score": [22], "text": ["This arrangement is pretty common along river boundaries. There are many practical reasons to place the border along one side or the other, among them licensing of boats and fishing, and that it is harder to find the middle than to find the riverbank.\n\nIn reality, though, it comes down to what the charter/court/legislature says.\n\nSometimes there is political pressure and sometimes deals are struck in setting the boundary.  For example there was a 17th century border related conflict between [Baltimore and Penn](_URL_2_) in trying to decide what water access Pennsylvania should get.\n\nIn the case of states admitted to the union, an already admitted state has much more political power, and can trade its support for territory.  This is why Ohio got Toledo.  Michigan was in turn allowed to grab the U.P. from Wisconsin.\n\nI can't answer to Potomac River, but the boundary between the distant parts Virginia that are now Kentucky and what was to become the state Ohio was [readjudicated in 1981](_URL_1_) so that Kentucky gets the river, but only up to the 1792 waterline on the Ohio side.  This is tricky because the river has changed course and in many places this is now in the middle of the river.\n\nIn 1910, part of the boundary along the West Virginia and Maryland was decided to be the south bank in [Maryland v West Virginia](_URL_0_).\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/217/1/", "http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/21/us/kentucky-indiana-and-ohio-end-river-boundary-dispute.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn%E2%80%93Calvert_Boundary_Dispute"]]}
{"q_id": "2cbf7q", "title": "How accurate are Ken Follet's \"Pillars of the Earth\" and \"World without End\" to actual life in 14th Century England?", "selftext": "I'm aware that the town itself is fictional, but how true is Follet's depiction of social organization and the role of the church in English society? \n\nSpecifically:\n\nHow much authority could the Prior of a Parish actually yield? Were they actually considered the \"owners\" of a town? \n\nIs the depiction of village life (the village of Wigleigh in \"World Without End\") accurate? \n\nThank you in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cbf7q/how_accurate_are_ken_follets_pillars_of_the_earth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cje7dbo", "cjefenn"], "score": [8, 5], "text": ["It has been a very long time since I read the book, but unless my memory is playing serious tricks on me, the cathedral was being built by a monastery, not a parish. It would only be a monastery or a diocese that would build a cathedral, not a single parish (a parish is a subdivision of a diocese, and 'cathedral' comes from \"seat of a Bishop\"). \n\nThe abbot of a monastery is and was of the same religious level order as a bishop of a diocese, and they were lords of the realm as well back then (I don't know if they still sit in the House of Lords, but they used to). I'm not sure at what level of nobility they were either, but at least equal to a baron and, like a baron, they could \"own\" or at least govern a town.", "Follow-up question regarding the book's social/family constructions. I'm just about to finish *Pillars of the Earth* on the heels of rereading Connie Willis' *Doomsday Book*. Obviously, historical novels will lean toward novel as opposed to history, but one major difference between the two involves parental love. I assumed that strong parental love (In *PotE*, a starving builder says that his children are his best work, though he hopes his cathedral plans will be his second best) was a fairly modern construction, and *Doomsday*'s fond mother who nevertheless prefers to have the nurse mind the children all day was more realistic. How adored were children of poor tradespeople in the 1100s? \n\n*PotE* is killing me. [Wikipedia's list of its historical inaccuracies](_URL_0_) is fascinating but surely this doesn't begin to touch on the social inaccuracies. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillars_of_the_Earth#Historical_accuracy"]]}
{"q_id": "8jk5mu", "title": "I have seen many references to \"Asiatic despotism\" in the work of 19th and 20th century writers. How did this notion become popular? Were Asian societies really more authoritarian than average as compared to other regions?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8jk5mu/i_have_seen_many_references_to_asiatic_despotism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dz0q1iz"], "score": [11], "text": ["Additional question, if I may: how did this trend color Western views of places like Russia and the Byzantine empire?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2gbneu", "title": "What would you consider to be the most essential AskHistorians posts that one should read?", "selftext": "This subreddit is full of insightful, fascinating and illumianting answers/posts by knowledgeable flaired redditors. Which of these would you strongly urge that everyone should read?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2gbneu/what_would_you_consider_to_be_the_most_essential/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckhkfru", "ckhlh77", "ckhm3wb", "ckhp1ya", "ckhs485"], "score": [20, 12, 16, 7, 2], "text": ["The next one.\n\nThere are so many good answers and well-researched responses that it's impossible to say. I'm always pleasantly surprised what I find and learn here, and I personally hope that I've contributed in some way.", "Anything that makes the [Sunday: Day of Reflection](_URL_0_) weekly feature.", "Many of our flaired users maintain [Profile Pages](_URL_0_) highlighting what they consider to be their best answers. Definitely a good place to start.", "I don't have any specific answers, but \"most essential\" is a somewhat specific term and I'm going to ride it home. \n\nIf there's anything essential in the breadth of historical consideration, it's the *means* of understanding history. New information emerges all the time, placing holes in some theories and validating others, so one's historical knowledge is always, to some degree, perishable. As a result, the most essential skill is in the interpretation of information, especially interpreting that information in as \"neutral\" a way as possible.\n\nAs a result, the most essential posts on /r/AskHistorians to my mind will be those that deal with how modern people find historical materials, interpret those materials, and how they draw hypothesis and theories from those materials. In my opinion, what makes a historian is the skill they display in this task above all others -- which means that anyone with the proper approach and an honest intellect can be a historian, irrespective of formal education or the circumstances of their life. History is a form of science, after all, and factual information is the resource science thrives upon. If one is capable of and willing to find that factual information (or the informations that are theoretically equally factual) in context of history, then that's the requisite basis to partake of the broader, modern world of historical study. \n\nOf course, what happens after that basis is established is responsible for the remarkable diversity in various studies of history, and where things naturally get much more complex. But again, \"essential\". And what is most essential is honest interpretation of the information at our disposal, with as little bias as is possible.\n\ntl;dr do we have a post that boils down to \"ditch the History Channel and passionately absorb information concerning your favourite eras of history from a diversity of sources\"? Because that is the essential thing. ", "Sort /r/AskHistorians by \"top\"  posts and that is the best place to start in assessing what the AskHistorians community considers most fascinating. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=day+of+reflection&amp;restrict_sr=on"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2yxbgs", "title": "Are modern Italians anything like ancient Romans physically?", "selftext": "In a lot of contemporary paintings, murals, etc, Roman look a lot more like modern day Turks. I know that there was a migration of tribes from the north down into Italy towards the end of the Western Roman Empire, but just wondered if a modern Italian would look anything like an ancient Roman if they stood next to them. Can a majority of the native Italian population today claim heritage back to Roman days?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yxbgs/are_modern_italians_anything_like_ancient_romans/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpe3blv"], "score": [29], "text": ["There was a study in Science (link at bottom) that traced genetic admixture events. There's also a [website](_URL_0_) that's free and a little easier for laymen to read. \n\nIf I'm reading it correctly, 41% of their sample of Tuscan genomes comes from an influx of \"French-like\" and \"Cypriot-like\" genes between 522CE - 1222CE. Their samples for the rest of Italy look pretty similar, with some exceptions (more Middle Eastern-type genes in Sicily, etc.) So going off of this, the answer is \"partly\". \n\n\n_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/", "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/747.abstract?sid=3a8a4e24-47e8-45c8-bbf8-23c1f6d246f5"]]}
{"q_id": "1x39jg", "title": "Did building a snowman have any kind of documented cultural origin, or was it just a spontaneous thing we started doing one day?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x39jg/did_building_a_snowman_have_any_kind_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cf7q46w", "cf855pw"], "score": [28, 6], "text": ["Shockingly enough, there have been numerous books published on the subject. Although there are no confirmed cultural origins, the first known depiction was in a Book of Hours currently held at Koninlijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. ", "_URL_0_ \n\nPrevious thread on the subject here. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b0oq5/wherewhen_did_the_tradition_of_building_snow_men/"]]}
{"q_id": "a09mec", "title": "\"IBM and the Holocaust,\"by Edwin Black claims, \"Data generated by IBM was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe.\" How do historians view this book? How deep was the cooperation between IBM and Germany?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a09mec/ibm_and_the_holocaustby_edwin_black_claims_data/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eahbxj0"], "score": [20], "text": ["There was a nice succinct answer from /u/estherke when [nearly the same question was](_URL_0_) asked about three years ago.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nOf course there is always room for more discussion."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wpbj4/the_book_ibm_and_the_holocaust_by_edwin_black/"]]}
{"q_id": "aj2ktv", "title": "In 1994 in the U.K., the 'Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill' outlawed (among other things) EDM or \"techno\" music. Rave culture persists there, however. What happened?", "selftext": "One of the elements of the U.K.'s 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill outlawed \u201cgatherings around music characterized wholly or predominantly by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.\u201d This was seen at the time as a push against \"rave\" culture or \"techno\" music events. So far as I know, people in the U.K. still go to raves featuring EDM that falls within this definition umbrella. Was this law just not enforced? If it was, how did rave culture in the U.K. get around this law following this Act's passage in 1994? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aj2ktv/in_1994_in_the_uk_the_criminal_justice_and_public/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eetxnxb"], "score": [5], "text": ["Autechre released an EP in 1994 which included a protest of this bill by way of a track called Flutter in which no subsequent bar is repeated in the same way. They even state: \"have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment.\", which highlights just how ridiculous the bill was to enforce from a technical perspective."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6gfp48", "title": "What is the history of cuck(old) as an insult?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gfp48/what_is_the_history_of_cuckold_as_an_insult/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dipwe4n"], "score": [308], "text": ["The first thing you have to realize when approaching this question is that before about mid-17th century (1650) or so, sexuality and sexual identity was largely controlled/supported by the village or town community. People who fell out of line from what was seen as correct or right were often beaten, humiliated or even tried by their local communities. As Stone puts it:\n\n\n > During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this intrusive scrutiny actually intensified due to the rise of ethical Puritanism and the increased activity of the Church courts in controlling personal morality. Everyone gossiped freely about the most intimate details of domestic relations, and did not hesitate to denounce violations of community norms to an archdeacon's visitation enquiry, so that people were constantly testifying in court about the alleged moral peccadilloes of their neighbours.\n\nAside from church courts, and indeed some of the court\u2019s sentences were town humiliations. One such sentence or community punishment might be the use of the cucking/ducking stool\u2014which looked like [this](_URL_2_) or [this](_URL_0_) where the cuckold or the woman accused of being too dominant and controlling or argumentative would be ducked in the water.. the 1615 ballad Cucking of a Scold recounts one such event:\n\n\n\n > Then was the Scold herself,\n\n\n > In a wheelbarrow brought,\n\n\n > Stripped naked to the smock,\n\n\n > As in that case she ought:\n\n\n > Neats tongues about her neck\n\n\n > Were hung in open show;\n\n\n > And thus unto the cucking stool\n\n\n > This famous scold did go.\n\nThe tradition or punishment is quite old--there are references to it in Anglo-Saxon times. The other form of community punishment might be the Charivari or Skimmington ride, that would include a impropmptu town parade of people banging on pots and pans and singing roudy ballads\u2014sometimes to force an unmarried couple to wed, sometimes to humiliate a man who couldn\u2019t control his wife, sometimes in the case of older widows remarrying. It was a form of social control-- Hogarth made an [illustration of this](_URL_1_), which even at his time was becoming dated\n\nAs one historian puts it:\n\n > Both the state and the community relied on this collective opinion to ensure social order: hence the importance of one's 'good name and fme' in determining guilt and innocence in both civil and criminal trials/ the courts' use of 'shame' punishments - the pillory, stocks, cucking stool and public whipping - to solicit community participation in the public destruction of the reputations of those convicted of certain crimes\n\nSo, in result, there was a high amount of pressure on men to assert their manhood through sexual control of woman. When a man was single, it was more than okay for him to brag about his sexual conquests, but as soon as he became married, it became essential for him to control their wives to avoid the risk and danger of being called a cuckold. The humiliation of such an event could spell loss of respect, honor, and in some cases lead to duels or fights. There is much to say about history of masculinity here that /u/Georgy_k_Zhukov might want to say here that I don\u2019t know as much about.\n\nRegardless, this held more or less true through the 16th and 17th centuries. The difference is that by the 18th century, the amount of community control over sexuality had begun to collapse \u2013 partially because of the rise of a more professionalized and urban police force that was more concerned with enforcing very visible sorts of disorder such as drunkenness and fighting and partially because church courts, which were the arbitrators and enforcer of english morality for so long never managed to recover after the Civil War.\n\nAs Shoemaker puts it\n\n > As the individual ceased to be so closely watched by the community, estimations of honour and reputation became less publicly defined. Craig Muldrew has traced a similar decline in the social and moral significance of 'credit' (a public reputation for solvency) between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as new financial institutions developed to guarantee financial transactions. As he suggests, these changes might usefully be interpreted as part of the same process that created the modern notion of the individual, whose identity is determined by the inner, 'true' self.\n\nBy the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution had resensitized the minds of English people to the fragility of \u201cthe great family of the public,\u201d the very \u201cprivacy\u201d of the marriage contract seemed to argue against the intrusions of public law. \u201cAdultery ceased to be a part of the history of cuckoldry and became a domestic tragedy, less a matter for public scorn (though that was still there) and more a part of private pain.\u201d\n\nIn the context of a private, personal pain, the image of the cuckolded husband and the community and group humiliation that came along with it began to fall apart. The shame was individual and within the family, and did not need to be reinforced or bestowed on an individual by a larger community. \n\nHowever, cuckold as an insult did not die off completely everywhere in the English speaking world. In fact, the term remained in vogue, in particular places. \n\nOne of those places was the American South, where the danger of black men sleeping with white women remained a paramount bogeyman \u2013 and still does. As you might suspect, this lead to the fetish and a porn genre that has heavy ties to humiliation and racism. A cuckold video usually involves an impotent and humiliated white man watching as his wife sleeps with a larger more powerful black man or \u201cBBC.\u201d \n\nEdit: removed something that was a bit too far over the current politics line :) \n\n\nSources:\n\nFashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660-1740 - - - David M Turner\n\n\n\n\nThe Secret History of Domesticity--Michael McKeon\n\n\nThe Family, Sex, and Marriage \u2013 Lawrence Stone\n\n\nThe Decline of the Public Insult In London \u2013 Robert Shoemaker\n\n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool#/media/File:Ducking-Stool_1_\\(PSF\\).png", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/William_Hogarth._Hudibras_Encounters_the_Skimmington.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool#/media/File:Old_woman_draught_at_Ratcliffe_Highway.png"]]}
{"q_id": "sgbdw", "title": "What is the earliest rendering of the common penis drawing we all know? (NSFW?) ", "selftext": "[This](_URL_0_)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sgbdw/what_is_the_earliest_rendering_of_the_common/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4duf1u", "c4dw23j", "c4dwgrr", "c4dxryn", "c4dxsi8", "c4dym53"], "score": [86, 22, 3, 6, 9, 2], "text": ["This is a pretty funny question, but it isn't without value. It is too bad you are getting downvoted because I at least think ancient graffiti is pretty fascinating.\n\nI can't tell you the earliest example, but there are Roman graffiti in Pompeii of the \"rocket ship\" type.", "The oldest I've heard of is the [Hohle phallus](_URL_0_) (NSFW? It's a stone object that vaguely resembles a penis), which admittedly is a full-scale stone phallic object, probably used as a dildo. That dates to about 26,000 BCE.", "Well, it seems relevant... so I guess I can link to a wikipedia article on [Kanamara Masuri](_URL_0_). There's a lot of little shrines and festivals like this in Japan. If you wanted to research it some more, I've heard of certain totems that are 2000 years old, but it's not my area, so I don't have much at hand to link to. ", "Really, really interesting thread here. Sometimes I forget how prominent and important dongs were in ancient culture.", "The oldest penis sculpture are believed to be 28,000 years old.  _URL_1_ \n\nThe oldest fertility statue (with boobs and a naked women) is even older, 35,000. _URL_0_\n\nEdit: I know it's not a drawing, but still a very old penis.", "I can't answer this question, but I remember seeing Titus Pullo drawing a penis on a bench in the first episode of *Rome*. That got me asking similar questions"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://benaxelrad.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/dickphoto.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4713323.stm"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanamara_Matsuri"], [], ["http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1181357/Carved-figurine-dating-35-000-years-mans-oldest-known-sculpture---yes-naked-woman.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus#Archaeology"], []]}
{"q_id": "anct7d", "title": "I'm a soldier on the Western Front during WWI, and I've been hit while in no man's land. What are my chances of survival?", "selftext": "This could question could apply to any country that was on the Western Front (British Empire, Germany, France etc.). I'm going over the top in an attack and I get hit, either by machine gun fire or artillery, but I'm not dead. How likely am I to survive this ordeal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/anct7d/im_a_soldier_on_the_western_front_during_wwi_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["efsygd4", "efsyx73", "efszunx"], "score": [5, 55, 12], "text": ["As a follow up question: How would a wounded soldier get back to his trenches? Did the opposition allow for recovery of wounded? That seems unlikely. If the wound is more severe then it could be impossible to crawl back.", "EDIT: I am home now and have provided a more in depth answer as a reply. But here is the TL;DR: The quick answer to your question is that it depends on the injury you sustained. **Surprisingly if you were wounded and received treatment you had a [95% survival rate](_URL_0_)(Found under \"American medicine in the second decade...\").** If you were hit by artillery you had a 30% survival rate. If you had a limb amputated you had a 95% survival rate. Survival rate of diseases with treatment was 30%. If you were wounded on the battlefield and were beyond help (head wound, abdomen wound, artery hit), you were left there to die on the field.\n\n\n\n\nI study 20th century warfare so I\u2019ll try to give the best answer that I can. Right now I am on my phone so I can\u2019t pull up exact numbers but once I am home in an hour or so I\u2019ll expand on my answer and go into more detail. For now I will answer your question specifically to the question you asked. And most of my answer will include more influence from the US history. But once I am at my desktop and have my books I will be able to provide numbers and percentages on survival chance dependent upon injuries. \n\n\nTo get to your question, the answer to your question depends on a multitude of circumstances; so it\u2019s difficult to answer. A number of questions have to be asked to determine your chances of survival. \n\n\nWhere in no man\u2019s land are you? Are you 5ft from your side\u2019s trench or are you 200ft from it? Did you end up next to a soldier nearby to assist you? The location in which you were injured greatly affects your chances of survival. The closer you were to being able to receive aid, the time it takes before a medic begins to work on you, these things will help determine your chances of survival. Back in WW1 there was no modern day corpsman. Where there would be a trained soldier having all the tools and equipment to field stabilize someone. Durning WW1 the US in essence borrowed from the English and French system. Medical staff used stretchers to run out and grab people and bring them back to their side where they would be transported back to the med tents. And then medical staff would begin work on you. Additionally, if a med tent became overflowed with wounded it could take more time for you to receive aid, lowering chances of survival. If there was prolonged machine gun fire or artillery, it may have not been possible for you to receive help as it may have been to dangerous for them to get to you. \nThere could be some instances where some limited immediate help could be provided. Let\u2019s say you got injured and ended up in a crater left from artillery and there was someone else in the hole with you. They may be able to apply a tourniquet and bandage to your wound. Thus your chances of survival would improve. Or maybe you were shot immediately after exiting your side\u2019s trench. Someone may be able to pull you back into the trench and you\u2019d be brought back to the med tents. Like I said, right now I don\u2019t have access to the numbers so I apologize. But if you were wounded in the trench and were brought back to the med tents for better treatment, your odds of survival would greatly improve. \n\n\nWhat kind of damage did you sustain? Were you shot in the end of a limb? The chest? The head? How much blood are you losing and how long will it take for you to bleed out? The severity of your wound is another factor that determines your chance of survival. In WW1, the medical technology in combat could even be considered primal when compared to today\u2019s and even WW2\u2019s medical standards. The more severe of a wound you received, as applies to any situation even outside of war, the lower your chances of survival. But it was even worse in WW1. Since field medics weren\u2019t standard practice, bleed out rates from bullet wounds and missing limbs were high. When I am home I will provide numbers on survival rates from different types of wounds and injuries sustained. \n\n\nAnother issue that soldiers faced were the low sanitation standards in the trenches and in med tents. Sometimes in trenches it was like standing in marsh water. People were sweating in the water, bleeding in it, throwing up in it. It was an absolute breeding ground for many diseases and illnesses. Let\u2019s say you received a superficial wound like a graze from a bullet or shrapnel, or you got cut somehow. The injury you sustained may have not been enough to send you back so you continue to stay on the frontlines in the trenches. Now the wound you received is being exposed to all the bacteria that is thriving in those trenches. And then you get incredibly sick. The medical technology wasn\u2019t their yet at the time, getting sick like that could mean certain death. This sort of thing even more so extended to the wounded in the med tents. In WW1 the medical practices had almost barely evolved since the Civil War. It wasn\u2019t fully understood by nurses and doctors at the time the importance of sanitation and keeping things sterile. Salt water was the main sterilization technique used to clean wounds. And once infection set it little could be done which resulted in high numbers of lives lost. Illness was so bad that it claimed more lives than gunfire did.\n\n\nI apologize that was my answer was not incredibly extensive and as I said, I will elaborate on it when I am home. I hope this somewhat satisfies your question. \n\n\nIf you want more information on this right now, read this: _URL_1_", "The scenario leaves a lot of questions regarding assumptions. Are you asking how likely you are to survive simply being in No Man's Land, getting back to the trench, or long term (the wound, the war itself, etc)?\n\nI'll try to address each of these in turn. \n\nFirst, let's take a look at *when* you would have gone over the top. It's either part of a trench raid or probe, or it's in a larger attack on the lines. \n\nIf the attack occurred as a trench raid or probe, it would have happened overnight. You could have been strafed by machine gun fire and clipped, and possibly separated from your raiding party. In this case, you'd need to be able to very slowly pick your way back to the lines. Dangerous, but possible - and this did happen. There could be occasional illumination flares, and that (along with noise) could be the most dangerous time to be caught in the open. Soldiers would try to memorize the shapes and shadows of what they could observe at night, because the movement of the flares would shift the appearance of the shadows, causing the appearance of moving objects. When observing a part of the line, a soldier would be aware of the optical illusion caused by illumination flares and would try to spot anything out of place. Noise near the enemy trench might invite a harassing grenade. You could also easily run into an enemy raiding party, or even another friendly raiding party, although that's a little less likely since the communication was pretty good about who was going out for raids. Still...very dangerous. Pick your way quietly back to the line, whisper to your mates, and hope the enemy doesn't hear the commotion. On the other hand, it's also likely that your buddies in a raiding party (there could be as many as 20) would spend some time searching for you before they gave up. They'd bring you back if they found you (alive). \n\nNow let's examine what might happen if you were clipped by a bullet or shrapnel during a larger attack on the lines. \n\nUnlike trench raids, dawn was the standard time of attack. This means that if you went over the top and were wounded, you'd have a helluva long wait until dusk to get back to the line unnoticed. *However*, it's kind of a Hollywood assumption that this is what would have to happen for you to get back to the relative safety of the trench. \n\nMaybe you can pick your way back. The gap of No Man's Land looks different depending on where you are. The average width is 250m, but the gap could be anywhere from 50 to 500m. The closest was SEVEN METERS at Zonnebeke. \n\nNear each combatant's line, there could be as much as 100 ft of barbed wire in many bands. There would be water-filled shell holes. The terrain is pockmarked and difficult. There could be primitive land mines of sorts and unexploded ordnance. If you could walk, you would. With luck, you'd make it back without being hit again. Or caught in wire. Or stuck drowning in mud. \n\nLet's ground this for a moment: there was quite a bit of casualty collection in No Man's Land, both formally (organized stretcher bearing parties) and informally (buddies carrying buddies during battle). If you were hit during a battle, you MIGHT be carried back right away, depending on the wound. There were also frequent, informal ceasefires arranged to allow for stretcher bearer parties (including Red Cross) to enter and remove wounded. Depending on where you get stuck in No Man's Land, you might be collected and treated by the enemy - or get swapped between friendly/enemy stretcher bearers and get back to your side for treatment. \n\nSimply being in No Man's Land is very dangerous. If you are there at night, you risk being caught as a trench raider by the enemy, hurting yourself on any of the very dangerous things on the ground, and getting killed by your own side. During a pitched battle, you risk getting hit by machine gun fire, a stray or directed rifle bullet, or shrapnel if there is an artillery attack or someone tosses a grenade (note: use of grenades in WWI is more of a harassing feature than how they have been used in more recent conflicts, beginning with WWII). \n\nWe've talked about the possibilities of getting killed in No Man's Land, getting killed while trying to regain the relative safety of the trench, so now I'll turn to the longer term questions of survival. \n\nLet's say you are among \"average\" British troops. The casualty(dead and wounded) rate is 56% and the over all death rate is 12.5%. \n\nA significant number (not quite 30%) of simple leg or arm wounds could result in death. American statistics show that as many as 44% of any gangrenous wound would result in death. A head wound puts you at 50/50 chances, and an abdomen wound is near certain death (99%). A majority of wounds came from shells. This should not be a surprise, since there was a lot more shelling than small arms combat. Since shell shrapnel can carry debris into a wound much more so than a bullet, you would be more likely to receive infection from a shell wound. If you're dragging yourself through a muddy No Mans Land with dead bodies all over the place, you can expect that any wound you have received could get infected. \n\nIn summary, a lot depends on the nature of the wound (of course), the time of day, the type of attack, the distance to friendly lines, the location of the wound, whether or not it gets infected (including time to treatment), etc. \n\nLots of resources available upon request. I will also recommend for general reading on the experience of day to day life and fighting in the trenches, Herbert McBride's \"A Rifleman Went to War.\" "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/practice-of-medicine-in-ww1.html", "https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-medicine-battlefield"], []]}
{"q_id": "9h8xj3", "title": "\u200b\u200bFrom Ska to Rocksteady and Reggae to Dub, Jamaican music w\u200bas transformed \u200bat an incredible pace in the 1960s and '70s. What factors influenced these \u200bmajor \u200bartistic and technological advances?", "selftext": "\u200bA few developments that come to mind: The strength of Jamaica's recording industry; influence of U.S. Jazz, Soul etc. via radios; a particularly hot summer that called for slower grooves, supposedly leading from ska to rocksteady; religious influence of rastafari via Ethiopia, including on drum circles; \u200bthe studio wizardry of the early dub producers. Would be glad to get more in-depth info and/or reading recommendations about the topic - also regarding what role Jamaican politics and economy played at the time for these impressive artistic developments and huge musical output for a (comparatively) smaller country.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9h8xj3/from_ska_to_rocksteady_and_reggae_to_dub_jamaican/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6ae1oa", "e6apqre", "e6b5dgp"], "score": [88, 3, 3], "text": ["Jamaican R & B (to use an umbrella term for all the genres you mention above) came to be so fruitful thanks to a fair few different factors - many of which you've mentioned above. I'd say that there's three very big social factors playing a role in how it came to be.\n\nFirstly, Jamaica was a British colony with a long history of slavery (/u/sowser discusses [the abolition of slavery in the British empire with a Caribbean emphasis here](_URL_0_)). While British slavery might have stopped a generation before American slavery, it unsurprisingly had lasting cultural impacts. Lloyd Bradley in *Bass Culture* argues, for example, that Rastafari is more than anything a cultural response to living in a black majority state with a British upper class. In Jamaica, the way cultural capital worked was to encourage an emulation of the white upper class. In contrast, Rastafari was to some extent an explicit rejection of high society's manners - the dreadlocks that Rastafari wore were a symbol of African heritage, for starters, and Rastafari attitudes and behaviours  were in opposition to the servile and self-serving attitudes encouraged by interaction with the British upper class.\n\nThe history of oppression of black people also meant that (poor) Jamaicans (of African heritage) shared several cultural touchstones with African-Americans, and gravitated towards their music. Jamaican R & B starts, primarily, as a scene simply playing American R & B records. There are later traces of this in how Bob Marley would later cover 'People Get Ready' by the American soul act Curtis Mayfield  &  The Impressions (or check out the compilation on the Soul Jazz label, *Studio One Soul*, where artists recording for the Jamaican-based Studio One label cover the likes of 'Time Is Tight', 'Respect' and 'Express Yourself'.) But at the start of the Jamaican R & B scene, the aim was simple emulation of American R & B.\n\nSecondly, because there was an entire lack of infrastructure willing to provide a space for R & B despite its popularity (whether because of simple poverty or other factors), a scene based around portable 'sound systems' developed, where entrepreneurs put together powerful portable PA systems and carried them around to different areas of the Kingston slums (charging for admission and selling drinks). \n\nDifferent sound system owners prided themselves on their ability to find the obscure 1950s American R & B tracks that had the qualities that Jamaican audiences wanted, often focusing on New Orleans-based R & B with something more of a Caribbean beat (take [the 1956 recording of 'My Boy Lollypop' by Barbie Gaye](_URL_2_), which I should point out was more New York than New Orleans in origin). As the sound systems grew more prominent, the entrepreneurs behind them started to desire new, homegrown product that better served their particular dancefloors, and the sound system owners therefore branched out into becoming, effectively, record labels. \n\nAnd if this sound system stuff sounds familiar, one of the reasons would be that Jamaicans in the 1970s like Kool Herc exported this idea to The Bronx in New York, and it became one of the pillars of early hip-hop when sound system culture, toasting, and turntable techniques were applied to funk and soul records - American rather than Jamaican R & B; the famous party where Kool Herc (arguably) invented hip-hop was literally the one where he applied the techniques of Jamaican soundsystem culture to the funk and soul records that his New Yorker audience knew.\n\nThirdly, it's also important to point out that Jamaica remained a British colony until August 6th, 1962 when they declared themselves an independent nation (mind you, it is still part of the Commonwealth - like Australia - and the Queen is still its official head of state). As a nascent nation, Jamaicans became increasingly proud of growing their own musical sounds, and increasingly focused on their own music rather than American or British imports. The Rastafari culture had previously been shunned by respectable Jamaican people anxious not to lose their cultural capital. But post-independence, Rastafari became seen less as troublemakers and more as a culture that was obviously home-grown and Jamaican, something that they might be proud of even if they weren\u2019t Rastafari themselves. \n\nAdditionally, the Jamaican R & B scene received an extra financial boost in the mid-to-late 1960s (and beyond) thanks to its success elsewhere. It\u2019s important to remember that hundreds of thousands of Caribbean people immigrated to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jamaican music served an important role for young Caribbean-British people and often inspired others who came in contact with it, even before the big success of Bob Marley (Paul McCartney\u2019s ska-influenced \u2018Ob La Di, Ob La Da\u2019 in the Beatles\u2019 White Album in 1968, populated by characters with typically Caribbean names - Desmond and Molly Jones - shows if nothing else that British fans of American R & B, like McCartney, were often also exposed to and interested in Jamaican R & B).\n\n[Millie Small's 'My Boy Lollipop' in 1964](_URL_1_), in a ska style (but not that different from Barbie Gaye above), was an international hit. This was thanks partly to the efforts of Chris Blackwell, a (white) Jamaican who transplanted himself to England and started the Island record label that would eventually sign Bob Marley and propel him to international stardom. Similarly, in the late 1960s, the Trojan record label would do a healthy business in releasing Jamaican songs in England. As English consumers generally expected better sound quality, the rise of Trojan led to improvements in the studio technology used, and thus to further changes in the styles of the music, as musicians tried to exploit the possibilities of new increases in sound quality.\n\nAll of these factors meant that - just as with American R & B at a similar time period - there was a lot of competition and thus experimentation in the scene, as different acts and producers strained to find that new 'thing' that would set them apart from their competitors on the sound systems of Kingston, or which might serve them to make it big in the UK. This led to the rise of new genres and sounds like ska and rocksteady and reggae, as one person\u2019s new thing became widely imitated (though rocksteady is basically slowed down ska, and reggae is basically rocksteady that\u2019s a bit funkier - given that the context of the rise of reggae is contemporaneous to the rise of funk in the USA - and a bit more ...stoned). \n\nSo yes, Jamaicans transformed the American R & B sounds they were hearing (Jamaica not being a million miles away from the US's southern coastline, after all, Southern R & B radio stations with powerful signals could be tuned into in Jamaica) into something distinctively Jamaican which they could then export to the UK and elsewhere in the world.\n\nIn terms of what to read, I think Lloyd Bradley's *Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King* is pretty accessible and well-written, albeit for a popular audience; Bradley was a sound system operator in the UK in the 1970s and has something of a practitioner's view on the scene, but he's also got a good annotated bibliography at the back of the book. There are also some good academic takes on Jamaican music culture in Dick Hebdige's *Cut 'N' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music* (Hebdige being a sociologist/cultural theorist famous for his 1979 book on subcultures, which introduced the term to the world), while Norman Stolzoff's *Wake The Town And Tell The People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica* is an ethnography focusing on Jamaican styles (dancehall, obviously) of the 1990s.", "Agree. Wow, what a treat. ", "This was fascinating to read, thank you. Could anyone recommend any reading on the relationship between punk and ska and how that came to be? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36pc0o/did_the_british_have_other_than_idealistic/crg8ez3/?context=3", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH35A5C5sZ4", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OYZ1PZtV0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "34g34r", "title": "When did the standard dimension of credit cards come to be what we have today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34g34r/when_did_the_standard_dimension_of_credit_cards/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cquis96", "cquohct", "cqup5b2", "cquq37w"], "score": [56, 11, 14, 4], "text": ["The current standard defining the size of credit cards is [ISO/IEC 7810, last revised in 2003](_URL_0_). If you visit that site you can look back through prior revisions; the earliest I can find relating to credit cards/magnetic stripe cards is from 1976. (You can also preview the current revision of the standard).\n\nI don't have access to the text of the previous standards unfortunately, but I would suggest around that timeframe for the \"standard\" per your question. Credit cards certainly existed before then - Diners Club, American Express and a few others started as early as the 1950s - but I can't find any indication of what sizes those cards were.\n\nEDIT: American Express started out with paper cards but was the first to switch to plastic in 1959. ([Source](_URL_1_)) That would probably be a good starting place for a deeper study.", "Diners Club was amongst the first (or the first depending on your definition) credit cards being in operation from the late 1940's. There are some images here dating back to the 1950's. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nUnfortunately no sizes are given but the proportions appear to be the same as today and it seems reasonable to think the size was then more or less what it is today .\n\n", "Is there a relationship between credit card size, business card size and/or poker card size (which are all about 2in x 3.5in)?", "Here's a site showing the evolution of Diners Cards over the past 50 years: \n_URL_1_\n\nNotice that it isn't until the late 1970s or even the 1980s that the current card design becomes common -- early cards did not have the current 16-digit embossed numbers, nor they have the magnetic stripe on the back.  These features only became common in the 1980s.  \n\nThe best recent examination of the economic and development of the modern consumer-credit industry is Evans and Schmalensee [*Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing*](_URL_0_) (2006).  This is more of a business and economics book than a history book, but it still gives a good analysis of how the credit card industry grew into the billion-dollar behemoth it is today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=31432", "http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-cards-history-1264.php"], ["http://www.dinersclub.com/press-room/card-history.html"], [], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=F7sMMrNUneoC&amp;lpg=PA325&amp;dq=credit%20cards%20history&amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;q=credit%20cards%20history&amp;f=false", "http://www.dinersclub.com/press-room/card-history.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1ijd3b", "title": "Why did Opium addict and oppress the Chinese so much, while neighboring countries such as Japan and Korea seemed relatively unaffected?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ijd3b/why_did_opium_addict_and_oppress_the_chinese_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb514zi", "cb51y2u", "cb53lb0", "cb5cbp0"], "score": [84, 15, 5, 3], "text": ["Opium didn't affect Japan/Korea because of the closed off manner of there governments and nations. Japan was a remote island largely unexplored and was not even important to the Imperial economies because of the minimal trade potential and the hostily to foreign powers.\n\nIt wasn't until Commander Perry and the US that Japan really opened up to foreign trade. Until then Foreign governments were only allowed small outposts that had limits on how many people and good could be stored there.\n\nCHINA however was beginning to feel the pressure from the West. It was lagging behind in terms of territorial expansion and military might making it a ripe target for British and foreign agents to attack. For example when the Chinese emperor tried to ban opium, the British sailed down the Yangzte blasting apart Chinese defenses. They were \"unstoppable\" to the \"ancient\" and unmodernized Chinese military. \n\nWhen the Chinese resisted the Opium trade because of the obvious harms to Chinese society, foreign powers responded with force to protect there valuable trade - cheap opium from the India colonies = expensive luxuries from China for England.\n\nBasically the Opium Wars were a massive political and military failure for the Chinese but would set them on the road to modernization. \n\nMore so, There are some reliable sources (can't link I'm on my phone) that suggest the opium manufactored in India for China was \"pushed\" on them as a manner for the British to raise LOTS of money well weakening the Chinese influence and defense. It was used to make a lot of money in both sterling silver and goods which would be shipped back to England as luxuries. \n\ntl; dr China had a large border, less strict trade policy and a weak military/political climate compared to the might of modern foreign Empires. \n\nJapan and Korea were fairly closed off, remote and much more strict to foreign presence in there territory.\n\n(For quick references please check Wikipedia as there section on the Opium Wars and Commandore Perry and Japan are both well written and sourced - Ill link more when I can get to a computer - hope this helps answer \nyour questions)\n\nCommdore Perry and Opening Japan \n_URL_0_\n\nOpium Wars \n_URL_2_\n\nOpium Trade - British Arguments for \n_URL_1_\n\nOpium Trade - British Arguments against\n_URL_3_\n\nedit1: Sources that should provided more information. All credit to those authors. I simply linked there work.\n", "I can speak to Japan at least. As the mainland Opium Wars raged, the island nation was in the final years of its self-imposed international exile. The Tokugawa Shogunate, the government of Japan, was not stupid: it saw the results of European imperialism and the suspect guise of \"Christianizing.\" They were especially perceptive of opium's ravaging effect on the former paramount Asian power. Andrew Gordon elaborates on this in his brief but informative *A History of Modern Japan*.", "I think that it's worth pointing out that it wasn't opium that oppressed the Chinese. Opium was simply the tool used. England can take much of the blame, but they were certainly not alone in exploiting Asia.\n\nIt's not as if the Chinese government was loving it, they did everything could to prevent it, from military action to morality propaganda.\n\nSo a better questions would be: Why was England so effective at using opium to oppress China as opposed to Japan and Korea.", "China's addiction to opium is tied to Britain's addiction to tea.  It's a story of the first truly globalized trade relationship.\n\nBritain needed tea, which only came from China, but the Chinese weren't willing to buy any English goods in exchange.  They only accepted valuable metals, usually in the form of Silver \"Mex\" dollars, mined in Latin America.\n\nThis proved an unbearable strain on the British economy until British traders figured out that Chinese traders were willing to trade for opium from India.\n\nAlthough opium was illegal in Britain and many prominent figures considered it immoral, the economic necessity of this trade proved irresistible. \n\nA related topic which I find fascinating is the story of [Jardine Matheson](_URL_0_), the company which more or less started Hong Kong by smuggling opium, and which is still a massive and powerful company to this day.\n\nOnce you learn a bit about them, particularly about their 'behind-the-scenes' role in shaping British policy in China, you'll come to the stunning realization that this one company  may bear more of the blame for China's 'Century of Humiliation' than the British government does!  And not only are very few people aware of this, but Jardine's is still a respected and influential company in China.\n\nI've never found any internet resources which directly support this claim, but there are a number of books on the subject.\n\nEDIT I'm hesitant to reference a fictional work, but I think it merits an exception in this case.\n\n\"Tai-Pan\" from the Asian Saga series of historical-fiction (which includes the classic \"Shogun\") by James Clavell tells the story of \"Struan's\" (which the book claims is not at all based on Jardine's ;)) and the founding of Hong Kong.  The book is a dramatization and should be taken with a big grain of salt, but it's a great read and IMO, after having done my own research into the subject, gives a fairly reasonable account)\n\nThe next book in the series, \"Gai-Jin\" tells the story of the 'opening up' of Japan, and \"Struan's\" role."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1750_perry.htm", "http://www.stanford.edu/group/journal/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Su_SocSci_2008.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Suppression_of_the_Opium_Trade"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardine_Matheson"]]}
{"q_id": "6w8ayy", "title": "Mansa Musa claimed that his predecessor, Abu Bakr II, set sail from the west coast of Africa with 2,000 ships and was never heard from again. Where did he... go?", "selftext": "Do we have any evidence, or at least a historical guess, as to what happened? It seems really odd that 2,000 ships, along with the emperor of Mali, would just straight up disappear.\n\nConsidering they sailed from the west coast of Africa, could they have reached America?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6w8ayy/mansa_musa_claimed_that_his_predecessor_abu_bakr/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm7iveh"], "score": [8], "text": ["I don't think it would be correct to say \"Mansa Musa claimed that...\"\n\nWhen this claim enters the historical record, it is not written in Musa's hand, or even in his lifetime. \n\nWe first encounter this claim when the Syrian writer Shihab al Umari visits Cairo 20 years after the Malian emperor's hajj, and al Umari writes down accounts of Cairenes who interacted with the Mansa during his stay in that city. \n\nSo, there is already a fair amount of room for invention being injected into the narrative, either by al Umari, or by one of the people he interviewed. \n\nAll of this is to say, we can not be certain that there was a voyage. We can't be certain how many boats were taken. The existing oral traditions and the earliest written account of the dynastic succession of Mali (written by Ibn Khaldun) don't agree with al-Umari whether Abu Bakr II was the father or elder brother of Musa. In fact, a recent(ish) scholar has even proposed that references to an Abu Bakr II might stem from mistranslations of arabic and misunderstandings of the rules of Malian inheritance. Thus, this scholar proposes that Mansa Musa was not \"son of Abu Bakr II\" but rather a male descendant of Abu Bakr I.^1\n\nAll of this is a long way of saying, we don't know much at all about this voyage of Abu Bakr II beyond what al Umari tells us, and there is strong reason to suppose it might be myth.\n\n----\n1. \"The Age of Mansa Musa of Mali: Problems in Succession and Chronolgoy\" in *International Journal of African Historical Studies* vo. 5, no 2 (1972) pp 221-234 _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.jstor.org/stable/217515"]]}
{"q_id": "4j4v2a", "title": "Is it true that Aristotle told Alexander the Great that his army should boil water before drinking it?", "selftext": "My microbiology lecturer mentioned this, but I can't seem to find any primary sources about this.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j4v2a/is_it_true_that_aristotle_told_alexander_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d33tzs2", "d34g5mg"], "score": [57, 3], "text": ["Nope, does not sound a very legit claim - I'm trying to think where your lecturer would have gotten that idea, but any ancient source definitely doesn't say anything like that. I've written [previously](_URL_2_) about the relationship between Alexander and Aristotle, and basically we don't know anything at all what Aristotle taught and said to Alexander. Aristotle taught Alexander only for a year or two when the prince was 13-14-years-old, although it's plausible that they corresponded until Alexander's death. Aristotle's and Alexander's teacher-pupil relationship was glorified in later antiquity and medieval times and people wrote things such as 'fake correspondence' between them (e.g. [*Secret of Secrets*](_URL_0_)) - I am not familiar with these works but it is possible that your lecturer has gotten the story from some fictional work.\n\nI also don't think Aristotle would have known that boiling water can make bad water drinkable. Aristotle ascribed to the Hippocratic idea of disease, i.e. that there were four 'humors' in the body, melancholy, choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic. They corresponded with the four primary fundamental 'qualities' in life: hot, cold, wet, and dry; and the four 'elements':  earth, air, fire, and water. They were respectively represented in the body by black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Sickness was caused by the imbalance of these four humors in the body. Hippocrates writes in great length in his [*On Airs, Waters, Places*](_URL_1_) how different kinds of waters (e.g. salty, hard, cold) have different effects on your health; for example, water from marshlands contains too much black bile and therefore disturbs the balance of your body, which can make you ill. Hippocrates believed that the geography and topography of the water source is what made the water good or bad, and he does mention that certain waters might need boiling because of their 'structure': \n\n >  Such , [rainwaters] to all appearance, are the best of waters, but they require to be boiled and strained; for otherwise they have a bad smell, and occasion hoarseness and thickness of the voice to those who drink them.\n\nBut, he definitely does not say anything to the effect that *all* unknown water should be boiled or that boiling water can prevent disease. Looked up also what Aristotle wrote in *On Meteorology* 4 about boiling, but it's all about theoretical questions such as what happens when things boil, what can boil, why different substances react differently to boiling etc., nothing about preventing diseases. ", "Followup question: Did any other ancient people make the connection between boiling and water potability? It doesn't seem like you would need to actually understand germs to make the connection. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretum_Secretorum", "http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.mb.txt", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yo0wl/do_we_know_what_aristotle_thought_of_alexander/cyfn0ue"], []]}
{"q_id": "3j8aam", "title": "Joshua Chamberlain and the defense of Little Round Top", "selftext": "My Pastor on this last Sunday used an illustration describing how Joshua Chamberlain and his 300 troops made a valiant defense during the battle of Gettysburg, getting whittled down to only 80 soldiers by the enemy 4000 confederates, only to then perform a valiant charge and subsequently capturing all 4000 of the confederates.  \nWhile this all sounds pretty amazing, I had not heard of this before and wonder if someone could verify, debunk or give a more accurate version of the event. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j8aam/joshua_chamberlain_and_the_defense_of_little/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cun5lqq"], "score": [35], "text": ["The numbers (80 charging and capturing 4000) are totally out of whack but in essence Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine did charge downhill at the 15th Alabama, driving them off and taking prisoners, and he was subsequently (30 odd years later) awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was also present at Appomatox and later Governor of Maine and President of Bowdoin. His career is pretty impressive, and, although it's frowned on here, the wikipedia page on him seems like a reasonably accurate summation of his achievements.\n\nMy personal opinion (as a former grad student in US History, Civil War specifically) is that his famous charge that saved the flank on Little Round Top did not turn the tide of the war, as is sometimes implied. No doubt had the 15th Alabama driven the 20th Maine from their positions it would have been a hard time for the Union defenders of Little Round Top, but Union reinforcements were already on the way, and the Confederate attackers were very tired, having already done a lot of marching that day, and did not have food or water. I don't think that they would have been able to exploit a small local success into a general breakthrough into the Union rear. I would also add that Longstreet had very ambiguous feelings about the whole battle and may not have supported a local success on Little Round Top with the weight of his whole Corps, even supposing that he could have been informed of the situation in a timely manner and responded with alacrity (alacrity not really being his style). On the whole, while any victory is a good thing, I don't think that the 100-odd prisoners that Chamberlain took with a bayonet charge saved the Union, or that, had he retreated that the Confederacy would have won the war.\n\nIn The Hands Of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain And The American Civil War by Alice Trulock isn't bad, although it's some years since I read it so I can't really give it a ringing endorsement."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1icege", "title": "During the Cold War, how much more independent were eastern block countries compared to Soviet republics?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1icege/during_the_cold_war_how_much_more_independent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb374by", "cb39m2d", "cb3n9qw"], "score": [2, 18, 2], "text": ["Independent in what way? ", "To some extent it is impossible to state. The threat of military intervention after putting Czechoslovakia back in their place in 1968 loomed over every political leader. When the political politburo in Poland considered giving in to the demands of Solidarity, the main concern was whether or not the Red Army would intervene should they choose to yield. The possibility they would do so is said to be the main reason for crushing the opposition and going all Military state on the country. Whether or not that is true (in theory the Polish politburo was informed the soviets won't intervene no matter what, but how reliable was that resurgence could be questioned) is unsure (maybe they were just power hungry and wanted to keep the power no matter what).\n\nGenerally, well, what Moscow says, monkey states do. Only difference were they had independent administration, separate parties and were allowed some freedom in their International Policy. Some - Poland and Czechoslovakia were forced to decline participating in the Marshall Plan on Stalins order.\n\nSource - I'm a Pole and was moderately interested in history in my youth.", "Most independent in Eastern block was Poland. You can see it by checking time of screening in different countries for example Star Wars or first translations of Tolkien. It will show you how open to Western culture was certain country.\n\nWell mostly those countres had to say sth about their internal policy but within borders outlined by USRR. No market economy etc. International policy was I guess most sensitive. I think the least independent was DDR, because that they were Germans and had border with capitalistic sister.\n\nAnd well if we count in Yougoslavia in Eastern block then its the most independent country, but it didnt really belong to that block."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "16whkh", "title": "If the year was 200 AD what could I buy with a single 'silver denarius'?", "selftext": "Jeweler here. Making a custom necklace for a customer who brought in a roman silver denarius. Just curious as to what it's value was 1800 years ago. (the coin is small, 18mm. And features Septimius Serverus. Coinn was minted 200-201 AD) thanks reddit :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16whkh/if_the_year_was_200_ad_what_could_i_buy_with_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c801ex8", "c8027ok", "c803vba"], "score": [10, 67, 4], "text": ["Rendering the value of ancient coins in modern day terms is tough.  I just looked at [Wikipedia](_URL_1_) and discovered a denarius might be about $20 of bread.  [The Dictionary of of Roman Coins](_URL_0_) says it was a daily wage.\n\n So let's assume that's correct for the 3rd century.  There's still no reason to think Romans valued bread as we do, or that all labor was equally valued.\n\nI've got a question for you: how do you know it's not a forgery?  An ex girlfriend gave me a sestertius of Trajan.  I have no idea where she got it, and my limited experience with coins gives me no reason to think it's fake.  I've found parallels in the manuals.  However whenever I tell someone about it the first question is always \"how do you know it's not fake?\"  Any suggestions?", "History major, Antiquities focus here. \n***\nThroughout the Severan reign, the currency went through yet another round of devaluation, bringing its silver content down once again, but this time, *VERY* drastically. It fell to exactly 50% silver purity in the standard silver denarius, down from roughly 80% silver purity. To put it in perspective, during much of the early Principate (first Emperors) the silver denarius was roughly ninety to high-eighties percent purity. \n***\nSo in simple terms, your customer got short-changed, heh. Well, relatively speaking. Later denarii have even lower silver content. But the Severan denarii stand at an economic crossroads of a sort, as they were the first time when the Roman coinage took a large-scale and severe hit (from which it would not recover). Severan denarii are as common as dirt on the current market - they are the most common denarii you can buy and the cheapest - as low as $40-60 per coin. In contrast, the earlier denarii were more pure and less of them survived to us, though that is not always true however - part of their rarity, I suspect, is due to the current market taking greater interest in Augustian or Caesarian denarii which represent the 'classic' Rome that they know rather some Late Principate/Dominate emperor they've never heard of. Of course, no doubt the current deluge of Severan denarii also has something to do with the sheer number that were minted - the Severan dynasty put in an admirable amount of effort into quantitative easing. I am somewhat of a numismatist and I collect Roman, Hellenistic and Chinese coins. Most Chinese and Roman ones, since they are cheap, plentiful and more standardised, so there is more fun categorising them and building progression collections. \n***\nNow, for the coin's actual value, we would have to know the relative date it was minted - there are several ways to check this, but the mere presence of the Emperor Septimius Severus may not be enough, as his descendants minted coinage with his likeness as well. Septimius Severus went through several coinage debasements, with even more devaluation overseen by his successors of the Severan dynasty. Furthermore, the wages were raised for important state-maintained occupations, such as the army (the most notable under the unpopular Caracalla went up to 700d mean wage of a legionary). These two factors in addition to the increase in the quantity of coins minted all resulted in falling value of coinage. One has to understand that the situation was that of the aftermath of the Second Crisis, or the Year of the Five Emperors (193-194 CE) and immediately prior to the Crisis of the Third Century. A time of severe political and economic instability it was and the difficulty with times such as these is that one cannot easily and accurately assess the value of coinage. There are hundreds of sources detailing the value of coins in the early Principate, for instance, but sources detailing the purchasing power of the Severan denarii are a bit harder to find. I will dig around and see what I can stumble upon. Of course, the legionary wages are somewhat of an easy 'gold standard' when it comes to determining the worth of a coin. If 700d is what an average legionary of common rank was paid every year, we are looking at 2d per day. Day labour would earn between 1-3d for the more manual labour and 4-7d for the craftsmen (these are middle Principate figures, right before the Second Crisis). \n***\nThe nature of Imperial coinage was such that a significant amount of imperial power and authority was based on something as simple and common as the value of a coin - strong coinage was a strong reinforcement of Imperial sovereignty and authority. Inflation was a much graver concern in a society lacking a fiat currency and instead based upon a fixed-value bullion-based currency. Decreasing the bullion content presented problems as all denarii were in theory equal value and the Emperor releasing the said denarii most certainly expected his to be taken at the same face value - such as when paying the persons under his upkeep their fixed salaries - salaries fixed under a previous standard of bullion content of coinage. You can certainly see the precarious nature of the situation here. Changing silver content of the denarius presented a governmental as well as an economic problem to the Romans and a historical problem for us as the economy reacted to the shifts in coinage value. These shifts were strictly speaking informal too, at first, as the primary aim of debasing coinage was to allow the Emperor to satisfy debts with less silver - and in order to achieve this aim, the amount of denarii paid had to remain the same. Therefore if Caracalla were to debase the denarii to 50% from 56%, the increase in army wages would nullify the entire logic of the debasement, at the first glance. On a closer examination, the Emperors often debased coinage (which affected everyone) but only increased the wages for the most crucial elements of their Imperial 'machine', such as the army.\n***\nSource: here is THE BEST quick easy reference source on coin purity that I have been able to find so far in my research: _URL_0_ As you can see, it incidentally comes from Tulane at New Orleans, which happened to have been one of the Unis where I took classes. (*I attended Loyola New Orleans before moving to Virginia; Loyola and Tulane were literally right next door to each other, with a small fence separating the two campuses - it was very common for students from both to take classes in either Uni*). Hell, I bet I still have this handout in one of my old binders from those days - I had a class on Later Roman Society that used this source.\n\nAnother very helpful source is the '*Archaeology of the Roman Economy*' by Kevin Green, which I used in my final paper project for that said class. It's not as boring as it sounds - the book is actually a pretty lively discussion of the Roman economy, not just a turgid description of minor archaeological finds that probably lacked much significance anyway unless one's subject is immeasurably narrow (which is sometimes my impression of books of this like).", "* You could buy just under one litre (1.56 sextarii) of beer!\n* With 20 of them, you could buy a pair of sandals!\n* With 15, you could buy a kilo of goat!\n* And most importantly, with 3 of them, you could buy a litre (dry measure) of barley, beans, or rye. \n\nHow i got this is below: \n\n\nDetermining the purchasing power of ancient anything is difficult, but approximation is very possible. So here goes: \n\n301 is going to be our baseline year, because an 'edict of prices' was released in that year, which denominated pay scales and price ceilings for consumer goods/services.  Using that edict, we can calculate the value of the denarii, in 200. \n\nIn 301, a legionaire earned 1800 denarii annually; in 200-201 (under Caracalla), they earned 700. \n\nThis price difference is almost entirely attributable to inflation. The manpower requirements/force structure of the legions were largely identical in those two years; it was only beginning with Diocletian that the army began morphing into the integrated field corps which differentiated it from the marian army it was in 200. \n\nThus, there was roughly 247% inflation in those years...which is to say, that your denarius would be worth only 40% of one minted in 301; when prices were laid out. And, as the empire made sure to maintain anapproprate supply of commodities throughout the urban areas of the empire(practical self-preservation), the relative prices of items like grain/wine/olive oil would have remained [relative to the market] stable. \n\nAnd, relatively stable prices would have meant that the only differences would be due to inflation*, which means that whatever something cost in 301, it would have cost .39 times the price in 301, as deliniated in the aforementioned edict. \n\n*Romans didn't understand economics, at all in the modern sense. This is part of the reason extrapolating prices is such a crapshoot - prices weren't indicators of the market's assigned value as we now understand it. They didn't exactly have a fed maintaining price stability, but a series of despots who lowered the value of money when they needed some, or lowered it when they felt like it, by killing people who tried to obey market prices. \n\nEdit: formatting"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=denarius", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius#Comparisons_and_silver_content"], ["http://www.tulane.edu/~august/handouts/601cprin.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "61pa7d", "title": "Tell me about Rome in the Islamic and/or Arab imagination", "selftext": "Just heard recently that ISIS has a magazine named \"Rumiyah,\" apparently Arabic for \"Rome.\" I found that fascinating. Wikipedia tells me that it's a reference to the prophet Muhammad's promise or prediction that Muslims would conquer Rome. That in itself is interesting, given that Muhammad's lifetime coincided with what seems to be Rome's nadir.\n\nCan you tell me about what role Rome plays in the Islamic and/or Arabic imagination?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/61pa7d/tell_me_about_rome_in_the_islamic_andor_arab/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dfgu0zk", "dfgw9bf"], "score": [34, 7], "text": ["There's a few parts to this. Firstly, there's a sura of the Qur'an called Sura \"ar-Rum\", i.e. Sura of \"Rome\" or \"the Roman Sura\". We know from context that it is *not* referring to the city of Rome or to the Western Empire, but rather to the Greek speaking eastern empire, whom we typically refer to as the Byzantines. NB that the Byzantines themselves would have called themselves \"Roman\" so while this is somewhat confusing to us it would have been unambiguous at the time.\n\nThe text of this Sura includes a prediction the Byzantines would be defeated and then recover in their battles against the Persians. So from the Pickthall translation:\n\n >  The Romans have been defeated\n\n >  In the nearer land, and they, after their defeat will be victorious\n\n >  Within ten years - Allah's is the command in the former case and in the latter - and in that day believers will rejoice\n\n >  In Allah's help to victory. He helpeth to victory whom He will. He is the Mighty, the Merciful.\n\nThis is actually one of the *only* explicit references to contemporary events in the Qur'an, which generally speaking does not make specific references to contemporary global politics and those references that it does make are often ambiguous, despite the supposed clarity of later exegesis ascribing each reference to a point in the life of Muhammad.\n\nSo it is prophesying that the Byzantines, having suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Sassanians, would then gain victory.\n\nSo there is a Quranic understanding that the position of the Byzantines in global affairs is a matter of theological concern, but there's little explicitly about the Byzantines (Romans) beyond that except the more general references to the predicted triumphs of the believers.\n\nBattles against the Romans (Byzantines) feature somewhat more prominently in the Hadith, the collected sayings and of the Prophet, for example here:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand here: _URL_0_\n\nBut that's still basically pretty pedestrian stuff.\n\nAs far as I'm aware, though I've read *much* less of this literature, the vast bulk of what gets modern Salafi Jihadists excited about this stuff relates to the later, non-canonical apocalyptical literature that while sometimes attributed to Muhammad in the style of hadith is typically composed, at best, of \"weak\" hadith and from an academic perspective appears to be very closely related to mid-to-late 7th century campaigns against Byzantium and the assaults Constantinople. In terms of content this stuff is basically asserting that the Muslims will be victorious in Constantinople and then will march on the city of Rome and that this will be part of ushering in the apocalypse.\n\nWhile such traditions have survived across the centuries they've never been regarded as being entirely canonical. Jihadists of an apocalyptic bent have latched on to them, particularly as they can read into the texts America or Russia or the Jews/Israel for Rome or whatever. These analogies are made pretty explicit in ISIS' materials and propaganda.\n\nSource wise:\n\nThe appendices of Will McCant's *ISIS Apocalypse* include a number of these stories about the conquest victory and the end times. IIRC Robert Hoyland's *In God's Path* talks about the formation of the apocalyptical literature in the context of the campaigns against the Byzantines.", "From my understanding the Islamic Ottomans knew they had conquered the Romans at the fall of Constantinople. Richard Fidler's history of Constantinople called \"Ghost Empire\" says \"The long story of the Roman empire comes to a close with those two elegiac lines of Persian poetry uttered by Mehmed in the Great Palace.\" \n\n\nThe lines were: \"The spider weaves the curtains in the Palace of the Caesars;\nThe owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.\"\n\n\nSo at the fall of Constantinople in 1453 there is some evidence that the Muslim Turks understood the gravitas of Rome and what they had done to the empire. \n\n\nSultan Mehmed was also said to have adopted the title 'Kayser-i R\u00fbm' which means 'Caesar of the Romans'. It also suggests that they themselves could not picture a world without a Roman presence and since they were the people to end the 2nd Rome, the mantle had been passed to the Islamic Turks to carry on Rome's legacy. \n\n\nA Muslim Caesar didn't fly in Europe though, as a marriage between the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III and the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium by the Pope at St. Peter's Basilica, in Europe's eyes, passed the legacy of Rome to Russia - hence the origin of the title 'Czar': 'Caesar'."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://sunnah.com/muslim/54/46", "https://sunnah.com/muslim/54/50"], []]}
{"q_id": "1pb19t", "title": "Hello, how many inhabitants did greek cities have in 2000 B.C.?", "selftext": "I want to write about the old city of Iolcus and wanted to ask how many people lived in that time in a \"normal\" city in the old greece in that time.\n\n(pls don't hit me, my english in not perfect.)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pb19t/hello_how_many_inhabitants_did_greek_cities_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd0k6hr"], "score": [27], "text": ["Not sure if this will help you but, during the bronze age on Crete, bigger cities were quite rare. The biggest one, Knossos, counted possibly several thousands individuals(estimates vary). Few after Knossos (Phaistos, Zakros, Malia) were singificantly smaller, maybe around 100 households (again, its hard to say).   \nMost common type of settlement were small villages of up to 10 households, and solitary houses in the countryside (just to mention, this is 2000BC, during the Minoan peak, when it's population was booming and was possibly at it's peak).\n\nYou should find more about this topic in 'The Aegean Bronze Age', by Oliver Dickinson. I just started studying this topic, so can't tell you more."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5t9lij", "title": "Do records exist of pre-industrial people expressing existential dread? Is it a modern luxury?", "selftext": "In modern life, it's common in some communities for people to think about, joke about, or discuss existential ideas; why we're here, what our remit in society is, how to cope with temporary existence, how to find purpose, how to embrace the self, and so on. In 2017, there are dedicated meme pages now for this self-aware, self-referential, existential, often nihilistic dialogue.\n\nQuestion: what historical record do we have of people expressing these kinds of existential thoughts? Is this a relatively recent luxury of post-industrial society? Do any pre-industrial records show a concern for life purpose, or do we just not know?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t9lij/do_records_exist_of_preindustrial_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ddllwni"], "score": [54], "text": ["Absolutely! These topics are all over the history of philosophy, and are found in most religions as well. However, most solutions tend to be different than existentialism itself (and the tone is often different). I'll only survey a couple attempts here, because these worries- how to live a meaningful life and avoid suffering, form one of the core subject matters of Ethics itself.\n\nAncient Greek philosophy was very concerned with the idea of how to live a good life and what gave life meaning. The works of Plato, the Stoics, Pyrrhonists, and Epicureans were all concerned (perhaps even primarily so) with how to live a meaningful life and cope with suffering.\n\nFor instance, the Epicureans were interested in the fear of death and suffering, writing extensively on the topics. For one of my favorite Epicurean takes on these topics you can see the Roman author Lucretius's *De rerum natura* or On the nature of things. Epicureans stressed living of a moderate life and to take joy in the pleasures of life while not allowing pains to disturb us. Another good text for these hellenistic philosophies is \"The Post Socratics Vol. I\" by Long and Sedley.\n\nThe lack of self and the death of the ego (and embracing the impermanence of all things) is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism sees the root of all suffering as the attachment of an illusory self to impermanent things. Only when we come to accept impermanence and to rid ourselves of the notion of the self can we avoid this suffering and escape the world of rebirth and impermanence. Obviously the key work in Buddhism is the Dhammapada, though for a layperson directed take on the religion I like \"The heart of Buddha's Teaching\" by Thich Nhat Hanh. Though note this latter is a religious text, not an academic source. It does however convey the Buddhist method of combating existential considerations.\n\nOne also finds such themes in the bible, the book of Job comes to mind (though this also deals with the problem of Evil), though I'm no expert on biblical philosophy to point to exact chapters.\n\nFor intros to other considerations see [these videos by professional philosophers](_URL_0_).\n\n\nEdit- one thing I thought I would add is that the existentialists seem to have such a unique approach to these questions primarily because they were responding to the failure of many of these ethical systems (at least in their minds). Thinkers in the industrial era suddenly found themselves with the arguments for God undermined, completely physical explanations of the world, and even more importantly physical explanations of the person, which led to a distinctively pessimistic view of these questions."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtKNX4SfKpzWy2OxVPOTlPDLbqC1IIotO"]]}
{"q_id": "9cofvq", "title": "What is the history behind the shift in Satan being regarded as an agent of God in Orthodox Judaism to being seen as a entity separate from God in Christianity.", "selftext": "In Judaism Satan is not seen as a physical entity seperate from God from my understanding. While in Christianity, Satan is seen as autonomous figure. What is the historical basis, if any, for this shift in thinking?\nEdit: \"punctuation\"", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cofvq/what_is_the_history_behind_the_shift_in_satan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5cnmdg", "e5cqftv"], "score": [58, 22], "text": ["That's a long question, I'd point you to the book [The River of God](_URL_0_) by Gregory Riley. His 4th chapter traces the history of that question. IIRC, when Israel was in exile they encountered more dualistic ways of thinking and understanding the world. And in doing so reinterpreted this history in that light. \n\nSo you can take stories like Job, who in that context Satan is a person in God's court. But, in that context he functions more as a character in a story that an actual person we can glean knowledge about. Similarly, in other earlier OT stories, the word translated Satan, in Hebrew means adversary. Number's 22 is a great story of Balaam's donkey in v. 22 the text says there is an adversary in his way. That context it's clear Satan isn't in his way, just an adversarial character. And it was an Angel of the Lord in the way, so it's not like it was an evil character. \n\nBut, as time went on and Israel encountered, and adapted more dualistic ways of thinking they began to add an article in front of adversary. You can see this in the LXX. I used to have a good example of a story in Kings and in Chronicles that illustrated this but I can't remember and all my notes are in my office. \n\nThat's the tl:dr version, but Riley gives a better outline. ", "One of my fellow moderators, at /r/AcademicBiblical has written an extensive article that sheds much light on the subject at hand.\n\nIt is entitled:\n\n[Princes of Darkness: The Devil\u2019s Many Faces in Scripture and Tradition](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.amazon.com/River-God-History-Christian-Origins/dp/0060669802"], ["https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/princes-of-darkness-the-devils-many-faces-in-scripture-and-tradition/"]]}
{"q_id": "7hjg2w", "title": "Rousseau abandoned his children at an orphanage. What kind fate he could expect for them? How likely it was that they survived to adulthood?", "selftext": "I'm asking this because while reading the [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article](_URL_1_) on Rousseau, I was struck by the following passage:\n\n > In 1745 Rousseau met Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Levasseur, a barely literate laundry-maid who became his lover and, later, his wife. According to Rousseau\u2019s own account, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se bore him five children, all of whom were deposited at the foundling hospital shortly after birth, **an almost certain sentence of death in eighteenth-century France**. Rousseau\u2019s abandonment of his children was later to be used against him by Voltaire.\n\nI highlighted the relevant sentence. Is the claim true?\n\nThe SEP article lists a bibliography at the end and maybe some of them contains the citation for the claim, but I don't have the capacity to research this question further.\n\nAccording to search, previously Rousseau's children have been discussed [here](_URL_0_) on AskHistorians, but only from the angle \"how common it was\", not \"what happened to the kids later\".", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7hjg2w/rousseau_abandoned_his_children_at_an_orphanage/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqscq00"], "score": [15], "text": ["According to Laurence L. Bongie, in his book *From Rogue to Everyman: A Foundling's Journey to the Bastille*, around two-thirds of children placed in Paris orphanages died in their first year. A significant number of the surviving third would not have made it to adulthood, given that deadly illness was a reality for most Parisians, and the very young were most vulnerable. I don't have statistics on this, but see David Garrioch, *The Making of Revolutionary Paris* (especially the second chapter) for more information on the various illnesses that plagued the city at this time. \n\nThis sounds pretty shocking to us, but it's worth remembering that infant mortality in Paris was somewhere in the range of 35 to 45 percent at this time (according to Daniel Roche, in *The People of Paris*). A foundling's chances of survival were worse than those of the average Parisian child, but, sadly, those chances were pretty abysmal to begin with. \n\nChild abandonment may not have been a death sentence, but it did worsen a child's chance of survival. Most parents who abandoned their children really didn't have a choice - most of the time they simply couldn't feed them. Rousseau, while he may not have been wealthy, also wasn't destitute. He could have given his children a better chance at life, but he chose not to do so. \n\nFor more information I really recommend the David Garrioch book I cited above, as well as Arlette Farge, *Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris*. Sorry, I'm too tired for properly formatted citations right now. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76yfrt/rousseau_had_five_children_by_therese_le_vasseur/", "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4h99k7", "title": "Considering its maritime traditions, why didn't Denmark have a larger colonial Empire like Britain and France did?", "selftext": "Just seems odd considering Spain and France weren't particularly maritime nations and yet they both had a lot of oversees holdings and it doesn't make sense to me why Denmark never had anything more than Iceland and Greenland (and a few negligable Islands across the world)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h99k7/considering_its_maritime_traditions_why_didnt/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2oo0zo", "d2ph517"], "score": [30, 5], "text": ["Denmark actually did have overseas holdings during from 1618, when the danish King Christian the IV sent a small expedition to Ceylon (todays Sri Lanka), until 1917 where the last remaining holdings (Danish west indies) were sold to the US for 25 million dollars. During this time Denmark also had som smaller holdings in Tranquebar, India and on the Gold Coast. Though the holdings in Africa and India were not really colonies, they functioned more like trading stations with several protestant missions attached. \n\nDenmark's drive for holdings where just like all other european powers driven by mercantilism (from the french word mercantile), where an positive trading balance were wanted, which then would lead to a higher tax base. To obtain this the government at the time would increase import taxes and decrease export taxes, the problem with this system was that every country in europe would do the same.\n\nHowever the colonies in Africa and India did not provide any real profit, and only the colonies in the Danish West Indies provided a profit, but only for a short periode of time. Which ultimately led to the sale in 1917.\n\nEventough Denmark did have a proud naval tradition at the time, it did not have the economic surplus to rival nations like France and Britain. This plus the factor that a great deal of Denmark's foreign policy at the time was specifically aimed at getting Skaane back from Sweeden, which removed some of the focus from the Caribbean, Africa and India.\n\nI hope this answers your question. I have provided some sources, keep in mind they are in danish though.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n", "In 1807 the British attacked Copenhagen in the aim of capturing/sinking the main Danish fleet,  basically to stop Napoleon getting them in the future. This would have severely   hampered any overseas expansion. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://danmarkshistorien.dk/leksikon-og-kilder/vis/materiale/merkantilisme-og-danske-tropekolonier/?no_cache=1", "http://danmarkshistorien.dk/historiske-perioder/den-aeldre-enevaelde-1660-1784/enevaeldens-krige-og-udenrigspolitik/", "http://danmarkshistorien.dk/leksikon-og-kilder/vis/materiale/om-ove-gieddes-ekspedition-til-ceylon-og-trankebar-1618-1622/?no_cache=1&amp;cHash=8f0c7a6254761753e4cd1eda7e0d85aa"], []]}
{"q_id": "7kttyy", "title": "Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. What did it mean?", "selftext": "Wiki describes fatwa as a non-binding legal opinion on matters of Islamic law. Local newspaper described it as \"every Muslim is obliged to kill him on sight\". Obviously, the truth is somewhere in the middle - Salman Rushdie had serious police protection so there must have been some threat to him.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7kttyy/ayatollah_ruhollah_khomeini_issued_a_fatwa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["drh4iud"], "score": [79], "text": ["A \"fatwa\", in the simplest sense, means an edict, or command, issued by a Muslim religious authority, usually a mufti or Islamic scholar. (sometimes imams can also issue fatwas) There have been many fatwas issued on various things, on such whether investing in stocks is allowed under Islamic jurisprudence or whether various foods are haram or not. Fatwas are not death-sentences in of themselves. But.....  \n\nIn Salman Rushdie's case, he had published his book \"the Satanic Verses\" in 1988. In part of the book, he drew inspiration from a long circulating idea (found in several of Muhammad's more controversial biographies) that the Prophet had mistaken some \"satanic suggestions\" for \"divine revelation\", interpreted them as such in error, and later withdrew them. Part of the Satanic verses book actually goes into the author's own interpretation of Muhammad's life, such as  Prophet Muhammad receiving a dream to return to a form of polytheism but later vigorously rejecting it. \n \n As expected, most mainstream Islamic scholars reject the idea that Muhammad had received instruction from devilish beings and call this heretical.   \n\nIn Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's case, he and other fundamentalist Muslims took Rushdie's book as pure blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. So he issued a *fatwa* or edict, calling upon Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie. This had **deep** implications upon Western perceptions of the Muslim world.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2n9lnu", "title": "When making a bibliography for an academic paper, why does it matter what city the publisher is based out of?", "selftext": "My suspicion is that this practice is one of those things that used to matter but is now antiquated because of how easy it is to look things like this up, or that it's used to distinguish between X publisher in one place and X publisher of no relation in another place. Do any academics know why this is emphasized in so many style guides?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n9lnu/when_making_a_bibliography_for_an_academic_paper/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmbmthm", "cmboo6w", "cmbopyv", "cmbpumr", "cmbs16e", "cmbtjwr", "cmbvq2l"], "score": [66, 22, 59, 35, 6, 3, 7], "text": ["Specificity. Typing a few more characters makes it just that much easier for a reader to track down your exact source. It may be true at the time of your writing that there is no potential for ambiguity. That may not be the case in perpetuity.", "Some of this demand can be attributed to historians' penchant for OCD behavior. The preferred style for academic historians is Chicago-Turabian, the latter part stems from [Kate Turabian](_URL_0_) who codified the various standards. \n\nHowever, the value of listing a city is also because not every edition/printing of the book is the same. Publishers change and newer editions may have additional material or different page numbers and it's vital for fellow scholars to be able to tell what edition your paper uses. The city is a vital clue for this, especially since publishers can come and go or amalgamate. ", "To add to what /u/targustargus pointed out, many presses (think Oxford University Press, for example) had or have many regional sub-units.  These did not, until very recently, have crossover catalogues; if you wanted a book from OUP Delhi, it was not necessarily available from OUP Oxford or OUP New York.  Before the era of Worldcat that distinction was rather important.  It is far less the case now, but many presses do still have regional branches or other entities under their umbrella with differing catalogues.  So you're right that it's often unnecessary now, but that is not universally true, and may not be (as pointed out) true in the future.", "In my own work, the place of publication has been important in two ways:\n\n1. *Raising historical questions*. For example: Why did the Prime Minister of Portugal publish [anti-Jesuit propaganda](_URL_1_) in France in 1758? Short answer, he was trying to enlist the Bourbon monarchs (France and Spain) to help suppress the order. Or, why was [pro-Jesuit propaganda](_URL_0_) being published in Nuremberg in 1788? Short answer, Protestants in the Imperial free city could use the story of the Jesuit suppression to censure the Catholic Church for its corruption and politicization. So place of publication helps scholars ask better-informed questions about historical sources.\n\n2. *Assessing modern histories*. Sometimes this is just about geographic bias. For example, if I want to read about the Viking-Age Faroes (in the North Sea), my best bet is a history published in Edinburgh, Scotland. But if I want to read about Finland, I'll probably look at a history published in Stockholm, Sweden. Sometimes this is about scholarly trends in a countries university system. For example, if I want to look at power relations and networks, the landscape archaeology of Sweden is a good bet. But if I want to look at perceptions or the experience of the landscape, then the landscape archaeology of England is a good choice. So if I already have specific questions and I'm working with a large bibliography, knowing place of publication can help me figure out where to start.\n\nPlus, as others have noted, it can help track down an exact source. This is especially true if you're trying to track down a page citation from a text that's appeared in many different editions.", "I'd agree it's an artifact.  More significant in a time when publishing/printing were indistinguishable (or performed proximately).  Now, the mere location of some corporate head office doesn't imply as much about where the intellectual or material product was made.\n\nStill, hardly surprising that conventions outlive utility.  Something like this is but a drop in the ocean of time/ink \"wasted\" on addressing--where a correct postal (ZIP) code makes city/state redundant.\n\nTradition is a powerful thing.  Many outlive utility.  Some outlive even comprehension of their original purpose.", "To agree with the other posters here, it's a requirement that is less relevant for modern books, but is sometimes helpful for older books that have gone through many editions, where there may be page numbers or even entire chapters that differ greatly between different editions.  In the age before electronic typesetting, page numbers could differ quite a lot between different printings of the same work, and so city of publication could be helpful in tracking down an exact page citation.", "I would argue that it is not necessarily an artifact.  I recently encountered two seemingly identical versions of a book.  One book had an error that the other had rectified.  One was printed in New York the other in Hong Kong. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_who.html"], [], ["http://www.worldcat.org/title/geschichte-der-jesuiten-in-portugal/oclc/243455371?referer=di&amp;ht=edition", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/republique-des-jesuites-au-paraguay-renversee-ou-relation-authentique-de-la-guerre-que-ces-religieux-ont-ose-soutenir-contre-les-monarques-despagne-de-portugal-en-amerique/oclc/778451756"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5xs99f", "title": "What was Cato the Elder's problem?", "selftext": "Why did he hate Carthage so much? It seem like after the 2nd Punic war Carthage had given up on militarism and was content to be an economic power. Why did Cato push so hard for the city to be destroyed?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xs99f/what_was_cato_the_elders_problem/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dekmtsu", "del51a4"], "score": [89, 11], "text": ["Cato the Elder is a strange man in general. \n\n* He was a staunch conservative; opposing change and following the old ideals of what it meant to be a proper Roman, and held every office from quaestor to consul.\n\n* He hated both Greece and Carthage passionately, this quote is attributed to him -'if ever the Romans became infected with the literature of Greece they would lose their empire'\n\nBradley lays out a convincing case for Cato's hatred of Carthage (and Greece) stemming from his deeply conservative attitudes towards both cultures. His hatred of Carthage stemmed from his deep fear that it would once more rise as a power to rival, and perhaps destroy, Rome. This is why he pushed for its complete annihilation so furiously. \n\nSo to summarise, he pushed for the destruction of Carthage because he was not satisfied with it remaining only an economic power. He feared greatly its possible resurrection as an enemy of Rome capable of bringing about her downfall.\n\nSources:\nPamela Bradley, 1990. *Ancient Rome: Using Evidence*\nPlutarch, *Cato The Elder*\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: still getting used to formatting, sorry :)", "I would question the premise regarding Carthage's militarism--certainly its empire had collapsed after the Second Punic War, but this empire was somewhat recent and specific to the Barcid family. But its commercial power was unchecked (it was able to pay off the indemnity relatively easily) and any thought that it was really pacified is belied by the military harbor, [still visible today](_URL_0_), that was built in the second century. And Carthage was, after all, very nearby--Cato's famous moment was when he showed a Libyan fig on the floor of the Senate, saying it had only been plucked three days earlier (Plutarch, Cato, 27). And in te war itself Carthage was no pushover, as the Romans cycled through three different generals before landing on Scipio Aemilianus, one of the most talented leaders in Roman history, to actually make headway.\n\nObviously I'm not justifying the Third Punic War, which was pretty blatantly aggressive on Rome's part, but within he power politics of the second century Cato was not wrong that Carthage was a threat to Roman power."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["Roman-Empire.net"], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cothon#/media/File:Carthage-1958-PortsPuniques.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1npkcc", "title": "What happened to cosmonauts on MIR when the USSR fell and turned over control to the new Russia?", "selftext": "Wondering how they handled the change, how they were treated, tech control for their issues during the switch, etc.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1npkcc/what_happened_to_cosmonauts_on_mir_when_the_ussr/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cckv7cl"], "score": [44], "text": ["There's a documentary about Sergei Krikalev's Mir mission during the USSR fall called Out of the Present. \n\nOn that mission he was up there for 10 months. He spent a total of over 2 years in space amongst all his missions. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "b3k01w", "title": "What was Spanish life like under the Arab occupation after 711 AD and how much of the Arab culture is present in modern Spanish and Latin American cultures today ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b3k01w/what_was_spanish_life_like_under_the_arab/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ej1fmuj", "ej1ftme"], "score": [7, 8], "text": ["You can hardly speak of \"spanish\" before 711 AD though, a better question would be what life in Islamic Iberian realms was like, are you particularly interested in what life was like for Christians? \n\nAlso the period of islamic rule lasted for nearly 8 centuries, it was extremely long and conditions varied greatly depending on location within the Iberian peninsula and date. Maybe you should specify that too?\n\nLast but not least, the impact of of that period in Spanish culture was immense, and is being a bit downplayed up to this day: here's a declaration from a representative of the Spanish royal Academy\n\n _URL_0_\n\n\nIll try and come back later to give a more complete answer, with better sources and a more in depth view\n\nEdit:\nLink doesnt seem to work, heres the name and info on this work\n\nLa investigaci\u00f3n de los arabismos \r\ndel castellano en registros normales, \r\nfolkl\u00f3ricos y bajos\r\nREAL ACADEMIA ESPA\u00d1OLA \r\nDISCURSO LE\u00cdDO EL D\u00cdA 20 DE MAYO DE 2018 EN SU RECEPCI\u00d3N P\u00daBLICA POR EL EXCMO. SR.  D. FEDERICO CORRIENTE Y CONTESTACI\u00d3N DEL EXCMO. SR. D. JUAN GIL", "You have asked two entirely separate questions, the latter of which is not historical in nature. The former question regarding life in Spain after the Muslim Umayyad conquest in 711, I can answer that it encompassed several periods of remarkable peaceful coexistence between Christians, Jews and Muslims. Keep in mind that Muslim rule in Hispania lasted over 700 years - it was more than just an 'occupation' - and the conditions would have varied significantly over that time span. However, the general view is that it was a period of exceptional tolerance for various ethnic and religious groups, and is referred to as La Convivencia.  There is some debate about what tolerance really meant, and I hope that we will get more answers on this post.  But it is a fact that for several centuries both Jews and Christians took part in the royal courts, and were fully integrated into the intellectual life, particularly in Cordoba.  A great deal of ancient classic writing survived because of la convivencia - Greek writings were translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and vice versa.  I may check back later to give some more detail.  There are actually many surviving firsthand documents from Christians, Jews and Muslims from throughout this period so if you don't get any detailed authoritative answers on this thread, here are two books that will definitely shed light on this:\n\n1: [_URL_2_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nand also 2: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\-pars\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/36/77/_ebook.pdf&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjnr4H7tZPhAhVPRBoKHWptDYEQFjABegQIBxAB&amp;usg=AOvVaw1irfG1caZkxCtEOQWeoLeE"], ["https://www.amazon.com/Ornament-World-Christians-Tolerance-Medieval/dp/0316168718", "https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812215699/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1", "https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812215699/ref=oh\\_aui\\_search\\_asin\\_title?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1"]]}
{"q_id": "4lk0zb", "title": "How common were domestic pigs in Arabia and the Middle-East before Islam? What happened to pig farmers after Islam became dominant religion in the region? Were there shortages of food/meat?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lk0zb/how_common_were_domestic_pigs_in_arabia_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3o0c4t", "d3o34mb"], "score": [73, 27], "text": ["I can't say that there were *no* domestic pigs in Arabia before Islam, but, for instance in Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam* the words \"pig\" \"pork\" and \"boar\" are not mentioned.\n\nEven if there hypothetically were pigs in Arabia there are only a limited number of locations where they could plausibly have been raised, such as in Yemen or the southern Levant. The raising of pigs, as I understand it, is a sedentary form of pastoralism. This would have been less common in Arabia than transhumance (i.e. seasonal migrations) or nomadic pastoralism. These latter forms focused on the raising of goats, sheep, and, most famously, camels.\n\nNor am I familiar with any reports of food shortages associated with Islamic strictures on food consumption.", "Domestic pigs can be found in Ancient Egypt dating back to the 5th millennium BCE, and were extremely common throughout North Africa until Islam became dominant, and was still common amongst some of the Berbers until relatively recently.\n\nOne of the primary purposes of pigs is garbage collection, as such while owning Pigs may have been outlawed for the Muslim population, there is still a need for them and some level of tolerance of letting marginalized groups have them.  To this day, the Egyptian underclass of informal garbage collectors, the Zabbaleen, still use and grow pigs.  They are also over 90% Coptic Christian.  In times of religious fervor and hysteria over disease outbreak it has not been uncommon for the government to do cullings, including as recently as a few years ago.\n\nAs for the food issue, just like today, people thousands of years ago preferred beef to pork.  People, especially the poorer, ate more pork when beef was less available.  McDonald's does this as well, when beef futures are expensive they bring back the McRib.\n\nThe problem of pigs is not that they're dirty or carry disease, that's 'mostly' a problem of modern farming.  It's that they're bad nomadic pastoral animals, and bad at herding across deserts (though they travel by boat fine).  Pigs are actually pretty smart and if given enough space will avoid sleeping in their own filth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "dh18q9", "title": "Gibbon about antipope John XXIII: \"The more scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was accused only of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest.\" What could \"the more scandalous charges\" be?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dh18q9/gibbon_about_antipope_john_xxiii_the_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["f3lwszk"], "score": [23], "text": ["Almost certainly those other charges were heresy, simony (buying and selling of church offices), and perpetuating the Western schism. These were considered more serious crimes because of their religious nature. \n\nBut that answer alone is incomplete, so let's have some context. Antipope John XXIII was born Baldassarre Cossa in the kingdom of Naples. His father was the lord of Procida and Cossa himself became a soldier. However, he later switched paths and instead studied civil and canon law and then entered into the service of Pope Benedict IX. He became a cardinal in 1402, but remained more interested in living like a warrior than a clergyman. Two of his brothers were executed by Ladislaus of Naples for piracy and Cossa himself was accused of collaborating with robbers and highwaymen, which he sometimes used as muscle to rough up his rivals.\n\nNow, it's important to explain here that from 1378 and 1410, there was something called the Western Schism. This meant that there were at least two popes both claiming ultimate authority, one in Rome and one in Avignon. This occurred, in large part, because from 1309 until 1376, the papacy had been based in Avignon. This situation had arisen because of conflict between Philippe IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but remained in place for so long because Rome had become awash in bloody violence as a result of the Guelph-Ghibbeline wars. In 1376, Pope Gregory XI decided to return to Rome on the advice of Saint Catherine of Siena and then died shortly after. After his death, Italian cardinals in Rome elected the Italian Pope Urban VI while the French cardinals in Avignon elected the Frenchman Antipope Clement VII. This situation continued for years with there effectively being two popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome. \n\nIn 1408, Cossa and six other cardinals withdrew their allegiance from Pope Gregory XII on the basis that he had broken his oath not to create more cardinals without consulting them. In response, Cossa and the other cardinals met with cardinals from Avignon to attempt to resolve the schism. They declared the Pope Gregory XII and Antipope Benedict XIII were both deposed and elected Antipope Alexander V. But Gregory and Benedict refused to resign, so now there were 3 popes. Alexander died a year later and thus, this group of cardinals elected Cossa as Antipope John XXIII. \n\nCossa's most formidable enemy (because he was very nearby) was Ladislaus of Naples. In 1413, he assisted Louis II, duke of Anjou in his abortive attempts to remove Ladislaus as the king of Naples. After that failed, Cossa fled to Florence where he met Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, who hoped to end the schism once and for all. The result was the Council of Constance, which Pope Gregory XII also authorized. The council decided that all three papal claimants should resign and a new one should be elected instead. \n\nBut Cossa didn't like the results, so he fled from Constance in disguise with the assistance of Friedrich IV, Duke of Austria. Sigismund was enraged and declared that Friedrich was to be deposed as Duke. Ludwig III, Count Palantine eventually caught up to them, though, and convinced Friedrich to hand Cossa over.\n\nCossa was then taken back to Constance where he was accused of a whole host of crimes and imprisoned. He was eventually freed after the Medici paid his ransom and submitted to the authority of the newly elected Pope, Martin V, who made him a cardinal bishop. \n\nNow, the $64,000 question is, \"Was Cossa actually guilty of all the crimes he was accused of?\" The answer is, \"Probably not.\" That he was a shady customer is not disputed, but even shady customers aren't guilty of every crime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2aoosp", "title": "In WWII, were there any Audie Murphy-level one man armies on the Axis side?", "selftext": "I always hear stories about American and Allied soldiers single handedly holding off an insane amount of Nazis or Japanese soldiers. Are there any cases in WWII where an entire American regiment couldn't advance through a town because of one German holding them off?\n\nIs it just Allied propaganda? Did the Allies just never report cases where of Axis one man armies? Genuinely curious.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aoosp/in_wwii_were_there_any_audie_murphylevel_one_man/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cixdxys", "cixgmi8", "cixitxt", "cixol84", "cixp8wc", "cixq6y0", "cixq9c7", "cixt8vf", "cixv0eo"], "score": [109, 59, 44, 9, 17, 10, 8, 8, 9], "text": ["[Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4](_URL_0_) would be the closest approximation I could think of at the moment. He was a sniper for the Finnish army during the [Winter War](_URL_1_) against Russia 1939-1940. During this time, he amassed 505 confirmed kills against the Soviet Army [possibly more due to the fact that kills had to be confirmed by another officer] and became feared as the 'White Death', as he was known to dress in white snow-camouflage. \n\nThe man was an especially skilled marksman, using his rifle's iron sights as they did not fog up in the cold air and also allowing him to increase his accuracy. He was shot in the jaw by a Russian soldier after numerous attempts to eliminate him prior (including artillery and counter-snipers), but survived and was promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant.", "Michael Wittmann would probably count as a one man army in terms of Panzer aces.  His story is almost certainly overinflated in the propaganda, but he was renowned at the time and definitely is worthy of some credit.  He won the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords which made him one of the most highly decorated German soldiers of the war.\n\nHe is credited with single handedly holding up the British 7th Armoured Division at Villers-Bocage and a great deal has been written about this encounter in particular.  You can find plenty of information on him and his exploits if you search around a bit.\n\nThe key point of contention seems to be whether or not he actually was completely alone during Villers-Bocage or if he was supported at times by part of his company.  Either way, he either personally destroyed or led an action in a key role which halted the advance of the British and destroyed more than a company without being killed.  It's a pretty impressive tactical feat regardless of the mismatch in firepower.", "Personal courage was not the exclusive preserve of Allies of Axis soldiers. Here's a few examples of heroism from Wehrmacht and Waffen SS troops.\n\nIn 1940, Waffen SS NCO Ludwig Kepplinger lead an attack on the Ijessel River bridge. Despite heavy fire from Dutch positions, Kepplinger lead two comrades in a hand grenade attack that cleared the way for the SS attack. Kepplinger won an Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross for his action.\n\nIn another bridge-related incident in Low Countries during 1940, Feldwebel (Sergeant) Helmut Arpke lead a gliberborne attack on the \nAlbert Canal bridges. In less than ten minutes, Arpke and his pioneer teams knocked out a Belgian MG nest and dismantled the demolition charges on the bridge. In the same action, another German paratrooper, Obergefreiter (Corporal) P. Meier swam across a river under fire, stole a bicycle, linked up with the Germans at Eben-Emael, and then turned back in search of his unit. Although he didn't find his comrade that day, he single-handedly managed to capture 110 Belgian soldiers.\n\nDuring the same action, Rudolf Witzig won the Iron Cross Second Class, the Iron Cross First Class, and the Knight's Cross all on the same day. Leading another glider attack, this time on the Eben-Emael fortress, Witzig rallied his men and coordinated a bitter fight to clear the Belgian troops entrenched inside the fort. \n\nIn July 1942, 19-year-old Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) Gunter Halm was part of a detachment of two anti-tank guns that destroyed nine British tanks and disabled six more at El Alamein. Halm won the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross in this battle. \n\n\n", "Oberstleutnant Gunter Viezenz who single-handedly destroyed 21 Enemy tanks with handheld explosives in ww2 (panzerfaust, Satchels/etc).  Tell me that isn't a one-man wrecking machine!  He was awarded the most Panzervernichtungsabzeichen (Tank Destruction Badges) in the Third Reich.\n\nSurprisingly Wiki has a pic and little blerb about him:\n_URL_0_", "[Franz Stigler]( _URL_2_) is perhaps best known for his antics involving escorting a damaged American B-17 to safety. \n\nHowever, in his amazing account of the war detailed in the biographical book of his war experience ( [A Higher Call] ( _URL_1_) ) we learn that he was a seemingly invincible German ace fighter pilot. He flew in missions from nearly the beginning of the war to the very end, wherein he finds himself among an elite unit of German aces flying the ME-262 jet fighter.\n\nStigler was credited with a few HUNDRED kills. Was he the most successful fighter pilot in all of recorded history? No.\n\nThat title belongs to another German ace by the name of [Erich Hartmann]( _URL_0_) with 352 credited kills.\n\nBoth men survived the war and many decades afterwards, dying eventually of old age. They seemed to be absolutely invincible in the skies over Germany.", "Yay, this doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet!\n\nErich Hartmann was a Luftwaffe pilot serving in Jagdgeschwader 52 on the eastern front. He had 352 confirmed kills - that is, he shot down 352 allied aircraft. He is the most successful fighter pilot ever in this regard, nicknamed \"The Black Devil\" by the Soviets.\n\nHe was never shot down, although he had to crash-land 14 times because debris from other planes he destroyed would hit him. This was because he often would wait until the last possible second to open fire on another plane, so as to maintain maximum surprise against the enemy and so the other planes in a formation wouldn't notice him coming. He would usually attack by diving from above.\n\nHe was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. He was only a 20-something year old guy during the war as well, which is incredibly impressive. Not a bad guy at all either.", "Really the main reason you hear about these stories relating to the Allies is because they won the war and its easier to glorify such things.  The Axis had plenty of the same Rambo style heroes but they lost so the Western media isn't so interested in glorifying Nazis.\n\nFor example you can take a look at the recipients of the Tank Destruction Badge _URL_1_\n\nJust about all of these guys are badasses - this is not just a badge for destroying tanks - its a badge for destroying them with handheld weapons (no AT guns, tanks, planes, etc).  These guys generally had to get VERY close and many of them did it over and over again.\n\n\nYou can also take a look at fighter pilots.  _URL_0_\n\nNotice how far down on this list you have to scroll to even find an Allied pilot.  Some of these scores are inflated but that is the case with both Axis and Allied sides.\n\n\nReally the Axis has more \"one man army\" situations for a few reasons.  One of them is that as the war went on they were generally outnumbered - its 'easier' to be Rambo if you are constantly put in desperate situations.  It was also the case that the Allies would often take a war hero off the front and put him back home to sell war bonds or train recruits.  Oftentimes an Axis soldier was put on the front until he was either killed or the war was over.  Thus lots of badass soldiers got more opportunities to continue being badasses.", "Heinrich Severloh comes to mind.\r\rDrafted in 1942 he never was a big fan of the Wehrmacht. After various disputes with his superiors he got asthma after a sustained period of physical labour in Russia. After six months in hospitals for recovery he got deployed to France.  Still not liking the Prussian military mentality, he did what he had to but at the same time was looking for ways out of the service until he became best friends with his superior Oberleutnant Bernhard Frerking while he served as his attendant. Time went by until the 6.6.1944 came around. Severloh's unit manned Widerstandsnest 62 on Omaha beach. From his position he had a good overlook of the eastern part of the landing zone. During the night he noticed bombs being dropped in the area, but they were too far away to really bother him. The naval bombardment in the morning on the other hand gave his position quit the beating with one shell impacting around 10m from his position. When the landing started he fired his MG42 into the landing infantry while his comrade, which was in WN62 brought more ammunition. According to his own testimony he felt sorry for the people he shot at but kept on shooting because he felt that otherwise he and his comrades would be killed. Over the course of the day he fired 12'000 rounds with the Mg 42 until he run out of ammo because no resupply arrived. He then proceeded to fire the 50 shots he carried for his 98k. According to him he missed 5 of these shots. By this time it was around 15:00 to 15:30. Out of ammo and alone he decided to leave his position and retreated. When he found the remains of his unit, his beloved Oberleutnant Frerking was missing. He was directing artillery fire from a bunker and didn't make it out alive, something that haunted Severloh his whole life.\r\rThis is the part we know and can verify to some degree, what remains unclear is the actual bodycount. Estimates vary from some hundred up to two thousand casualties inflicted by severlohe. While the second number pretty sure is too high, it's certain that he played a crucial role in the defense of his sector. What strikes me most is that he wasn't a typical hero, and he sure didn't see himself as one, but simply a man with a machine gun in a favourable position with many targets, enough ammo and a reason to keep fighting (saving his comrades).\r\rSources: a documentary called \"Todfeinde von Omaha Beach\" by Alexander Czogolla is how I first found out about him.\r\r\rHis autobiography \"Erinnerungen an die Normandie 6.Juni 1944\"\r\r", "Check out [Hans Ulrich Rudel](_URL_0_)\n\nHe was the only person to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with GOLDEN Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds and was the highest decorated serviceman of the Axis forces. The only one with higher decorations was Hermann Goering.\n\nThe man is responsible for the following:\n\nFlew over 2500 combat missions\n\nDestroyed over 800 vehicles\n\n519 tanks\n\n150 artillery pieces\n\n70 landing craft\n\n9 aircraft\n\n4 trains\n\na few bridges\n\nand contributed to the destruction of a destroyer, 2 cruisers and a freakin Russian battleship. He was literally Hercules in a cockpit and absolutely loyal to the Nazi party until the end"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnther_Viezenz"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hartmann", "http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0425252868?pc_redir=1405330637&amp;robot_redir=1", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Destruction_Badge"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel"]]}
{"q_id": "3c7tqc", "title": "Did they honor the \"Don't kill the messenger\" back in the days?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c7tqc/did_they_honor_the_dont_kill_the_messenger_back/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cst6p85"], "score": [6], "text": ["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."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "8qeb2p", "title": "Why did concept albums take off, and what happened to them?", "selftext": "It seems as though the concept album was largely confined to the 70s \u2013 *The Six Wives of Henry VIII* (1973), *Journey to the Centre of the Earth* (1974), *Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters* (1974), *Animals* (1977), *Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds* (1978) and *The Wall* (1979), to name some of the most prominent examples. Yet, looking at the 80s, I can't really think of any concept albums of note. Why, then, did they take off, and why haven't they made a major comeback?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8qeb2p/why_did_concept_albums_take_off_and_what_happened/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0ivlwe", "e0j806t", "e0lpmgc"], "score": [6, 332, 6], "text": ["Follow-up questions: What caused the rise in their popularity in the first place? Was there a particular artist or album that started a trend or marked a significant cultural change?\n\nAlso, FYI, concept albums still exist (and seem to be popular among smaller groups of fans) in the hard rock/metal world. \n\nTool - Lateralus (2001)\n\nTool - 10,000 Days (2007)\n\nKeldian - Outbound (2013)\n\nThrawsunblat - Wanderer On the Continet of Saplings (2013)\n\nThrawsunblat - Metachthonia (2016)\n\nWoods of Ypres - Pursuit of the sun  &  allure of the earth (2004)\n\nAnubis gate - Horizons (2014)\n\nBrendon Small - Doomstar Requiem (2013)\n\n\nThose are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, that I've listened to, and that I believe qualify as concept albums because they are tied lyrically, musically, and thematically from start to finish, including ALL tracks. If we loosen the definition of \"concept album\" a bit, the list of candidates from the 80's or later gets very long very quickly. \n\nHowever I do agree that they seem to have lost the universal cultural appeal of your examples from the 70s. And I would also like to know why.", "**1/2**\n\nFirstly, let's talk about what an album is. So, the word 'album' originally comes from the idea of the album implicit in the term 'photo album' which (in the pre-internet age, at least) is a book that holds separate photos in a single package. The original albums were albums in this sense: they were pre-packaged collections of single 78rpm discs, a format that, at least in its popular form, usually only held 3-4 minutes of music on each side. Together, with a set of 78rpm discs packaged together, you had an album. The first concept album inevitably dates from this period, not the 1970s. For example, Woody Guthrie's *Dust Bowl Ballads*, from 1940, was a folk concept album revolving around the experience of Depression/dust bowl-era 1930s in Oklahoma (song titles including 'The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)', 'Dust Bowl Refugee', 'Dust Bowl Blues' and ['Dusty Old Dust'](_URL_1_)).\n\nWhen the 12\" 33rpm record became popular in the 1950s - when you could fit all of an album on one disc - concept albums soon followed, such as *In The Wee Small Hours* by Frank Sinatra, from 1955 - as one of the first pop albums to be released on one 12\" 33rpm disc, it was also therefore one of the first pop concept albums to be released on one 12\" 33rpm disc (seeing as the songs had a theme of late-night loneliness tying them together, [like the title track](_URL_3_)).\n\nHowever, in the mid-1960s, with the rise of multitrack recording technology, you get a different kind of conception of what an album is to what had previously come. To some extent, in the 1950s, the attitude towards the album was that it was simply a collection of performances. However, from the 1960s, people started viewing the album not as a collection of recordings of performances, but a thing in of itself; the album wasn't an avenue for you to hear the Beatles performing ['A Day In The Life'](_URL_2_) - it was no longer simply musicians performing, caught on tape, but a physical artifact - a piece of vinyl - deliberately designed to be received as art. The Beatles and their producers  have generally denied that *Sgt Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band* (released in May 1967) is a concept album in the way that, say, *Tommy* is - obviously, the first three songs are sort of thematically linked, but then it goes in other directions - but it absolutely was a concept album. With its sounds being electronically manipulated in a way that would mean the Beatles couldn't actually sound like that in real life, and in its emphasis on the album being a physical artifact - the ornate packaging, the effort put into the album cover, the loop in the runout grooves, for example - the concept of *Sgt. Peppers*, in a way, was of a new *conception* of *the album* as an artwork in of itself. An enormously popular new conception of the album, seeing *Sgt Peppers*' enormous success.\n\nThe albums you mention - by Rick Wakeman, Pink Floyd, etc. - historically follow in the wake of *Sgt Peppers*, which - along with some other ambitious albums of the period, such as *Pet Sounds* - inaugurated a new era of 'rock' music which distinguished itself from run of the mill pop by its sonic ambitiousness, and its desire to *progress* artistically, to do something new. \n\nAt this point, after the success of *Sgt. Peppers*, which had elements of 20th century (classical) art music forms like *musique concrete* in it, several artists started to combine rock music with other musical forms that were typically longer than the 3-4 minute pop song. For example, The Moody Blues released *Days Of Future Passed* in November 1967, which features orchestral interludes by the London Festival Orchestra, and which clearly aims at a sort of classical form in the parts of the album without orchestra. The Moody Blues, and other such ambitious, largely British rock bands, were well-received, and the impulses of groups like Yes and Genesis and ELP came together in a genre called *progressive rock*, which aimed to progress from *Sgt Peppers*' starting point towards a music which aimed towards the ambitiousness and complexity of some of the forms of classical music. The point at which progressive rock really gets going commercially and artistically is basically on the turn of the 1970s.\n\nWith that in mind, let's talk about the concept album. Firstly, there are a variety of different kinds of concept album. At the most basic level of the concept album is the idea that there is a thread running its way through these songs - these songs have been collected together for a specific purpose. \n\nOne of those purposes is a consistent lyrical theme - see *Dust Bowl Ballads* or *In The Wee Small Hours*, or, for example, *Little Deuce Coupe*, the 1963 album by the Beach Boys that's *all* about cars. *Animals* which you list above, fits this category. Another is that there is a consistent use of particular musical sounds or events on the album. So, for example, the band Self released an album in 2000 called *Gizmodgery* which is a concept album because everything on the album is recorded with toy instruments ([hear their version of 'What A Fool Believes'](_URL_8_)). \n\nAt a slightly more advanced level of conceptual-ness is an album that has a sort of progression of situations through the album - a song cycle where the songs are meant to be presented in a specific sequence. Pink Floyd's *Dark Side Of The Moon* goes from birth (the infant cries and heartbeats at the very start of the album) to death ([a song called 'Eclipse'](_URL_0_)), for example, and there's particular ways in which the music of the different songs on the album fit together thematically. But other albums might have a sense of progression in this kind of way without necessarily having a specific theme - there might be some elements of the kind of motifs and musical structures that you might see in a symphony, mixed with pop music forms (though, usually, with rather more widdly guitar and burping synth than the average classical symphony).\n\nAnd then there are albums that specifically do 'rock opera', in the sense that the albums are storytelling narrative, told through song - quite like an opera or musical, except in rock album form. *Tommy* by The Who, from 1969, was self-consciously a rock opera, described as such in its promotional material (and later presented in film musical form, i.e., [with Elton doing 'Pinball Wizard'](_URL_5_)). You can often imagine rock operas performed as musicals, and in fact Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's *Jesus Christ Superstar* was first a rock opera album, released in 1970 with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple playing Jesus ([here on 'Gethsemane'](_URL_6_)), before it was first performed live in 1971. *War Of The Worlds*, with its narration is very clearly a rock opera. And *The Wall* too, with its somewhat abstract but fairly clear narrative of a rock star becoming progressively more alienated as explicated in the film version.\n\nSo the various types of concept albums took off, essentially, because in the wake of Sgt Peppers there was a young, but rapidly maturing baby boomer audience who wanted to believe - in the wake of *Sgt Peppers* that rock music could continue to be *important*, that it could be High Art. In wanting to be High Art, the rock musicians emulated the forms of High Art they saw in socially-esteemed classical music - symphonies and operas.\n\nSo the explosion of concept albums in the 1970s was predicated on the belief that rock music was reaching towards High Art, and that the way in which to reach towards High Art was to emulate classical forms. These beliefs did not last in the discourse around popular music. By the late 1970s, critics and younger audiences championed punk, which self-consciously rejected any prog rock pretensions to High Art (John Lydon in his autobiography *Rotten* talks about how he became a member of the Sex Pistols largely because they saw him in his famous 'I hate Pink Floyd' t-shirt; he also claims that \"Yes or any of that stuff...was too arty, distant and remote, all about 6/4 masturbation\"). Punk largely championed the 3 minute single, and musical simplicity - it was part of the myth of punk that they could barely play their instruments. Not necessarily *because* of punk, but the late 1970s saw the bigger progressive rock bands ultimately move away from forms and sounds that aimed for classical music. Genesis transitioned from Peter Gabriel as lead singer to Phil Collins as lead singer, and eventually started making fairly straight pop music (['Follow You Follow Me'](_URL_7_)). Trevor Horn of The Buggles produced an album for Yes, which ended up having a new wave style hit in ['Owner Of A Lonely Heart'](_URL_4_). Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2' might be from a concept album, but it has a disco beat. \n", " >   Yet, looking at the 80s, I can't really think of any concept albums of note.\n\nThere were a lot of bands that today would be called \"power metal\" or \"progressive metal\" doing concept albums in the 80s.  The most prominent being:\n\n* Queensryche - *Operation: Mindcrime*, released in 1988, is a rock opera with a clear story progression from track to track about a dystopian near future.  *Rage for Order* (1986) and *Empire* (1990) also have strong concept album elements, although not every song on those albums are tied together.\n\n*  Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden were incorporating some thematically related songs as early as 1982's *Number of the Beast*, which continued into *Powerslave* (1984) and *Somewhere in Time* (1986).  *Seventh Son of a Seventh Son* (1988) meets all the criteria for a concept album, with every song based on Orson Scott Card's novel *Seventh Son*.\n\n*  King Diamond - *Abigail* (1987), thematically centered around ghosts and hauntings.\n\n* Helloween - Most of their albums have some concept elements, especially *Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt 1* (1987) and *Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt 2* (1988), which were originally intended to be released as a double album, and finally were in 2010.\n\nOutside of strictly heavy metal, we've got:\n\n*  Blue Oyster Cult - Although *Imaginos* (1988) is credited to BOC, it's probably better described as longtime producer and lyricist Sandy Pearlman's project tying together many of the repeating themes in previous albums by the band.\n\n* Planet P - More or less a one man band (Tony Carey), Planet P's second release, *Pink World* was released as a double album (On pink vinyl!) in 1984.  It's about a highly dystopian post nuclear apocalypse society contained inside an area called \"the Zone\".\n\nOne can debate how \"notable\" some of these albums are outside their genre.  *Pink World* is somewhat obscure, and *Imaginos* suffered from distribution and record label problems, but *Operation: Mindcrime* and *Seventh Son of a Seventh Son* both hit the mainstream charts (*Seventh...* was #1 in the UK), and *Mindcrime* was certified platinum, *Seventh* gold by the RAA.\n\nConcept albums didn't disappear in the 80s, they were just in a different place."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z39KZAryzk", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudNm4r9NKo", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiPUv4kXzvw", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOuYquXuuc", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePiGVI2Hs-g", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOjyGy1NR4Y", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDRXbP1MaY", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV64MTaw7aE"], []]}
{"q_id": "6kl7co", "title": "Did Vietnam War get that bad for Americans as depicted in Apocalypse Now: open desertions, lack of C.O.s, bases in complete desolate condition...", "selftext": "Great movie. and I hear the Vietnam War vets say this movie is the closest thing that resembles what they went through out of all the other hollywood movies. Not sure if they mean thematically or realistically. \n\nWhat I am asking is did things get so bad for some American forces there that there were open desertions (like when the boat was passing by one of the frontline bases), complete chaos (the scene where there is a machine gunner and sleeping grenadier) and oblivious conditions (the second scene where playmates are shown, with them going half-full insane and trapped in the desolate base with dead bodies not taken care of) etc etc...?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kl7co/did_vietnam_war_get_that_bad_for_americans_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djnh8xm"], "score": [26], "text": ["OP have you got a link to where Vietnam veterans praised the film for its accuracy? I was under the belief that it was the opposite, giving the film being an updated Heart of Darkness.\n\nAlso, the answers in [this thread](_URL_0_) may be of some interest. (given by /u/Anastik and /u/deleted)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28isjy/reception_of_apocalypse_now_among_vietnam_veterans/"]]}
{"q_id": "52c9zc", "title": "Did pre-Islamic Arabs eat pork? Did they practice circumcision? What was the reaction to Muhammad's rules on these practices?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/52c9zc/did_preislamic_arabs_eat_pork_did_they_practice/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7jrwww"], "score": [13], "text": [" >  Did the pre-Islamic Arabs...practice circumcision?\n\nYes. This seems to have been widespread to the point of near-universality among males and was also practiced on females. The Arabic word for the practice \"khitan\" is pre-Islamic, and we also have pre-Islamic words referring to the un-circumcised. The practice of circumcision is also mentioned in pre-Islamic poetry.\n\nA second century AD Syriac commentator, Bardaisan, noted upon the conquest of the Nabateans (of northern Arabia) by the Romans that:\n\n >  \u2018Recently the Romans have conquered Arabia [i.e. the Nabatean territories] and have done away with the old laws there used to be, particularly circumcision, which was a custom they practised\u2019\n\nFrom Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs*\n\nMoreover, in the hadith, circumcision is included among the \"Fitra\", the practices so basic to human existence that there are expected to practiced regardless of any specific religious injunction almost as a point of personal hygiene, and which include clipping one's fingernails, trimming of pubic hair, removing under-arm hair and trimming the moustache.\n\nMoreover, circumcision would have been practiced on a religious basis by the extensive Jewish community of Arabia, which seems to have been common in north Arabia and even predominant in the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen.\n\nAs a result, I'm not familiar with any objections to the practice.\n\n >  Did pre-Islamic Arabs eat pork?\n\nI can't prove a negative, but, as I've discussed previously before [HERE](_URL_0_), the answer seems to be no. Certainly there were (and are) pigs in the Levant and the wider Middle East and Arabs who would have come across and even eaten pork in those locations. But that being said, and I say this as a non-farmer, as far as I'm aware the conditions in most of Arabia are not conducive to raising pigs, and boars are not endemic to the Arabian peninsula.\n\nSo in pre-Islamic Arabia, as now, the primary forms of pastoralism related to the raising of camels, sheep and goats, and to a certain extent horses, rather than the raising of pigs or cattle which are ill-suited to the desert.\n\nsource wise:\n\nAs mentioned above see Robert Hoyland's *Arabia and the Arabs*\n\nand the *Encyclopaedia of Islam* entry on circumcision \"Khitan.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4lk0zb/how_common_were_domestic_pigs_in_arabia_and_the/"]]}
{"q_id": "2q006a", "title": "imagine a normal British Celtic farmer in 77BCE, imagine a normal English Saxon farmer in AD1059. aside from things relating to religion how would their daily lives likely be different?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2q006a/imagine_a_normal_british_celtic_farmer_in_77bce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn1t7ai", "cn21fej", "cn2cn0a"], "score": [26, 6, 6], "text": ["I don't know enough about agriculture specifically to talk about the daily work life of a farmer in either era, but I imagine there would've been stark differences in population density, more widely shared cultural mores, and generally more developed infrastructure connecting the various kingdoms. \n\n77BCE predates the Roman conquest so a farmer living in this era would have had a much more limited understanding of the broader world. You said 'apart from religion,' but in many ways it's difficult to separate religion from the daily life of a person living at the end of the first millennium, at least insofar as how joe farmer would imagine his place in the world. By this time the mark Rome left on the island would've been unavoidable (speaking of physical remains), and when the Normans conquered the island just a few years on, the influence of that reign and the The Roman Catholic Church would leave marks that still can be seen today. \n\nThe tribes that inhabited the islands in 77 BCE certainly had dealings with the Mediterranean world, to say nothing of the inter-tribal dealings and shared cultural heritage, but by 1059 the intervening centuries saw so many changes through both the precipitate social upheaval brought on through war, and also more gradual influence through trade and the concomitant spread of ideas that I would imagine a tribal farmer in pre-roman Britain would have a more local understanding of his environment. --- I don't mean to imply that a farmer in 1050 would care in the slightest about anything beyond his local existence, rather that he would be more likely to have heard of Jerusalem or Constantinople, say. And that, theology aside, even a passing familiarity with Christianity carried with it such dense cultural weight that it would be near impossible to have it not color your experience and perspective in some way. \n", "I think that the English Saxon farmers would also be involved in the wool trade, while the celtic farmer most likely would not. I believe wool had become an important industry by the middle ages, and that many Saxon farmers depended on their wives to convert wool into textiles (for trade with France) as apart of their livelihoods. \n\nSource: Robert Bucholz, *History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts*. Great Courses No. 8470.", "One of the biggest changes in agricultural technology would have been the introduction of the mouldboard plough.  \n\nThe Celtic farmer in 77 BCE would have used a \"scratch plough\" (or \"true ard\") - Quite possibly pulled by oxen.  \n\nThe Saxon farmer in 1059 AD would have used a mouldboard plough almost certainly pulled by oxen.\n\nThe mouldboard plough had two advantages.  It greatly reduced the amount of time to prepare a field, allowing a farmer to farm more land and grow more produce.  In the form of the heavy wheeled mouldboard plough (sometimes known as the \"Roman Plough\"), it also allowed tougher and more difficult soils to be ploughed and put into agriculture.\n\nThere is archaeological evidence that the Roman plough was used in Britain by about the late 3rd or early 4th century AD.\n\nBy the 8th or 9th century, the three field system (one field planted in grain, one in other crops (usually peas, lentils or beans), and one left fallow as pasture)- rotate annually - had replaced the old two field system (half the land left fallow every year) in Britain.  (The secret to it's success was planting the third field in nitrogen fixing crops, which helped renew the soil.)\n\nThese two changes meant that the Saxon farmer could put more land in production and produce more crops (and larger surpluses) than his Celtic predecessor.  \n\nThe replacement of oxen by horses as the main draft animals for ploughing came later in Britain (12th century?) and this led to another improvement in farm productivity, as horse teams can plough faster than ox teams.  (Raising Crops in Northern Europe, with a short growing season, means that there is a limited time between the ground thawing and the crops needing to be planted, in which ploughing can be done.  What cannot be ploughed in that window cannot be successfully cropped that year).\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "chkg5e", "title": "Before the light bulb (and after, but before high-powered bulbs), did trains travel only by day? If they traveled at night, what are the details of what happened if an animal or debris was on the tracks?", "selftext": "If they did travel at night, was that limited to cargo only, or did passenger trains travel by night as well? Did they use oil lamps in the compartments? Was there a high risk of fires?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/chkg5e/before_the_light_bulb_and_after_but_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["euwrq3c"], "score": [39], "text": ["The light bulb is hardly the only source of light.\n\nEarly trains that operated at night used candles enclosed in large housings that had reflectors and lenses to project the light forward.    In the second half of the 19C trains switched over to oil burning lamps, typically using kerosene.\n\nThere was a second type of flame based lantern, the \"carbide lamp\".  When water drips on calcium carbide it gives off acetylene gas which is burned to produce light.  This type of light was also used in early automobiles (e.g. 1915 Model T)  and on bicycle headlights up until the 50s, and for miners and cavers.\n\nAround 1880 Charles Brush developed the arc lamp which is basically an electrical arc between a pair of carbon electrodes.  It sometimes required adjustment of the spacing between them as the carbon gradually wore down.  It was very bright, and locomotives equipped with arc were required to add shutters so that they could dim their lights for oncoming trains.\n\nAlthough Edison developed the incandescent lamp at about the same time, these used a carbon filament which was fragile and not well suited to the vibration of a locomotive.  It wasn't until 1911 that the tungsten filament came out.\n\nAdoption of the light bulb was not immediate by any stretch. According to a [1915 Santa Fe Magazine](_URL_0_) article, lighting broke down as:\n\n    In 1915 there are 67,869 locomotive headlights in use.\n      42,213 are oil.\n       2,904 are acetylene.\n      22,120 are electric arc.\n         632 are incandescent."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=EfLNAAAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA8-PA43&amp;lpg=RA8-PA43&amp;ots=SRPwLSfm3n&amp;f=false#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "8a8ua8", "title": "I've read that for all their lamentations over the evils of slavery, only George Washington among the southern Founding Fathers bothered to free his slaves in his will. Was this true? How unusual an act would this have been for the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8a8ua8/ive_read_that_for_all_their_lamentations_over_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dwxemtz", "dwxl9qb"], "score": [9, 29], "text": ["Side question: Any examples of the other founding fathers \u201clamentations over the evils of slavery\u201d? I know they signed the document that said all men are created equal when they obviously didn\u2019t mean all men, but are there any times they lambasted slavery and it\u2019s evils specifically? I feel like the title is referring to some specific anti-slavery speeches or writings, but I\u2019m not familiar.", "There was a wave of manumission in Virginia following the American Revolution and some 10,000 slaves were manumitted in the 1790's. This was part of an increased dialogue that had centered on the evils of slavery (in particular the slave trade) in both the United States and Great Britain as well as a loosening of the [manumission laws in Virginia](_URL_0_).10,000 is a very large figure in American history for manumission although comparatively small to Latin American slavery. So Washington wouldn't have been particularly out of place for manumitting his slaves but given the number of slaves he owned certainly set him apart(although most he couldn't free as they were from his Wife's first husband). Regarding other Southern founding fathers, the only prominent Virginian of the period that comes to mind is John Randolph of Roanoke. A rather interesting and eccentric figure even for his time period, he left competing wills behind that were contested in court by his heirs regarding the manumission of his 400 or so slaves that dragged on for over a decade. Even after they were freed they had a horrible time actually making it to the land they had bought in Ohio being met with angry armed mobs repeatedly who did not want to live among blacks. Randolph really didn't come into prominent political office until the 1790's however so past the time you'd probably normally consider the founding."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/An_act_to_authorize_the_manumission_of_slaves_1782"]]}
{"q_id": "3nqzt7", "title": "Pre-WWII did Jews really occupy a disproportionate amount of authority and wealth in Germany compared to their being 1% of the national population?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nqzt7/prewwii_did_jews_really_occupy_a_disproportionate/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvqzysa", "cvre68f"], "score": [7, 5], "text": ["Also, I had read that Jews from eastern europe that immigrated to the US were almost universally literate even if they weren't wealthy in Poland or whatnot.\n\nWas the status of Jews say from 1860-1920 pretty similar in Germany to the rest of Eastern Europe, or were they more disadvantaged in Eastern Europe?\n\nThis may just be because Poland was more poor than Germany.\n\n", "The German Jews were a highly urbanized, bourgeois, middle-class community and highly integrated in German society. According to the population census of 1925, around 564 000 Jewish Germans lived in the Reich. As you said, that's close to 1% of the total population. In the first half of the 20th century the Jewish community of Germany was not a growing, but a stagnating, even slightly shrinking one. -- Contrary to the frequent depictions of a strong Jewish influx in right-wing propaganda of the time. This perception was probably based on the more recent immigration of 108 000 Eastern European Jews in the 1920s (called *Ostjuden* in German at the time). These Jews were on the average poorer and more openly religious than the indigenous Jews of Germany. Compared to them the Eastern European Jews were a more \"visible minority\".\n\nThe Jewish population was concentrated in the largest cities of the Reich, around a third in Berlin alone. Their occupational pattern was relatively stable and -- as in many places -- the product of historic pre-modern practices of exclusion from certain professions. In relation to the total population, the Jews were overrepresented in the areas of small business like retail (often self-employed), in trade, and in banking (although not by a large degree). They were traditionally underrepresented in agriculture (as a result of their concentration in urban areas) and in the industry (as a result of their middle-class/self-employed traditions). The Jews of Germany were in no way disproportionally wealthy or powerful. If you want, the \"most powerful\" Jews of Germany, if it even merits the term, were the founders and owners of large department store chains like the Tietz or the Alsberg family. That didn't protect them from dispossession and eventually murder at the hands of the National Socialist regime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "9ijyjs", "title": "What can we know of Zoroaster, his authoring of sacred texts, and what they reveal about him?", "selftext": "A brilliant answer to [another question](_URL_0_) by /u/lcnielsen ended with the following: \u201cOf course, textual critics like to argue that the Gathas are hyper-formulaic compositions that tell us absolutely nothing about the experiences of Zoroaster and the world he lived in. But that's a discussion for another time!\u201d Now is that time! How are we to understand these compositions and what can we know of Zoroaster and his contribution to the religion that bears his name?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ijyjs/what_can_we_know_of_zoroaster_his_authoring_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e6kqfaa", "e6z6p6a"], "score": [53, 2], "text": ["Oh boy, this is a tough one. Before we can even attempt to formulate an answer, it's important that we know the terms we're using. So, prepare for some breakdowns. I will do my best to \"work my way up\" from the extant source material we have, to allow the reader the ability to judge for themselves. A fair amont of subjective judgment is in my view a necessity given the state of the source material available. Throughout, I will include useful links to the material of _URL_3_, which is a fantastic resource.\n\n###**The Avesta**\n\nThe Avesta is the portion of Zoroastrian scripture written in an obscure Iranian language conventionally called _Avestan_. Avestan, especially in its archaic form, is by far the oldest Iranian language, with the earliest preserved material dating back to the mid-2nd Milennium BC. It has a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility with Vedic Sanskrit, but as far as I know no extant Iranian language is thought to be particularly closely related to it. It is in this way very unlike Sanskrit, which is usually thought to be the ancestral language of all modern Indic (or _Indo-Aryan_) languages - Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati,  & c. But I digress.\n\nThe Avestan material can be classified into two parts - older, and younger. One section of the material is collected into the [Yasna](http://_URL_3_/yasna/index.html) (literally meaning \"liturgy\"). The bulk of the Old Avestan material is contained in the poetic hymns in strict meter, the _Gathas_ (chapters 28-34, 43-51, 53). 35-42, the \"Yasna Yaptanghaiti\" are in a dialect identical to the Gathas and presumably similarly old, but in \"prose\". Most of the rest of the Yasna material (minus a verse here or there) are in \"younger Avestan\", which since the work of the great 19th-century philologist Martin Haug have been accepted to be separated from the older material by a minimum of centuries.\n\nThe next big collection is the [Vendidad](http://_URL_3_/vendidad/index.html) (or Videvdad), which is a big book of... stuff, that is sometimes kind of weird (see chapter 8: \"Funerals and purification, unlawful sex\" or chapter 14: \"Atoning for the murder of a water-dog\") and clearly of a highly mixed age - some of it must be so young as to date no earlier than around the Parthian period (i.e. from around 200 BC to 200 AD), but scholarly orthodoxy (e.g. Boyce) holds that it was mostly fixed at some point prior to the Achaemenid period. Much of it is dedicated to moral guidances, directions on ritual purity, and pseudo-laws. This is said to be the one book out of twenty-one in the canon of the Sasanians that has survived, which really makes you wonder how weird the other twenty were. I tend to take the supposed extensiveness of Avestan material destroyed by Alexander or the Muslims with a very large pinch of salt (especially considering the fair amount of repetition found in extant material).\n\nWhat must be the bulk of Young Avestan material is found in the [_Yashts_ (PDF warning!)](_URL_2_) which are epic hymns dedicated to individual deities. The introduction contains a brief explanation of how these fit into Zoroastrian theology from an inside perspective, which may be interesting to read to some.\n\nFinally, there is the Khordeh Avesta, which is the prayer book that many Zoroastrians carry with them. It contains mostly material from the rest of the canon.\n\n###**Pahlavi Literature**\n\nThe Pahlavi literature, in Middle Persian, is extensive and diverse enough to be beyond my means (and probably any reader's attention span) to fully explain, and it is perhaps best to look over the index found at _URL_0_ to get an idea of what it contains. It contains some of the straightforward explanations of Zoroastrian cosmology in e.g. the Bundahishn. However, it postdates the Sasanian period, and it is generally questionable to what degree it preserves older tradition - it may only be a small sliver of interpretations and vernacular glosses of scripture that survived the collapse of Sasanian Persia (diversity is suggested by e.g. Arabic accounts of Zoroastrian beliefs). Of course, it is fascinating as a body of religious literature in its own right, but less relevant to our purposes here.\n\n###**Zoroaster and the Gathas**\n\nVirtually all studies of the origins of Zoroastrianism stands on the shoulders of the great philologist Martin Haug. Haug identified the Gathas as the holiest scripture of contemporary Zoroastrianism, and realized that they were written, as I noted above, in a much older (centuries, at least) dialect than much of the older variant (Being a 19th century German linguist, he was obviously more quantitative and specific about these relationships than I will try to be here). Drawing up a chronology, he found the traditional dating of Zoroaster as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great to be implausible, and proposed instead that Zoroaster must have lived in the 2nd milennium BC. Haug's theological \"insights\" were, shall we say, less impressive, and I won't go into them here.\n\nIt goes without saying that it is not actually possible to **prove** that a prehistoric prophet personally composed the Gathas - one problem with the type of pastoral society the Gathas are set in is the lack of geographic identifiers. We do at least however have the prophet identified as Spitama Zarathustra, i.e., Zarathustra of the Spitaman clan, and other names associated with his family. Moreover, we can present the usual arguments - their preservation in a peculiar metric form, the unlikelihood of a movement springing from nowhere, the distinct literary style,  consistent theology, the abscence of certain elements of later societies (most famously, iron)... and the fact that the author [helpfully identifies himself](_URL_1_):\n\n > Y 43.7 As the holy one I recognized thee, Mazda Ahura, when Good Purpose came to me and asked me: \"Who art thou? to whom dost thou belong? By what signs wilt thou appoint the days for questioning about thy possessions and thyself?\"\n\n > Y 8 **Then I said to him: \"To the first (question), Zarathushtra am I**, a true foe to the Liar, to the utmost of my power, but a powerful support would I be to the Righteous, that I may attain the future things of the infinite Dominion, according as I praise and sing thee, O Mazda.\n\nNow, when one sets out to read the Gathas, it is important to understand one \"axiom\": there is no clear distinction made between divinities, and the abstract concepts they represent. The late, great Mary Boyce liked [this verse](_URL_1_) as an example [brackets mine]:\n\n > Y 31.4. If Asha [righteousness] is to be invoked and Mazda [wisdom] and the other Ahuras [lords] and Ashi [reward] and Armaiti [devotion], *do thou seek for me, O Vohu Manah* [alt: *do thou seek for me by the best purpose*], the mighty Dominion, by the increase of which we might vanquish the Lie. [If the meaning of the verse is unclear, it is saying something like: \"If we are to invoke the divine, grant us the power to destroy evil\"]\n\n", "Follow up question for @Lcnielsen : Both Christianity and Islam shaped the goals and foreign policy of the empires where they were practiced. Islam tore off a huge chunk of the eastern Roman empire in the name of spreading the religion, and the remaining Byzantine empire and the European states that launched crusades attempted to reconquer the old territories, also for the glory of their respective gods.\n\nDid Zoroastrianism shape the foreign policy of the various Persian empires/dynasties in a similar way? Did practitioners of  Zoroastrianism see Roman paganism and Christianity as something they needed to overcome, defend against, etc?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9hzwqi/saturday_showcase_september_22_2018/e6g830k/"], "answers_urls": [["www.avesta.org", "http://avesta.org/yasna/index.html#y43", "http://avesta.org/kanga/kanga_yashts.pdf", "avesta.org", "http://avesta.org/vendidad/index.html", "http://avesta.org/yasna/index.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "1jmyg5", "title": "Who was the Queen of Sheba?", "selftext": "For someone who is reputed to be extremely wealthy and mentioned in many texts, how is not much known about her? She even goes by innumerable different names. Is this a common historical occurrence?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jmyg5/who_was_the_queen_of_sheba/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbg9v5m", "cbgbz5r"], "score": [27, 23], "text": ["I am surprised that you presuppose that all the references are of the same person. \n\nSheba was an ancient kingdom whose borders and rulers would have been subject to change over time.", "In the *Kebra Nagast* she is identified with a Queen Makeda of Ethiopia, and has a son named Menelik with Solomon. This is, of course, an Ethiopian tradition, and it was written in the 14th century, so I think you're unlikely to find any relationship to historical fact here."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2ftlo5", "title": "Do we know anything about how the Olmec civilization was ruled?", "selftext": "[ ](/classyspitfire)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ftlo5/do_we_know_anything_about_how_the_olmec/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckctk95"], "score": [64], "text": ["That is a complicated question and to answer it in a way that is more illuminating to the readers out there who do not know much about the Olmec, I am going to address it and some broader Mesoamerican history at the same time.  **If you don't want this contextual information, just skip to my second reply below.**\n\nBefore we begin, I should offer two disclaimers - I do not specialize in the study of the Olmec and more importantly that field remains very divided due to the limited amount of archaeological data we have on the Olmec and the extent to which much of our current understanding of the Olmec relies on extensive interpretation of that limited dataset. \n\nNeverthless the archaeological data we do have suggests that the rise of the Olmec civilization proper during the Early Formative (~1000 BCE) coincided with a significant increase in regional trade ties across much of Mesoamerica.  Readers who are unfamiliar with Mesoamerican history should know that Mesoamerican culture was in its infancy during this timeframe and that this development was one of the seminal moments in the overall evolution of Mesoamerica.  While the nature of depositional means that only certain kinds of artifacts will be preserved in the archaeological record for an extended period of time, Archaeologists are fairly certain that ritual goods and precious stones were among the primary goods being exchanged by Mesoamericans in this first example of a pan-Mesoamerican trade network.   Trade goods identified as originating in the Olmec heartland as well Olmec-inspired iconography found at distant sites like Tlatilco and Chalcatzingo point to the centrality of the Olmec to this activity, which raises several questions about early Mesoamerican trade: what allowed the Olmec to take such a preeminent role in this trade activity?  What does the widespread dispersal of Olmec religious paraphernalia across Mesoamerica say about the nature of this exchange?\n\nTo answer these questions we must consider several factors. Even during this early time period, Mesoamerica was a very culturally diverse region.  When one considers the difficulty of facilitating trade across a wide range of cultural and linguistic barriers (to say nothing of the complicated logistics of moving goods over long distances) it becomes apparent that the growth of this trade network must have reflected a profound shift in the nature of Mesoamerican affairs.  Archaeologists generally agree that, save for a few notable sites, most Mesoamerican societies during this time frame exhibited a limited amount of social complexity.  While burial deposits and site layouts do point to a degree of social stratification, most Mesoamerican societies do not appear to have the complex social hierarchies and individual specialization that is associated with \"civilization\".  Monumental architecture as Olmec sites like San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, La Venta, and Laguna de los Cerros demonstrates that the Olmec on the other hand were an entirely different animal so to speak.  The construction of the temple mounds, stone sculptures, and ritual complexes found at these sites would have required significant resources and labor which could have only been organized by a very centralized society with narrowly delineated social positions and roles.\n\nArchaeologists believe that the comparatively greater social complexity of the Olmec offered them a significant advantage in the mass production and distribution of goods, one that allowed them to achieve dominance in this early Mesoamerican exchange.  Here it should be pointed out that \"trade dominance\" in this context is not what we would imagine it to be in today's society.  The Olmec were not a gang of merchants who produced a lot of consumer goods which drove their competitors out of business.  The Mesoamerican exchange is not generally thought of as something that had any immediate and significant impact on the day to day lives of most Mesoamericans.  It is instead a phenomenon that exclusively involved the ruling elite of divergent societies found across Mesoamerica.  Although not always explicitly visible in the archaeological record, the exchange of goods also entails a transference of ideas and particularly in the case of the Olmecs, the widespread trade of their ritual goods signifies the high esteem many Mesoamerican elites held for Olmec sensibilities and beliefs.\n\nA recurrent theme in Mesoamerican culture is the use of exotic goods and foreign religious imagery as a means of legitimizing one's own rule and authority.  For a long time Mesoamericanists have seen the widespread demand and adoption of Olmec aesthetic and material culture as the first expression of this theme.  The general thinking is that elites coming from societies that were materially more humble than the Olmec would have been extremely impressed by the extravagance and grandeur of Olmec goods and culture, seeking to associate themselves with and ultimately emulate the behaviors and organizational patterns of the Olmec themselves.  It is for this reason that the Olmec are widely considered to be the \"Mother culture\" of Mesoamerica.  As the Olmec either directly or indirectly organized trade to distant regions and other Mesoamerican elites came to demand their ritual items, a pan-Mesoamerican elite culture began to develop - with certain religious practices and beliefs being adopted so completely across the region that a basic template for Mesoamerican civilization was established.  Beliefs which were still widely observed by the time the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica, like the worship of mountains and an early precursor to the Aztec rain god Tlaloc (God IV), reverence for the cardinal directions, and perhaps even the Mesoamerican Ballgame have their origins in Olmec religion.  Although this narrative has been rightly critiqued by many (I myself am a firm believer that the Olmec were merely partners in the development of a shared Mesoamerican culture and that the contributions of the Zapotec have been grossly underestimated by Mesoamericanists) and there are competing explanations for the abundance of Olmec imagery in other Mesoamericans cultures, the basics of this interpretation are largely accepted by Mesoamericanists. \n\n(Continued in reply)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4tfhry", "title": "Did nobles pay rent to live at Versailles?", "selftext": "Did members of nobility pay rent to live at Louis XIV's court? Did they pay for food or was everything provided for? \n\nAlso, I read that during the reign of Louis XIV, Versailles was open to the public - even the apartments (and bedrooms) of royalty. Wouldn't this have posed a huge security threat in terms of potential assassination attempts, as well as theft? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tfhry/did_nobles_pay_rent_to_live_at_versailles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5hzto3"], "score": [12], "text": ["They were provided for. Versailles was a golden prison. But everyone did not stay at court everyday. Many of the wealthiest nobles had an hotel somewhere close ( like in the city of Versailles ) where they retreated after the day at court. There the hotel was theirs (bought or rented ) and when they organized festivities or hold their \" own little court \" it was up to them to pay of course.\n\nPlus, many nobles, those who were not the political elite ( ministers, secretary of state, ...Etc ) would live for several months every year to live in their castles or manors, generally in the countryside. \n\nServants were also provided for, and there were a lot of them. Meaning that being a servant at Versailles, or generally for the King's court, was an excellent advancement in life. \n\nYou read right that Versailles was extremely open. This is due to several thing. First the King was a public person so this, a access to Versailles, was wanted by the monarch. But it does not mean that because one could walk through Versailles and see the King. \nThe second reason is practical, Versailles was constantly being built. Thus, workers and artisans needed to get from a point to another to do their work. Yet, there has been foreign witnesses who were surprised at how easy it was to walk in Versailles, even visiting the *chambre du roi* ( the public King's bedroom ) without being bothered by a guard. \n\nAs for the security, the King was rarely alone, especially Louis XIV. But security improved during the *affair of the poisons*. On the other hand the openness of where the monarch lived became troublesome during the reign of Louis XV, when Damiens almost killed him. This was not new to Versailles however. When Henri III was murdered by the monk Jacques Cl\u00e9mentin 1589, the murderer managed to get to the king without being bothered by anyone ( the fact that he was a monk played a part ). \n\nAs for theft, I don't know if there have been any studies about it, or if there even is any kind of sources we could use. \n\nSources  :\n\n*Versailles: Au Service du Roi* by Mathieu da Vinha ( which I am very sad it has not been translated, it would be a success even among general public. Anyone working in book editing ?? ). \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2mde25", "title": "Why is the Devil often potrayed with a pitchfork?", "selftext": "I found an old topic on this but nobody had answered. Where does it come from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mde25/why_is_the_devil_often_potrayed_with_a_pitchfork/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm38bt9", "cm3kmpa"], "score": [139, 9], "text": ["This question poses an interesting challenge that can shed light on how historians think about evidence, and how we often take different approaches to finding an 'answer' to our questions.\n\nTo start with, most of the physical features of the modern image of the Devil developed through the medieval period as the Devil (Satan) became more *real* to Christians, as he began to stalk the earth in the minds of ecclesiastics. This process of *materializing* the devil begins in the latter part of the early middle ages, late Carolingian. These physical features given by ecclesiastics are not represented in the Bible. \n\nThe problem medievalists face is that documentation between late antiquity through to the high middle ages is thin. How did the Devil get the form he was given, why was he given his specific look? Historians must turn to archaeology, architecture, arts, visual evidence where text is absent or mute. For some medievalists, this means a turn to *formalism*.  Here is what medievalist Norman Cantor has to say about formalism:\n\n >  A definition of formalism in medieval studies might be the way of interpreting literature or art that stresses the heavy or exclusive dominance of traditional standard images or motifs, perpetual coded formulas of representation and description. The traditional, standardized images and motifs are privileged and centered in this view of medieval visual and literary art, while individual creativity and original discovery are marginalized or excluded altogether. Formalists regard medieval literature and art as overwhelmingly dominated by traditional sets of images and themes and individual creativity in literature and art as rare. [Cantor, *Inventing the Middle Ages*, William Morrow:1991,p162]\n\nSo, for some medievalists, this methodology privileges the persistence of forms inherited over time:\n\n > Literary and artistic styles and genres did change, but not the thematic content of ideas in medieval art and literature. Ideas, themes, motifs followed traditional formularies. [p163]\n\nCantor shrewdly see that there is some foundation to this approach, but also sees it as ideological:\n\n > Iconology and topology also speak to the conservative continuity and enduring unity of higher medieval culture. The great preponderance of images and motifs was inherited from Greco-Roman classical art and literature or from the thought world of the Church Fathers [..] which in turn was a product of the interaction of biblical ideas with the classical traditions.\n\nWhat does all have to do with the devil and his pitchfork?\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**The Devil's Trident**\n\nHere is one of the [first representations](_URL_1_) we find of him with pitchfork, on [Muiredach's High Cross](_URL_3_) at the Irish monastery of Monasterboice. The carving is dated to the 10th century. On the right arm it depicts the devil, pitchfork in hand, herding souls away from Jesus at the center, corralling souls off to hell to the blast of a demon's trumpet like some parade in our worst nightmares. Or is it a trident the Devil uses to corral the souls?\n\nThe historian Jeffrey Burton Russell did a lot of important work on demonology of the middle ages, from heresy and witchcraft to the history of the devil. He contributed tremendously to understanding the development of the devil in the minds of Latin Christendom and how that in turn affected persecution. His writing is often beautiful, lyrical and convincing with his immense erudition. In some important respects, though, he leaned on formalism, and it shows in his totalizing rationalizations of the origins of witches, witchcraft, and the devil. Here he writes about the devil and his pitchfork:\n\n > Three of his characteristics have origins other than the bestial. Wings are an ancient symbol of divine power found on the shoulders of many Mesopotamian deities, and from Mesopotamia they passed over onto the shoulders of the Hebrew cherubim and seraphim. Ahura Mazda in Iran was represented borne aloft by mighty wings. Hermes, the messenger of the god, wore wings upon his ankles or legs. Horns to are ancient symbols of power and fertility. The Devils \"pitchfork\" derives in part from the ancient trident, such as that carrier by Poseidon, which symbolizes threefold power over earth, air, and sea, in part from symbols of death (such as the mallet of Charun), and in part from the instruments used in hell for the torment of the damned. [Russell, *The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity*, Cornell:1977, p254]\n\nWell, he's just about the only one who has written much of anything on the devil's pitchfork and so it gets repeated and [becomes true](_URL_2_). Even Russell putting \"pitchfork\" in quotations sets us up for doubt, that the pitchfork isn't actually a pitchfork. Russell has on his very interesting agenda a rooting of Christian beliefs in traditions that came before it. Accordingly, we should see that the \"pitchfork\" is an inheritance of a Poseidon's classical, 1000 year old Trident. Following the logic of formalist medievalism, and not entirely without good argument, this image crossed 1000 years from Greece, maybe India, to Ireland and wound up as the image a carver would use in their depiction of the devil. Russell would likely support his arguments with the tremendous storehouse of history he kept in his head to remind us of all the other inheritances that can truly be documented.\n\nThere is safety in tradition, in formalism. It compares physical evidence, things we can *see* and *touch*. And it provides an answer no matter how great (and often inexplicable) a gap. Whether that answer is right is another matter, and one that I want to challenge.\n\nThe problem is that nowhere is the link across 1000 years gap positively affirmed. Not in the bible, not in the writings of Church fathers. No early transitional iconography nor mention of trident in ecclesiastical writings. It develops in iconography of the latter end of the early middle ages, during the period where the devil starts to take his place in the material world. During this time he moves from invisible instigator to walking among us. I wrote a bit about another aspect of the Devil's materialization in the early middle ages in [another post on the devil and his suit](_URL_0_). \n\nIf the devil is to appear in the real world, an innovation in Latin Christendom, than why wouldn't the real world inspire his image?\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**The Devil's Pitchfork**\n\nThe imagery of the war between God and the Devil as fought on earth was created by ecclesiastics, and principally by monastics. It should be familiar story to most that these monastics lived in rural surroundings. There wasn't much of life in the early middle ages Europe that wasn't dominated by agriculture. Abbeys were situated on cleared land, or land to be cleared.\n\nThe early medievals inherited the light scratch-plow from the Romans. But medievals in northern Europe, with heavier, clay soils, innovated the moldboard plow to turn deeper farrows. And so it is that the Romans [had a two-pronged pitchfork](_URL_4_), but it was smaller, for light work.  It appears, in the west, that the three-plus pronged pitchfork developed in the early middle ages. (The trident was used by Romans for fishing, but it does not appear to have persisted past antiquity, nor made its way to the north.)\n\nFarming communities grew up around these abbeys, against their walls. The monastic's daily life would have been suffused with the sights, sounds, smells of rural life, of peasantry. The rhythms of scything, stacking, and moving hay. Of mucking barns. Pitchforks slung over shoulder, propped against walls on breaks, or swinging in hours of constant motion.\n\nThese monastics were some of our only witnesses to war in the medieval country side. We know that war was not fought by sword alone, and indeed the peasant with pitchfork was an effective threat to the mounted warrior.\n\nSo, if the monastics are now thinking about the devil come to earth, to obtain not just the soul but now the very bodies of people, to be swept, shepherded, cajoled, into the mouth of hell to live a physical pain, when that monastic is searching for imagery with which to arm his rebelling demons, why would he look further than the fields of his monastery, fields filled with the hard working Christian souls tending the fields and barns with the most common of implements?\n\n\nThe Devil's pitchfork appears in the second half of the early middle ages, somewhere after 800 CE. He appears by the hands of ecclesiastical writers and artists: monks and bishops. Did those monks and bishops draw their inspiration from Greece and Rome of a 1000 years before? Or from looking on peasant flock who the monks were *just then* beginning to worry would be shepherded away by some physical, stalking Satan, prodded and poked from salvation to the gates of hell like some demonic inversion of John the Baptist's vision of salvation by Christ:\n\n >  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. [Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17]", "-I'm still a student but I feel I can actually contribute to this.\n\nOne thing that I've learned about the portrayal of good and evil (this has come from sources such as reading Nietzsche, to examining the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation, to even Ancient Greece and Rome) is what is associated with \"good\" and \"evil\"\n\n\"Good\" is mainly associated with the rich- they are \"pure\", they are clean of the stench that the poor have because the poor must work, they do not have to bother themselves with using tools such as pitchforks, and they also set the viewpoint for good and evil- or that they determine what and who is good and bad. This can be seen easier in societies where one of, of the main upper social classes are composed of the clergy. In Medieval Europe, it was the clergy. In India, the Brahmans, in South/Latin America (before colonization) the tribal leaders of the great empires (Olmecs, Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, etc.) and after, the Spanish.\n\nThe ideas of what good and bad looked like were made by those in power- and those in power wanting to look good, pure, etc. also associated the terms with Christianity- or specifically morality. Those who were rich could only be considered good Christians because they were \"so obviously blessed\" to be born into a rich family, or somehow make the wealth themselves. \nThe bad was everyone else. The poor, the serfs, the slaves, the workers, the foreigners, the conquered peoples, those in exile, who fall out of favor, who are not rich or powerful. They were seen as bad, and so were their habits.\n\nIn Ancient Athens (and most of Ancient Greece), it was seen as a disgrace to work for a living. If you didn't have some sort of preexisting wealth, you were still a citizen (assuming you were male, born in Athens, and completed your military service), but you were looked down upon. You had a vote, but you weren't considered as smart as those who didn't have to work for a living. This idea was so en-rooted in Athenian culture, that the philosopher Socrates lived by it- getting all his meals from friends/parties, and living in a small home.\nBack to the Devil- The poor were associated with bad morality, and the ultimate symbol of bad morality was Hell, Lucifer, the Devil, Satan, whatever you want to call it. Pitchforks were used by farmers, and because farmers had to manually work, and were still poor ?(for the most part) the pitchfork became associated with this sense of bad morality because of its association with what the \"good\" part of society considered \"bad\"\n\nEverything has been covered wonderfully- I just want to get this out there (and see if my thought pattern derived from my studies is logical)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kwoku/when_did_the_devil_gain_his_suit_in_popular/clpmzav", "http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/pix/Monasterboice-Muiredachs-High-Cross-East-Face-Last-Judgment_medium.jpg", "http://books.google.com/books?id=x2QRu5-rVZgC", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muiredach's_High_Cross", "http://books.google.com/books?id=GrXyV1LPmZAC"], []]}
{"q_id": "3v4vha", "title": "Where did the practice of flipping a coin to make a decision come from?", "selftext": "Ex: top side = one option, bottom side = another option. I'm wondering where that specific method, that seems universal, seems to come from.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3v4vha/where_did_the_practice_of_flipping_a_coin_to_make/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxkg5ca"], "score": [12], "text": ["See [this](_URL_0_) post from a couple of years back.  The practice probably dates back to the beginning of coinage."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qo0ap/how_did_flipping_a_coin_become_a_way_to_easily/"]]}
{"q_id": "5h8kmq", "title": "If I were a middle class man born around 6th century BC: would it have been better for me to live in one of the Greek City states, or somewhere in the Persian empire?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5h8kmq/if_i_were_a_middle_class_man_born_around_6th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dayjzej"], "score": [182], "text": ["There's a lot of ground to cover here - I hope this answer will make some kind of sense by the time we get to the end.\n\n**3 Problems with your Question**\n\nFirst, you're asking about the 6th century BC, but the Persian Empire doesn't actually exist for the first half of that century. Around 550 BC, Cyrus II conquers the heartland of the Medes, which can be seen as the rise Achaemenid Persia (though this is a slight simplification as Cyrus was a Teispid). Throughout the rest of the century, the new power of Persia keeps expanding, absorbing first Lydia and Babylon, and then most of eastern Iran, the Levantine coast, Egypt, parts of the Indus valley, and Thrace. Persia is not a constant presence, but a growing world empire, and the reach and nature of its dominion are only just taking shape. For the sake of this answer, I will assume you were born at some point in the reign of Darius I (c. 522-486 BC), which is generally considered the period when Achaemenid power solidified.\n\nSecond (and you probably know this already), you could be living in a Greek city state *and* in the Persian Empire. The Greek cities of Western Asia Minor, those on the south coast of the Black Sea, and the settlement at Naukratis in the Nile Delta are all part of the Persian Empire by the end of the 6th century BC. This complicates your question for a number of reasons, but it also helps. We can make a better comparison between places to live if they both belong to the same cultural zone but exist under different political circumstances.\n\nThird, the \"middle class\" is a modern concept. The Ancient Greeks did not know it; while I don't think we have enough information about the socio-economic or political thought of the Persians, I doubt they knew it either. It is true that the Greeks idealised the philosophical concept of the middle as a superior \"third option\" that avoided unhealthy extremes, but this concept did not map onto any particular social, economic or political group in society. Indeed, the ideal of the middle was malleable to the point of meaninglessness. Aristotle once refers to a regent of Sparta as a member of the \"middle\" because he wasn't a king. In practice, the Greeks saw society as divided into two groups: the rich and the poor. The difference between the two was that the former owned enough to live a life of leisure, while the latter had to work to get by. In this worldview, every single person we would consider \"middle class\" was considered one of the poor. This category may have been very broad, ranging from penniless day labourers to well-to-do independent farmers, but it wasn't subdivided in any meaningful way (except, of course, for the strict distinction between free citizens and slaves).\n\nSo, when we're talking about a \"middle-class man\" in the 6th century BC, we have to bear in mind that we're applying an arbitrary modern distinction onto a past that didn't recognise it. Generally, the existence of slavery and the peculiarities of a subsistence economy led to a system of labour relations that doesn't quite overlap with what we know today. For the sake of this answer, I'll assume you are either an independent small farmer or a specialist craftsman - categories that would put you above abject poverty, but would still require you to use your own labour (along with that of your family and slaves) to survive.\n\n**The Nature of Persian Rule**\n\nThis is where we get to what you're really asking: are the conditions of life in the Greek city-states c.520 BC fundamentally different from those in the Persian Empire? Would the average man of modest means notice the effect of his political situation?\n\nWe should not be distracted here by Greek rhetoric about how all the subjects of the Great King were his slaves, and how the barbarian ruled his realm with an iron fist and with the arbitrary cruelty that was typical of an oppressive despot. This is mostly a matter of propaganda. In fact, we have the counter-propaganda too: Persian reliefs from Persepolis show that the Persians themselves liked to see their empire as a collection of peoples cheerfully joined in the worthy task of supporting the righteous rule of Ahura Mazda's representative on Earth. They paid tribute, and in return they received peace and justice from the king.\n\nIn practice, all the evidence we have suggests that the Persians liked to rule, as most empires do, by affirming and preserving existing administrative structures and political systems in return for tribute and loyalty. In other words, they were happy to let their subjects do their own thing as long as they paid tribute every year and sent as many troops as the king needed. The famous Cyrus Cylinder confirms the privileges of the old Baylonian priesthood; Darius' self-representation in Egypt casts him as a traditional pharaoh, honouring and paying for the upkeep of the old cults and temples. In Asia Minor, the Greeks were initially allowed to keep the tyrants that ruled their cities. When the Ionians rose in revolt in 499 BC and deposed their tyrants, the Persians, upon crushing the revolts, decided to let them keep their new democracies, too (Herodotos 6.43.3). As long as the tribute kept coming in, the Persians were cool with whatever.\n\nIt follows that we shouldn't think of the Persian Empire as a despotic, barbaric realm in which all freedom of thought and enterprise was stifled. Rather, it was an agglomeration of semi-autonomous communities that were free to do more or less what they wanted as long as they paid the tribute, served the Persian war machine, and recognised the complete subordination of their foreign policy to the interests of Persia. Individuals within the empire may not have noticed its presence very much, unless the tribute came partly out of their pocket, or if their area had received a Persian garrison.\n\nThis form of rule, coupled with the *Pax Persica*, meant that the Greek cities of Asia Minor actually flourished once they had fallen under the Persian sway. Possibly their integration into the imperial system opened up new markets for their traders; certainly their connection to the old civilisations of the East generated a boost in intellectual development, with the first medical and ethnographic treatises, the first world maps, and the first histories ever written all originating in late 6th century BC Ionia. Herodotos (5.28) notes that Miletos, which had suffered endless internal strife before, became \"the jewel of Ionia\" once the Persians guaranteed the position of its tyrant Histiaios. A similar development may well have taken place elsewhere in regions that were previously unstable. In regions that had previously enjoyed unity and stable rule (like Egypt under the Saite dynasty), life would have gone on more or less as before.\n\n**So Where Would You Rather Live?**\n\nSo let's get down to brass tacks. As a man living in modest comfort, where would you be better off? As should be clear from the above, it really depends on where you are and what you do for a living. \n\nAs an independent farmer, your life is likely to be the same all over. Both the Greek world and the Persian Empire knew a small leisure class of large landowners, but the small farmer was known to the Greeks by the late 6th century BC, and no doubt he would have been seen elsewhere too. And the life of a small farmer was hard work wherever you happened to live. The only difference between *some* (but by no means all) Greek city-states and most of the Persian Empire is political representation. In states like Athens, you'd have a vote in the Assembly, and a share in the political processes of your community. In most Greek cities you'd enjoy certain rights as a freeborn citizen. These things were still in development, and even many Greek states were run by tyrants, or by oligarchs, like the cities of Phoenicia, but still, if politics is your thing, you might be happier in Athens or Cyrene than somewhere in Mesopotamia.\n\nIf you're a specialist craftsman, you really want to be in the trade network, regardless of where you might be. From the Phoenician cities on the Levantine coast, a centuries-old trade web spread all over the Mediterranean, and you could profit from this web whether you were on Samos or Cyprus or Sardinia. The example of Ionia above shows that being part of the Persian Empire doesn't seem to have hampered trade - indeed, it may have boosted merchant activity as more regions became pacified. By the late 6th century BC, you could also benefit from the new network spreading east over land - the Royal Roads that connected the western administrative hubs of the Empire to its core in Persia. Where you obviously *don't* want to be is \"off the grid\", in remote semi-autonomous parts of the Persian Empire that saw limited economic activity. If you were in the [old Assyrian heartland](_URL_0_), for instance, or in some distant area of the Iranian plateau, there would be little else for you to do except sell to your local community. Far better to be in one of the wealthier, better connected parts of the Empire, like Ionia or Lower Egypt."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g326k/xenephon_writes_about_huge_abandoned_cities_in/dap70ii/"]]}
{"q_id": "4goxy9", "title": "Why are American Indians stereotypically humorless?", "selftext": "We aren't.\n\nEDIT:\n\n\"There is scarcely anything so exasperating to me as the idea that the natives of this country have no sense of humor and no faculty for mirth. This phase of their character is well understood by those whose fortune or misfortune it has been to live among them day in and day out at their homes. I don't believe I ever heard a real hearty laugh away from the Indians' fireside. I have often spent an entire evening in laughing with them until I could laugh no more. There are evenings when the recognized wit or story-teller of the village gives a free entertainment which keeps the rest of the community in a convulsive state until he leaves them. However, Indian humor consists as much in the gestures and inflections of the voice as in words, and is really untranslatable.\"\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4goxy9/why_are_american_indians_stereotypically_humorless/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d2jnkdk"], "score": [108], "text": ["From an anthropological standpoint- two reasons. \n\n1) that it is very helpful to portray a group as \"other\" if \"they don't act like us\", so saying a group is unfeeling, humorless, or conversely, overemotional and passionate can make a distinction between them and us. See the American portrayals of Japanese or Germans during WW2, or Irish during the Famine. \n\n2) A lot of the early interaction with American Indians by whites was in a hostile environment, where empathy isn't really an asset. Nor is showing fear or pain. Later, not showing emotion is a common coping strategy for groups who fear reprisal for their words or actions. See diaries/memoirs of American black slaves, or 20th c POWs. (Same concept behind the myth that \"black people don't feel pain like white people\", which apparently is still widely believed in the medical field.)\n\nThis is a link to a really interesting pamphlet written by a Smithsonian anthropologist in the 1930s- who was frankly surprised by the depth and beauty of the Seneca Iroquois culture he documented. It's definitely not without some temporal bias (meaning academic language and standards were different in the '30s) but interesting.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.loc.gov/folklife/LP/Iroquois_L6_opt.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1d2wno", "title": "How did they decide where to land on the moon?", "selftext": "I'm looking at [this](_URL_0_) map and most of the landing seem to be around the equator", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1d2wno/how_did_they_decide_where_to_land_on_the_moon/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9md4d6", "c9md7yt", "c9me5s9"], "score": [25, 65, 6], "text": ["Let me preface my answer by saying that my practical knowledge is based entirely on kerbal space program (an amaaaazing space simulator with a kickass free demo), but also that the principals are interchangeable with real life..\n\nThe main reason most of the landings were around the \"equator\" is simply that that was the easiest region to reach. When you are sending heavy equipment to the moon, you need to be using the most efficient route possible to reduce fuel consumption, which in turn would require extra thrust.\n\nTo do this, the route you take to the moon has to be as efficient as possible, with the highest chance of success. This means for one thing, burning fuel as low as possible inside gravity wells, but more importantly, approaching the moon on the plane of its orbit. (simpler version from astronaut's perspective - Approaching it flat, to either side, rather than climbing or descending above/below it.)\n\nBecause our moon spins in such a way, the astronauts actually have access to about 5 degrees up or down depending on how patient they are, without expending any extra fuel. This is because our moon doesn't spin exactly on its orbital plane. But to land more than 5 degrees from the \"equator\" requires an extra fuel burn in the moons orbit, which means carrying it all up there in the first place, not impossible, but just complicates the process, and leaves less room for errors. \n\nAs for why each specific site was chosen, I can only make the assumption that the exact sites where chosen only once they knew which ones they could reach, and the lateral coordinates were chosen mainly on scientific interest. Hopefully an actual historian will have a source for the desired outcomes of each landing.", "Howdy.\n\nI'm not a NASA historian or Space historian but I am a teacher, and one part of a lesson involved the moon landings.  From NASA I got a teacher's instructive guide which is, according to NASA, accurate information.  (For example, [here](_URL_0_) is one part of the guide.)\n\n\nAccording to the booklet from NASA, the six Apollo neaside landing sites were chosen to explore different geologic terrains.  Apollo 11 landed in basaltic lava, as did Apollo 12; Apollo 14 landed in what was thought to be ejecta from the Imbrium Basin; Apollo 15 in breccia and basalt mare and highlands; Apollo 16 landed in anorthosite and highlands soil; and Apollo 17 landed in an area comprised of mare soil, orange soil, basaltic lava, and anorthosite.\n\nThe Lunar and Planetary Institute says that the Apollo 11 landing site was one of three short-listed landing sites and was chosen because it was relatively smooth, with no large hills, cliffs, or deep craters.  It would require less fuel to get to (nearside, near the equator) as well, among some other criteria.  The mare regions near the equator were the best bet.  The Apollo 12 precision landing was done because Apollo 11 landed a few miles beyond its planned target, so Apollo 12 would have a precision landing in order to prove that it could work for future missions.  Its landing site was chosen because the mare region it would land in was younger and of different composition from Apollo 11.\n\nLanding sites were still restricted to regions near the equator; prior to Apollo 13's aborted mission, Apollo 14 would have landed in an area to study volcanic deposites, but instead it was retargeted to the Apollo 13 area known as the Fra Mauro formation, which was a convenient marker that divided features geologically older and younger, and there would be easily accessed samples from deep in the moon's crust.\n\nApollo 15 was chosen firm because they could sample the rim of the Imbrium Bason along the Appenine Mountains and would allow NAA to explore and study a channel in the mare surface formed volcanically.\n\nThe Apollo 16 landing site was chosen because NASA wanted to land at a site in the lunar highlands away from the mare regions, so they chose the Descartes landing site.  This would allow them to sample the Descartes Formation and the Cayley formation, which cover about 11% of the lunar nearside and thus were important to study.\n\nApollo 17 which would be the last landing Apollo mission, ended up choosing the Taurus-Littrow Valley.  They wnated to obtain highland material samples and investigate allegedly young, explosive volcanic activity.  This was someone influenced by Apollo 15 photographs which showed that the valley was safe to land in.", "Sir Patrick Moore produced detailed maps of the moon's surface which were used by Nasa for planning the landings. It was his detailed research which allowed for potential sites to be initially identified. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Moon_landing_map.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/58199main_Exploring.The.Moon.pdf"], ["http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10525469"]]}
{"q_id": "19zkra", "title": "Is it true that Marcus Crassus was killed by being forced to drink molten gold?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19zkra/is_it_true_that_marcus_crassus_was_killed_by/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8sqnjb"], "score": [250], "text": ["Cassius Dio, a Roman historian writing about 200 years after Crassus' death, [says this](_URL_0_):\n\n\n >  and while Crassus even then delayed and considered what he should do, the barbarians took him forcibly and threw him on the horse. Meanwhile the Romans also laid hold of him, came to blows with the others, and for a time held their own; then aid came to the barbarians, and they prevailed; for their forces, which were in the plain and had been made ready beforehand brought help to their men before the Romans on the high ground could to theirs. And not only the others fell, but Crassus also was slain, either by one of his own men to prevent his capture alive, or by the enemy because he was badly wounded. This was his end. **And the Parthians,** ***as some say,*** **poured molten gold into his mouth in mockery**; for though a man of vast wealth, he had set so great store by money as to pity those who could not support an enrolled legion from their own means, regarding them as poor men. [emphasis mine]\n\nHowever, Plutarch, a Greek historian writing 100 years earlier, [says this](_URL_1_):\n\n >  Some, however, say that it was not this man, but another, who killed Crassus, and that this man cut off the head and right hand of Crassus as he lay upon the ground. [...]\n\n >  Surena now took the head and hand of Crassus and sent them to Hyrodes in Armenia [...]\n\n >  Now when the head of Crassus was brought to the king's door, the tables had been removed, and a tragic actor, Jason by name, of Tralles, was singing that part of the \"Bacchae\" of Euripides where Agave is about to appear. While he was receiving his applause, Sillaces stood at the door of the banqueting-hall, and after a low obeisance, cast the head of Crassus into the centre of the company. The Parthians lifted it up with clapping of hands and shouts of joy, and at the king's bidding his servants gave Sillaces a seat at the banquet. Then Jason handed his costume of Pentheus to one of the chorus, seized the head of Crassus, and assuming the role of the frenzied Agave, sang these verses through as if inspired:\n\n >  *\"We bring from the mountain*\n\n >  *A tendril fresh-cut to the palace,*\n\n >  *A wonderful prey.\"*\n\n >  This delighted everybody; but when the following dialogue with the chorus was chanted:\n\n >  *\"Who slew him?\"*\n\n >  *\"Mine is the honour,\"*\n\n >  Pomaxathres, who happened to be one of the banqueters, sprang up and laid hold of the head, feeling that it was more appropriate for him to say this than for Jason. The king was delighted, and bestowed on Pomaxathres the customary gifts, while to Jason he gave a talent. With such a farce as this the expedition of Crassus is said to have closed, just like a tragedy.\n\nIt's kind of difficult to marry the two accounts: the one with Crassus being beheaded and his head then being treated as an object of mockery during a spontaneous performance in front of the king, and the other with the Parthians pouring gold into the mouth of his corpse. Unless they Parthians took the head and poured gold into its mouth after it arrived at the king's palace; or they poured gold into the open throat of the decapitated body. Or, possibly, Cassius Dio was merely recording an apocryphal rumour about the Parthians' treatment of Crassus. \n\nWe just don't know for sure.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://lexundria.com/dio/40.27/cy", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1cixhq", "title": "I've recently read a few theories about different historical figures having supposedly faked their deaths, but nothing definitive. Has there ever been a documented case of this?", "selftext": "Heard in conversation about Niccolo Machiavelli and most recently Captain William Kidd.  Any info on these or really ANYONE who has done this is much appreciated!\n\nUPDATE:  A lot of interesting stories here, thanks to everyone for all the feedback.  Still having trouble finding anything about Captain William Kidd (any leads, /u/eternalkerri ?) or Niccolo Machiavelli, if anyone has a good source.  \n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cixhq/ive_recently_read_a_few_theories_about_different/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9gzsk4", "c9h0kvc", "c9h0t5k", "c9h0xjd", "c9h17oa", "c9h71ph", "c9hb6ek"], "score": [63, 3, 7, 32, 35, 15, 30], "text": ["If you believe ~~plutarch~~ Cassius Dio and Livy, cleopatra faked her death to avoid Mark Anthony's wrath. Once he was confirmed ~~dead~~ dying she revealed herself as alive.\n\n\"he [Mark Anthony] half suspected that he was being betrayed, and yet because of his love for her could not believe this, but pitied her even more, it might be said, than himself. Cleopatra, no doubt, understood this very well, and hoped that once he heard that she was dead, he would not survive her, but straightaway follow her example. So she hastened to take refuge in the tomb with a eunuch and two of her women attendants, and from there sent a message to make him believe that she was dead.\"\n[Cassius Dio The Roman History book 50](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd \n\n\"Marc Antony, defeated in a naval battle near Actium, fled to Alexandria and, besieged by [Octavian] Caesar, in a desperate situation and above all misguided by a false rumor about the death of Cleopatra, killed himself.\"\n[Source from Livy, Ex libro CXXXIII](_URL_1_)\n\nI just checked, the History of Rome by Mike Duncan tells the story as well. Episode 51 for anyone interested. Minute 17.", "An old gentleman turned up claiming that he was Billy the kid long after his execution with some interesting life details.  ", "I always quite liked the story of Marshal Ney escaping execution and living the rest of his life in America", "It depends on what you mean by historical figure, but certainly within the limit here of 20 year ago, there was such a case. However, the British labour politician and former minister [John Stonehouse](_URL_0_) was found to have faked his. It was alleged (but never proven in court) that [he had been working for the Czech intelligence service](_URL_1_) during the cold war.", "Author Ken Kesey \n\nIn 1965 the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tried to fake a suicide to escape arrest for marijuana.  He wasn't too successful though.\n\nHis suicide note read \"Ocean, ocean, I'll beat you in the end. I'll break you this time. I'll go through with my heels at your hungry ribs.\"\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)", "[John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan](_URL_1_), disappeared in 1974 shortly after becoming the chief suspect in a brutal attack where he was accused of killing his children's nanny and wounding his ex-wife.  He has never been seen since.  He was convicted of the crime in absentia, and has since been declared legally dead, though no proof has ever been found.  He's kind of an urban legend, where every few years people in various corners of the world claim to have found the lost Lord Lucan.\n\nIn fact, the British politician [John Stonehouse](_URL_0_), who had tried to fake his own death and disappear, was found because someone thought he was the Lord Lucan!", "According to Suetonius, some folks faked their own death to escape Nero's singing.  From his [Life of Nero](_URL_0_):\n\n > While [Nero] was singing no one was allowed to leave the theatre even for the most urgent reasons. And so it is said that some women gave birth to children there, while many who were worn out with listening and applauding, secretly leaped from the wall, since the gates at the entrance were closed, or feigned death and were carried out as if for burial. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://lamar.colostate.edu/~jgaughan/primarywebpages/courses/DioonCleopatra.htm", "http://www.livius.org/li-ln/livy/periochae/periochae126.html"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse", "http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/05/three-labour-mps-history-mi5"], ["http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/12/clip_job_kesey.php"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan"], ["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "30xhw9", "title": "What impact has the Temporal Cold War (22nd-31st Centuries CE) had on modern historiography? How does one even begin to write history in its wake?", "selftext": "This would seem to be an historian's nightmare, given the constant alteration and re-alteration of history as a quasi-military tactic.  How do historians take all of this into account?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/30xhw9/what_impact_has_the_temporal_cold_war_22nd31st/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpwsnnh", "cpx5ayr"], "score": [40, 5], "text": ["Just a disclaimer, I am not a meta-historian, but I will take a few courses in temporal field theory and de-located event nexuses within the next ~35 years, so I think I can speak to this topic.\n\nOne of the real challenges that the field has been facing in recent years has been establishing a cohesive timeline and closing leaks with various heavily modified threads that have been severed from their rooting. Obviously, this has not been entirely successful, as we can see from the continued persistence of genocide \u2018denial\u2019 and evidence of extraterrestrial intervention in early megalithic structures, which are merely holdovers from alternate histories where collateral damage during the war will be very high. One of the most serious conflicts currently occurring is the first War of the Weimar Succession (~3950 BC - 2509 AD), with fifty or sixty alternate developments of the Hitler timeline currently in conflict. We obviously can\u2019t tell which will eventually triumph, but Minksy et al. have already identified potential splitting threads, using a regression analysis of toothbrush mustaches in the period. Charlie Chaplin has already been heavily affected, and it could spread to various other silent film stars and possibly some lesser-known U.S. presidents of the early 20th century. \n\nOf even greater threat is the growing body of evidence for volcano deification in Semitic cultures in the first millenium AD, which may indicate the proliferation of temporal alteration technology to a rogue state or terrorist group. In her work on pan-Pacific confederation pre-2721, Devadas will theorize that the perpetrators are a Polynesian splinter group, especially given the fragmentary hints of fleets of Hawaiian dreadnought-class warships and rocket artillery as early as 1850. Consequences from this could be dire, as Mecha-Israel will indicate that it will strike tactically at any unobtainium enrichment facilities possessed by its past or future enemies, giving potential for escalation of the conflict, especially in the space-time area of the Holocaust.\n\nNow, what\u2019s the upshot of this for us? Without violating the 20-year rule, I can only go up to the early 90\u2019s, back before our historiography was altered to make the Christian Dark Ages less prevalent. It\u2019s also becoming clear that slavery did not become a cause of the U.S. Civil War until about 1985 or so. In light of these and many other events, two competing schools have developed, one which seeks to artificially generate a \u2018mainstream\u2019 vision of history, using periodization and simplification of potentially contradictory events in order to construct a plausible timeline for the unsuspecting general public. Federal support for these efforts have led to their dominance of the education system and textbook publishing. The other, smaller group, supports what they call \u2018controversy theory\u2019, in which all potential interpretations must be simultaneously accepted as valid, and no evidence can be discounted in the search for the various competing versions of the truth. They see these mainstreamers as oppressive arbiters who seek to use consensus and their argument from authority in order to suppress debate and evidence of the temporal conflict to come. It really all comes down as whether you view history as an simple explanation of events leading up to the present, or a constantly shifting paradigm where new evidence is constantly coming to light and upturning previous theories. As to which of these schools of thought will eventually win out, well, only time can tell.", "This question is a common infinite recursion.  Please do not use the search feature."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3z5rs0", "title": "Has Jody Foster ever responded or had anything to say about the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3z5rs0/has_jody_foster_ever_responded_or_had_anything_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cyjuf4o"], "score": [75], "text": ["Yes. She published an article (entitled \"Why Me?\") on the subject in Esquire Magazine in December, 1982. \n\nIt is a fascinating read, and is freely available online in a few places (_URL_0_ has a copy). \n\nEffectively, she responded as you might expect a freshman at Yale to respond to being indirectly involved in a Presidential assassination: complete incredulity. She had been getting letters from Hinckley for some time, but could not believe it when the story started to tumble out. Her Dean called her to say that her picture had been found on Hinckley. She was told she had to talk to the FBI. She cried a bit...then started laughing. Her roommate thought she'd gone insane... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["douban.com"]]}
{"q_id": "1er8tt", "title": "British use of oddly pronounced words in determining German spies during the Second World War?", "selftext": "I cannot remember where I heard this (possibly QI).  I was just wondering if there was any truth to the story that during the Second World War the British would attempt to establish if someone was a German spy through their pronunciation of certain English words/names.  For example the surname Cholmondeley which is pronounced as Chum-li.  Is this true and how/when would such a method be used?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1er8tt/british_use_of_oddly_pronounced_words_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca2y7rg", "ca3305k", "ca37ud3", "ca382h2", "ca397ac"], "score": [73, 27, 2, 4, 6], "text": ["This is called a shibboleth.\n\n_URL_0_", "It's difficult to prove a negative, but I would be very doubtful of such tricks. Many English speakers won't be aware of these pronunciations, or that in fact there are multiple pronunciations. As an example, it is often said that name of the town Cirencester is pronounced \"Cissister\", so it would make a good shibboleth. It's perfectly true that many people do pronounce it that way, but there are also locals who pronounce it the more obvious way. This would be even more true of names like Cholmondely,  Festonhaugh (\"Fanshaw\") or St John (\"Sinjin\"), since they are not common in England and it would not be possible to guarantee that a native speaker had come across them.", "I've heard of \"Lieutenant\" (pronounced as Leftenant by Brits) being used this way. \n\nAlso, Scheveningen in Dutch (Germans would go with a \"sh\" or \"sk\" initial sound, instead of \"sX\" with X as in Scottish \"Loch\") and \"p\u00e3o\" in Portuguese (with a nasalized vowel, not a diphthong such as Spanish speakers would produce).", "May I recommend an excellent 1942 film called 'Went the day well' The film is about a group of Nazi fifth columnist's in an English country village and the title refers to their usage if English which arouse suspicion and subsequent uncovering. A review from the Guardian highly recommends it. _URL_0_ apologies for the mobile link.", "Not exactly the same thing ,but during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans sent infiltrators in allied uniforms to cause confusion, called [Operation Grief](_URL_0_). They had some success too, enough to make everyone suspicious of everyone else. Soldiers would throw up impromptu road blocks, and question people with weird questions. The story that I always remember from it is an American general who was asked what League the cubs played in. He said American League, so ended up under arrest until someone else came along to vouch for him.\n\n(Source... just read about it recently. I think it was Citizen Soldiers by Ambrose? Linked to the Wiki page for the operation which also mentions it though)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth"], [], [], ["http://m.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/08/went-the-day-well-film-review"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif"]]}
{"q_id": "1tbjxq", "title": "How did contemporary modern soldiers come to carry so much equipment, as compared to soldiers in say, WWI or WWII?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tbjxq/how_did_contemporary_modern_soldiers_come_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce6dh1k", "ce6dpfq", "ce6drg9", "ce6dtrl", "ce6dvqv"], "score": [9, 3, 9, 3, 2], "text": ["Andrew bacevich in one of his books (I forget the name)  does a really good job talking about how at least the american removal of the draft caused a huge shift to all-volunteer military that is much smaller, and every decision in military planning from that point on focused on how to get the absolute most out of each soldier", "Soldiers at these times were conscript, they were drafted, then went through some basic training, given a rifle and sent directly to the frontline. They were cheap, easily replaced and no as effective as today's soldiers. \n\nThe pack therefore consisted on things to eat, some ammo, some cleaning kit for the rifle, a blanket and that was about it. Investing millions for expansive gadgets would have been useless. They also had to walk a lot more as oil was generally needed by the huge armoured divisions in fashion at the time (for WW2).\n\nYou could compare them for example with Roman Legionnaries who are actually closer to modern militaries than WW1 infantry (professional, highly skilled troops with extensive training and with relatively low losses in combat). The standard Roman legionnaries had a more than 20 kg pack, to which you had to add a good quality armor that would easily bring him over 30 kg when in full marching kit which is about the same as today's soldiers. \n\nThis tend to show that armies tend to issue bigger, more extensive kits to soldiers that are worth it because they actually are a huge investment and issuing them anything that could keep them alive a little bit more is completly worth it because it protects an investment and is a real force multiplier.\n\nIn another way, issuing thousands of dollar in kit to a conscript that only had the most basic training and has great chances of not surviving a week on the frontline is lost money because it will not improve much his survivability anyway and will not help him much be a better soldier (as he won't be trained to make the most of his expensive gadgets).\n\n\n", "Certainly not a new issue.  S.L.A. Marshall's 1950 book \"The Soldier's Load and The Mobility of a Nation\" discusses the issue fairly in depth, and was required reading in the U.S. Marines for quite a while.  Not sure if it still is.  \n\nHis proposal was that soldiers should not carry more than 40 lbs of gear, though some might argue the size of the average fighter has increased since then.  Many of the U.S. military journals have had discussions over the last 10 years about the sustainability of the gear loads, and the high rate of joint degradation of soldiers carrying loads up to and often exceeding 100 lbs per fighter. Natick Labs June 1989 report T19-89 ( _URL_0_ ) was one of the earlier studies I know of that went into the actual, long-term physical damage of carrying such loads, and reviewed typical loads from WW I through the 1983 Falklands campaign.  For example, the French Foreign Legion in WW I carried an average 45 kg, and U.S. forces in North Africa in WW II carried 60 kg.  So, not far off from today's loads.  Obviously things may have been lighter in pre-industrial times.", "I don't have it handy, but I believe I read about this in *The Solder's Load and the Mobility of a Nation* by S.L.A. Marshall. It's a slim book and easy to find in a library. Anyway, the argument was that the total load of a soldier has actually changed little since the days of the Greeks, with a total load in the neighborhood of 80-100 pounds (35-45 kg) being a typical load expected of an infantryman. The change over time was in the relative proportion of that load that was weapons ( &  ammunition), armor, and \"supplies\" (food, water, clothing, etc.). \n\nClassical times had heavy armor, but limited supplies since campaigns ended for the winter and food was scavenged along the way. American civil war troops had no armor, but heavy armament and plenty of supplies. And now, with the return of effective armor, the balance is swinging back to more armor, and lighter weapons- the M4 is lighter than the M16 which was lighter than the M14. \n\nAs to your specific observation, I suspect many of the videos and pictures you see are from combat, and the soldiers have left behind their backpacks that contained their sustainment gear, e.g. their bedroll, extra socks and underwear, sewing kit, etc. etc.", "Individual soldiers became much more valuable as the life of loss became a much less acceptable thing. With that, came the end of Conscription. Conscripts weren't given the advanced training modern soldiers are, they were given basic training, a rifle, and some basic protective gear and told to go out there, kill some bad guys and let the other guys take care of you. \n\nNow that people are much more valuable(Not out of any real morality per say, it's the PR war at home), soldiers get more advanced training, and due to the monetary investment the government has put into training you, you have to be equipped with some of the latest, and some of the more expensive equipment, and the best chance of survival.\n\nThere also comes with this, the fact that warfare is much smaller these days. Instead of having battalions or platoons moving together comprised of specialized units, you have small, self-sufficient squads. Self-sufficiency requires you to carry more stuff so you can fill multiple roles and take care of yourself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA212050\u200e"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6ldyfy", "title": "Why is the Irish head of government called the Taoiseach even in English but the head of state not called the Uachtar\u00e1n?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ldyfy/why_is_the_irish_head_of_government_called_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djummf7"], "score": [5], "text": ["The simple answer is because that is the way it is laid down in *Bunreacht na h\u00c9ireann* [the Irish constitution] in 1937. \n\nArticle 12 of the Constitution lays out the title and duties of President [Uachtar\u00e1n]  and states :\n\n > There shall be a President of Ireland (Uachtar\u00e1n na h\u00c9ireann), hereinafter called the President, who shall take precedence over all other persons in the State and who shall exercise and perform the powers and functions conferred on the President by this Constitution and by law.\n\nIn the rest of the constitution the office holder is referred to as \"President\". \n\nThe title of Taoiseach is more clearly described as being in Irish.  Article 13 describes the head of government as Taoiseach.  The office holder is referred to as \"Taoiseach\"  in the rest of the constitution. \n\n > The President shall, on the nomination of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, appoint the Taoiseach, that is, the head of the Government or Prime Minister.\n\t\t\n\n > The President shall, on the nomination of the Taoiseach with the previous approval of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann, appoint the other members of the Government.\n\nThe reason for this is that the title of President went back before the Treaty of Dec 1921 when the title of President of Ireland was used by Sinn F\u00e9in and De Valera in 1921 after the establishment of D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann in 1919 [the so called revolutionary D\u00e1il] and the declaration of independence.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4vfn2z", "title": "Were European ships \"drastically inferior to Chinese ships in every respect imaginable even as late as 1800\", as my textbook claims?", "selftext": "*Global Politics in the 21st Century*, by Robert J. Jackson, repeats the claim that European ships were \"drastically inferior to Chinese ships in every respect imaginable even as late as 1800\". This seems to be quite a claim.\n\nMoreover, its reference for this is a book called *The Genius of China*, which doesn't exactly encourage confidence. \n\nChina isn't exactly famous for being a naval power, either. I know for certain that at one point they had that exploring / treasure fleet, but aside from that? To say that China's ships were superior in every aspect at the start of the 19th century is just... huh?\n\nIn the 18th century, Europe had 200-gun ships-of-the-line, and I've never heard of China having anything even remotely similar.\n\nPlease tell me my textbook isn't a complete waste of money.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vfn2z/were_european_ships_drastically_inferior_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5y6h6k", "d5y9il3", "d5yuzfn"], "score": [37, 27, 10], "text": ["The Chinese explorer Daxi Hongtong reportedly reached the Arabian peninsula in 674 AD.  It wasn't until the Viking Age a few centuries later that Europeans could claim similar range.  The great admiral Zheng He (1371\u20131433) explored the coastlines of Asia in ships larger than that of Columbus and made it as far as Mombasa and Mecca.  Zheng He's flagship was about 67 meters long.  By comparison, Henry V of England's flagship, *Grace Dieu*, commissioned in 1420, the largest in Europe, was about 66m long.  These were both exceptionally large ships for their age, but I think it's safe to say that the Europeans caught up with the Chinese sometime during the 15th century.  In 1522 Magellan's fleet circumvented the Earth.  By 1800, European ships were far superior and this is a major reason why Europeans went on to dominate Asia and \"humiliate\" China for 100 years.\n\nOne innovation that Europeans did copy from the Chinese in the early 19th century was watertight compartments.  European ships were apparently superior in every other respect.", "The height of Chinese naval technology and power was in the early 15th century, but after the Ming Emperor Zhu Di, none of his successors saw need in developing the navy anymore. Well, that was partially the problem. The other part to the problem was corruption, or gross inefficiency when it comes to the navy. \"The Empire's troops [did] not take care of the ships\", as the famous Ming general Yu Dayou (1503 - 1579) has put it. He observed that \"the Empire [spent] lots of money on building the ships, but none [was] of usable quality\", and that \"most ships, after its construction for about a year, would be sunken and no longer be used\". His advice was actually \"[he would] rather have the ships built by the people than have it built by the Empire\".\n\nSource: China's Research On the History of Ming in the 20th Century (20 shi ji zhong guo de ming shi yan jiu).  ", "*Caveat lector*, I am in no way an expert on Chinese ships or shipbuilding, but I may be able to provide an answer on European ships and how they changed over time. Something to keep in mind is that there are a ton of fables that center around the admiral Zheng He, who seems to have bene a real person who existed and led several voyages of discovery, but whose achievements and the size of whose ships is substantially exaggerated. For example, [this image](_URL_6_) tends to circulate on the Internet when Chinese treasure fleets come up; it purports to compare one of Zheng He's ships to one of Columbus's ships, but the purported Chinese treasure ship would literally be impossible to sail, even if you could build it; the notion of having off-center masts is laughable and a wooden ship that size would hog, sag or twist itself apart in any sort of a seaway. \n\nOn the flip side, it's also worth pointing out that no such thing as a \"200-gun\" ship of the line ever existed; the largest of the age of sail was the *Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de la Sant\u00edsima Trinidad*, built to carry 112 but eventually enclosing a fourth gun deck to have a total of 140 guns. \n\nSo to get to the crux of your question, were Chinese ships \"better\" than European ships at the start of the 19th century? Well, is an apple better than an orange? What I know about the sea-going warships that were being built in China at that time is that they were meant for coastal patrols and as anti-piracy vessels, and also ships that could navigate up the large rivers into China's interior. Chinese trading ships were meant to be able to reach into its extensive trading empire extending to the Indonesian archipelago to the south, the Japanese islands to the north, and India to the west. I don't know the extent to which the Chinese state had a navy to patrol those sea routes or provide convoy or other systems of protecting trade, but that would be a good starting point. \n\nAnyhow, attached are some comments I've written and/or threads I've been involved with regarding *Western* ship design, hopefully this can be helpful to you. If you have follow up questions, please ask! \n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_7_\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pn7v5/what_changes_occurred_in_the_construction/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2709jm/how_would_a_britishhms_frigate_built_in_1715/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/44sivx/ship_design_and_construction_in_the_age_of_sail/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l2ib8/what_breakthroughs_allowed_for_the_construction/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n5n5k/in_age_of_sails_how_various_navies_determine_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fs8qr/how_much_more_advanced_was_a_british/ckcdgbf", "http://premium.imagesocket.com/images/2016/01/05/2852814-cggn.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38sjil/how_did_britain_manage_the_logistics_of_fighting/"]]}
{"q_id": "3k10jn", "title": "What language did Siddhartha Gautama/Buddha speak?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3k10jn/what_language_did_siddhartha_gautamabuddha_speak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuua0w4"], "score": [32], "text": ["According to Buddhist tradition he spoke Pali, a Pakrit from northern India in which most early Buddhist scripture first appears, before the rise of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit as the liturgical language.\n\nThis is despite the Buddha's own urging of priests to teach in the local vernacular (sakay\u0101 niruttiy\u0101), instead Pali was preserved as a language of faith throughout much of the Buddhist world, particularly among Theravada Buddhism.\n\nIn reality, the Buddha was almost certainly multilingual, as a member of the Kshatriya caste he would most likely have been literate in Sanskrit, which was a language of prestige and learning, related to and sharing many features with the Pakrits or \"vernacular\" languages. \n\nMost of my information comes from Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler. It's a very interesting book, although as it is an attempt to overview language spread and change across the world over a very long timeframe it does probably gloss over some details."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "32bjc5", "title": "Has a gang war in a city ever become embroiled in a true war or insurgency?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32bjc5/has_a_gang_war_in_a_city_ever_become_embroiled_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq9uhbz", "cq9vx1p", "cqa6tn5"], "score": [58, 27, 6], "text": ["To some extent, you can count the Nika Riots in Constantinople as an example of this. At the heart were the two big groups of chariot racing fans, the Blues and the Greens. These two groups were much bigger than just racing though, as they were also street gangs, and in some interpretation, proto political parties. They often rioted among themselves, but during the Nika riots, the two sides sort of found common ground in opposition to the policies of Emperor Justinian I, and the riot turned into a general revolt against the emperor. ", "We were never technically at war with Libya in the '80s, but we used [military response](_URL_1_), sanctions etc. against Moammar Qaddafi and his state-sponsored terrorism.  Everyone else here can decide if that counts.\n\nAt that time, one of the most powerful gangs in the history of Chicago was at their peak:  El Rukn (~~Islamic~~ Arabic for \"pillar\" or \"foundation\").  They had gotten powerful enough that they were [influencing local politics](_URL_2_), campaigning for then-mayor Jane Byrne, contributing to aldermen Ed Vrdolyak and Bobby Rush, and finally planning on running one of their own as an alderman.  In 1986, El Rukn leader Jeff Fort and 4 others were [convicted of contracting](_URL_0_) with Libya for the purpose of committing domestic terrorism (Fort's conviction was the [first of its kind in the US](_URL_3_)).\n\nEl Rukn was styled by Fort as an orthodox Islamic group but it bore more resemblance to black nationalism or Nation of Islam and was, in the end, a street gang albeit a disproportionately powerful one.  This is probably not exactly what OP was looking for but historically when one thinks \"gangs\" one does not have to necessarily be from the US to draw the correlation with the concept in major US cities, especially Chicago with its historic ties to organized crime.\n\nEDIT removed unnecessary editorializing", "In Detroit during the late 1960s until the early 1970s, there was arguably a relative level of insurgency, kicked off by the 1967 Detroit Riots and the spread of the Black Power Movement.  A lot of the militants in Detroit that were members of groups like the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party were drawn from local gangs.  Substantial income to the social programs pioneered by local militants (especially the BPP) came from robbing heroin houses in the city, which itself was a function of many of the armed militants formerly being stick-up boys who got their day-to-day income through this method in the first place.  \n\nSource: Williams, Yohuru.  Lazerow, Jama.  \u201cLiberated Territories: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party.\u201d  Duke University Press.  2009.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-10-31/news/8603210871_1_el-rukns-black-p-stone-nation-street-gang", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_United_States_bombing_of_Libya", "https://books.google.com/books?id=M01XXY9Dk74C&amp;pg=PA224&amp;lpg=PA224&amp;dq=el+rukn+influence+on+chicago+politics&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=WnNuElI1K8&amp;sig=-_FGKXkTjIC_Q4qemY-fijhsKbM&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=D5UqVZS9F4uuogTCvYH4Cg&amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&amp;q=el%20rukn%20influence%20on%20chicago%20politics&amp;f=false", "http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-1988/The-Making-of-Jeff-Fort/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ya3gj", "title": "What are the origins of mathematical symbols like \"+\", \"-\" and \"=\"? Have they always been used (since we've had need for them at least), or were other symbols used in the past?", "selftext": "As an extension, what are the original origins of the numbers? I cans see how 1 to 3 were just lines of that number, and 0 is pretty simple, but what about the others?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ya3gj/what_are_the_origins_of_mathematical_symbols_like/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cp7mqts"], "score": [93], "text": ["The symbols (+) for addition, (-) for subtraction  (=) date from the 15th and 16th century. The signs for + and - were used by Johannes Widmann in the late 15th century. They first appear in print in a book he wrote about accounting. You can see a reproduction [here](_URL_3_). In the book, they denoted surplus (+) or deficit (-) rather than operations, so he used them to distinguish between positive and negative quantities. However, Cajori writes that Widmann also used the symbols to signify the operations in other places.\n\nThe symbol for equality is due to the Welshman Robert Recorde in his 1557 book *The Whetstone of Witte* (math book titles used to be so much better). You can find the book [here](_URL_4_). You can see the part where he introduces the symbol [here](_URL_2_). He explains that he chose two parallel lines because \"no two things could be more equal\". \n\nAs you can see, these are relatively recent and certainly much more so than the need to express addition and equality. A complete survey of the symbols that were used before would be take a long time (take a look at the second chapter in Cajori - referenced below). Very often, operations would simply be explained in words, and only the numerical results expressed with symbols. Often, addition would be denoted simply by juxtaposition (putting the numbers next to each other).\n\nThe numbers we use now came from Arabic numerals around the 10th century. The Arabic numerals were themselves based on Hindu numerals (you can see a comparison [here](_URL_0_)). Apart from speculation, I don't think there is a definitive explanation for the shape of the numerals above 4 (which evolved from a cross).\n\nThe classic reference for all this is Cajori ([A History of Mathematical Notations](_URL_1_)) which, although a bit dated, contains beautiful illustrations. You can also look at Boyer and Merzbach's History of Mathematics."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#mediaviewer/File:Indian_numerals_100AD.svg", "https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equals_sign#mediaviewer/File:Recorde_-_The_Whetstone_of_Witte_-_equals.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematical_notation#mediaviewer/File:Johannes_Widmann-Mercantile_Arithmetic_1489.jpg", "https://archive.org/details/TheWhetstoneOfWitte"]]}
{"q_id": "2vassb", "title": "In 1912 Japan gave the US 3,000+ cherry blossom trees. In 1915 the US reciprocated the gift by sending flowering dogwood trees. What happened to those trees?", "selftext": "While reading the comments here (_URL_0_) I came across this quote:\n\n > The US government reciprocated with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan in 1915. In 1981, the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturists were given cuttings from the trees to replace some cherry trees in Japan which had been destroyed in a flood.\n\nBut I could not find a picture of those dogwood trees.  I would love to know what happened to them.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vassb/in_1912_japan_gave_the_us_3000_cherry_blossom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cog80tt"], "score": [68], "text": ["The Hibiya Park dogwoods appear to be later arrivals, [based on signs at the park](_URL_1_). Though the *Japan Times* reported that those trees arrived in 1915, it appears that the original dogwoods were [either burned during World War II air raids or cut down as \"enemy trees.\"](_URL_0_) The ones in the park today are [descendants of the original trees](_URL_5_).\n\nA small park near the National Diet appears to have a cluster of dogwoods from 1960, and [the Koishikawa Botanical Garden of Tokyo University may have had one](_URL_4_) until a few years ago when it died. There may be a surviving example at Tokyo Metropolitan Agricultural Horticultural High School and one at the National Institute of Fruit Tree Science in Shizuoka Prefecture. I've also seen another source say the one at Koishikawa Botanical Garden still survives.\n\nIn November 2012, 100 flowering dogwood [were planted in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo](_URL_3_). These were the first of 3,000 sent by the United States as part of the \"friendship blossoms\" program. [The U.S. Department of Agriculture developed appropriate cultivars to survive the Japanese climate](_URL_2_), and 1,000 will be planted in Tokyo. Another 1,000 will be planted in the Tohoku region, epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami. Another 1,000 will be distributed to schools and other organizations.  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2v85tz/til_the_pink_cherry_blossoms_in_washington_dc/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.hokkoku.co.jp/sakura/washington_takamine_e.html", "https://tokyotree.wordpress.com/", "http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb13/dogwoods0213.htm", "http://amview.japan.usembassy.gov/wordpress/friendship-blossoms-strengthening-bilateral-ties-through-trees/", "http://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/www/contents/0000000000000/1274348645969/index.html", "http://www.kensetsu.metro.tokyo.jp/kouen/kouenannai/park/english/hibiya.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "5vtf2g", "title": "I have an interest in Medieval History. Who are the most important historians I should be familiar with?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vtf2g/i_have_an_interest_in_medieval_history_who_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de4zcmn", "de5445v", "de5dv01", "de5irzg", "de64x0c"], "score": [23, 3, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Okay, this is a fun one. I hope some of the other medievalists will stop by and critique/add to my list.\n\nSo medieval history, the academic discipline, has got to be one of the most self-obsessed...er, self-*reflective*...er...out there. There is an enormous emphasis placed on \"where we came from\" as a field. So like other fields, we \"need to know\" the top people working right now or in the past 20 years on whatever more specialized topic you do (as a late medieval/Reformation historian, my list is going to look very different than /u/alriclofgar's as an Anglo-Saxonist, which will be different than /u/Yazman who studies al-Andalus, and yet we are all medievalists). BUT there's also a list of foundational figures from the late 19th/20th century that Everyone Knows. Offhand, I'd have:\n\nMarc Bloch ([Marc Bloch always goes first](_URL_0_)), R.W. Southern, Charles Homer Haskins, Henri Pirenne, Jacques LeGoff, Herbert Grundmann, Ernst Kantorowicz, Gerd Althoff, Caroline Walker Bynum, Johan Huizinga, Joseph Strayer, Eileen Power\n\nETA: Georges Duby\n\nA bit peripheral to the Middle Ages now, I think we'd also be expected to recognize Peter Brown, Eamon Duffy (or at least understand the phrase \"stripping of the altars\"), and Fernand Braudel.\n\nOh, and I think we're at a point of both being supposed to know Otto Brunner and being congnizant of his Nazi sympathies/activities.\n\nMany of these scholars, though not all of them, have a massive distinguished body of work but are best known for one or two of them that, in retrospect, drove a major paradigm shift in medieval historiography. Despite Haskins' wide-ranging interests in early and high medieval history, especially in England, his name is pretty much inseparable today from the phrase \"renaissance of the twelfth-century.\" Ernst Kantorowicz goes with \"the king's two bodies,\" a theory of medieval political thought. Southern said, \"Hey, but isn't culture as important as politics?\" Bynum was hardly the first scholar to study medieval religious women, but her perspective and argument were strong and compelling enough to basically invent a new subfield.\n\nSo what I'm saying is, it's not necessarily that you have to read everything that all of these people wrote. In fact, a lot of the individual points and arguments they made have been superseded by later scholarship. But their contributions to *shaping* medieval studies--*that's* what to know.", "For my own field, armour and weapons:\n\n* Claude Blair - His European Armour c. 1066-1700 is still the go-to general history of armour. He made a lot of terminology (always saying mail, not 'chainmail' and never 'plate mail') standard. His way of thinking about armour - in terms of its underlying construction, how it fits together - is still influential. \n\n* Alan Williams - The Knight and the Blast Furnace was a game changer when it came out in 2000. By analyzing the metallurgy of armour he was able to quantify a lot of what had previously been guesswork. For a field that is still very closely tied to art history, he did a lot to bring in materials science. He also collects a lot of previous work on the history of armouring.\n\n* Tobias Capwell - I suspect Capwell's best and most influential work is in front of him (he's not old!). For an analysis of armour's function, he's hard to beat.\n\n* Ewart Oakshotte - say what you will about his famous typology of swords and all the fanboys that slaver over it, his emphasis on blade geometry and function rather than hilt decoration is really important. Even if some of his functional explanations are guesswork.\n\nThen there's some historians that are important but haven't published much book-length works in the field. Pierre Terjanian has been an influential curator, first at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and then at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has written a lot of great stuff about the armouring industry in various German cities. Silvo Leydi has written quite a bit about the armour industry in Milan.", "Norman Cantor, *Inventing the Middle Ages*\n\nMarcus Bull, *Thinking Medieval*\n_____________________________________\n\nMarjorie Chibnall, trans., *The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis*\n\nWilliam of Malmesbury, *Gesta Regum Anglorum,* trans. R A B Mynors; Rodney M Thomson; Michael Winterbottom\n\nIbn Khaldun, *Muqaddimah,* trans. Franz Rosenthal", "This definitely isn't what you meant, but I'm gonna add to the great lists here by throwing in some literal medieval historians and works you should read if you want actual medieval perspective. These obviously aren't histories you take at face value, but they were big works in their time and help understand a lot of what we've learned since. I'm admittedly pretty Britain-centered, though.\n\n* Geoffrey of Monmouth's *Historia Regum Britanniae* (medieval bestseller on Britain)\n* Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris's *Flores Historiarum* (two chroniclers for one work)\n* Boethius's *De Consolatione Philosophiae* (foundation for medieval European philosophy)\n* The *Middle English Prose Brut* Chronicle and its continuations (lot of different versions and continuations exist, but this was the most popular book the late-medieval English world read, so it's essential propaganda reading)\n* Virgil's *Aeneid* (an old professor once told me you just can't be a Western literary historian without knowing the Aeneid, but mileage may vary for other historians)\n\nAs for modern historians, I'm still playing catch-up myself, but I'm seconding March Bloch. Even in a literature-focused department, he was first on the bibliography when I walked through the doors, along with Georges Duby. It's worth noting that there's kind of an ideological divide between English and French historians in the 'canon'. You'll notice that England and American put out titles likely to start with \"The Reign of...\" while France gives us ones with \"Society\" and \"Rural,\" if that makes sense. The best I can say is browse different areas and read abstracts of articles to see what pulls you in. Sometimes you can even search for \"[Subject] bibliography\" and get a reading-list other scholars have put together. Better yet, find a book that grabs your interest, then check its bibliography and see where their sources came from. If a subfield has a 'canon', chances are good they'll show up a lot in references.", "The classic medieval military historian has to be Charles Oman. He published his *Art of War in the Middle Ages* in 1885, but it's his revised two-volume edition of 1898 (Re-titled *A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages*) that really cemented his reputation as the father of medieval military history. \n\nAlso quite influential, and of a similar era, is J.E. Morris. His writings on the English longbow and Crecy are still being debated, and while I disagree with most of what he has to say, I cannot say that he's not very influential. \n\nWhile talking of vintage historians, it's hard for me to not mention Ralph Payne-Gallwey, whose history of the crossbow is still the most widely available book on the subject despite being over 100 years old. \n\nFor more recent historians I have to mention John Keegan (particularly his *Face of Battle*), as well as Kelly DeVries, Anne Curry, and Maurice Keen. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Bloch#Second_World_War"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1gammh", "title": "Who was the first person to get shot and who was the first person shooter?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gammh/who_was_the_first_person_to_get_shot_and_who_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caidr8f", "caihlen", "caiic2l", "caim40m", "cains0u", "cair1x4"], "score": [124, 21, 22, 4, 18, 4], "text": ["To put it quite simply: We have no idea. If you mean shot with a firearm, it could be anybody who had access to one of the early firearms developed in Europe, up to and including cannons. Cannons, however, were used mainly for siege warfare, so if somebody died by cannon before they died by arquebus (or something similar), it probably was as a side effect.\n\nIf you mean by any ranged weapon, then we will probably never know, as most ranged weapons such as slings, bows, etc. are centuries, if not millennia older than writing or recorded history.", "While it was not exactly what you have asked, your question reminded me of this article: [Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported](_URL_0_)\n >  A skeleton in an Inca cemetery near Lima, Peru, dates to about the 1530s and shows a wound that is presumably from a Spanish firearm.\n >  No similar evidence of a death by gunshot this early has been found elsewhere in the Americas.\n\nHere is another article from [ScienceDaily](_URL_1_)\n >  Edges of the holes in the skull and the entire bone plug were found to be impregnated with fragments of iron, a metal sometimes used for Spanish musket balls. It appears that a musket ball less than an inch in diameter had punched into the back of the skull and passed through the head, leaving pieces of iron deep inside the bone that stayed there for 500 years.", "The *Wu Jing Zong Yao* was a military compendium published in 1044 during China's Song Dynasty. In it, there were chapters devoted to early gunpowder formulas and weapons. While gunpowder may have been invented *up to 600 years earlier*, this book contains the first recorded \"official\" recipe. \n\nThere are also references to the use of a *huo qiang* - taken here to mean 'fire lance' but is also the modern Chinese term for firearms in general. These were (relatively) cheap and accessible disposable primitive firearms - essentially, a cheap gunpowder device that shot out fire and small bits of shrapnel at close range. Not what you would call a traditional 'gun' though...\n\nThese are *claimed* to have been employed in the imperial armies as early as the late 10th Century and references to their use in battle appear occasionally in early military histories.\n\nIt is more than likely that a projectile from a fire lance would have struck a soldier - friendly or otherwise, because these things would have been tremendously inaccurate - in the course of a battle.", "Given the responses in this thread to date, perhaps a better follow up question is:\n\nWho was the first person to get shot and who was the first person shooter in recorded history?", "The Danish King Kristian I was hit in the face by an arqebuis shot fired by someone in the Swedish peasant militia host (that won the battle) at Brunkeberg outside (nowadays inside) Stockholm 1471. He lost three teeth and had to retreat from the frontline.\n\nThis is one of the first recorded occasion of someone mentioned by name being hit by a hand-held gunpowder weapon in Scandinavia.", "There is a report of a British soldier being shot with an arquebus at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415\n\n* Keegan, John. The face of battle : a study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. London : Barrie  &  Jenkins, 1988.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/science/20inca.html", "http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070620081734.htm"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3i2sdd", "title": "Was adopting pseudonyms a particularly Communist thing to do and when did it begin?", "selftext": "Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot etc. When did radical politicians/revolutionaries begin adopting pseudonyms and was it a 'left-wing' phenomena?\n\nALSO: If the cause was for safety why were they kept once power was achieved?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i2sdd/was_adopting_pseudonyms_a_particularly_communist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucyijw"], "score": [22], "text": ["I'd never thought about it before, but its Communist usage does seem to have started as a Russian thing, presumably reflecting the party's illegality, perhaps as a safeguard against police infiltration of party cells: I can use my name in everyday life, but within the Party I'm such-and-such - let the authorities hunt him instead. Prominent German Social Democrats conversely tended to use their \"real\" names even during the period of repression (1878-90), but they enjoyed some freedom in electoral activity. \n\nPseudonyms had of course been used in writings in the past - American revolutionary authors routinely adopted Roman ones, and even innocuous British tracts might be credited to \"A Merchant\", \"A Lover of His Country\", etc, but such names existed merely on paper rather than in their political life. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "d12xfn", "title": "The largest cavalry charge in history was at the Battle Of Vienna, where 18000 polish winged hussars charged the Ottomans. How would this have sounded? If you were in the Ottoman camp, Vienna, 1 km away, 10 km away? Would you have heard it or felt the ground shake at these distances?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d12xfn/the_largest_cavalry_charge_in_history_was_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ezk0961"], "score": [57], "text": ["This question might be more scientific than historical so I'll give a short answer from a scientific perspective.\n\nSince I can't find a measurement of the sound level of a galloping horse with an armoured hussar on top, I'll take a dB of 80 at a distance of 8 m to be a reasonable guess (according to this [link](_URL_0_) a motorcycle at that distance is 90 dB and a car is 70 dB).\n\nSound intensity drops off as 1/r\\^2, so at 1 km, the sound intensity is reduced by a factor of about 16,000.\n\nLuckily this is about the number of horses in your example, so the 18,000 horses at 1 km has about the same sound intensity as one horse at 8 m.\n\nAt about 10 km, the sound intensity is dropped by another factor of 100, corresponding to -20 dB, so 60 dB in total, which according to the above link corresponds to the noise level of an office or conversations in a restaurant. Or, according to the numbers above the sound of 18,000 horses at 10 km has the same intensity as the sound of one horse as 80 m.\n\nThis means that the wind would have been a major factor. If it blew the sound away from the Ottomans they should not have been able to hear 18,000 hussars galloping at 10 km, but at 1 km they should unless the wind was very strong.\n\nGrund shaking is a little more tricky. It is unaffected by wind of course, but the intensity may not fall off a 1/r\\^2, since some sound waves (in the ground) stays at the surface and would fall off only as 1/r. So maybe it could be possible to feel the ground shaking from a cavalry charge further away than you can hear it, but probably only if the wind was towards the charge.\n\nI'm guessing that the hussars only actually galloped the final short distance and held something like a trot at even closer than 1 km, so maybe bring the 80 dB above down to 60 dB if you want the effect of trotting horses, which brings the sound intensity at 10 km down to 'library' level according to the link..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.industrialnoisecontrol.com/comparative-noise-examples.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "2jtlsd", "title": "Why are there always pianos on the streets during WWII movies?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jtlsd/why_are_there_always_pianos_on_the_streets_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clfq762"], "score": [9], "text": ["I don't think there's ever going to be a truly historical answer to this, so let's consider it in a hypothetical fashion.\n\nThe piano is a great and easily recognizable accessory to have available as a backdrop for meaningful conversations between characters in a film.  They can sit at or near it, perhaps picking away wistfully at the keys, with all of the melancholy promise that an instrument in desolation can offer.  It's very similar in this fashion to the \"beat-up gramophone\" that also appears so frequently in such films, no doubt playing the languid notes of Ms. Edith Piaf.  The mood of nostalgia seems to be inescapable in the western WWII film (as compared to the hideous realism of something like Elem Klimov's *Idi i smotri* (1985)), and this sort of omnipresent musical accompaniment helps it along nicely.\n\nWithin the narrative world of such films, I can imagine a number of practical reasons why the piano would noticeably appear in streets with such regularity.\n\n1. Pianos are large and sturdy enough that they can still effectively \"work\" even after having taken some punishment -- though not a lot.\n\n2. Their size also means that they really can be visible in a way that a hastily discarded violin or harmonica or something can't be.  Who knows how many abandoned violins we've seen in the background of shots in such films without really noticing them?  And what untutored GI could pick up an abandoned violin (which also needs a bow) in the same way that he could pluck idly at an ivory key?\n\n3. That pianos should be in the street at all during such times is jointly a function of their commercial value and their physical size.  They're just expensive enough for a fleeing family to want to save them, if possible, but also so burdensome that they'd be among the first things abandoned during the act of headlong flight.  The value that would see them dragged towards the door or out into the street in the first place might also see them become popular targets for looters, both civilian and military alike.  These looters still wouldn't be able to get them very far from where they were found, unhappily.\n\nThese, at least, would seem to be reasonable explanations for the phenomenon you've noted."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "79acqg", "title": "[Meta-ish] How representative is this sub of the larger academia?", "selftext": "I am under the impression that quiet a few of the responders in this sub are professional historians or related professions. Now it would wholly improbable that this sub paints a 100% accurate picture of the whole of academia but I wish to know how close it is. \n\nFor example, I am under the impression that in general, users here reject the conflict hypothesis. Am I correct to assume that in general, the larger academia would reject it, too? \n\nEDIT: What I think I am trying to say is this sub mainstream or not. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79acqg/metaish_how_representative_is_this_sub_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dp0epln", "dp0in53", "dp0lokq", "dp0o5ef"], "score": [61, 14, 23, 22], "text": ["AskHistorians requires that answers reflect current academic, peer-reviewed scholarship on the topics under consideration. Where there is a scholarly consensus, that means we require *posts* to observe it, even if the individual user disagrees. Where there is a historiographical dispute in peer-reviewed scholarship or where the poster in question disagrees with a theory or view, often times they will note the different perspectives and explain why the disjunction exists. \"Peer-reviewed\" is as close as you're going to get to a definition of 'mainstream', I think.\n\nI've also compared AH historians to the \"academic demographics\" of the profession in [this earlier thread](_URL_0_), if you're interested.", "Can I ask what is meant by \"conflict hypothesis?\"", " >  For example, I am under the impression that in general, users here reject the conflict hypothesis. Am I correct to assume that in general, the larger academia would reject it, too?\n\nHistorians of science definitely reject the conflict thesis. Would \"the larger academia reject it, too?\" It depends on who that is\u00a0\u2014 if that means non-historians of science, maybe not. But among historians of science, the conflict thesis is known to be totally false.", "Speaking as a former flaired contributor (under previous account u/tfrauline) and a working academic in 18th century literature, I think AH contributors are by and large pretty good about assessing the current state of knowledge on the topics they respond to.\n\nHowever, AH is still very much subject to the **huge** demographic bias that occurs across reddit. [Here's a 2016 Pew research center study](_URL_0_) of reddit's demographics, which determined that 70% of users are male, and 59% of all users are between the ages of 18-29. This obviously isn't AH's fault but as far as I've seen on both sides of the contributor/asker divide the subreddit is still very much subject to this bias.\n\nWhat this means as that the responses and discussions here are typically not coming from older more established contributors (particularly senior academics) and women contributors. These are two extremely important/large demographics within academic circles and therefore this does have an impact on the type of answers your getting. This is less about how valid the answers you get are, but more the angle or perspective of the question or answer.\n\n~~For example: there are a dearth of strong gender studies expertise in this subreddit which impacts the general tone of response to questions about historical sexuality or sexual practice. It's not that any of the answers you get are \"wrong\", far from it, but you'd get very different responses from a well-established women professor.~~\n\n**edit**: I've since reassessed this particular section related to gender studies after reviewing some AH answers. See my comment [here](_URL_1_)\n\nThis doesn't mean AH isn't a **fantastic** subreddit, probably the best reddit has to offer. Readers should just be aware of the website's demographic bias across every subreddit. It's part of the reason I've tried to ease off my usage of the site for anything other than entertainment."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48sywy/how_representative_of_the_field_is_raskhistorians/d0miyc6/"], [], [], ["http://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-news-users-more-likely-to-be-male-young-and-digital-in-their-news-preferences/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79acqg/metaish_how_representative_is_this_sub_of_the/dp1dswt/"]]}
{"q_id": "76z1m1", "title": "Why did Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht continue to fight even in the face of overwhelming defeat in late 1944-45?", "selftext": "In history, when most nations are faced with obvious military defeat, either the defeated's leaders call for an armistice/peace and end the war to prevent any further pointless deaths, or the army themselves desert or mutiny to force a surrender, as what happened in Germany during World War I.\n\nSo what kept the Wehrmacht fighting to the very end even when the situation was obviously hopeless? I know the party's inner circles secretly disobeyed Hitler such as Speer's refusal to execute the Nero decree, or even plotted against him to end the war such as the July 20th plot. But what kept German soldiers fighting all the way until even Berlin was a pile of rubble, rather than mutinying or deserting when defeat was obvious around the time the Soviets smashed Army Group Center in August of '44, or the failure of the Ardennes counteroffensive later that winter?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/76z1m1/why_did_nazi_germanys_wehrmacht_continue_to_fight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["doizwzf"], "score": [23], "text": [" >  But what kept German soldiers fighting all the way until even Berlin was a pile of rubble, rather than mutinying or deserting when defeat was obvious around the time the Soviets smashed Army Group Center in August of '44, or the failure of the Ardennes counteroffensive later that winter?\n\nWell, the Ardennes counteroffensive failed, but the fact that the Germans could muster such an offensive that late in the war and still cause serious concern on one front shows that the Germans themselves didn't think their forces were on the verge of imminent collapse and indeed still had strength left.\n\nLet me give you something from a military perspective on warfare. Remember a couple things:\n\nFirst, just because you're retreating on all fronts, doesn't mean defeat was obvious. You know the enemy doesn't have infinite troops and supplies (just as you don't), you're likely motivated to defend your homeland while their forces are farther and farther away from their own homes, and you the soldier assigned to a front may not have a full grasp on just how actually desperate the situation is. \n\nHow much knowledge would someone assigned to the Western Front have of how crushing their losses were on the Eastern Front? What awareness would, say, ground forces - who are being told to regroup to fight on better ground - have of the utter destruction of their naval forces and air forces?\n\nAs long as the chain of command remains intact, and you are getting communications and command  &  control from HQ, you're still given orders and thinking the war is being prosecuted. Meaning, you have a chance.\n\nA historical example of this is the Persian Gulf War: why did Iraqi forces surrender en masse once the ground campaign started? Well, a month of constant airstrikes that decapitated command and control and left many units without guidance from above would leave troops wondering whether the war was even being prosecuted fully anymore. If you're not even sure your nation is intact anymore, what impetus do you have to keep fighting?\n\nSecond, those who do have the full picture - the leadership - are thinking far more political in nature. Remember, warfare ultimately supports some sort of political goal. In late 1944, just because you are losing a war doesn't mean you are guaranteed utter defeat and Berlin in rubble - you may start thinking that sure, the war is lost, but you can bleed the enemy enough or make yourself unappealing enough for an invader that they settle for a peace that doesn't involve the dismantling of your country and giving up your sovereignty.\n\nYou also see this all over history. A particularly pertinent example to today is the Korean War: the course of the war ebbed and flowed as the US/UN entered the fray and then China entered resulting in a stalemate. The US/UN ultimately felt that they had achieved their goal of defending South Korea and didn't want to escalate the war into China. On the other hand, China had supported North Korea and kept them from capitulating. In the end, both sides agreed to a cease fire and pulled their forces back, creating the situation we have today. \n\nI do, however, want to point out one other thing now, from a historian's perspective:\n\nThe Wehrmacht DID start surrendering in larger numbers in late 1944/early 1945, but particularly so to the Western Allies, who treated POWs far better than the Soviets did.\n\nIn Eisenhower's *Crusade in Europe*, he stated that over 10,000 German POWs were taken by his forces *per day* in March of 1945. All told, over 300,000 German POWs were taken in March of 1945 alone to bring the total haul of German POWs to 1.3 million, and in April this was even more staggering: over 1.5 million more Germans surrendered to the Western Allies, the same month that nearly 100,000 German soldiers died resisting in the Battle of Berlin. By contrast, the Western Allies since D-Day suffered around 160,000 KIA and 70,000 captured\n\nUsing the *Biennial Reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War, 1 July 1939 - 30 June 1945* by General of the Army George C. Marshall. [PDF link here](http://www.history._URL_0_/html/books/070/70-57/index.html), note that this is an official _URL_0_ link, some important points:\n\n* Page 149 of the report (160 in the pdf) states: \"During the month of March nearly 350,000 prisoners were taken on the Western Front\"\n* Page 189 of the report (200 in the pdf) states: \"Following the termination of hostilities in Europe our forces were holding 130,000 Italian prisoners and 3,050,000 German prisoners as well as an additional 3,000,000 German troops who were disarmed after the unconditional surrender. \"\n* Page 202 of the report (213 in the pdf) has the following table on German AND Italian losses in campaigns the US was involved in, in Europe:\n\nCampaign | Battle Dead | Captured\n---------|----------|----------\nTunisia | 19,600 | 130,000\nSicily | 5,000 | 7,100\nItaly | 86,000 | 357,089\nWestern Front | 263,000 | 7,614,794\n---------|----------|----------\nTotal | 373,600 | 8,108,983\n\nNote that captured on Western Front includes 3,404,949 disarmed enemy forces after the unconditional surrender\n\nConsider those numbers in this context:\n\nFront | Germans Killed | Germans Captured | Total\n---- | ---- | ---- | ----\nEastern Front | 4,300,000 | 3,100,000 | 7,400,000\nWestern Front | 370,000 | 8,100,000 | 8,470,000\n\nGerman forces were far more likely to surrender to the Western Allies, and there are even cases of [German troops fighting West](_URL_2_) to surrender to the Western Allies.\n\nSo consider that there were those who chose to take the chance to fight and possibly die rather than surrender and be guaranteed to be treated brutally, like those who surrendered at Stalingrad, of whom only a fraction returned years after the war ended."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["army.mil", "http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/070/70-57/index.html", "https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pv49h/ive_often_heard_the_myth_about_german_troops_at/"]]}
{"q_id": "3d4shs", "title": "Get Cultured! - Massive Cultural History Panel AMA", "selftext": "Hi everyone! Today's panel AMA will have a bit of a different tone than our regular panels; instead of focusing on a specific period or topic in history, we will talk about our work in a specific *subfield* of history: cultural history. My hope is to give some of our flairs with obscure specialties some exposure, while simultaneously introducing many of you to a subfield of history that you may be unaware of. Think of this panel as a half-AMA, half-workshop: we will all be glad to discuss questions about our fields of research, but we will also answer questions about the nitty-gritty of doing cultural history: how does a cultural historian conduct their research? What kinds of sources do we use, and in what ways do we use them?\n\nSo then, what is cultural history? Admittedly, it is a fairly nebulously defined subfield when compared to its sisters like economic or military history. Peter Burke answered the same question thusly: \u201cit still awaits a definitive answer.\u201d Cultural history can be done across time and space, and study nearly any aspect of a society: there exist cultural histories of animals, of clothing, of landscapes, finance, religious beliefs, warfare and so on. Burke posited that because cultural historians study such a multitude of subjects, it is their methods, not objects of study, which unites them: \n\n > \u201cthe common ground of cultural historians might be defined as a concern with the symbolic and its interpretation. Symbols, conscious or unconscious, can be found everywhere, from art to everyday life, but an approach to the past in terms of symbolism is just one approach among others.\u201d \n\nWe look at any aspect of a society, how it is created as a symbol and how that symbol is interpreted and by members of a historical culture. Accordingly, this will be a fairly open-ended panel where we invite you to discuss our objects of study *and* our methods. We are cultural historians, ask us anything!\n\nHere is the massive list of our panelists, their areas of research and the kinds of topics they would like to address today:\n\n* /u/depanneur is a historian of the imagination who is broadly interested in popular belief and the supernatural in medieval Europe, and is specifically focused on that topic as it pertains to early medieval Ireland. His other interests include the intersection of landscape and culture, magic in the pre-modern world as well as animals and animal symbolism. He is willing to discuss the forest in medieval imagination (especially in Ireland), the supernatural in early Irish history and the methods used to study popular cultures in pre-modern Europe, as well as their problems.\n\n* /u/vertexoflife  is primarily a historian of the book, but focuses specifically on the history of pornography and obscenity, with a heavy focus on histories of sexuality, marriage, and privacy. He has just finished writing a book on the history of pornography, the majority of which can be read at _URL_0_. He is happy to answer questions about the overlap between cultural and intellectual historians, or how the book can be a cultural force.\n\n* /u/TheGreenReaper7 holds an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from University College London. His research outputs have been on socio-legal culture in a comparative context in the Medieval West (c.1100-c.1300) with a special emphasis on pre-Conquest Wales. His other chief research interest is the development of the social and martial cultural phenomenon commonly known as \u2018chivalry' from its (contested) origins in the twelfth-century to the end of the Hundred Years War. Questions about cultural (vis-\u00e0-vis legal) bonds, masculinity, and military ethics very welcome!\n\n* /u/itsallfolklore has conducted work on Northern European folklore, especially as recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have also published on the social/cultural history of the American mining West, working with written and archaeological/architectural resources. My dozen books include studies of Virginia City, Nevada, the architectural history of Nevada, and work with letters from the California Gold Rush. Over three dozen articles include diverse subjects on the same and also dealing with Northern European folklore; I am currently working on a book that is a collection of essays on the folklore of Cornwall. I can address aspects of folklore (particularly as oral tradition manifests in historical documents) and the culture of the Old West.\n\n* /u/historiagrephour holds a master's degree in Scottish history and specializes in the concept of cultural gradation within the Scottish Highlands. For the purposes of the AMA, I can discuss issues related to elite Lowland and Gaelic cultures in early modern Scotland (roughly, 1500-1700) including cultural influences on marriage, fosterage, divorce, education, language, literacy, honor codes, and hospitality.\n\n* /u/WedgeHead is an historian of the Ancient Near East specializing in culture and identity. My interests primarily concern the way ancient people expressed their imagination of the self and other (identity/alterity) in texts. I have written on a variety of topics including cultural appropriation during the reign of Assurnasirpal II (Neo-Assyrian Empire), stereotyping and cultural identity in the diplomatic correspondence of the Late Second Millennium BCE (Amarna Letters), and a variety of topics concerning the Middle Babylonian period (c. 1500\u20131000 BCE) in Mesopotamia. My current research deals with the formation and development of the concept of ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. I am happy to answer anything I can about the cultures of the ancient world or the methods we use to study them.\n\n* /u/Mictlantecuhtli studies the Teuchitlan culture of West Mexico, a Classic period civilization centered around the Tequila volcano of Jalisco. The Teuchitlan culture is one of many of many cultures that make up the shaft tomb tradition of Western Mexico. What sets the Teuchitlan culture apart from other extensions in Nayarit or Colima is their unique concentric circle architecture called a guachimonton named after the principal site Los Guachimontones. My primary focus on the Teuchitlan culture is less on the hollow ceramic figures from their tombs and more on their architecture. I'm interested in how they were built, why they were built, and their distribution on the landscape. My in-progress thesis is on architectural energetics and labor organization in the context of the Teuchitlan culture's corporate power structure.\n\n* /u/Shartastic studies African-American athletes throughout the 19th Century into the early 20th Century. His focus is on African-American jockeys and the modernization/commercialization of sport, but he's happy to talk about other sports and athletes generally too.\n\n* /u/butforevernow is an art historian and gallery curator with a speciality in eighteenth century Spanish art. My current research (for my Master's) focuses on depictions of everyday life in Madrid from/in the later eighteenth century, so I'm particularly interested in the details and workings of that culture, especially the art, theatre, and costume/fashion. I'm happy and eager to answer any questions that I can in that or any related area :)\n\n* /u/TenMinuteHistory: My research is on the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1920s and 30s, My research interests more generally include bodies, movement and their cultural meaning.\n\n* /u/agentdcf: I am a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain, with particular thematic emphases in culture, environment, and food. My research is a cultural and environmental history of wheat, flour, and bread, and it stands at the intersection of several (usually separate) themes and methodologies: cultural history (which I would define as histories of \"meaning,\" broadly defined), social history, environmental history, food, science and medicine, the body, and consumption. I'm best-equipped to answer questions about food and ideas of nature, though I can take a stab at questions of cultural history across the West in the modern period. I have a lot of teaching experience in Western Civilization, world history, environmental history, and some US history (especially California, my home state); this has given me a long and global view of things, but a fairly spotty expertise.\n\n\nPlease note that not all of our panelists live in the same time zones, so some may answer your questions later than others. Please be patient!\n\n^^^^^^^Obligatory ^^^^^^^shoutout ^^^^^^^to ^^^^^^^/u/dubstripsquads ^^^^^^^for ^^^^^^^coming ^^^^^^^up ^^^^^^^with ^^^^^^^this ^^^^^^^panel's ^^^^^^^title", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct1r5gr", "ct1r9u6", "ct1rc5x", "ct1rcr6", "ct1re5t", "ct1ryeb", "ct1s0xe", "ct1seou", "ct1sh0n", "ct1sjzs", "ct1ti31", "ct1uc8r", "ct1v597", "ct1vb6s", "ct1wi45", "ct1zkc3", "ct1zrph", "ct26e3l", "ct2td3g"], "score": [6, 3, 7, 6, 7, 3, 9, 2, 13, 3, 8, 3, 4, 3, 13, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["/u/depanneur : How do histories of the imagination work? Do you trace elements such as \"representations of werewolves\" through chronicles and histories and how people would have thought about them?\n\nLike histories of sexuality, I imagine it is immensely difficult to talk about people's imaginations, as they are especially unrecorded and undocumented until much later in the historical period. How do you deal with this diffuculty?", "/u/historiagrephour how did concepts and particularties of marriage change in the late 1600s to the early 1700s? In my research, this is the period of time in which the English established a more or less five-step process when it came to marriage:\n\n > 1) A contract between the the families for financial arrangements and exchanges of property (in cases where there were finances or property to be exchanged.)\n\n > 2) The spousals--the exchange of promises spoken between the husband and wife in front of witnesses.\n\n > 3) The proclamation of banns for three weeks prior to the marriage. The banns were a loud public announcement on behalf of the marrying couple for three weeks prior to the marriage, to allow people to dispute or contradict it.\n\n > 4) The wedding in and the blessing of the Church (when the wedding actually took place in a church)\n\n > 5) Sexual Consummation. Legally speaking, anyhow--surviving evidence shows sexual consummation happened among the lower classes before the marriage in many cases.\n\nDoes this hold true in Scotland as well?\n\nAlso, in English literature and culture the bordertown of Gretna Green is described as a sort of old version of a Las Vegas wedding, where people could run over the border and get married quickly. Do you have any information on this?", "/u/itsallfolklore How do you work with oral histories and orality in folklore? I understand there has been a great deal of critique of early pioneers in the field such as the Grimm Brothers for writing down, well, essentially their own stories (middle class) dressed up in peasant clothes. How do folklorists deal with alternate or different folktales.\n\nAlso, I've been reading into erotic folk stories lately, any pointers you might have for me there?", "Directed at /u/Wedgehead, what sort of sourcework must you use to construct the identity of these Ancient Near-Eastern cultures? I imagine things that we might use now (diaries, letters) are somewhat few and far between.\n\nSecondly, abstractly related to the first, how can we use Ancient Near-Eastern religious belief, or folklore (i'm thinking Gilgamesh) to construct how these societies viewed themselves or their neighbors?", "/u/TheGreenReaper7 how would sexual masculinities be expressed? That is, what were they defined against? In England, for example, poets often defined themselves as masculine and asserted their masculinity by painting the Italian as effeminate, dissolute, and obsessed with buggery. Would this carry through to Wales or other places?", "For everyone: What kinds of sources do we use, and in what ways do we use them?", "To my mind Cultural History is, at its core, about the *meaning* of things. \n\nTake, for example, the recent debate about the meaning of the Confederate Flag in the United States.  This is the kind of thing cultural historians are interested in.  Of course, when talking about meaning you have to talk about meaning *to whom* because these are not universally agreed upon and might even be hotly contested. When historians turn their eye to this moment and talk about the contested meaning of the flag, they will be doing cultural history. Indeed there is already plenty of literature on the meaning of the Confederacy.  \n\nNote that the meaning might not be the same thing as what something is.  Describing the flag, how it was made, or even the battles of the American Civil War don't necessarily get you closer to answering the question.  You need to get at what people think, how they react, and what they say about things.  And that's not always easy depending on the sources you have available to you!\n\nFor my own work, I'm particularly interested in the ways that human bodies ascribe meaning and have meaning ascribed onto them.  When I study ballet in the Soviet Union, I am interested in the ways in which an aesthetic and style of movement that emerged in and represented an aristocratic and imperial era were reconciled (or weren't!) within an environment that was purportedly antagonistic to the aristocratic and imperial past. In what ways did Soviet artists and audiences understand ballet intellectually?  Did their intellectual understanding seem to conflict with their aesthetic understanding? (Spoilers: It seems to have!).  \n\nThe arts aren't the only things that carry meaning with them, the flag being just one example.  But cultural history can be done on practically an endless variety of topics.  Food, institutions, sports, art, political process, cars, and the list could go on and on. \n\nThe beginning of the AMA mentioned symbols - and I think this is at least partly correct.  The important thing to realize is that even things that aren't normally thought of as symbols carry a great deal of meaning with them.  Often time people don't even think of that meaning as culturally contingent. The usual give away is when people start talking about things that are \"natural.\"  Cultural Historians tend to question just how \"natural\" these things are and instead what to discover how the meaning arose, how it is expressed, and what people do with that meaning.", "This one is for /u/Mictlantecuhtli specifically, although of course anyone can chime in. \n\nI'm assuming that a great deal of work and debate goes into how we define a \"culture,\" particularly when what we have left is mainly archaeological remains. I'm also guessing that there's a great deal of work on the margins of cultures -- stuff like \"well this is definitely a shaft tomb, and that one over there is definitely not, but what about these things in the middle?\" \n\nI'm wondering if you can speak a bit to the other side of that, if possible. How do we study or how do we know what *internal* controls there were on a particular culture to, for example, keep building shaft tombs, or keep on creating *guachimonton* architecture, etc. Is it a conscious cultural choice, or is it something that people are so accustomed to that they don't even notice anymore? Who policed, internally, the outliers in that culture? ", "For everyone: why the resurgence of interest in material culture on the part of historians as of late? From the History of the World in a 100 Objects to Jane Bennet's *Vital Matter*, 'things' are pretty hot in the academy. Is it a desire to sidestep some of the messiness of texts, which were so thoroughly problematized by three decades of theory? Is it a move to make our methods and ambit more interdiscplinary? A simple matter of pragmatically working with a broader array of sources without unduly privileging text?", "I guess my question is mainly for /u/WedgeHead. \n\nHow *do* the cultures of the Acient Near East express their identity? Or, the other way around, what aspects do you study to arrive at an answer, what material do you use? And what social strata are present in the material, e.g., can you say anything about the middle/lower classes at all, or is it mainly elite communication? \n\nSorry for the many question marks and if the question comes of a bit broad! I'm mainly asking because my own research atm. goes into questions of identity and expression in Roman Germany, in the context of Epigraphic Culture. Which means that the things I look at are mostly names, liguistic peculiarities, the gods they worship and how they did that, the men/women they marry, their social status as well as iconography and portraits/statues (which allow us to look at the way people dressed or wanted to be portrayed to the outside world); so mainly funerary inscriptions and votive altars and the way they relate to the landscape and population around them - I'd find it *very* interesting to see how similar questions are asked in other cultural contexts (and with a different material corpus, I imagine)!\n\n", "Question for /u/TheGreenReaper7, I have a copy of Maurice Keen's *Chivalry* sitting on my bookshelf in the 'to-read' pile. To what extent is this book still a major work in the study of Chivalry and how has it been left behind in the ~30 years since it was first published? ", "How do you define a culture and how frequently do groups of individuals assert that they belong to one culture when in some real sense they belong to another culture.", "hello to user historiagrephour.   Did Gael and Gall of the same religion in Scotland see themselves as having a more important connection than Gael and Gael of different Christian sects?", "hello to user depanneur.  \nIs there any evidence that Irish people in the middle ages were consciously copying barbarian modes of dress and facial hair as reported in Latin texts?", "A kind of methodological question, do you think culture is \"real\" or is it created by observation? Given that \"culture\" imposes a uniformity on the lifeworlds of innumerable diverse individuals, can you actually talk about, for example, French culture independent if talking about French culture?", "This one is probably for /u/itsallfolklore. I recently picked up a collection of Russian fairy tales, which I'm very much enjoying. One of the things that's struck me though is the similarity to those that I learnt as a child (in Ireland). \n\nSome of this can be explained by open borrowing (eg Pushkin's *Fisherman and the Fish*) but it seems that a lot of elements of fairy tales are common (eg clever foxes, people-turning-into-animals, kidnapped wives, etc) across borders.\n\nSo is this a case of certain fairy/folk tales spreading across Europe? Or are these elements, and the stories that contain them, universal across peasant societies? Or indeed, are the various fairy tale taxonomies simply broad enough that you could use them to classify *any* tale, if you wished.\n\nBasically: how did fairy tales or their elements of these spread over time? If that's too broad a question, I'd welcome being pointed at any reading.\n\n[Edit: And, of course, thanks to everyone for doing this AMA.]", "What is the difference between a historical culture and a historical ethnicity?\n\nHow broadly can we stretch the category of \"a culture\" and still have it be meaningful? I imagine \"early modern Italian high-class ballet culture\" could be a useful construct, but \"Western culture\" might be near meaningless. ", "A question for all panelists:\n\nMy studies tend to focus on the fairly traditional aspect of high politics, diplomacy, and war. From what I've come across, it seems that historians like me (who I'll call \"traditionalists\" for lack of a better term) by and large neglect the methodologies of cultural historians. They are far more interested in things like interest group dynamics, theories of institutional behavior, and ideology (but ideology as it's studied in political science/international relations departments, rather than by cultural historians). Likewise, cultural historians seem to neglect those aspects of politics that traditionalist historians focus on. I'm probably being somewhat myopic here, but it seems that cultural historians focus almost solely on the \"holy trinity\" of race, class, and gender. This isn't to say that cultural historians are unconcerned with politics. From what I've come across, it seems that a major argument of cultural historians is that *everything* is political. Yet there appears to be a distinct lack of concern by cultural historians about the \"high politics\" analyzed by traditionalist historians. There are exceptions to this, with Krisitin Hoganson's *Fighting for American Manhood* being the example that first pops into my mind, but there does seem to be a general disconnect between the methodologies and findings of traditionalist historians and cultural historians. \n\nSo, to finally get to my question: Do you think this disconnect between traditionalist and cultural historians exists? If so, what explains it and how can it be reconciled?", "I was wondering what you all thought about the interdisciplinary nature of cultural history. One of you mentioned above that often art history departments are less interested in the thing-ness of things than actual historians are nowadays, which made me think about my own relationship to historical studies. \n\nIt seems like you are all trained as historians - which of course means very different things in different schools, nations, traditions - but nonetheless you must find yourselves often bumping into problems that are of a specifically literary nature, or a specifically art historical nature. \n\nI am trained in literary studies, but I would consider myself more of a cultural historian, and I often hear more textual people say that we are both bad historians and bad literary scholars. Jack of all trades, master of none! \n\nOf course these people are wrong, but how? \n\nHow do you overcome these training hurdles? Or do you think that the specific methodologies of cultural history are \"deep\" enough to cover all your bases? Or do you believe that we have to be one kind of cultural historian - more anthropological, more literary, or more iconographic? \n\nAnd finally, a practical question, why won't the rigid contours of academic departments soften to allow access to cultural historians? It often seems like if you have a degree in history, you can only work in history departments, and if you have a phd in literary studies, the only jobs open are in literature departments... "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["www.annalspornographie.com"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "52gkzv", "title": "In conflicts like The War Of The Roses, Thirty Years War, and Hundred Years War to name a few. Did the noblemen of that time ever express regret, sympathy or disgust that their conflicts were responsible for so many innocent peasants or civilian caught in the middle of it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/52gkzv/in_conflicts_like_the_war_of_the_roses_thirty/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d7kqj2s", "d7ks0k6"], "score": [7, 57], "text": ["As a follow up question:\nHow often or common was the justification of the human cost of these conflicts for the leaders involved the \"injustices\" suffered at the hands of the other side? How often or common was it said that the actions of one side were only necessary to defend against the other?", "Well... define \"innocent.\"\n\nI can only really speak with any degree of expertise on the Hundred Years War, so I'll confine my answer to that scope. But I think it's important to acknowledge that military violence against civilians was definitely a topic being discussed and debated at that time, most notably from a clerical perspective. I'll make several references here to Honore Bonet's *The Tree of Battles* (1381 or thereabouts), as it's a book that directly addresses this topic and was written by a cleric for a noble audience.\n\nBut essentially, principals of military conflict in the Hundred Years War were such that attacking illegitimate targets of violence was generally condemned. What constituted a legitimate target was, however, the subject of some debate. The \"commonplace\" military thought process was more or less as follows: By paying taxes (in terms of food or coin or what have you) to the opposing political structure, the peasants were therefore directly supporting the ability of the enemy to directly wage war, and therefore inflicting violence against them (and, more relevantly, taking their stuff) was justified. This was, of course, a rather pragmatic position (it's a lot easier to feed an army when you can forage off the land), as well as one with underlying significance as a challenge to the feudal order of the enemy (if lords can't defend their peasants, then they're failing to adhere to a principal responsibility in the late medieval social contract).\n\nOf course, it should be no surprise that Honore Bonet and other clerics and writers (such as Christine de Pizan in her 1415 *Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry*, which draws heavily from Bonet) did not approve of these justifications. One of the most fascinating parts of *The Tree of Battles* is how Bonet lays out a variety of different situations where violence against apparent noncombatants might or might not be allowed. Can soldiers take an old man long past fighting years captive? (No, unless he's an important advisor for the enemy). Can violence be inflicted upon priests? (No, so long as they're living up to their obligations and not acting as combatants themselves, *and they're allowed to defend themselves against unjust violence without counting as combatants or violating their responsibilities as priests). And so on, and so forth.\n\nThe question that this begs is, of course, if Bonet's recommendations and others like them were ever actually followed. Well... that might be less likely. Generally speaking, military necessity was decidedly on the side of the looting and the pillaging, provided all the legal preconditions lined up.\n\nAnd that's a very important \"provided\". I don't want to get too much into Just War Theory in this response, but remember when I mentioned earlier that the fact that civilians and peasants were actively paying tax to an opposing governmental structure was a critical element of the justification? Well, for that, you require a legitimate opposition, which means you need a just cause of war against the crown. And you can't conduct a legitimate private war against the king just on your lonesome, you essentially need to be working for another king who has a legitimate cause of war. There are accounts of the English looting and burning through the French countryside one day, only to start paying fair price for goods seized the very next day, after news came that a truce had been signed. And legitimate war was a legally enforced concept - in his *The Laws of War in the Middle Ages*, Maurice Keen describes accounts of a trial of a notorious mercenary. He had served the English for a time, lording over a bit of seized territory in France and extracting \"taxation\" from the local countryside, but when a truce was signed he maintained the same behavior. A halfhearted defense that he had changed his allegiance and now supported the King of Navarre in *his* war against the French crown was submitted in court, tried, and found lacking, and the mercenary was put to death.\n\nSo, to answer your original question, the best I can say is this:\n\nSome noblemen probably did express regret, sympathy, or disgust at the demise of noncombatants during the Hundred Years War. They were human, after all. But fundamentally, in a war between princes, those noncombatants about which you ask were considered legitimate targets for physical violence - \"caught in the middle\" wouldn't be an accurate descriptor for their plight. The accounts that survive bemoaning the injustices inflicted upon them were not noble in origin, though they were intended for a noble audience and seem to have been read and enjoyed by nobles. And cases of violence being committed against targets that were universally considered to be illegitimate targets - peacefully serving prisoners, for example, at no risk of escape - there would have been significant social condemnation.\n\n**Primary Sources:**\n\nBonet, Honore. *The Tree of Battles*. Translated by G. W. Coopland. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1949.\n\nFroissart, John. *The Chronicles of England, France, and Spain*. Translated by Thomas Jones. London: William Smith, 1839.\n\nde Pizan, Christine. *The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry*. Translated by Sumner Willard. University Park: University of Pennsylvania, 1999.\n\nde Venette, Jean. *The Chronicle of Jean de Venette.* Translated by Jean Birdsall. Edited by Richard A. Newhall. New York: Columbia University, 1953.\n\n**Secondary Sources:**\n\nAllmand, C. T. *The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-1450*. Cambridge University, 1988.\n\nContamine, Philippe. *War in the Middle Ages*. Translated by Michael Jones. New York: Basil, 1984.\n\nKeen, M. H. *Chivalry*. New Haven: University of Yale, 1984.\n\nKeen, M. H. *The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages*. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1965.\n\nSumption, Jonathan. *The Hundred Years War*. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1991.\n\nSynan, Edward A. \"St. Thomas Aquinas and the profession of arms.\" *Mediaeval Studies* 50 (1988): 404-437.\n\nReichberg, Gregory M. \"Thomas Aquinas on Military Prudence.\" *Journal of Military Ethics* 9 (2010): 262-275.\n\nWright, Nicholas. *Knights and Peasants: the Hundred Years War in the French Countryside*. Suffolk: Woodbridge, 1998."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "8hq163", "title": "From 1840 to 1890, scholars seem to agree that the US had a long stretch of terrible presidents (excepting Lincoln and Polk). What are the prevailing theories that explain why the electorate was choosing bad presidents for roughly 50 years?", "selftext": "I'm also interested in whether or not the factors at play during that time have any analogous factors acting today.  \n\nI tried to think about why this may be: I thought that maybe since this time frame came on the heels of the Second Great Awakening, that there may have been some cultural influences.  Or perhaps that there might have been a lot of trying to appease diametrically opposing groups with candidates who were in the \"middle\" of the issues at the time (that contributed to the Civil War).  \n\nBut I'm more interested in what historians think about this.  For reference, Wikipedia has a table that collects various scholar rankings of presidents: \n_URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hq163/from_1840_to_1890_scholars_seem_to_agree_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dylskul", "dyn968z"], "score": [33, 7], "text": ["What standards are used to judge \"best\" presidents in a historical sense? How do historians disentangle their own political biases from these standards?", "Gosh where to begin!   This is a little disjointed as I\u2019m trying to fit a bunch of branches in one skinny trunk, but I\u2019m also wanting to challenge the terrible label\u2026 On the whole, these Presidents were middling, not terrible. \nI'm going to start with Richard C. White: \"Political parties mattered far more than presidents, but these parties were not particularly ideological. They tapped deeper loyalties that arose out of (identity politics of the 19th century). People became Democrats or Republicans because of who they were more than because of the principles they espoused.\" White in his Oxford series has a running theme of \"the sufficiency of the common vs insufficiency of the uncommon.\"   \nBut to answer the question, historians of the 19th century have a much different appraisal of the 19th Century presidents than an aggregate of scholars/political scientists do. It's why Grant is having a love affair, Arthur is getting some love, and it's why probably Andrew Johnson and Rutherford B Hayes will be reexamined (to perhaps say they were terrible!). \n Yet, while 19th century historians want to take a more critical look at the presidents and elevate the time and their Presidents, it does not mean that the rankings should be changed. These Presidents were middling. \nYet, let\u2019s take a look at why they get knocked with being terrible\nAs a collective: \n1. Corruption  &  Political Divisions: Every four years was a different tale of corruption, whether in the nominating process, in the Executive Office, in the nominating process, in the local exploits of the party of power\u2026 Yet, for most of the time, the Executive and Legislative branches were often split. It was hard to pass sweeping legislation. Meaning, so much of the \u201ccorruption\u201d was not as sexy as we think of today. It was political partisanship. The spoils system wasn\u2019t as nefarious and undemocratic as usually spoken of. It was the death of James Garfield that changed the spoil system. \n2. Take Buchanan and Johnson. They immediately look bad in comparison to Lincoln, and most importantly, they clearly were not up to the task of resolving the divisions. They did not have the moral arc to confront the change from slave labor to free labor. With Johnson, it\u2019s almost a reversal of a bold direction for the country. \n3. Aloofness: Many of the presidents were aloof, some rumored to be drunks. A president like Pierce was a drunk due to seeing his son die. Often times, in these rankings, they are comparing a Grant to a modern president\u2026 It\u2019s why with Brands and others you are seeing a Grant renaissance. \n4. Not giving enough \u201ccredit\u201d to certain issues of the 19th century: \n\ta. Indian Wars: The Civil War ends. War does not. But it seems many texts jump from Civil War to Spanish-American War to WWI and to WWII.   So in these rankings, they don\u2019t get the bonus points\u2026 \n\tb. Building of American infrastructure  &  A New American Way of Life \n\t\tWe forget tariffs, canals, railroads, mail routes, judicial circles, supply routes, emigration routes, confronting Chinese immigration, developing towns, and a list of other \u201cinternal improvements\u201d dominated the legislative cycle. \n\tc.  Reconstruction had many successes and possibilities, and yet, it was all but dismantled. But to some degree, it was done according to political engagement.  The results might be worth ranking low, but the political process was working according to the inputs. The common American wanted competency. (Disenfranchisement, illiteracy, political grafts, inequality, dangerous classes, etc\u2026 limited who would consistently have a voice). \n\td. Presidents were growing presidential power \n\te. Immigration  &  White Supremacy: It\u2019s always the toughest question, do you knock a historical actor for having an immoral view, even if at the time, it was accepted? \n\tf. Wage Labor Taking Over America and Urban America \n\tf. Overall, you are seeing a theme of these\u2026  The Gilded Age, like today, was a time of sweeping changes. The real detriment is that the overall health of the nation seemed to be suffering with regular panics, poor health, the entrenchment of Jim Crow, etc\u2026. \n5. Sources: Reformer and critics dominate the primary sources. Historians like sexier topics. So the time and presidents are forgettable. The sexier public figures were not politicians or never became President.\n6. Electoral Process  &  Citizenship: Huge turnout, great enthusiasm for voting. Politics were entertainment. You were born into a party. The press was political.  \nOverall though, these Presidents are clearly middling at best. The public wins the spotlight, and constantly, historians find themselves asking  wondering what if Lincoln lived, or what if a president had the courage of a Lincoln. For me and others, the Gilded Age is a great example of how the common produces wins, not a President creating a Great Society. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Scholar_survey_results"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3gprap", "title": "Why was being an elevator operator considered so important? Why was it important enough to warrant a union?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gprap/why_was_being_an_elevator_operator_considered_so/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cu0neq6", "cu0om3n", "cu0tmif"], "score": [22, 43, 2], "text": ["Because the automatic elevator was only invented in the 1930s. They didn't become common until after the war, as buildings were built with them. \n\nElevator operators hadto be able to smoothly bring a car level with the floor, without jittering up and down, or leaving a drop-off to the floor or a ledge to catch the toe and trip the person. This took skill and practice.", "I think the important thing to remember is that early elevators were heavy machinery used primarily for industry. Think large steam-powered things. The first Elevator Union in the US was for Elevator Constructors, not simply operators. The change of elevator operation from an industrial job to a hospitality job follows the improvements in technology that allowed automating the complex and sometimes dangerous mechanisms of an elevator.\n\nDeaths in early elevators due to people falling down shafts or being crushed or caught between the floors and elevator carriage made having a properly trained operator desirable. \n\nIt took some time to really create a fully automated system usable even by children. Early elevators would have an operator control a lever to stop the elevator properly level with the floor and operate the doors. This required training, and as technology improved building and business owners would add other services that operators provided so they became a part of the service and hospitality industry. Things like making announcements, escorting guests, and delivering mail.\n\nHave a look at:[Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower, 1889, by \nRobert M. Vogel](_URL_0_), it has lots of nice pictures that show the complexities of elevators at the time. \n\nThere's also [The History of the American Elevator Industry 1850-2001](_URL_1_)(pdf) that may be interesting to you.\n", "Follow up question, what happened to the elevator Union?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32282/32282-h/32282-h.htm", "http://www.elevatorpreservation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/historyofelevatorindustry1850-2001-wq.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "3cy3c0", "title": "Was Philosophy prominent in Africa?", "selftext": "I ask this because I want to know if there were schools of Philosophy in specific African countries, enough to distinguish itself as African Philosophy. \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cy3c0/was_philosophy_prominent_in_africa/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct0acqm", "ct0gylz", "ct0jt7r"], "score": [23, 6, 2], "text": ["Do you have a specific time period and region in mind? Alexandria in particular hosted many Greek philosophers during the Hellenic and Roman periods, St Augustine was born in Hippo Regius (Algeria) and the Madrassahs in Morocco were particularly renowned during the Umayyad Caliphate and Cordoba periods. \n\nYet i somehow gather from your question that you might be more interested in Sub-Saharan Africa. Would I be correct in that assumption?\n\nedit: Augustine was born in a smaller town in Numidia, further west of Hippo Regius. ", "Another subreddit that may prove helpful is /r/askphilosophy.  \n\n", "Ancient Egypt had a pretty strong philosophical tradition. There are even some pretty admiring passages about Egyptian philosophy in Ancient Greek writing (e.g. Plato's *Timaios* or Aristotle's *Politics*).\n\nHere are some texts and names to get you started, if you are interested:\n\n* Imhotep (~2700 BCE)\n* Instructions of Kagemni (~2500 BCE)\n* Ptahhotep (~2350 BCE)\n* Instructions of Merikare (~1990 BCE)\n* The Debate Between a Man and his Soul (~1900 BCE)\n* The Eloquent Peasant (~1800 BCE)\n* Instructions of Ani (~1500 BCE)\n* Echnaton (~1350 BCE)\n* Instructions of Amenemope (~1200 BCE)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3lky13", "title": "How did paralyzed people get around prior to the invention of a wheelchair?", "selftext": "I'm paralyzed waist down as a result of an accident. \n\nI have a love hate relationship with my wheelchair. I hate it for what it is. But I'm forever grateful that a device exists which I can use to get around, keep active, and be independent.  \n\nSpinal cord injury while not very common still has always occurred..\n\nI wonder how those peoples lives were, say, 300 years ago? \n\nNot just the wheelchair but also other advances like medication for pain and catheters to be able to urinate. \n\nI know these weren't around until recent times. 19th century? \n\nSo what was life like for the paralyzed prior to the introduction of wheelchairs and medications to improve quality of life? \n\nWere they seen as NOT part of society?  Did they live their lives on bed rest? Did their life expectancy go down considerably?\n\nI'm so intrigued.... ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lky13/how_did_paralyzed_people_get_around_prior_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv7dmnu", "cv7hkzz", "cv7hx1p"], "score": [14, 23, 6], "text": ["Not to discourage further discussion of an interesting topic, but you may find some more information in the answers to a past question like [How did different cultures in different time periods treat the disabled?](_URL_0_) I'm not sure any of those directly answer your question, but they are similar and interesting.", "Medieval western Europe:\n\nIn cases of paralysis or impaired mobility, medical texts prescribe care (treatment/hopeful cure) like applying heat, ingesting various herbs and spices, and the odd instruction to wrap the impaired limb in fox fur or breathe in vapors from the fires of purgatory. Based on modern medicine, I'd guess the first two, at least, were focused towards pain relief to some extent. I've never seen anything about help in urination, but medical texts aren't my specialty so that's not saying much.\n\nSocially, late medieval guilds generally had statutes to provide financially for members who became disabled, due to sickness, old age, or industrial accidents like carpenters who had a house fall down on them (London 1389 for the falling house; most are more general). Poor people without familial support generally ended up begging, although some found shelter in hospitals (shelters) typically run by religious houses. Most paralyzed people probably ended up financially dependent on their families.\n\nAs far as getting around, probably the best details come from saints' lives and miracle stories. Some mobility-impaired people were able to drag themselves to shrines (in hopes of a cure) with the aid of crutches, or by crawling. Most stories involve the person being \"brought\" or \"carried\" by others--family, friends, occasionally local people they paid. Carrying might mean in a basket, on a horse, in someone's arms, on a stretcher or a litter. A few miracle stories also let us know that the person seeking the miraculous cure had help getting dressed, out of bed, etc. from family members.\n\nI have zero clue about impact on life expectancy. A lot of the sources are concerned with impaired mobility that comes with old age, which skirts the question; the emphasis in the miracle stories is obviously on how the petitioner was eventually cured.\n\nIf you're interested in reading more about the Middle Ages, OP: the foundational source on this for medieval is Irina Metzler, *Disability in Medieval Europe*, although a lot of it is concerned with the theology and philosophy of disability. Her *A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages* is probably better for your interests here, but it is cost-prohibitive unless you have access to a university library. Sharon Farmer, *Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris*, draws on the miracle stories, so it actually reveals a surprising amount about navigating various disabilities including paralysis.", "Hi! You'll likely get more focused, in-depth answers if you could specify a region/culture/country and time period, but meanwhile, there's a short comment here from u/NurseAngela\n\n* [What was life like for physically disabled people prior to the invention of wheelchairs?](_URL_0_) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13nmgc/how_did_different_cultures_in_different_time/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j1zdl/what_was_life_like_for_physically_disabled_people/"]]}
{"q_id": "3vgv7x", "title": "Why did General Longstreet appear to shift his views so radically after the Civil War?", "selftext": "I realize Wikipedia is not particularly reliable, but I'm going to presume that it gets basic facts correct like:\n\n* He became a Republican\n* Led an African American militia against a mob of white supremacists\n\nWhile I realize the dude is probably far from being considered progressive by modern standards, this seems pretty extreme for an ex-Confederate General. What caused this relatively drastic shift in beliefs?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3vgv7x/why_did_general_longstreet_appear_to_shift_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxnxmb5"], "score": [16], "text": ["Without commenting on Longstreet himself, I think it's worth noting that just because someone fought for a particular side in the Civil War that doesn't *necessarily* mean they were perfectly ideologically aligned with that side. In a society in which family and community ties were extremely important, people often fought for reasons of loyalty to their family/city/state to the exclusion of ideological considerations. Even Robert E Lee had complex and contradictory attitudes toward the issues of slavery and secession."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2j1x8e", "title": "Were entire villages in Europe deserted during the Black Death? If so, what became of them?", "selftext": "I've heard it said that entire villages were wiped out but I never knew if it was true. What happened to the towns? Were they just left alone until it was all over? Were they sacked?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2j1x8e/were_entire_villages_in_europe_deserted_during/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cl869nn", "cl8ejkk"], "score": [19, 6], "text": ["Yes, entire villages were struck so hard that they were abandoned. In Sweden, there's a specific name for villages that were abandoned - \"b\u00f6le\" was added to the name of the village when it was re-populated again. It might not have been entirely eradicated, but enough so that people could move in from the outside and claim the abandoned land, farmhouses and so on.\n\nThere are hundreds of places in Sweden with the name \"b\u00f6le\" added before or after the village name, such as B\u00f6le, R\u00e4tansb\u00f6le, K\u00e5rb\u00f6le, Baggb\u00f6le, Klassb\u00f6le, Brandbol, Klassbol and \u00c4ndebol.", "Entire farms and villages in Norway were decimated after the black plague, in the span of two years the plague killed half of Norways population.\n(Some say two thirds of the population.)\n\nSome families would take names such as \u00d8degaard\n(\u00d8degaarden, \u00d8de-Raa, \u00d8de-Rud, \u00d8deg\u00e5rd) \u00d8de=Deserted/abandoned Gaard/G\u00e5rd=Farm.\nwhen they took over the land/farm.\n\n\nAfter the Black plague ravaged the country, there was no longer an elite or higher educated people that could hold the state and run the country.\n\nNorway gradually lost control of the country, Denmark seized controll and created an union.\n\nThe Norwegian goverment was disolved and the country became a part of Denmark.\n\nTo this day there stil is no elite in norway other than the royal family who are Danish descendants.\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "43dcv0", "title": "Is it true that heavy alcoholics were more resistant to the black plague?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43dcv0/is_it_true_that_heavy_alcoholics_were_more/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czhwu63"], "score": [8], "text": ["Where did you hear/read this claim? Was it sourced?  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5bg7nj", "title": "\u2018Don\u2019t forget Harold, the last English King before the Norman Conquest, was Orthodox.\u2019 Has this any truth? in it?", "selftext": "The claim is [here](_URL_1_) but it is mentioned in a few other places, plus Fr Michael Wood also claims that \u2018Aristobulus, Britain\u2019s first bishop (in AD 37) was Orthodox\u2019.\n\nI understand that previous to the Great Schism (1054 CE) there were far more liturgies spread around Europe (including England) and that as the Roman Church has been preeminent for the last 950 years or so in the west, we have forgotten that it might not have been so before that.\n\nIt's also known that there was trade with Byzantium in the early middle ages, and even some evidence that Britain was considered part of [Byzantium's sphere of influence](_URL_0_)\n\nSo, further to my first question, how strongly orthodox was England in the early middle ages?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5bg7nj/dont_forget_harold_the_last_english_king_before/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d9pgvxv"], "score": [14], "text": ["I don't think there's a clear historical answer to this, since the split between churches was a process that wasn't complete until long after 1066. Certainly, English and Eastern Christians at the time did not consider themselves part of a single unified church opposed to Roman Christianity. \n\nThe theological answer is that the Orthodox church believes it descends from the original, literally orthodox, version of Christianity that once existed throughout Europe. At some point the Roman church fell into error and the two churches split. Before the split, most \"Eastern\" and \"Western\" Christians could be considered in some sense Orthodox (excluding Arians, Donatists, and so on). \n\nSo Eastern Christians can try to project their currently defined beliefs back on historical churches and say whether they were \"Orthodox\" or not. They commonly believe that the Roman church fell into error with the addition of the Filioque clause to the Nicene Creed, and that the split became permanent with the \"Great Schism\" of 1054 (although this certainly wasn't clear at the time).\n\nFor example, the English king Edward Martyr is accepted as a saint by the Orthodox, since they believe the Filioque was not in use in England during his lifetime. However, it's debated whether Edward the Confessor should also be considered a saint, partly because he died long after the Filioque was used by the Pope in 1014, and therefore possibly accepted the clause. \n\nIn any case, a fringe group of Orthodox theologians argue that the Anglo-Saxon Church was not in communion with Rome in 1054 and was only brought back into line in 1066, when William was given papal blessing for his invasion, apparently because Harold was an oathbreaker and the English Church was corrupt and failing to pay tribute to Rome. \n\nIf the Anglo-Saxon church did not accept the Filioque (very unlikely) and was not subject to Rome in 1066, then it could be considered \"Orthodox\" if you really want to stretch the definition. But it's a pretty silly argument in my view because it requires projecting modern religious definitions back to a time before they really existed. In any case, the Anglo-Saxons did not use the Greek Rite and were certainly more influenced by Rome than Constantinople. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/04/heptarchy-harun-ibn-yahya.html", "http://www.byzantineambassador.co.uk/hieromonkmichaelwood"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "29t9qb", "title": "For how long has \"denialism\" been a thing? Did people in other centuries deny important historical events ever occurred?", "selftext": "Obviously the most notable modern example is holocaust denial or extreme Japanese nationalists that deny the Nanking Massacre occurred. On a lower level, you have websites like InfoWars which rush to claim that virtually every tragedy is staged by the US government and didn't actually occur.\n\nIs this a strictly modern phenomenon, or has denialism been something which has always had it's \"place\" in society? Are there any notable historical examples of denialist movements akin to holocaust denial existing throughout history?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29t9qb/for_how_long_has_denialism_been_a_thing_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cioxsry"], "score": [13], "text": ["One of the best examples of this would be the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.). He ordered the destruction of almost all books in the empire except for ones about astrology, agriculture, medicine, divination, and the history of the State of Qin. So all history and philosophy from before his reign. He literally wanted Chinese history to start with him, and he ordered the execution of hundreds of scholars who were found to be hiding forbidden books.\n\nThis was also the guy that was obsessed with immortality and drank potions with Mercury in them, which were likely one of the biggest contributors to his demise."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "35wwlw", "title": "In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, there are slaves that that were only 1/16th and 1/32nd black. How common was this in the South and are there cases of slaves that had even less black heritage?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35wwlw/in_mark_twains_puddnhead_wilson_there_are_slaves/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cr8mwx5", "cr8okkk", "cr8u0kd"], "score": [50, 46, 10], "text": ["In that story, the percentages are meant to be satirical. Twain's drawing attention to the fact that really, there's no difference between the slave and the enslaver.", "First, it's worth noting that the percentage of African ancestry doesn't always represent the phenotype, since genetic expression is a complex thing. There are hundreds of accounts of quadroon slaves (1/4 black) who were reported to be whiter looking than most white people, whiter-looking than their own owners. There are a lot of reports from that era of people complaining - not about slavery, but about white slavery because these mulatto slaves looked too completely white.\n\nAs for how low one's black ancestry could go and still be sold as slave, there are plenty of examples of 1/16 and 1/32. Or even lower.\n\nFor example, Reverend Calvin Fairbank, a methodist minister and abolitionist from New York wrote about a girl named Eliza who was 1/64 black, and whom he purchased at a slave auction in Kentucky:\n\n*I only remember that it was early in May, 1843, that my sympathy and patriotism were roused in behalf of one of the most beautiful and exquisite young girls one could expect to find in freedom or slavery. She was the daughter of her master, whose name I withhold for laudable reasons, and was as free of African blood as Kate McFarland, being only one sixty-fourth African. She was self-educated, and accomplished in literature and social manners, in spite of the institution cursing her race ; and her heartless, jealous mistress had doomed her to be sold on the block, hating her for her beauty and accomplishments.*\n\n*Eliza had been confined in an upper room of the Lexington jail. She recognized me as I was walking in the jail-yard, and drew my attention by tapping upon the window. I called upon her in her room, learned her situation, and hastened to Cincinnati to Levi Coffin, then with him to Hon. S. P. Chase, Nicholas Longworth, Samuel Lewis and others, returning to Lexington with twenty-two hundred and seventy-five dollars, and a paper authorizing me to draw twenty-five thousand if necessary to save the girl.*\n\nHe goes on to describe that when she was put on the auction block, he got into a bidding war with a Frenchman who coveted the girl, but he outbid the Frenchman and was able to buy Eliza for $1485. Eliza was then freed and taken to Cincinnati, where she eventually married and lived as a white woman. Only a few people knew she had once been a slave.\n\nHe mentions that her master (who was also her father) was glad that she had been freed, and never intended to sell her on the auction block but was forced to do so by his wife. He contributed $100 towards the money that went into buying and freeing her.\n\nI haven't come across any statistics of how many slaves had 1/16 or 1/32 or 1/64 African ancestry, but there were certainly some. It would have been pretty inconsequential just how much African ancestry they had, because legally the one-drop rule or maternal inheritance didn't care about fractions, and appearance-wise it didn't take much to make the person look white. As lots of people have reported, there were many, many quadroons that looked clearly and unambiguously white but were kept and sold as slaves. The \"fancy trade\", which was especially prominent in New Orleans and Kentucky specialized in white-looking young women who were sold for prostitution in bordellos or as mistresses to the wealthy.\n\nEdit: The extract I quoted above is from the book \"*Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times: How he fought the good fight to prepare the Way*\" which was published by R.R. McCabe  &  Co. in Chicago in 1890.", "Not uncommon. There is a very striking picture of some emancipated slaves that appeared in Harper's magazine in 1864, with an explanation of who the emancipated slaves were. A couple of them were some kids who are white, but were slaves. The photo and description was designed to bring sympathy to the abolitionist movement by making people feel empathy with the white slaves, even if they couldn't identify with the black slaves. \n\n\nPic here:\n_URL_0_\n\nThe description of some of the people in the photos:\n\nTo the Editor of Harper's Weekly: \n\nTHE group of emancipated slaves whose portraits I send you were brought by Colonel Hanks and Mr. Philip Bacon from New Orleans, where they were set free by General Butler. Mr. Bacon went to New Orleans with our army, and was for eighteen months employed as Assistant-Superintendent of Freedmen, under the care of Colonel Hanks. He established the first school in Louisiana for emancipated slaves, and these children were among his pupils. He will soon return to Louisiana to resume his labor. \n\nREBECCA HUGER is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father's house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself. To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood. In the few months during which she has been at school she has learned to read well, and writes as neatly as most children of her age\u2026\n\nROSINA DOWNS is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair. Her father is in the rebel army. She has one sister as white as herself, and three brothers who are darker\u2026 \n\nCHARLES TAYLOR is eight years old. His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky. Three out of five boys in any school in New York are darker than he. Yet this white boy, with his mother, as he declares, has been twice sold as a slave. First by his father and \"owner,\" Alexander Wethers, of Lewis County, Virginia, to a slave-trader named Harrison, who said them to Mr. Thornhill of New Orleans. This man fled at the approach of our army, and his slaves were liberated by General Butler. The boy is decidedly intelligent, and though he has been at school less than a year he reads and writes very well. His mother \u2026\n\nHarper\u2019s Weekly, January 30 1864\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.frantzkebreau.com/uploads/5/4/8/7/5487562/2248303_orig.jpg?248"]]}
{"q_id": "bk1k9r", "title": "What did people do before modern medicine when they tore a major ligament such as an ACL or Achilles tendon? Was life over or did they attempt a rudimentary fix?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bk1k9r/what_did_people_do_before_modern_medicine_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["emdt9s4"], "score": [135], "text": ["First things first, ligaments are very different to tendons.  Ligaments connect bone to bone; tendons connect muscle to bone.  If you injure a ligament, your joint will be destablized; if you injure a tendon, the muscle it attaches to will no longer be able to usefully pull on anything.  \n\nIn response to your question, it wasn't until Avicenna, a thousand years ago, that tendon repair was well documented and recommended.  Galen describes one instance of tendon repair on an injured gladiator but generally recommended against it.   The vast majority of the world population even in Avicenna's time did not have access to Avicenna or the surgeons he trained, so the answer to your question is... live as best they could.  \n\nACL repair as a modern surgery is only about 100 years old.  You can function reasonably well with a torn knee ligament by the way -- you'll certainly have trouble doing anything athletic, and your knee may buckle frequently, but you should be able to walk.  \n\nFurther reading:\nInsights into Avicenna\u2019s knowledge of the science of orthopedics.  Behnam Dalfardi et al.  World journal of orthopedics 5 (1), 67, 2014"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1l0c8z", "title": "Stripping Enemy Armour in Battle, e.g. The Iliad", "selftext": "I had no idea whether to post this here or in r/Literature but just incase this is a true historical phenomenon, I'll ask it here.\n\nI'm currently on my first read through of Homer. I started with the Odyssey and am now on the Iliad.\n\nAn odd, recurring action I've noticed is opponents stripping their enemies of armour in the heat of battle. Now perhaps it's just me, but this doesn't seem particularly practical. Thousands of men fighting hand to hand, arrows flying everywhere, and soldiers are looting corpses.\n\n\u201cBut now the son of Mecisteus hacked the force from beneath them both and loosed their gleaming limbs and tore the armor off the dead men's shoulders... Antiphus he hacked with a sword across the ear and hurled him from his chariot, rushing fast to rip the splendid armor off their bodies... his knees went limp as Eurypylus rushed in, starting to rip the armor from his shoulders.\u201d - Excerpts From: Robert Homer  &  Fagles. \u201cThe Iliad.\u201d Viking.\n\nIs this poetic license, or did soldiers really try to loot heavy armour in the midst of a battle? Is it even looting, or is it some sort of desecration or signal of victory?\n\nIt's a strange question I'm sure and I hope I chose the correct subreddit. Thanks everyone!\n\nEDIT: I apologise that the thread title is not in the form of a question. I cannot edit it but if it needs to be changed by a mod, this might be better: \"Did the Ancient Greeks strip enemy armour in the midst of battle? (Source: The Iliad)\"\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l0c8z/stripping_enemy_armour_in_battle_eg_the_iliad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbuinjr", "cbulth4", "cbuo6f1", "cbuqf7t"], "score": [69, 15, 10, 4], "text": ["It has to do with the way Greek soliders gained \"glory\" or \"renown\" (these are English translations that probably don't do the initial concept justice). The Greek term was \"kleos,\" and in order to get this glory on the battlefield, you not only had to accomplish certain things, but you had to make sure that others saw you do so. Glory in private didn't really count; the point was to make people talk about you.\n\nIf you killed your enemy on the battlefield, maybe people saw it or maybe they didn't, but if you took their armor, no one could say that you weren't an accomplished warrior. Stripping the arms and armor of the vanquished was a physical sign of the presence of kleos, or glory.\n\nSPOILERS - This is why you'll see such an enormous fight over the armor of Achilles worn by Patroclus. When Patroclus dies, both sides realize that there's basically no bigger prize in Ilion than that set of armor. Of course, when Hector ends up with it, his fate is pretty much sealed. You'll also see that post-Patroclus' death, Achilles gets another set of armor made by Hephaestus and delivered by Thetis. Legend had it that, after the fall of Troy and the death of Achilles by Paris' arrow, Ajax and Odysseus both feel they deserve Achilles' armor and make their cases. When Odysseus wins by eloquence, Ajax falls on his own sword and kills himself. He missed out on the kleos he felt he deserved.", "From van Wees, he postulates that the battle scenes from the Iliad were modeled on Dark/Iron Age warfare into the Archaic Age (before the development of hoplite warfare. That warfare was essentially skirmishing between bands of men who clustered around warrior elites. Each person was expected to take a turn at the front skirmishing before returning to the rear. Occasionally they'd group up and rush, dispersing the other side back and that would allow them to quickly strip a dead enemy before pulling back. Skirmishing resumes. ", "Its fairly common in more primitive cultures for this to happen. There are documented cases of it occurring in Roman sources, where it's noted that, for example, the Gauls and the Bastarnae would strip the slain. I'm not certain whether these formulae in the *Iliad* represent a pre-Dorian tradition or whether they are a Dark Age tradition. However, this was probably done during the early Dark Age at least, when it seems probable that massed formations did not encounter each other. Keep in mind that in Homer anyone stripping an enemy rarely does so unopposed. Other champions will jump in to rescue their slain comrades from disgrace, and frequently the bodies of the slains become mosh-pits for confused and bloody melees. Also, keep in mind that these guys are *champions*. The rank and file soldiers, who rarely figure in Homer except as vague references to mobs of skirmishers running around (except for the great bit when the Greeks unite and form a phalanx before the walls). They don't mess with the champions, ever. Also, one other thing. Homer doesn't represent a form of warfare that was ever used, at least not altogether. There are instances when Homer refers to an actual practice that was done in war at some period or another, but they're confused and muddled and all sorts of warped.", "To add to the excellent answers on \"kleos\", do note that bronze armour was expensive, to the point of being a noticeable part of the assets even of landowners. A suit of armour, \"lightly used\", was a highly significant piece of loot - and more portable than livestock, which had to be fed. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4zsx7j", "title": "When in history did the firebombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. start being considered as disproportionate?", "selftext": "After hearing about Dresden/Tokyo, etc. on Reddit for so long, I decided to form my own opinion and do my own research. I was familiar with the Blitz, and the concept of total war (i.e. \"gloves are off on all sides\" warfare), but I was unaware of the Coventry Blitz. Similarly, I did not know about the Rotterdam Blitz, when, on May 14, 1940, Nazi warplanes razed Rotterdam to the ground *while the city was surrendering*. \n\nWith atrocities like the Blitzes and Pearl Harbor fresh in the Allies' minds, I think it would have been logical if a small number of people had seen the firebombings in places like Dresden, Kobe, Hamburg and Tokyo as excessive and disproportionate. Especially in the era of total war.\n\nIt is often said on Reddit (and mocked by /r/badhistory), that the firebombing of Dresden on February 13-15, 1945 was a war crime since the Allies deliberately targeted civilians for no reason, and the city served no military purpose whatsoever. I was skeptical, so I did some digging. Sure enough, true to the principles of total war, Dresden was a key manufacturing, logistics and railway hub for the Eastern Front. It just also happened to be a city with an immense amount of arts and culture. However, to say that Dresden was purely a civilian city doesn't jive with how the Nazis pursued total war.\n\nI like to watch old clips of news broadcasts from Operation Desert Shield/Storm on Youtube. It was clear from hearing Gen. Schwartzkopf, Gen. Kelly, BGen. Neal, etc. speak that the commanders took pains to avoid indiscriminate bombing or targeting civilians, to avoid the kind of bad publicity that B-52 saturation bombing in Vietnam generated. Such pains were magnified by the bombing of the baby milk factory and the Amiriyah shelter bombing.\n\nU.S. commanders were keen to point out that Hussein weaved his war machine within the civilian infrastructure, such as the communications bunker in the basement of the al-Rashid Hotel. It turned out that the Finnish manufacturer of the Amiriyah shelter admitted (in an interview with a newspaper in Finland) that the Iraqi Army used the bottom floor of the shelter as a command post, and secretly placed civilians in the top floor at night, unbeknownst to the Coalition.\n\nAnd yet, the Coalition backed off striking places like the baby formula factory or the Amiriyah shelter more often than not, to avoid bad press in the west as well as in the Arab World. If Desert Storm had been fought by WWII total war standards, Baghdad would have been razed to the ground and hundreds of thousands of civilians would have died.\n\nPerhaps after WWII and the advent of nuclear weapons, it was finally decided that human beings are worth more alive than dead (as globalization spread). Or, maybe nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ICBMs became far, far more efficient than total war could ever be. In any case, I don't think there have been any large-scale wars that utilize the principle of total war, since WWII. Maybe the Korean War.\n\nAt any rate, the reason why I went on this tangent is because we are of a generation that has not seen the horrors of total war like our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. We weren't there, we don't know what it was like to survive the Blitz in Tube stations, or see half your city wiped off the face of the earth by B-29 firebombing runs. So that tints our perception of history. Maybe Dresden/Hamburg/Tokyo/etc. *wasn't* seen as excessive or as a war crime back then. I want to know when it started to be considered as such.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zsx7j/when_in_history_did_the_firebombings_of_dresden/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6ysklr", "d6zbdsf"], "score": [43, 6], "text": ["One of the more useful resources I encountered on this point was the excellent documentary *The Fog of War*, centered largely around conversations conducted with Robert McNamara. McNamara is most famous for his role in the escalation of the Vietnam War, but in my mind he is a central figure in considering the morality of saturation bombing by the United States.\n\nMcNamara worked under the somewhat infamous General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was the father of the doctrine of saturation bombing, and McNamara worked under his command conducting statistical analyses to study this strategy. McNamara would later go on to denounce this doctrine in stark terms. From the Fog of War documentary:\n\n > LeMay said, \"If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.\" And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?\n\nOf course, this is McNamara many, many years after the firebombing of Japan, with McNamara in his twilight years, likely trying to salvage his legacy by demonstrating remorse, though that's just speculation on my part. The fact that at the time he supported the logistics of firebombing suggests he did not have such a serious moral qualm at the time, however.\n\nWe can find a more useful measure of the time line of when the American Department of Defense began to critically evaluate whether firebombing, or just general \"saturation bombing\" constituted a war crime.\n\nThis evaluation may have began with the United State Strategic Bombing Survey, initiated by the US Secretary of War Stimson at the direction of President Roosevelt. This study concluded that saturation bombing failed to achieve many of its strategic goals, mostly relating to the productivity of Axis powers' war economies. If we interpret the above quote from General LeMay literally, we can see that this report in many ways began to implicitly call into question the morality of saturation bombing by calling into question its strategic soundness. This study was released in 1944. Interestingly, no such study was conducted by DoD to evaluate the effectiveness of the extensive aerial bombing campaign of North Vietnam, though by then the US military largely used the parlance of \"strategic bombing\" rather than \"saturation bombing\" to describe its aerial bombing doctrine.\n\nSo the short answer is that it may have been apparent to the US military *during* World War II, and it at least was implicitly considered distasteful by DOD at the time of Vietnam War. \n\nSources: \n\n* [Fog of War transcript](_URL_1_)\n* [US Strategic Bombing Survey](_URL_0_)", "Looking more at the European theatre, the area bombing campaign certainly was seen as disproportionate or immoral by contemporary observers. Things are a little murky though because of the differences between stated aims, actual aims, and actual methods. It's also important to note that the law on protection of civilians was more hazy in WW2 than now, so using the term \"war crime\" can be anachronistic.\n\nQuotes here are from *Bomber Command* by Max Hastings.\n\nIn the UK, bomber command held to the idea of using bombing to break the enemy's morale, by making conditions unbearable for civilians. This would clearly be considered a war crime by current standards. And at the time it was widely deemed unacceptable, including by Churchill and the US establishment. However early attempts at precision bombing proved futile. The smallest target the bombers could reliably hit was a city. Since the means weren't up to targeting anything other than cities, that's what the bombers targeted.\n\nIn theory this was aimed at the destruction of military targets, but this was effectively a smokescreen. In practice, they destroyed cities. Since this accorded with what Bomber Command wanted to do anyway they were happy to continue. When it entered the war, the USAAF was drawn into this approach. While it professed to be hitting military targets, in practice this was indistinguishable from destroying cities. Only later did it develop a more targeted (and, arguably, effective) approach, particularly its campaign against German oil infrastructure. Bomber Command resisted committing resources to this campaign, almost to the point of insubordination.\n\nQuestions of proportionality, and even effectiveness, were not high up for Bomber Command, and not much more important for US commanders.\n\nThis approach certainly drew criticism in the UK at the time, including in Parliament (I can't find the name of the most notable MP right now) and, oddly, the chaplain of Bomber Command itself. So questions over its morality were being raised, but probably not being given a great deal of attention.\n\nAs for Dresden itself, as an operation, the bombing was not notably different from the bombing of dozens of other cities. The aims, methods, and even level of destruction, were similar. However two things made it notable. The first was that it came at a time when Germany was clearly collapsing. The stated objective, which was essentially to cause disruption of German logistics and communications, was harder to justify as proportionate. Second, Dresden was a city known by educated people in England, a familiar name (unlike, say, Darmstadt), one with emotional resonance.\n\n > For the first time since the bomber offensive began, on the news of the destruction of Dresden a major wave of anger and dismay swept through Whitehall and the Air Ministry, echoed in Parliament, and finally reached the gates of High Wycombe. Urgent questions were asked by important people about the reasons for destroying the city.\n\n > Concern was heightened by the release of an Associated Press dispatch from [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] on 17 February, in which a correspondent reported that 'Allied air chiefs' had at last embarked on 'deliberate terror bombing of German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hasten doom'.\n\nChurchill composed a (somewhat self-serving) memo for the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Chiefs of Air Staff:\n\n > It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing ... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon miltary objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.\n\nMax Hastings argues that Dresden was a turning point for opinions of the saturation bombing campaign, a point when its realities could no longer be ignored or excused so easily, and when a considerable ambivalence entered the national view of the campaign."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/#pto", "http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "4p2qa9", "title": "[Meta] Has there ever been a significant disagreement in answering a question on this subreddit?", "selftext": "I've been a regular reader of this subreddit for several years now.  Although I am not a historian, I recognize that there is some wiggle room in interpretation of data and historiography in general.  Pretty near every single answered post I have come across (to my recollection), however, has contained either one \"winning\" answer (by which I mean, one person answers the question so effectively that no one else attempts OR no other answer receives any where near the same amount of upvotes) or several harmonious answers.  Has there ever been a serious disagreement in answering a question on this subreddit though?  If not, why do you suspect that that is?  Or if it is merely uncommon to find disagreement, why?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4p2qa9/meta_has_there_ever_been_a_significant/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d4hn6ff", "d4ho12g", "d4hqwsj", "d4iawca", "d4il75z"], "score": [98, 36, 8, 5, 3], "text": ["Cordial disagreement and discussion do occur on a fairly frequent basis here - indeed, differing scholarly interpretations have been the driving forces behind some of the best discussions I've seen on /r/AskHistorians in the past. I'll leave in-depth discussion of historiography to those whose prose can do it better justice, but just as an example of a couple of disagreements in which I've been involved in the past:\n\nIn [this](_URL_0_) discussion of naval aspects of the Winter War, I debated with /u/TehRuru34 about several aspects of the conflict. This was a fascinating and humbling exchange for me, as /u/TehRuru34 firstly caught me out on a mistake I had made in my own notes about the calibre of several Finnish naval gun emplacements - I had recorded the largest of them as 16 inch guns when the source I was citing stated they were 12 inch guns - and additionally because it highlighted the ongoing disagreements in more scholarly accounts of the conflict. As I discuss in my edit of the original post, the book from which I drew my discussion of the Soviet battleship *Marat* and cruiser *Kirov* clashes with the sources /u/Tehruru34 presented. Trotter, in *Frozen Hell,* claimed that *Marat* had been damaged in an engagement with Finnish coastal artillery in the early days of the conflict, while Soviet primary records indicate the ship resumed active operations so soon after the engagement that it clearly had not required repairs. \n\nIn hindsight, this was an exchange that really highlighted for me the deeply flawed nature of English-language historical accounts of the Winter War, and was a contributing factor to my resigning my flair on the topic. My reliability as a historian of the Winter War is only as good as the reliability of my sources, and the unfortunate reality of the situation is that those sources are by and large either extremely dated or lacking academic integrity. As I've found myself locking horns with /u/Holokyn-Kolokyn, Tehruru34, and others, who have often had a firmer basis in more recent, scholarly publications in Finnish or Russian, it's been a fascinating and humbling exercise in re-examining the reliability of the sources I draw upon.\n\nMore broadly, it's these kinds of discussions which I feel really can contribute to /r/AskHistorians in a truly wonderful manner. While it's of course embarrassing to make mistakes or indeed discover that the sources upon which you rely are flawed, highlighting these discussions really demonstrates the value of polite, friendly, scholarly disagreement. The real 'winner' from a disagreement like the one I highlight above is the readership. It provides a fascinating insight into scholarly review and puts on display the importance of both primary evidence and of the manner in which we interpret that evidence. It also provides everyone involved with a deeper understanding of the events being discussed - in this case, the naval theatre of the Winter War, and at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, helps us to become better historians by encouraging us to reflect on our own work, research and arguments, as well as the resources we draw upon.\n\n...Or at least, that's what I'll keep telling myself so I can feel better about being wrong on the Internet!", " >  no other answer receives any where near the same amount of upvotes\n\nWith regard to your question here, this is due to a critical weakness in Reddit. Early posts get *much* more attention than later ones. This is why you rarely see multiple posts with the same amount of upvotes. \n\nIt's also why we maintain a strict principle of moderation. It helps prevent a short, two-sentence answer from stealing attention from the several-thousand-word, in-depth reply that takes hours to draft.\n\nFor anyone who answers questions here, it's *enormously* frustrating to spend time writing a response to a post, only to have a shorter and much more cursory answer grab all the attention because it was posted 30 minutes before.", "I don't know if you'd call it significant but [here](_URL_0_) /u/Jan_van_Bergen and I discuss the different interpretations of the question if Germany was a sovereign state between 45 and 49.", "Can't find it now but there was a great discussion a while back about the cause of the USS Maine explosion. Got into very nitty gritty detail, even discussing the combustability of certain types of coal during that period. ", "one of them keeps recurring and seem to be about 50-50 divided, is: Did Russia's invasion or the atomic bomb compel Japan to surrender in WW II? granted, both sides have good pts. and it almost certainly was a little of both of these; but the sides seem to have equal advocates. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cigm8/yet_another_war_question_why_didnt_the_soviet/"], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fs8ys/did_germany_formally_cease_to_exist_as_a/"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3maekr", "title": "What did slavery in Saudi Arabia look like in the 1950's and how and why was abolished accomplished?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3maekr/what_did_slavery_in_saudi_arabia_look_like_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvef981"], "score": [6], "text": ["Slavery in Saudi Arabia is a difficult topic to tackle, mainly because of scope and definitions.  (I know more about slavery in the 70's with wealthy families, so anyone who knows more on the 50s and general slavery can correct me if I'm wrong)\n\nThere are so many kinds of workers in very difficult conditions, so it's difficult to define what is what before talking about it without generalizing.\n\n1. There are families (usually wealthy) who have their own personal slaves.   The slaves are descendents of slaves and have been with the families for generations.  They might have no (known) connection to their homelands in Africa anymore.  They are born into slavery.  They may not have Saudi citizenship (despite being born there), almost certainly no Saudi passport and no other citizenship from another country.  They are most likely stateless.  Wealthy families employ them in domestic jobs - cooking, cleaning, babysitting, gardening, driving the women/kids, bodyguards and so on.  These slaves are not traded.   The families would have known the slave since s/he was a baby and would not trust someone new into their homes, with their women and kids.  The slaves travel with the Arab families and perform these same duties abroad.  There have been reported instances of the Qatari royal family traveling on diplomatic missions with their slaves to the United States and Britain, but even ambassadors do that too (bring slaves to the new country) and this is done even by non-royal families.\n\n2.  There was regular slavery.  Slaves traded in markets.  These slaves have a connection to their African homelands but could not go back because of conflict in their countries, poverty or because of exit-visa restrictions.  They were not tied to a specific family (not born into slavery) but they cannot leave.  I don't know much about this type, but there were some poor families that owned slaves.  They were used to do domestic work at home and to drive the women and kids.   I don't know if large-scale slave labor existed or how it was like.  I hope someone will add to this.\n\n3.  There are also a lot of abuses in employment in Saudi Arabia - from employers not paying their staff and not letting them quit or leave the country, or paying them very little for a lot of work, letting them live in extreme poverty (which is made worse by the workers sending most of their money back home), seizing their passports, hitting and beating them and so on.   Immigration and employment laws put migrant workers at a disadvantage, tying them to the company they're employed at and making it very difficult to change jobs or leave the country.  Sometimes poverty in their home countries makes it difficult to leave, preferring to endure the miserable conditions, but other times employers take the extra steps of seizing their passports, threatening to report them for crimes (stealing from the employer) which would get them arrested at the airport and imprisoned. \nMost of these workers work in construction - they don't live with their employers, they rarely do domestic jobs, they are not traded and are not considered slaves (not by language, law or culture).  \n\nThe lines between all these groups are blurry.  Is this last group slavery or not?  If a wealthy slave owner pays his slaves, treats them well, their quality of life is better than most people (including other poor slave owners), and gives them the permission to travel/leave, but they are stateless people who have no right to leave the country or work elsewhere, is it still slavery?  Let's say \"yes\" and now slavery is abolished, where would these slaves go?  They are still stateless and have no right to work elsewhere.\n\nThe issue is not a single problem (the legality of slavery), but a multitude of other problems such as citizenship and immigration, exit-visas, employment rights and economics that all work together to put certain groups at a disadvantage.\n\nNote:  Some slaves did have citizenship and passports.  There was a time when slave passports would list the owner of the slave on the (slave's) passport, but this was removed (I think due to diplomatic pressure.)    \n Listing the owner's name may have prevented the slaves from traveling without their owners' permission (border/airport security would check), but I don't know how this worked when this part was removed from the passports.   Slaves traveled with diplomatic missions and regular slave owners, but I don't know of any reports of slaves making a run for it once they were outside."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7gv5z3", "title": "Is it true that the root of the etymology of \"slavic\" comes from the word \"slave\"? Was this name self-applied, or externally applied, to the slavic peoples? Where did it come from, where did they come from, and who were these peoples' oppressors?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7gv5z3/is_it_true_that_the_root_of_the_etymology_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqmaee0", "dqnr06u"], "score": [112, 3], "text": ["You actually have the etymology backwards - it is not that the word \"slavic\" comes from the word \"slave,\" but rather that the word slave comes from the word slavic. From the Oxford English Dictionary: \"medieval Latin sclavus, sclava, identical with the racial name Sclavus (see Slav n. and adj.), the Slavonic population in parts of central Europe having been reduced to a servile condition by conquest; the transferred sense is clearly evidenced in documents of the 9th century.\"\n\nI don't know much about the 9th century in Europe, hopefully someone will come along who can talk about the medieval Mediterranean slave trade in more detail. However, David Brion Davis discusses this briefly in his *The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture* (page 52). Davis's key point is that, even long prior to the beginnings of *African* slavery in Europe, the word slave had an ethnic/foreign connotation. Davis compares the latin word *servi,* which has no ethnic connotation, with the new word *sclavi,* which was used first by the Germans in the 10th and 11th centuries, and then by the Italians in the 13th century, to indicate captives brought out of the Black Sea region as part of a Mediterranean slave trade. The word rapidly spread into English and French as a way of distinguishing \"unfree foreigners from native serfs\" (Davis). When Spain and Portugal began to import African slaves in the 15th century, they applied this existing term, the meaning of which had shifted from denoting slavic servants with a notably lower status, to foreign servants with a notably lower status of any ethnic origin.", "There's no universal agreement on the exact etymology of the word 'slavic' and 'slavs', however, as usual with etymologia incognita, there's a number of valid theories.\n\nIn 18th century, the most common theory was that it stems from \"slovo\", a word that exists in a number of slavic languages that means either \"word, talking or letter\". In 19th century, Bohemian phililogists J. Dobrovsk\u00fd, P. J. \u0160afa\u0159\u00edk and F. Miklo\u0161i\u010d came forward with a theory that due to prefixes \"-en, -an, -enin, -anin\" in slavic languages, the base of \"slav/slov\" would imply some kind of a toponym. Due to the similarities to lithuanian \"salava\" - \"to flow\", they argued that Slava / Slova must've been the toponym of a river in whose floodplains the ancestral slavic tribes lived. Later, \"slava\" and \"slovo\" would come to form its own meanings in different slavic languages. The toponym theory is seen as one making most sense.\n\nOther theories claim that the name didn't come from within the slavic tribes, but from outside influences. Some theories associate Scythians with early Slavs, and thus connect the etymological development parallel to cultural one. \nAccording to some, it stems from the protoindoeuropean \"(s)lawos\", akin to greek \"\u03bb\u03b1\u03cc\u03c2\" , which means \"folk, population\" \n\nOne theory that's important to your question states that the word comes from the Gothic verb \"slawan\" which means \"to be silent\". This theory draws parallels to the fact that multiple slavic languages call germans \"mute\" (polish \"niemcy\", croatian \"njemci\"), as it probably stems from the fact that early germanic and slavic tribes couldn't properly understand each other, and thus considered one another 'mute'. The problem this shares with the theory you stated, that 'slavic' comes from latin 'sclavorum' is the improbability of a nation internally calling themselves by something that would be considered pejorative. ( aforementioned Niemcy still call themselves Deutsch, as that's an outsider's name, not a native one ) "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "7rrkjd", "title": "A cracked photoplasty post claimed that after the holocaust homosexual prisoners were not released but forced to serve the remaining of their sentence. Is this true? What happened to homosexuals after?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7rrkjd/a_cracked_photoplasty_post_claimed_that_after_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dsz2fa1"], "score": [104], "text": ["From an [older answer](_URL_2_):\n\n**Part 1**\n\n/u/Kugelfang52 has gone into this before [here](_URL_1_). It is very important to mention here that this subject matter, as well as a more general history of Nazi persecution of homosexuals, both gay men and lesbian women, is still a subject that has not been researched very well yet.\n\nAside the problem of continuing social stigmatization and even criminalization of homosexuality in the decades following WWII (in East Germany, paragraph 175, the section of criminal law concerning male homosexuality, was ceased to be enforced in 1957 but remained on the books until 1968; in West Germany remained on the books until 1969; in Germany it took until 2002 to have all the Nazi convictions against homosexuals annulled), is the problem of sources.\n\nAs Kai Hammermeister showed in his article *Inventing History: Toward a Gay Holocaust Literature* (German Quarterly 70.1 (Winter 1997)), sources from the perspective of homosexual victims are practically non-existent and that even establishing the basic facts of persecution is difficult:\n\n >  The trouble already begins when we consider the historical facts. Though we do have a fairly good sense of the how and why of the persecution of homosexuals under Hitler, this sense nevertheless remains a rough outline without much color or detail. Historians have bemoaned this fact time and again; it seems that one cannot write about the gay Holocaust without lamenting the absence of enough documents, dossiers, confessions, reports, or simply stories. (...) Nonetheless, historians have agreed on a general picture regarding the persecution of homosexuals by the National Socialists. Without going into phases and specificities of this persecution, I only want to mention a couple of numbers that serve to emphasize the extent of these events. About 100,000 gay men were registered by the Gestapo, half of whom were sentenced by an NS court for their homosexuality. It is widely assumed that between 10,000 and 15,000 gay men wore the pink triangle in concentration camps; the number of homosexual inmates in other prison camps, for example in the so-called Moorlager, is still unknown.\n\nHowever, even the details Hammermeister gives are somewhat in dispute. There have been suggestions that the actual number of people persecuted is much higher. One of the few homosexual survivors coming forward after the war and relaying his experience, Heinz Heger, contends that the number of homosexuals persecuted and killed ranged into the 100.000s. Ruediger Lautmann: *\u201cGay Prisoners in Concentration Camps as Compared to Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses and Political Prisoners,\u201d* in Michael Berenbaum (ed.): A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, (New York: New York University Press, 2000) 200-206 writes based on a comprehensive review that about 100.000 homosexuals were charged and imprisoned by the Nazis, 15.000 ended up in concentration camps and about 3.000 survived until the end of the war.\n\nOf these estimated 3.000 survivors only 15 men had come forward to tell their story, 6 of them anonymously, and the last known homosexual survivor of a concentration camp had died in June 2012.\n\nThe same principle problem applies to the study of the treatment of homosexual men under Allied occupation in Germany. What can be said with certainty is that in the American, British and French zones, paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code of 1871 remained in effect in its Nazi version of 1935 (this version had removed the previously held \"tradition\" that the a crime was only committed when penetrative intercourse had happened, in the Nazi version, criminal offense existed if \"objectively the general sense of shame was offended\" and subjectively \"the debauched intention was present to excite sexual desire in one of the two men, or a third.\", meaning that physical contact was not required anymore). In the Soviet zone, the pre-Nazi version of \u00a7 175 was applied.\n\nBefore going into further details, it needs to be stressed that as to why this remained in effect in the Western occupation zones, also a lot of research needs to be done still. However, it is an interesting trend that while the laws and provisions in many European countries at the time was to lessen or stop the policing of homosexuals relationships between men (Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland all decriminalized homosexual behavior in the 1930s and 1940s, Poland never legally criminalized homosexuality except during the German occupation), Great Britain and the US went in an opposite direction.\n\nIn the decades preceding WWII, GB and the Us increasingly started to police homosexual behavior. When it came to the occupation of Germany, the problem was further confounded by the fact that a large swath of US policy makers who were involved in setting up the occupation of Germany were convinced of the sexual immorality of the Third Reich and of the need to return to Christian values and morality in order to combat the corruption and sexual licentiousness they believed was a core element of the Nazi version of fascism (see Andrea Slane: *A Not So Foreign Affair: Fascism, Sexuality and the Cultural Rhetoric of American Democracy*).\n\nWhat shaped the Western Allies' policy towards homosexuals in Germany further was the plan on how to deal with survivors of concentration camps. The Handbook for Military Government in Germany Prior to Defeat or Surrender (published in 1944) specified that after liberation, one of the first duties of the Allied troops was to separate the victims of Nazi persecution into different and predominantly national categories, a huge and in practice incomplete feat that not only lead Jews to protest (for they wanted to be grouped in one category rather than their national category) and that lead the predominantly German category of victims of social persecution (asocials, homosexuals, criminals) to be grouped in the \"criminal\" category because their arrest and imprisonment was actually based upon laws. As Michele Weber writes:\n\n >  For American troops serving under military policies that increasingly penalized homosexual active in military service and coming from states where homosexuality was classified as a crime, it was not surprising that homosexuals were categorized as criminal under the American system of classification.\n\nThe procedure as laid out in the *Handbook* for this group of victims was explicit: \"Ordinary criminals with a prison sentence still to serve will be transferred to civil prisons.\" Meaning that if somebody convicted under \u00a7175 by the Nazis, which held a provision for imprisonment for up to 10 years, and imprisoned in a Concentration Camp could be imprisoned by the Allies if they believed that the person had not served their sentence in full. For those who had \"served their sentence\", freedom was guaranteed but fear of being arrested again under \u00a7175 remained.\n\nThis was not really in line with the guidelines of denazification set by the Allies themselves. Since \u00a7175 restricted citizenship, and it was the Allies explicit policy to remove all laws that restricted citizenship based on politics, religion or other categories, it should have been at least reverted to its pre-1935 version. Furthermore, Law number 11 of the Control Council concerning Nazi Law stated: \u201cNo German law, however or whenever enacted or enumerated, shall be applied judicially or administratively within the occupied territory in any instance where such application would cause injustice or inequality, \u2026by discriminating against any person by reason of his race, nationality, religious beliefs or opposition to the National Socialist Party or its doctrines.\"\n\nAnd yet, \u00a7175 remained in _URL_0_ practice this often lead to cases like that of Karl Gorath. Gorath, a homosexual survivor of the camps, was arrested by the American authorities in Germany in 1946 and sentenced again under \u00a7175 to a prison sentence by the same Nazi judge who had sentenced him in the 1930s.\n\nAs for numbers: Michele Weber states that under United States administration, an estimated 1,100 to 1,800 men were arrested yearly on charges of violating Paragraph 175, a number significantly higher than it had been in the Weimar Republic. A substantial study of how many of them were convicted and subsequently imprisoned does not exist yet.\n\nIt is interesting to note that in contrast, in the Soviet zone, not only did the Soviets return to the pre-Nazi version of \u00a7175 and argued for that to be adopted in all occupation zones but also the number of cases involving the legal provision was much smaller. Jennifer Evans counts 129 cases of persecution based upon \u00a7175 in East Berlin until 1952, which can be chalked up to the fact that under their rules of evidence, penetration had to have happened and it required physical proof, something not on the books in the Western zones. All that despite the fact that Stalin had re-criminalized homosexuality in the USSR in 1934 and that as G\u00fcnter Grau has argued, when it came to safeguarding the sexual mores of young males, the East and West upheld similar images of respectability and moral endangerment.\n\n\n\n "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["place.In", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h399i/how_did_the_allies_care_for_holocaust_survivors/d2o01rp/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5911n4/ww2_holocaust_how_were_homosexual_concentration/d95cysz/"]]}
{"q_id": "3hu2ra", "title": "Two guys in Poland are claiming they found an old Nazi train loaded with gold deep in a Polish mountain, can somebody tell me more about this and are there more WOII myths/stories like these?", "selftext": "I saw quite some articles about it on news websites like this one from the Guardian but i would like to learn more about this story or stories like this one! \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf the train is really packed with gold it would be such a nice scenario for a new Indiana Jones movie! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hu2ra/two_guys_in_poland_are_claiming_they_found_an_old/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cuavabu"], "score": [64], "text": ["Well, as the article says it is a local legend, but not an entirely unsubstantiated one. \n\nThe Nazis tended to plunder and loot art and other valuables basically everywhere they went. At the beginning of the Third Reich, Hitler came up with the idea for his [F\u00fchrer Museum in Linz](_URL_1_). They wanted to fill it with treasures of the Great Masters, basically showing the superiority of the Germanic people. Art was looted basically everywhere the Nazis went (at first they only took over museums but then that turned into stealing people's personal possessions pretty quickly). In addition to the museum, Hitler and other high ranking nazi officials wanted art for their personal collections. They didn't exclusively loot art, basically anything of value was stolen (gold, jewels, books, etc). there was actually a special task force, [the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)](_URL_0_) dedicated to the looting.\n\nAs the war's destruction became parent, groups of American and British curators and art historians formed a group called the MFAA,  short for [Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives](_URL_2_). You may know of them from the film \"Monuments Men\". They were on the front lines of the war, looking for art and helping to preserve whatever they found (they also often helped preserve buildings and architecture that was damaged from the war). The Nazis had caches of loot in salt mines, castles, underground tunnels. As the Third Reich fell, they destroyed many of these caches, but the MFAA attempted to find and save any art they could. In the [Bernterode Mine](_URL_3_) they found the coffin of Frederick the Great, along with many other priceless pieces. \n\nThe MFAA kept working until 1946 but they still continued their efforts to encourage preservation of cultural goods, a policy that the US usually (and that's kind of a big usually but I'll get within the 20 year limit if I start on this) tries to uphold today. There are many pieces still unaccounted for, but those could have been destroyed, stolen, sold on the black market or maybe they're still out there. \n\nSo not crazy that there might be a train full of Nazi gold in a mine. Happened fairly often. I didn't see the movie so I can't speak to how good it was, but there are a bunch of books about the MFAA. Momuments Men- Robert Edsel and  Salt mines and castles: The discovery and restitution of looted European art by Thomas Howe are good places to start.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/20/fortune-hunters-flock-to-polish-town-after-alleged-find-of-nazi-gold-train"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.errproject.org/", "http://www.artrestitution.at/F.prerogative.html", "http://www.aaa.si.edu/exhibitions/monuments-men", "http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/2/4/the-monuments-men-cover/?page=single"]]}
{"q_id": "5hr150", "title": "We all know swamps are humid and unpleasant. Why did the Russians (St. Petersburg) and Americans (Washington DC) insist on building cities on swamps?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hr150/we_all_know_swamps_are_humid_and_unpleasant_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db2zb6a"], "score": [41], "text": ["Somewhat different reasons.\n\nPeter the Great really wanted to emulate a beautiful European city \u2013 specifically the watery city of Amsterdam, filled with canals and along a riverbank. The Neva delta was very pretty to him, a lot of waterways and small islands and flat shores, so as Tsar he ordered his new city to be built there in the model of European cities. Supposedly, he saw the auspicious sign of an eagle as well while scouting the area.\n\nThe American Congress wanted to reach a compromise between the competing interests of Southern and Northern states, as well as create a capital distinct from the states that could maintain its own safety. (The previous Congress building in Philadelphia had been besieged by protesting war veterans, and the Pennsylvania government did nothing to stop them.) \n\nIn exchange for building the capital between the two northern-most slave states, Maryland and Virginia, the Southern states agreed to take on a share of the North's war debts. Maryland and Virginia authorized a tract of land to be given to the federal government along the Potomac River, though it was President Washington who selected the specific location along the river. \n\nHe chose a site next to the already-existing Virginian city of Alexandria, in which his family owned a fair bit of property, and which also happened to be just a few miles up-river from his home. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3og1hx", "title": "Why are carp thought of so differently in Europe and America?", "selftext": "Growing up fishing in America, I was always taught that carp were \"trash fish\" and bottom feeders, but I am under the impression that carp are highly sought after as sport fish in Europe and were brought to the US from there. \n\nAre American carp really the descendants of European carp? What accounts for the difference in how they're perceived by anglers? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3og1hx/why_are_carp_thought_of_so_differently_in_europe/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvwzjtc", "cvx0uqs", "cvx3bn9", "cvxaejk"], "score": [76, 11, 8, 5], "text": ["There are a lot of different varieties of carp.\n\nThe carp in North American, the common carp, is a terrible fish to eat. The meat is spongy, and tastes bad, and is full of intramuscular bones. Also, the carp are an invasive species that has hurt the populations of other fish, mostly by eating up a lot of the food. Carp are big fish, and they eat a lot. Their size can make them fun to catch though, so you do see more anglers fishing for them.\n\nAnglers in Europe like carp because they're big and fun to catch, and they don't have a lot of the bass and sunfish that American anglers prefer to go after. The European (and Asian) carp are also smaller, and their meat is supposed to be more enjoyable to eat, but still not very good. Most carp dishes have a lot of spices and seasonings to cover up the carp taste.", "There's two different types of carp fishermen. \n\nFirstly, there's the East Europeans who eat them. Then there's the mostly British who catch for sport. There are thousands of Brits who go to France every year, where they seem to thrive, to catch common, grass and mirror carp, some of which can be about 100lb.\n\nSome of the lakes in France pay a fortune for a prize fish.", "I just learned about this in an environmental science class.  Most of the carp in America came from Germany and spread throughout the country pretty quickly.  There are lots of reasons that Americans dislike carp, including bad to eat, invasive, and lead to the decline of other species.  Another interesting factor is that carp are one of the only fish to survive in heavily polluted waters.  And as a bottom feeder, they tend to disturb the bottom and make the water even more turbid.  People in North America then thought that carp were contributing to the pollution problem and were 'dirty', while in most cases it was just human activity polluting the waterways.", "Everything people say here is true about common carp, bullhead carp, or grass carp. Silver Carp however, the ones that jump out of the water behind boats, have a white meat similar to Cod because they aren't bottom feeders like the others. I have eaten Silver Carp and it is good but there is still a Y bone in it. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3a5sr2", "title": "Indiana Jones and the Captioners of the Unattributed Artifacts", "selftext": "So, we've been playing the \"identify an artifact game\" in the Friday Free For All threads lately, but I didn't want to wait until then to continue. The mods said I could continue it as a floating feature, and that they'd even give my post special color treatment, so here we go:\n\nThis is [my entry](_URL_0_), first posted last Friday. So far, /u/Aerandir suggested (correctly) that it's Roman glass (and /u/Tiako was glad he didn't guess otherwise). I'd like to see if anyone knows anything more about these items though, because their function is at least as interesting as their form. \n\nIf no one can figure out the function, I'll pass it along to /u/Aerandir for identifying the historical context.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a5sr2/indiana_jones_and_the_captioners_of_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cs9iwcg", "cs9k31y", "cs9li38", "cs9p4m4", "cs9ppms", "cs9q9w4", "cs9rx31", "cs9tj70", "cs9vkon", "csa35vl", "csa49rs"], "score": [2, 3, 11, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 11, 7, 5], "text": ["I really want to guess right because I have my own thingy I want to post, but I only know like 4 things about Rome, all of which are from the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series... \n\nDo these birds float? ", "Are they intended as a vessel? Were they meant to hold perfume or oil vessel, for instance?", "Okay, here's the [second object](_URL_0_), which I think will be hard for most of you to guess.\n\nAs a hint, [this](_URL_1_) is the same object from a different region. ", "Ok! Round 4, aka \"Suck it classicists!\" \n\n[Here you go!](_URL_0_)", "Alright [here](_URL_0_) is my offering", "So here's [something](_URL_0_) sort of more fun I guess... not really", "Here is another object, which should be familiar to some discussions that have happened here: \n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: bonus points if you can tell what this is _actually_ an image of.", "I present a [most curious scrap of fabric for our 8th round.](_URL_0_) What is it made of, what is it a part of, who might have worn it, when and where, etc. etc. ", "OK, round... nine I think?\n\nWhat is it!? Type, period, location, and manufacturer please! [Full view](_URL_0_) and [detailed close up.](_URL_1_) Edit: [And another close up](_URL_2_)", "since Sid_Burn is nowhere to be seen, I'll keep the game rolling. [here](_URL_0_) is your next artifact! Please to be identifying its purpose.", "Ok, I'll keep the ball rolling with [this toughie](_URL_0_), what culture, region, time period?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.rmo.nl/beeld/tentoonstellingen/Lugt%20Kroller%20Moller/Objecten%20700p/_480/Lugt_vogels_700p.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://museum.cjh.org/web/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=37762&amp;size=167x172", "http://i.imgur.com/Fxp0vjz.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/MuGkyRn.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/8Vh6Jcm.jpg"], ["https://i.imgur.com/a09eTFK.jpg"], ["https://jasongoodwinauthor.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/513angel.jpg?w=560"], ["http://imgur.com/7bqBH5p"], ["http://i.imgur.com/5pqXRMv.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/c4qmEnD.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/jXM7UxT.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/vKdVKLG.jpg"], ["http://i.imgur.com/Ltuf6C8.png"]]}
{"q_id": "2tqlyg", "title": "With the Northeast Blizzard approaching, I was wondering when was the first time a civilization really had a handle on being able to anticipate that a large storm was coming?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tqlyg/with_the_northeast_blizzard_approaching_i_was/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co1lxjb"], "score": [45], "text": ["Good question. I'll answer only to the United States, since I don't have a good grasp on an answer for other places in the world.\n\n**On May 1, 1857, the *Washington Evening Star* published the first weather forecast in the United States.** This was the result of eight years of active work and decades of preparation by Americans across the country. Taking weather observations had been a common activity among science-minded people as early as the 17th century. Using new, accurate barometers made possible by the advances of the early modern era, they could measure air temperature and pressure, wind speed and direction, cloud cover and precipitation. \n\nEveryone knows about Benjamin Franklin's fascination with the weather, but Thomas Jefferson was an avid weather-watcher, too. He bought his first thermometer while writing the Declaration of Independence and bought his first barometer a few days after signing that document. He noted that the high temperature in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776 was 76 degrees. George Washington also made regular weather observations. The last weather entry in his diary is on the day he died.\n\nThrough the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Americans charted the weather. In the 19th century, weather observing networks began to grow across the United States. Americans would take their observations and send them in to a central collecting point, which would collate the results and publish them. Americans could see where it was wet and where it was dry across the country. One of the pioneering efforts was made by the surgeons of the U.S. Army, who recorded observations reliably from the 1820s to the 1840s at posts throughout what was then the frontier. The Army Medical Department's ostensible goal was to determine what effects the weather had on disease.\n\nThe data collected by these observers wasn't \"live,\" though. The mail took weeks or months to travel from state to state, which meant that the information was of historical value only. This changed with the invention of the telegraph. When Samuel Morse patented the practical telegraph in 1837, it became possible to send news of the weather faster than the weather itself.\n\nIt took time for this to happen. The telegraph spread rapidly -- almost everyone could see its value -- but charting the weather required an organized network of *both* observers and transmitters.\n\n[Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had the foresight to see what was needed](_URL_0_). In 1848, he began a project whose goal was to describe the climate of North America and learn about storms as they traveled across the country. At the time, it was not even known that in North America, storms predominantly travel from west to east.\n\nHenry had already recruited volunteers -- teachers, farmers, ministers, lighthouse keepers -- across the country to take measurements that they then mailed to the Smithsonian on a monthly basis. In 1849, he recruited a smaller group of volunteers who telegraphed their daily observations to the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian supplied these volunteers (many of whom where employees or representatives of the telegraph companies themselves) with calibrated instruments, standard reporting forms and guidelines for collecting data.\n\nThe telegraph companies realized there was value in sending this data free of charge, and Henry used the data creatively. Starting in 1850, he began preparing a daily *current* national weather map in the Smithsonian castle in Washington, D.C. This map was later put on display in the castle's main hall, where it could be viewed by the public.\n\nNewspapers and others took this information and distributed it. As people realized that the weather followed specific patterns -- notably from west to east -- they realized that not only could they observe the weather, they could predict what would come, based on what the weather was doing elsewhere.\n\nThere were problems with Henry's program, of course. Observations were based on local sun time, which meant they weren't taken simultaneously. The start of the American Civil War in 1860 disrupted the program for almost a decade, and the data was only as accurate as the observers were. If someone was sick or simply failed to take one of the four readings of the day, the information was missing. [In 1870, President Ulysses Grant signed the first legislation creating a regularized weather service within the U.S. Army's Signal Service.](_URL_1_) This service grew and became the U.S. Weather Bureau (today the U.S. Weather Service) in 1890."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/henry/meteorology", "http://www.weather.gov/timeline"]]}
{"q_id": "bmw7ee", "title": "If the French Revolution didn't see the establishment of a lasting democracy in France, why do we consider it so significant?", "selftext": "The French went from a monarchy, to a brief dictatorship, to an Empire, and to my understanding the French would proclaim 4 republics over the course of history to the present. If the Republic was so short-lived why do we consider the first French revolution to be significant?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bmw7ee/if_the_french_revolution_didnt_see_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["en0wza9", "en19tzp"], "score": [230, 38], "text": ["Your question presumes the idea of 'progress' - that history is a linear development slowly building up to the world we have today, and past events should be remembered primarily in terms of how they led us here. This view is far from uncommon, but historians need to be very careful not to project modern values and assumptions backwards onto the past. The French Revolution was immensely significant *at the time* because it changed Europe socially, politically, militarily and ideologically. Many of those changes are still with us, others have faded away or been overtaken by subsequent changes.\n\nPolitically, socially and ideologically, the French Revolution is often credited as the birth of the modern nation-state. It began a process whereby the inhabitants of France actually became French, giving people a sense of national identity and standardising language, culture and administration. It changed people's political identity by both expanding it horizontally (no longer just Norman or Parisian, now *French*) but also vertically (not just a peasant, now a citizen). In doing so, it swept away the last cobwebs of the middle ages. By then exporting the revolution intellectually (Jacobinism) and militarily (Napoleon) this process was echoed across the continent. For example, the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved.\n\nMilitarily, the creation of a nation meant the possibility of a national army. With the *levee en masse* (conscription) Napoleonic France completely changed how war was fought. Gone was the gentlemanly manouvre of small professional armies. Instead, huge armies of enthusiastic patriots able to break free from supply lines and 'live off the land', only to come together and overwhelm the enemy in massed column melee attacks. As Napoleon put it: \"You cannot stop me; I spend 30,000 lives a month.\" Even bulwarks of monarchical conservatism such as Prussia were forced to respond by imitating the French militarily, but conscription isn't something the army can just *do* - ultimately, the state of Prussia had to make significant domestic political and social concessions as a result.\n\nIn summary, the French Revolution *created* the nation-state of France. Then, it gave Napoleon the tools to export that Revolution. By a combination of direct imposition and indirect imitation, this had a significant impact on countries across Europe.", "I'm sorry my english is actually pretty weak.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Part 1 on 2**\n\n1. **The idea of \"Nation\"**\n\n* **Actual historical consensus**\n\nThe idea of a ***creation*** ***from scratch*** of nation-state of France is actually forsaken by academic history.\n\nToday, the historical consensus is about a progressive construction of french nation-state since roughly the 10th century.\n\nIt's wrong to say that, overnight, one inhabitant of France would wake up considering himself french, a**nd the idea of a creation of the nation state of France only with the Revolution was largely diffused during the 19th and 20th century, exactly because the republican party had to legitimize himself in a century where everything was to built and France was seeking his equilibrium.**\n\nDuring the Ancien R\u00e9gime, the idea of nation was not evocated because we must understand that the concept of nation was not even created. And that is where the problem is : in fact, we see that what we today call as *nation* would, indeed, be seen in some ways (and more and more) during the Ancien R\u00e9gime.\n\nI will quote Alain Talon, a reference in History, who is criticizing the supporters of a creation of nation-state during the Revolution :\n\n & #x200B;\n\n > \u00ab Voil\u00e0 le d\u00e9faut de tenir la d\u00e9finition de la nation comme un concept intemporel alors que le contenu qu\u2019ils donnent \u00e0 ce concept est lui bien li\u00e9 \u00e0 une \u00e9poque bien pr\u00e9cise : le XIXe si\u00e8cle \u00bb  \n >   \n > \"Here is the fault of seeing the definition of nation as a timeless concept wereas the meaning they give to this concept is linked to a specific era : the 19th century.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nMy translation should be horrible, but what he tries to say is that people who considered nation as a Revolutionnary creation, used the values of the 19th century to seek for similarities in the past, which they obviously could not find.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI will quote Anne Marie Thiesse in *La Cr\u00e9ation des identit\u00e9s nationales, Europe, XVIIIe \u2013 XXe si\u00e8cle,* which she is a fervent defensor of the idea that nation was invented at 100% during Revolution.\n\n > \"La v\u00e9ritable naissance d'une nation, c'est le moment o\u00f9 une poign\u00e9e d'individus d\u00e9clare qu'elle existe et entreprend de le prouver. Les premiers exemples ne sont pas ant\u00e9rieurs au XVIIIe si\u00e8cle : pas de nation au sens moderne, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire politique, avant cette date. \\[...\\] \u00c0 l'aube du XIXe si\u00e8cle, les nations n'ont pas encore d'histoire. \\[...\\] L'id\u00e9e de nation est n\u00e9e du combat contre le pouvoir monarchique et la division sociale en ordres aux droits in\u00e9gaux.\"\n\nMy translation:\n\n > \"The true born of a nation, is where a group of individuals declares that it exist, and undertakes to prove it. The first exemples are not before 18th century : no nation at a political meaning before this date. \\[...\\] Before 19th century, nations still don't have an history. \\[...\\] The idea of nation is born from the battle against monarhcy et against social division in orders and inequals rights.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* **Why can we talk about nation before the Revolution ?**\n\nDuring the Ancien R\u00e9gime, monarchs but also peasants constructed ideals, true or non-true figures that would incarnate the kingdom, a part of the kingdom, or a value to fight for.\n\nJoan of Arc is a good exemple. Charles VIIth, after winning the hundred years war, reviewed the trial of Joan of Arc and sanctified her in order to cement the kingdom. Even if the actual military utility of Joan of Arc is largely question to debate, she was actually a way to unite the king's subject, which is what we consider today as a part of the definition of the nation.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI'll quote the pope who sanctified Joan of Arc :\n\n > \u00ab C'est que, par son conseil, les habitants de Reims sont revenus \u00e0 l'ob\u00e9issance \\[...\\]\u00a0Par sa p\u00e9n\u00e9tration et son habilet\u00e9 les affaires des Fran\u00e7ais ont \u00e9t\u00e9 solidement reconstitu\u00e9es. \u00bb  \n >   \n > \"By her advices, Reims' unhabitant came back to obedience. \\[...\\] By her penetration et her hability, the french's affairs were firmly reconstituted\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnother hero like that who is not known is *Le Grand Ferr\u00e9* who has the particularity of being a hero of the peasants. The recent works of the historian Colette Beaune showed that Le Grand Ferr\u00e9 was indeed, at that time, a very popular man and was constructing a collective identity and imaginary to the subject of french kingdom.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDuring the war of Spain succession, the kingdom of Louis XIV was in such trouble that the king had to write down a message which was read in every villages : an excerpt. (1709)\n\n > \"Je suis persuad\u00e9 qu\u2019ils s\u2019opposeraient eux-m\u00eames \u00e0 la recevoir \u00e0 des conditions \u00e9galement contraires \u00e0 la justice et \u00e0 l\u2019honneur du nom FRANCAIS.\"  \n >   \n > \"I'm persuated that they would themselves be opposed to received condition \\[peace conditions\\], that are opposed to the justice and the honor behind the word of FRENCH\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI quote Fernand Braudel : *Identit\u00e9 de la France*\n\n > \\[La nation est\\] un r\u00e9sidu, un amalgame, des additions, des m\u00e9langes. S'il s'interrompait, tout s'\u00e9croulerait. Une nation ne peut \u00eatre qu'au prix de se chercher elle-m\u00eame sans fin, de se transformer dans le sens de son \u00e9volution logique.  \n >   \n > \\[Nation is\\] a residue, an amalgam, additions, mixings. If it would stop, everything would crush down. A nation is at the only price to find herself without any ending, to transform herself in the way of her logical evolution.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* **And that transformation is leading me to : Why is indeed Revolution so crucial about nation.**\n\nWhat is certain is that Revolution have created a new society where the idea of nation was the main pillar, and yes, the Revolution actually was, maybe, the last stone of the nation-state construction of France.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI will quote Anatole Prevost Paradole in *La France Nouvelle :*\n\n > The French Revolution had found a new society, she would yet seek for her gouvernment\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBefore Revolution, the word of \"Nation\" would designate a minority community living in another majority comunity. After the Revolution, nation was indeed what was caracterizing France.\n\nTo understand that, I like the preface of the book : *1789 - 1815, Revolution Consulate, Empire*, which talk about the idea of nation and Revolution. Unfortunately, I cant translate it entirely.\n\nIn fact, what invented Revolution was the notion of sovereignety of nation : *\"La nation reprend toute sa souverainet\u00e9\"*, Choudieu, 10th august 1792. \\[\"*Nation is taking back all of her sovereignety\"*\\].\n\nNation was being the motive of dying and living, that is what is incredible with Revolution.\n\nDuring middle-age, dying for the homeland had striclty not a single oz of meaning. The only sacrifice you could do was for god : it's the crusade.\n\nBut I will quote Jean Tulard, specialist of Revolution :\n\n > \"En criant \"Vive la nation !\" \u00e0 Valmy, les soldats de Dumouriez avaient enterr\u00e9 l'Europe cosmopolite des Lumi\u00e8res et annonc\u00e9 les mouvements de 1830 et 1848 \\[...\\] La f\u00e9odalit\u00e9 dispara\u00eet ou recule de fa\u00e7on spectaculaire, les id\u00e9es de libert\u00e9 ou d'\u00e9galit\u00e9 font leur chemin sur le continent.\"  \n >   \n > \"By shouting \"Long live the nation !\" at Valmy, Dumouriez's solders had bury the cosmopolitan Europe of the Enlightenment et announced the movements of 1830 and 1848. \\[...\\] Feodality vanished or retreated in a spectacular way, the ideas of liberty and equality are making their way to the continent.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3m5gmr", "title": "In Saving Private Ryan, a few American soldiers open the hatch of a Tiger tank to drop a grenade inside , is there any documentation of this actually occurring in ww2?", "selftext": "In the movie, a few soldiers open the hatch of the commander's cupola and shoot him. They proceed to drop a grenade in the tank before being killed. Had this we occur in ww2? Didn't hatches have locks on them? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3m5gmr/in_saving_private_ryan_a_few_american_soldiers/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvc67pq", "cvci82n", "cvcil4v", "cvclrqm"], "score": [164, 33, 7, 15], "text": ["Most tanks' hatches did have locks to stop the hatch from being pried open from the outside, and a system to stop the hatch from falling closed and bonking the unfortunate crew member on the head, and that included the Tiger tank. The commander of the tank in *Saving Private Ryan* probably foolishly left his hatch unlocked. \n\nTiger I tank commander's hatch. The three bars served to lock the hatch closed.\n\n_URL_2_\n\nThe commander's hatch of the \"Tiger\" in *Saving Private Ryan* is actually a rather poor representation, being just a flimsy piece of sheet metal. The real Tiger's hatch was quite heavy and couldn't be held open with just a rifle barrel as depicted in the movie.\n\nAnother example; Tiger I tank loader's hatch. You would turn the small wheel to move the bars and lock the hatch.\n\n_URL_4_\n\nin relation to your point about tanks' hatches being pried open and things thrown inside them, the Marine tank battalions in the Pacific devised a solution. In response to the suicidal tactics used by Japanese soldiers equipped with grenades and pole mines, each battalion systematically put combinations of chicken wire cages or nails on their tanks' hatches in order to stop Japanese bombs from actually touching the tank; this would reduce potential blast damage. Wooden planks on the tanks' sides were used to stop Japanese magnetic mines from sticking, and apparently provided minimal protection against light Japanese antitank guns. Sometimes, the planks were used as a form for a layer of concrete and left in place. Planks or poles were also sometimes placed across the suspension arms to stop things from being shoved inside and jamming up the wheels.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_3_\n\nLate model (lowered) Sherman split-hatch cupola. The torsion springs and toothed \"claw\" and catch helped hold the hatch open. Early Shermans did not come with this feature, and it was retrofitted.\n\n_URL_1_", "A Finnish soldier named Einar Schadewitz has been told to have jumped on a Soviet tank in 1940 and tried to open the hatch with his knife. When he failed to open it, he knocked on it and shouted in Finnish \"Open up Ivan, death is knocking!\". The enemy opened the hatch a little and Schadewitz was able to toss a live grenade in.\n\nI read about him from a book about recipients of the Mannerheim Cross, unfortunately I can't remember or find the name of the book anywhere. [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) cites [another book](_URL_1_) as a source though.\n\nSorry about lacking better sources, I think this is an interesting story and related to the question so I wanted to share what I know.\n\nEDIT: changed the source book link to worldcat.", "Tanks in that period definitely did have \"combat locks\" which would prevent anyone from opening the hatch from the outside for exactly this reason. \n\nI believe in the movie there is a scene where the tank commander comes out of the hatch to direct some of the infantry.  It can probably be explained by the commander simply forgetting to re-lock the hatch after this scene.", "In Russell Braddon's memoir of the fall of Singapore and time as a prisoner of war in Changi, The Naked Island, he tells the story of a fellow prisoner: \n\nDusty had escaped from Parit Sulong and had then swiftly be come lost. Eventually, he saw a British tank, so he knocked upon its side with his stick and, before it had occurred to him that the occupants who emerged from the tank looked strangely unlike Australians, had been captured by the Japanese. Here, however, native shrewdness intervened where intelligence could never shine. He, too, carried Mills bombs down his shirt front (a fact which the Japanese did not suspect in one who looked so harmless), so he shoved his stubby-fingered hand into his bosom, plucked out a grenade, deposited it carefully among his captors and then stepped smartly behind a rubber tree. When, after a shattering explosion, he deemed it safe to emerge, he was most gratified to observe that all the Japanese gentlemen were dead. He accordingly departed with great speed into the jungle and there, once more, lost himself. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.imgur.com/z6YQOsN.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/nj3R9Et", "http://i.imgur.com/k3V8bAP", "http://i.imgur.com/7WO2cUw", "http://i.imgur.com/B4IJiSt.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/wnHo7QG.jpg"], ["https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar_Schadewitz", "https://www.worldcat.org/title/kuolema-kolkuttaa-mannerheim-ristin-ritari-einar-schadewitz/oclc/820121699&amp;referer=brief_results"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ghv9l", "title": "How and why did painting various fruits on a table become a respected art form?", "selftext": "I was visiting a doctors office and on the way in I saw various paintings by different artists of fruits on a table. I'm sure we've all seen a few in our lifetime and even parodies of them on every cartoon growing up, the painter with his bowl of fruits has his artwork comedic ruined. \n\nHow did this start and why? I always assumed it was practicing for portraits. Thank you for reading and replying. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ghv9l/how_and_why_did_painting_various_fruits_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckjhehz"], "score": [74], "text": ["This is a better question to ask art historians. Pictures of fruit (and similar items) are called \"still life\" paintings. Their significance needs to be seen in context So, briefly: prior to the Renaissance, most paintings had a religious theme and painting a commonplace situation or people was unusual. As the renaissance progressed, still life paintings became more popular for several reason. They allowed the painter to show off their techniques, and, while fruits are to us the easiest thing to obtain at any store, they were much more prized in the 17th and 18th centuries, the height of still life painting. They represented a way to show off one's access to prized fruits that needed to be specially grown, perhaps in a hothouse, or transported from far away. In short, they were luxuries. Still life paintings also often included dead animals and household objects like dishes and pots and vases. These too were luxury items, representing some of the most valuable things the household contained. It was a way to show their artistic style and the harmony of their home, representing all of these different aspects of their wealth, their home, their hunting grounds, their agriculture, etc. It also showcased the painter's skill at painting immobile items. They could more completely show how well they could imitate life by focusing on these non-moving objects. In contrast, people who paint still life paintings today might not be entirely aware of all of this history, and might instead just be making a reference to a popular old theme, but without knowing why that theme was popular."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "wla9a", "title": "Was there a 4,000 year old Sumerian tablet lamenting about the young being stupid?", "selftext": "The first chapter of Carl Sagan's \"The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark\" says:\n\n >  One of the oldest short essays in human history, dating from Sumer some 4,000 years ago, laments that the young are disastrously more ignorant than the generation immediately preceding.\n\nI can't find any reference to this. Did it exist? What's a source to prove/disprove this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wla9a/was_there_a_4000_year_old_sumerian_tablet/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5ean8q", "c5ec08a", "c5ecga9", "c5efmjx"], "score": [52, 22, 11, 5], "text": ["This one?\n\n\"[There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end: Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.](_URL_0_)\"", "I've also seen that quote attributed to Socrates.", "\"When the poor man dies, do not try to revive him.\"\n\n\"I escaped the wild cow but the wild ass came upon me.\"\n\nAre two quotes I remember reading in \"Patterns in Prehistory\". I think that they are from the Sumerian period.\n\nTheir mordant humour makes them seem as if they were written yesterday. They remind me a bit of these... _URL_0_", "I find that every older person that complains about younger generations are simply not involved with them to a degree to make their views valid, and their involvements are rarely initiated by the elders, and even more rarely positive.  \nTo contrast, I find that those excellent individuals that are involved with youth and try to help them from their own experience mostly complain about the parents, and validly so, for the interaction are usually negative and numerous because of improper parenting.  \nEvery generation can be at least as wonderful and terrible as any that has come before it. Don't you want to help make a better future by helping the ones following you?  \nTL;DR: be excellent to each other, and party on dudes. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bartleby.com/73/456.html"], [], ["http://www.chrisconnollyonline.com/2009/02/72-is-partial-compendium-latvian-humor.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "1nhajw", "title": "Were those of mixed (white-native American) descent treated differently in colonial Pennsylvania/America in the 1750s and 1760s?", "selftext": "The French and Indian War sent quite a deep animosity between white and native, so what happened to those that were mixed? How were they treated and how were they perceived? Were they considered white or \"Indian\"? Were there any benefits?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nhajw/were_those_of_mixed_whitenative_american_descent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cciqfnu"], "score": [10], "text": ["I'm going to start out by saying I can't provide any specific sources, as I learned this in class and really don't feel like going back through all of the books I read during that time.\n\nBut yes, they were treated differently.  It actually wasn't completely rare for the mixing to happen, especially with white men and Native women.  While it didn't really happen with the \"proper\" men of the cities, it happened often with traders and frontiersman who spent a lot of time outside of the cities (and people within cities didn't find it all too inappropriate for these types of men to have these relationships).  These men were outside of the cities, so this \"inappropriate\" behavior did not infiltrate normal society.  Also, it was viewed as a part of their business, as they needed guides and some kind of security and access from the local tribes.\n\nThere was mixed reaction for the women, however.  The opinion of Native women about themselves being involved with white men was split, as some felt white men were bad providers and wouldn't provide a real stable future, and the other half approved because white men could get them access to English goods and hopefully secure peace between the settlers and the Natives.  These relationships also fell under Native rules and laws, as they were outside of English societies, so that was viewed positively.\n\nThe colonists' views of the Native women did not match their accepting view of the white men involved with them.  They viewed the Native women involved with colonist men as taking advantage of the men (almost as a form of prostitution) since the Native women expected goods in return for the relationship.  They also viewed the Natives as savage in all aspects of life, including have multiple sexual partners (which wasn't necessarily always true) and going after just about any white male, as opposed to the civil, stable marriages the colonists participated in.\n\nBecause of these negative views of the native women, and the men involved not being a real part of civilized society, the children of these relationships were not generally accepted into society, as they had \"savage\" in them and were not proper.\n\nAlso, the reverse situation (Native men and white women) was not very common at all, and was more seen in captivity narratives and stories.\n\nAgain, I'll say I am not an expert in this subject, and someone who is can probably come in and give many more details.  But, this is what I've learned through my course of study.  Hopefully this can provide at least a little light on the subject until an actual expert comes in here."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2t269c", "title": "I have never seen a depiction of a native American with male pattern baldness. Did it just not exist among the New World populations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2t269c/i_have_never_seen_a_depiction_of_a_native/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cnuzz0r", "cnv0qpe", "cnv5gpx", "cnvhorq"], "score": [24, 20, 10, 6], "text": ["This might be worth crossposting to /r/AskScience for their input on the genetics side of things.", "Also, as another question, based on the depictions of native Americans I've seen, it seems like facial hair was very rare. Is there any historical explanation or information behind that?", "[Here](_URL_0_) is a recent post on the facial hair question. I can't help you with the baldness question.", "Male pattern baldness is in fact virtually unknown among native americans - here's a magazine article which mentions the fact, but it doesn't give a source:  _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/2mw2km/when_i_watch_movies_with_native_americans_i_never/"], ["http://health.ninemsn.com.au/menshealth/grooming/695086/the-bald-truth"]]}
{"q_id": "4xp2e9", "title": "Only one empire ever controlled the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea. Why is that?", "selftext": "In history, there are many empires which controlled roughly similar regions, but after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, no other power had sole control of the Medieterranean Sea. I wonder, why is that? Was there any other empire which positively tried to do that or is this question too arbitrary?\n\nGratitude. \n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4xp2e9/only_one_empire_ever_controlled_the_entirety_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6hka9l"], "score": [66], "text": ["I can't speak to the period after Rome, but the answer is likely to be the same one that applies to the period *before* Rome: the existence of well-organised rival states prevented any single power from achieving total control over the entire sea.\n\nFrom the sixth century BC onward, there were two major candidates for supremacy over the Mediterranean: Carthage in the West, and the Persian Empire in the East. Carthage had successfully settled the North African coast from its main city westward, as well as the coast of the Iberian peninsula, Sardinia, and Western and Northern Sicily. It was poised to take over the rest of Sicily and use the island as a springboard to further eastward expansion. The Persian Empire, meanwhile, had reached the Aegean by 546 BC; it had subdued Cyprus, Egypt and much of Libya. In a series of campaigns between 510 and 490 BC, it crossed from Asia into Europe, conquering Thrace, Macedon and all the islands of the Aegean. Both powers seem to have chosen the year 480 BC for their next great push. Persia had its sights set on mainland Greece; Carthage meant to take over the Greek side of Sicily.\n\nAt this point, however, something weird happened: both major powers were defeated by the Greeks. Herodotos, our main source for the events, reports the tradition that the great battles of Himera and Salamis occurred on the exact same day. At Himera, a massive Carthaginian invasion force was destroyed by Gelon of Syracuse. At Salamis, the Persian fleet was checked by a Greek alliance under Spartan and Athenian leadership and forced to withdraw. In the next campaign season, the Persian army was destroyed at Plataia, extinguishing the Persians' hope of conquering the Greeks. It is not easy to say how all this could have happened, but I gave it a try [here](_URL_0_).\n\nNeither Carthage nor Persia were broken, however, and for the whole century and a half that followed, their desire for further Mediterranean expansion periodically flared up again. The history of Sicily in the Classical period is one of repeated and desperate struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks over domination of the island. In 406 and 405 BC, two of the greatest Greek settlements on Sicily (Akragas and Gela) were razed to the ground, but in 397 BC a major Carthaginian army was destroyed at Syracuse, and the Carthaginians were soon reduced to a single settlement on the island. They tried again, repeatedly, to take control, but they were ultimately unsuccessful each time - mainly due to the presence of the powerful city-state of Syracuse and its dependent territories. Persia, meanwhile, gathered fresh armies and fleets several times, but the Athenians repeatedly destroyed them. The Persians ultimately got wise and chose a divide-and-rule policy that effectively turned mainland Greece into a dependent region (although priorities like consolidation and internal unrest meant that they never resumed active expansion further west than Libya and Greece).\n\nDespite their constant attempts to subdue their Greek neighbours and control more of the Mediterranean, there was never a time when either state was anywhere close to controlling the entire climate zone. Simply put, there were strong states in their way, and their repeated failure to subdue these prevented the establishment of an empire like Rome eventually became."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4i1o75/why_was_the_invasion_of_greece_by_xerxes/d2ufyrc"]]}
{"q_id": "1czasx", "title": "Dumb Question: How did a city like Rome at the height of the Roman Empire manage to keep a reliable food surplus without refrigeration or fast transportation?", "selftext": "Something that had always puzzled me is how far food goes before it reaches me. So many things line up today to get a hamburger on my plate. How did ancient cities accomplish this?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1czasx/dumb_question_how_did_a_city_like_rome_at_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c9leist", "c9lf5u3", "c9lfeqa", "c9llbvu", "c9lp7k5"], "score": [19, 152, 145, 5, 10], "text": ["Salt was definitely a major factor for preserving meats, but granaries did their part too - grain was essential to the Roman diet. Roman granaries were able to store surplus grain from Egypt for years, which became especially helpful during crop shortages and the like. ", "The staples of the Roman diet were the [Mediterranean triad](_URL_1_) - wheat, olives, and grapes.  Unprocessed wheat, olive oil, and wine, shipped in enormous amphoras, kept for years and could be - and were - shipped from far-off provinces and stored in massive warehouses in and around Rome.  Beyond those staples, many people in Rome itself had gardens to supply them with potherbs, and the Italian countryside around Rome was filled with farms, supplying the city with eggs, honey, fruits, vegetables, songbirds, dormice, snails, and less ordinary delicacies (when in season, of course - and /u/Tiako's comment notes that the evidence for this claim is not certain).  Meat and fish were less common in the ordinary Roman diet than they are today, but cows and sheep and pigs could be driven into the city and slaughtered there (side note:  animals sacrificed on the altars of Rome's temples were often sold by the priests to butchers in the city market; this bothered Christians, as Romans 14 attests), and, of course, the fish markets in Ostia were only a little ways down the road.  \n\ntl;dr:  besides a few easy-to-keep and easy-to-transport staples, Romans, and pretty much everyone else before the internal combustion engine, ate locally.\n\nEdit:  I don't mean to imply that managing those easy-to-keep staples was an *easy* thing for Rome to do.  [Ensuring the grain supply](_URL_0_) was a matter of enormous importance to the government of the city; Rome - with more than a million people at its greatest extent - was utterly reliant on the essentially parasitic relationship it had with the grain-producing provinces; keeping the *panes* part of *panes et circenses* flowing was a major concern for all the Emperors; and when Rome's support network broke down in the 5th century AD, the result was famine, misery, and a massive population decrease.", "So far from being a dumb question, it is one that attracts an enormous amount of scholarly attention. One of the great works on the Roman economy in recent times is called [The Grain Market in the Roman Empire](_URL_0_) by Paul Erdkamp, one of the great modern scholars of the Roman economy.\n\nA quick, simplistic answer to your question: most importantly, you can't expect the diversity of options to be available to a Roman. Even the wealthiest Romans were not immune to the dictates of the season or to transportation. Animal product was primarily obtained in Latium, although artistic evidence clearly indicates that fish, almost certainly salted, was obtainable in the city. There has not to my knowledge been a systematic study of fruit and vegetable supply, and while it is sometimes asserted that the surrounding countryside must have specialized heavily in this I do not know of positive evidence to support. I also would not be surprised if urban gardening played a part in that supply. Olive oil overwhelmingly came from Spain, and wine from southern Gaul and northern Italy (actually don't quote me on that one).\n\nGrain, by far the most important source of food, came generally from Egypt, North Africa, and Sicily and took up a considerable amount of the Imperial attention. Ships carrying a certain amount of grain to Rome could import their other goods duty free, and the emperor owned considerable lands in Egypt devoted to supplying Rome.\n\nI may be able to provide additional detail for specific topics if you are curious.", "If I remember well my history classes, it was because of salt, actually salt was a very valuable asset in Rome, to the point that workers were paid in salt... that's the origin of the SALary word. Actually salt is used in a lot of places in the world where refrigeration is not an option, obviously food doesn't taste the same, but it's a very interesting flavor. ", "No one has mentioned fermentation, which was important for preserving food. Wine and _garum_ were both an important part of Roman cuisine, _garum_ in particular being very nutritious."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_supply_to_the_city_of_Rome", "http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art811.asp"], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=IIj9uvGtJFEC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5hdzva", "title": "In a Christmas Story, Bob Cratchit earned 15 shillings a week in 1840. What was the spending power of a wage like that?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hdzva/in_a_christmas_story_bob_cratchit_earned_15/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dazxj15", "db07klk", "db0dy18"], "score": [62, 22, 8], "text": ["First off, the story you want is [A Christmas **Carol**](_URL_1_). [A Christmas **Story**](_URL_4_) is the one where Ralphie wants a BB gun for Christmas, but everyone tells him \"You'll shoot your eye out!\"\n___\nThat being said, I'm not sure how much historical information can be used to answer this question. Spending Power, by which I assume you mean Purchasing Power, is an economic measure of how much goods and services you can buy. You can calculate it, which means the question you've asked is a math question, not a history one.\n\nThe answer to your question that is the easiest to understand is to convert 15 shillings in 1843 money (the story takes place in 1843, not 1840) to 2015 money (the most recent year for which full financial data is available). A simple way to do this is to use the either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Retail Price Index (RPI), both of which are tools used to measure inflation, specifically measuring the change in costs of specific goods and services from one year to the next. There are plenty of sources for these. If you live in the UK, [here](_URL_5_) is the Office for National Statistics' page for it. If you live in the US, [here](_URL_2_) it is for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.\n\nAs for calculating the amount, you can find a calculator for CPI or RPI online very easily, and since they're all going to work off the same data (historical data you can find on the above sites), they should all give you the same answers. The problem is that a lot of them don't go back far enough to convert 1843 money. I found one that did, and your answer is [here](_URL_0_).\n\n15 Shillings per week in 1843, according this calculator (which uses the RPI), will be \u00a366.40 in 2015. And if you live in the US, [the IRS says](_URL_3_) the average exchange rate from US Dollars to British Pounds in 2015 was .681, which turns \u00a366.40 into $97.50. That site gives alternative methods to calculate purchasing power, but this is going to be the generally accepted answer.\n\nSo, imagine being paid \u00a366.40 or $97.50 weekly, or $2.44/hour last year. That's Bob Cratchit's Purchasing Power.", "This will be off by about 40 years, but [\"Life on a Guinea a Week,\"](_URL_0_) which appeared in *The Nineteenth Century* in March of 1888, offers some insight into what a clerk, earning 50 guineas,  (i.e. \u00a352/10/0) - might have in the way of expenditures.\n\nThe weekly expenditures listed are as such:\n\n\n\nExpenditure | Shilling | Penny\n---|---|----\nRent | 6 | 0\nBreakfasts | 1 | 8\nDinners | 5| 0\nTeas | 1 | 0\nBootcleaning | 0 | 3\nCoals  &  Wood| 1 | 0\nWashings | 0 | 9\nTobacco, etc. | 0| 6\n**Total** | 19| 3\n\nNow, to be fair, the article in question seems to be concerned with proving that it is possible to subsist on one guinea \"... and yet life not be a burden and perpetual misery to an individual.\" so, remember that. It's also supposed to be about a single man, not a family. Feel free to read the article linked above yourself. Since it was published in 1888 it's free to read on google scholar and it is quite short.\n\n*Roberts, W. \"Life on a Guinea a Week\" In The Nineteenth Century, 464-67. Vol. 23. Henry S. King  &  Company, 1888.*", "Adding to this: was Bob Cratchit's income supposed to be realistic, or was it exaggerated for literary effect?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.measuringworth.com/m/calculators/ukcompare/result.php?year_source=1843&amp;amount=0.75&amp;year_result=2015", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol", "http://www.bls.gov/cpi/", "https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/yearly-average-currency-exchange-rates", "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/", "https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices"], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=foo7AQAAIAAJ&amp;lpg=PA464&amp;ots=a6scBTwOoZ&amp;dq=%22Life%20on%20a%20Guinea%20a%20Week%22&amp;pg=PA464#v=onepage&amp;q=%22Life%20on%20a%20Guinea%20a%20Week%22&amp;f=false"], []]}
{"q_id": "2c4oc0", "title": "I read in another thread that the Japanese were oppressed by a dictator for decades prior to WWII. I was wondering what was the structure of the government in Japan and how did it function? Perhaps address how \"oppressed\" the people were, what was life like, and the relationship with the government?", "selftext": "I apologize for the amount of questions, I just feel like I don't know much about pre-WWII Japanese society. ESPECIALLY compared to Germany and America and whatnot. I would also be interested in any significant social movements pre or during WWII.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c4oc0/i_read_in_another_thread_that_the_japanese_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc0w6c"], "score": [29], "text": ["I love this question, The pre-war period is my favorite part of Japanese history, but I`m hundreds of miles away from my computer and reference materials so I can`t write a good response. Don`t be surprised if there is an edit in two or three weeks time with a lot more info.\n\nI`ll start by linking to [this](_URL_0_) monster post I wrote on Japanese militarism which you may find useful.\n\nPre-War Japanese society is fascinating. In the interests of brevity i`ll split prewar Japan into two parts, 1920 (The start of the heyday of the Taisho Democracy) to 1933 (assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi) and 1933 to 1941. But things are a little bit more complicated than that and I encourage further research as always.\n\nBy 1920 Japan was one of the economic powerhouses of the world. While the Europeans had sacrificed milllions of men and the production of their entire nations in the First World War, Japan had focused on its economy and came through mostly unscathed (For the first time, Japan changed from a borrowing nation to a lending nation). Japan had also had its share of the spoils of war, with new possessions in China and the Pacific as well as a seat at the League of Nations Security Council.\n\nJapan was also an increasingly liberal and progressive country. The new Emperor since 1912, Emperor Taisho, was (possibly) feeble-minded and was both pro-west and pro-liberlism as far as we can gauge from his few public appearances. Japan`s prime minister, Hara Takashi, was a party politician as opposed to the Oligarchs that had dominated Japanese politics before the war.\n\nJapanese Society during Taisho is nicknamed  Ero, Guru, Nansensu (Erotic, Grosteque and Nonscensical) if that gives you an idea of what it was like. People dressed in European style clothes and talked politics, philosophy and foreign poilicy in public. Young people who talked politics were nicknamed Marx Girls and Marx Boys, reflecting their likely political leanings. European Style Cafes and Bars covered the streets. Art-Deco Theaters, Opera Houses and flashy hotels were opened everywehere to service Japan`s growing middle and upper classes, which included an increasing number of Journalists which was a rising profession. Universities and Higher education were also becoming more common (the first womens university in Japan opened in 1918) and liberal and communist ideas filled their halls. Indeed, liberalism permeated every part of society, even the army. One army commander complained soldiers had become rebellious `due to the rise in general knowledge and social education.`\n\nBut a sickening stench covered this liberalism, the stench of ultra-nationalism that would later plunge Japan into WW2. Leading leftists in Japan supported Japan`s imperial adventures in Korea and China and 15 years earlier, when riots had wracked Japan at the end of the Russo- Japanese War because people felt Japan had not punished Russia sufficiently, some of the leading rioters had been members of leftist organizations.\n\nIn 1923 the vote was extended to all men over 25 who could prove a steady income. However, the same year the Peace Preservation law was also passed, which allowed the government to arrest anyone who was opposed to the `Kokutai` or national polity. What this meant in reality was members of far leftisist organizations were driven out of government and arrested. This back and forth push between Democracy and Authoritarianism characterized the government of the Taisho Era.\n\nOne interesting Characteristic of later Taisho Japan is that the `cool` intellectual thing became supporting Fascism, Imperialism and Authoritarianism. We imagine Paris in the 20s as a place where the world greatest liberals talked about democracy. Late 1920s Tokyo was similar, except Japans greatest intellectuals gathered to talk about utter devotion to the emperor and other authoritarian concepts. People like Kita Ikki and Tamakura Kotaro pressed ideas of Japanese Racial superiority and the neccessirty of an Authoritarian government. In the case of Tamakura Kotaro, he had started out as one of Japan`s liberal Marx Boys, but somewhere became disillusioned and became graudually more right wing and extreme.\n\nWith this in mind, its easy to see how the seemingly strong Taisho Democracy was balanced on a knifes edge and collapsed so easily.\n\nEDIT: Japanese Phone Keyboard:s don`t like me, excuse the bizarre formatting and any typos\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27rqb3/what_was_the_japanese_justification_or_rationale/ci3rahv"]]}
{"q_id": "1vgjrd", "title": "In the HBO series 'Rome' set during Julius Caesar's dictatorship and later Augustus' bid for power, the two main characters come to run something called the Aventine Collegium by appointment of Mark Antony. Was this a real thing, and if so what was it?", "selftext": "The series is very unclear about this. It *seems* to be some sort of state-sanctioned gang, conducting murders and running brothels - at one point they're tasked by Augustus and Mark Antony with killing a whole bunch of men that could warn Brutus of their alliance. The series takes a lot of liberties with history so it might not have been a real thing, but I'm curious to see if it was. The leader is referred to as a Captain, but I think in Latin that just means 'head' or 'leader'.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vgjrd/in_the_hbo_series_rome_set_during_julius_caesars/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ces3dfm", "ces9v9c"], "score": [37, 4], "text": ["It was actually. Rome, in those times, actually had no police force. It was also illegal to bring active soldiers into the city under arms.\n\nDuring the political reforms of the later stages of the republic, physical violence and force became common tactics used by different sects in order to suppress opposition and enforce their own agendas.  In the show Rome you can see an example of this when Marc Antony is trying to get to the Senate to veto and is attacked by a mob of club wielding thugs. Those thugs are meant to intimidate and threaten participants in the forum to promote a political agenda.\n\nSenators and Consuls eventually clue up to the fact that having armed gangs full of guys like that running around the city bullying your political enemies was a great way to make sure you win elections and stay in control.\n\nOf course that would not be without some backlash for the prestigious and eventually the oligarchy turns to organizing the gangs under proxies. Two of the first and most famous are [Milo](_URL_1_) and [Clodius](_URL_0_).\n\n[Here](_URL_2_) is paper further explain their activities within the context of mob warfare in Rome with a bit of editorializing. There is a bibliography at the bottom with further source material if anyone is interested. A few sources, particularly *Mob Violence in the Late Roman Republic: 133-49 B.C* by J.W Heaton and *Violence in Republican Rome* by AW Linott would be relevant.", "Great comment by /r/AFancyLittleCupcake\n\nAlso, when you they're tasked with killing people on the \"list,\" that wasn't actually murder, it was state sanctioned \"proscription.\" Like the original concept of outlawing someone, it was the state declaring \"hands off, you can totally kill this guy if you want.\"  They refer to this a few times in the show.\n\nAlso, there have been several threads here before about the historical accuracy of the show, which you might find instructive.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Clodius_Pulcher", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Annius_Milo", "http://papersiwrote.blogspot.com/2006/09/organized-gang-warfare-in-late.html"], []]}
{"q_id": "2juxgs", "title": "(Nautical) Historians, how were masts of tall ships mounted (stepped) before the modern crane?", "selftext": "For instance, during the construction of HMS Victory. Also, a corollary; were different techniques used in the East and West?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2juxgs/nautical_historians_how_were_masts_of_tall_ships/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clffwzf", "clfowuv", "clfrprs"], "score": [39, 3, 2], "text": ["In the West, cranes called sheers were used. These tended to be light wooden structures, fixed at the base. They were very simple, consisting of a few long beams. They were mounted either on masonry structures, as can be seen in the Copenhagen [Mastekranen](_URL_0_), or on old ships. Ships that carried sheers were known as sheer hulks. The cranes on sheer hulks could be smaller than land based ones, as the effective height of the mast could be increased by tilting the ship. This was done either by shifting ballast, or by physically pulling the sheer hulk over using ropes and teams of men. The collections of the National Maritime Museum include a model of a sheer hulk masting a frigate, which can be seen online [here](_URL_1_)", "It isn't a tallship, but I actually helped raise the topmast on the *Dove* docked in Historic St. Mary's City, MD. \n\nShips were made at the time so that they could raise or lower their masts in case of inclement weather so that they could minimize the risk of capsizing. \n\nOn the deck there is a large windlass. Imagine a six-foot-wide, maybe two foot diameter barrel perpendicular to the bow. It has several slots in which to attach a lever, you have to remove and replace the lever as you move the windlass. The huge machine works as a gigantic winch. On the *Dove*, it was placed just aft of the foremast.\n\nA line runs from the windlass, over the top of the mainmast's platform (you might think of it as a \"crows' nest\"), through the cap (on top of the mainmast, where the topmast will be attached), through an opening on the bottom of the platform. The line is then attached to the topmast, looped around the bottom then the top.\n\nAt this point you are ready to hoist the mast in place. Once the top reaches the platform above the mainmast, you undo the knots at the top and fix the line to the cap. You then attach the rigging to the top of the topmast (it's attached to a ring and attached to the platform ahead of time). After a bit more hoisting, you add the flagstaff and whatever else goes up there, hoist some more. The topmast is fixed in place with a wooden block that goes through a \"fid\" in the bottom of the topmast and holds it above the platform.\n\nI made a pretty extensive PowerPoint about it full of my own pictures. If anyone knows how I can upload it publicly, I'm willing to share.\n\nEdit: I should add that the *Dove* is a replica of a standard 17th-century vessel.", "I should also maybe mention if it would be interesting to you that the tradition of converting older ships into crane ships did not stop after the age of sail. The *USS Kearsarge* famously was converted into a crane ship in the 1920s. Here is a [before](_URL_1_) and an [after](_URL_0_) photo of her. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastekranen", "http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/67768.html"], [], ["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/USS_Kearsarge_as_crane_ship_AB-1.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/USS_Kearsarge_after_WWI_refit_1916.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "55fc8h", "title": "If I used a phone in an American city in the 1930s, and someone hung up on me, would I hear a dial tone?", "selftext": "Or would it just be silence? Would an operator inform me I've lost connection? Not sure...", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/55fc8h/if_i_used_a_phone_in_an_american_city_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d8avpoa"], "score": [16], "text": ["It's possible.\n\nBell felt that human operators gave better service, but after the operators strike of 1920 investments were made in switching hardware to support direct dial.  [The first dial tone service in Atlanta](_URL_0_) began in 1923, but adoption was gradual.  Nationwide, 65% of telephones were using dial service by 1947.  By 1956 the rate was 89%.\n\nThe procedure for using a switchboard was that when the caller took the phone off-hook it would cause a light to come on at the switchboard.  The operator would plug one end of the patchcord into the socket corresponding to the caller and ask who they were calling.  If it was a local call then the operator could complete the call by plugging the other end of the patch cord to the destination.  When the call was over the lights would turn off and the operator would unplug.\n\nLong distance calls required to operator to connect to other operators via the trunk lines, and patch it through.\n\nIn some old movies there is the trope where the caller bounces the hook up and down to make an urgent call.  This just made the light flash on the switchboard.  I don't know if it was effective.\n\nIf the callee hung up very soon after picking up, it's possible that the operator might ring back to check that the line was working.  Otherwise it would just be silence.\n\nIf you had dial service (like in the 70s) it depended on who was calling.  The line didn't drop until the caller hung up.  If the callee picked up the telephone again and tried to dial someone else they would still be talking to the first caller.  If, on the other hand, the caller hung up, the callee would get a dial tone.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.atlantatelephonehistory.info/part2.html"]]}
{"q_id": "29d4tc", "title": "Were there any feared knights from medieval history like the Mountain from Game of Thrones?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29d4tc/were_there_any_feared_knights_from_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cijw4vk", "cijwq5k", "cijzgkr", "cik100m"], "score": [111, 103, 34, 37], "text": ["Feared? Well, sort of. There were definitely some more famous ones. William Marshal comes to mind. He was a sort of proto celebrity and lived between 1146CE and 1219CE.\n\nHe was one of the younger sons in his family, and he didn't really stand much of a chance to inherent land. He ended up finding talent as a knight and spent a lot of time tourneying with friends, where he gained recognition with a few royals. He also had a reputation for playing rather dirty:\n\n\"The Marshal made a point of playing to win. Wherever he went he was ruthless on the field, mastering tactics (such as grabbing his opponent's horse's reins) that eluded others.\" (Nigel Saul, \"Chivalry and the Birth of Celebrity\").\n\nHe lived long enough, married the right person, and won enough tournaments to move up in society enough to live comfortably. One of his children commissioned an historical poem about him, and records tell a decent amount.\n\n\nWorks referenced:\n\nPRACTICAL CHIVALRY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY: THE CASE OF WILLIAM MARSHAL\nRichard Abels\n\nSaul, Nigel. \"Chivalry And The Birth Of Celebrity.\" History Today 61.6 (2011): 20-25. Historical Abstracts. Web. 29 June 2014.\n\n(Yes, I know, I haven't formatted my citations properly or similarly, but it's a Saturday, it's summer, this is reddit, and I'm tired).\n\nBasically, yes. And I'm sure that for every knight that we know about, there were many who have been lost to history. ", "Reynald de Chatillon comes to mind as a frightening knight of rather dubious morality, like the Mountain.  He defied the peace treaty between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin by raiding Muslim caravans and sparked what ultimately became the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem after the Battle of Hattin.  Baldwin IV told Saladin he couldn't do anything to stop Reynald, who could not be controlled.  He launched pirate ships in the Red Sea whose men plundered at will.\n\nSaladin was generally merciful after Hattin, where Reynald and Baldwin's successor, Guy of Lusignan, and most of the knights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem were defeated.  Saladin refused Reynald a drink of water and apparently sliced him up personally for his misdeeds.  The Templars were similarly not spared; they had a pretty brutal streak and Saladin thought them too fanatical to live.  The Crusades saw some pretty awful knightly violence in general with the captures of Antioch (1098) and Jerusalem (1099) during the First Crusade, and Constantinople (1204) during the Fourth Crusade.  \n\n\nOf the Franks (generic term for Crusaders at the time) at Constantinople, Speros Vyronis writes \"For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable.  They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church's holy vessels.\"   It was even worse that the Crusaders were giving up on the Holy Lands and sacking a Christian city after more than a century of East/West hostility and suspicion regarding the Crusades. \n\n\n\n\nThe Baltic Crusades had some pretty horrific violence, too.  The Teutonic Knights and Brothers of the Sword/Livonian Order were about as savage a \"spreading faith by the sword\" enterprise as the world has seen.\n\nThe suppression of the Cathars in the \"Albigensian Crusade\" in Languedoc was also pretty awful.\n\nI'm sure if you look into some of these events you can single out some particularly brutal and deadly knights.  \n\nsee: Runciman, Steven, A History of the Crusades: Volume 2, The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East (1952), Graham-Leigh, Elaine The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade (2005), Vryonis, Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe. New York: Harcourt, Brace  &  World. p. 152., .", "Not a badass but noble:\nFearful for his enemies was Zawisza Czarny known as The Black Knight.\nHe lived ~1370-1428 in Poland.\nBest knight of his time, winner of countless tournaments.\nHe fought in the Battle of Grunwald (1410) where he is known for his act of bravado which was recapture of lost King's banner.\nHe participated in many campaigns with Sigismund of Luxemburg against Ottomans.\nIn Aragon he defeated  in a duel John of Aragon who was known as greatest western European knight.\nAs a skilled diplomat he proposed a peace treaty between Jagiello and Sigismund in 1411. Also he was a member of polish delegacy to the Counsile of Constance (1414-1418) where he was defending Jan Hus in Constance (1415) and also convinced Pope Martin V that John of Falklengerg's story about \"Good, catholic Tutonic Order and bad pagan Poland\" was a piece of crap.\n_URL_0_\nLess about diplomacy, more about fighting:\n\nHe died on 12 of June 1428 near Golubac, Serbia.\nSigismund was defeated by the Ottomans and had not enough boats to cross Danube. The Black Knight covered Emperor's retreat to the river and when finally Sigismund sent him boats to cross the river, he refused. He said he can't abandon any of his men (\"No men behind\") and was taken captured.\nIn Janissar's camp two of Janissars were diputing who's hostage is he. One of them lost his temper and cut Zawisza's head off.\n\nIn Polish Scouts \"Ten Commandments\" second one is to: \"[you can] rely on [a boyscout] as on Zawisza\"\n\nJan D\u0142ugosz: \"Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae\" (1455\u20131480)\nStanis\u0142aw Kuczy\u0144ski: \"Zawisza Czarny\" Katowice: 1980.", "Irish society before the 12th century was a direct inheritor of Iron-Age social structures, meaning it was dominated by a warrior-aristocracy whose legitimacy depended in part on their capacity to fight in battle. And by fight in battle, I mean at the front lines; Irish annals sometimes list dozens of kings who perished in combat in a single battle. This means that Irish kings were expected to fight alongside their retinue of household troops in battle, and that a few of them were famous for being relatively fierce warriors.\n\nCerball mac D\u00fanlang, king of Osraige immediately comes to mind. He was a 9th century king of Osraige, a small territory wedged between the provinces of Munster and Leinster whose almost constant military campaigns during the Viking Age saw his kingdom become a major power in eastern Ireland. He was renown as a charismatic warrior-king who became feared by Scandinavian raiders:\n\n > When the Norwegians saw Cerball with his army, or retinue, they were seized by terror and great fear. Cerball went to a high place, and he was talking to his own people at first. This is what he said, looking at the wasted lands around him: \u2018Do you not see,\u2019 said he, \u2018how the Norwegians have devastated this territory by taking its cattle and by killing its people? If they are stronger than we are today, they will do the same in our land. Since we are a large army today, let us fight hard against them. There is another reason why we must do hard fighting: that the Danes who are along with us may discover no cowardice or timidity in us. For it could happen, though they are on our side today, that they might be against us another day. Another reason is so that the men of Munster whom we have come to relieve may comprehend our hardiness, for they are often our enemies.\u2019\n\n > Afterwards he spoke to the Danes, and this is what he said to them: \u2018Act valiantly today, for the Norwegians are your hereditary enemies, and have battled among you and made great massacres previously. You are fortunate that we are with you today against them. And one thing more: it will not be worth your while for us to see weakness or cowardice in you.\u2019\n\n > The Danes and the Irish all answered him that neither cowardice nor weakness would be seen in them. Then they rose up as one man to attack the Norwegians. Now the Norwegians, when they saw that, did not think of giving battle, but fled to the woods, abandoning their spoils. The woods were surrounded on all sides against them, and a bloody slaughter was made of the Norwegians. Until that time the Norwegians had not suffered the like anywhere in Ireland. This defeat occurred at Cruachan in E\u00f3ganacht. Cerball came back home with victory and spoils.\n\nIn an annal entry below, it is said that Cerball \"was worthy to possess all Ireland because of the excellence of his form and his countenance and his dexterity\", implying that he deserved to dominate all of Ireland because of how mighty a warrior he was - Irish warfare depended on mobility and quick skirmishes without armour, so dexterity would have been an important skill for a fighter. In an entry that relates his victory battle against the king of Tara, it is said that \"the learned related that Cerball had great difficulty there because Tairceltach mac na Certa practised magic upon him, so that it might be less likely that he should go to the battle; so Cerball said that he would go to sleep then, and would not go to the battle.\" -- Cerball was such a fierce fighter that only magic could stop him from giving battle!\n\nThe Fragmentary Annals of Ireland attest to his fame during his lifetime; in an entry for the year 859, after Cerball 'despoiled the land of all its goods' in the kingdom of Mide, it is said that:\n\n > Many of the poets of Ireland made praise-poems for Cerball, and mentioned in them every victory he had won; and \u00d3engus the scholar, successor of MoLua, made the most of all.\n\nNow this is one of my favourite annal entries ever:\n\n > The men from two fleets of Norsemen came into Cerball son of D\u00fanlang's territory for plunder. When messengers came to tell that to Cerball, he was drunk. The noblemen of Osraige were saying to him kindly and calmly, to strengthen him: \u2018What the Norwegians are doing now, that is, destroying the whole country, is no reason for a man in Osraige to be drunk. But may God protect you all the same, and may you win victory and triumph over your enemies as you often have done, and as you still shall. Shake off your drunkenness now, for drunkenness is the enemy of valor.\u2019\n\n > When Cerball heard that, his drunkenness left him and he seized his arms. A third of the night had passed at that time. This is how Cerball came out of his chamber: with a huge royal candle before him, and the light of that candle shone far in every direction. Great terror seized the Norwegians, and they fled to the nearby mountains and to the woods. Those who stayed behind out of valor, moreover, were all killed.\n\n > When daybreak came the next morning, Cerball attacked all of them with his troops, and he did not give up after they had been slaughtered until they had been routed, and they had scattered in all directions. **Cerball himself fought hard in this battle, and the amount he had drunk the night before hampered him greatly, and he vomited much, and that gave him immense strength; and he urged his people loudly and harshly against the Norwegians, and more than half of the army was killed there, and those who escaped fled to their ships**. This defeat took place at Achad mic Erclaige. Cerball turned back afterwards with triumph and great spoils.\n\nHave you ever been so hungover that you vomited and gained immense strength? Cerball mac D\u00fanlang did! Most of Cerball's deeds from this entry onwards relate to him defeating Northmen in battle and taking their spoils of war, or raiding neighbouring Irish kingdoms and inflicting \"total devastation\". Unfortunately, Cerball died in the year 888, which is missing from the Fragmentary Annals, so we'll never know what his eulogy looked like (when Irish kings died, the annalists would often include eulogies mentioning their valour, righteousness and prowess in battle).\n\nCerball mac D\u00fanlang was a renown warrior-king, and likely feared by his neighbours and by Scandinavian raiders. A lot of what's written in the annals may be dynastic propaganda, but it is still most likely that people during his lifetime did actually believe these stories."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Falkenberg"], []]}
{"q_id": "2ojjxf", "title": "When and how did crossing our fingers become the symbols for both luck and lying?", "selftext": "It seems strange to me that it's the symbol for luck and when we cross it behind our back to hide a lie. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ojjxf/when_and_how_did_crossing_our_fingers_become_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmnzv7a"], "score": [4], "text": ["Try /r/askanthropology. It seems like a more cultural thing than a historical thing "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5ndkdx", "title": "I'm a German living in western Germany in December, 1944. Do I have any idea how poorly the war is going, or would Nazi propoganda have successfully hidden German setbacks from me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ndkdx/im_a_german_living_in_western_germany_in_december/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcanqlo"], "score": [129], "text": ["Modified from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_) \n\n >  Enjoy the war, for the peace is going to be terrible- popular German joke in the last year of the war\n\nAs the fortunes of war turned against Germany after the Battle of Stalingrad, German propaganda found an imperative need to readjust to this new reality. Prior to the military reversals of 1942, German propaganda had operated on the principle of presenting an \"ersatz reality,\" wherein the state-dominated media maximized Germany's victories and ignored the salient reality that Germany's war was not a short one and her enemies persisted in fighting Germany. The scale of defeats like Stalingrad, the growing Allied bomber raids, and the surrender of German forces in North Africa pricked this media bubble and German propaganda organs responded accordingly. \n\nThis retooling of the Third Reich's propaganda apparatus in light of defeat pursued several seemingly counter-intuitive strategies. For one thing, despite the fact that the Third Reich was a personalist dictatorship *par excellence*, the figure of Hitler disappeared from German propaganda. In contrast to propaganda from the earlier years of victory, post-Stalingrad news of German military operations seldom invoked Hitler's name or connected him too heavily to military operations. This was part of a deliberate strategy on Goebbels's part as he recognized connecting Hitler too intimately to Germany's military fortunes made him, and by extension, the legitimacy of the entire regime, culpable when these operations did not bear fruit. Rather than present images of the F\u00fchrer, Hitler was  invoked in late war propaganda as an abstract figure that stood for all Germans. This could just be from invoking his title, or oblique historical analogies such as films that made apparent the connection between Hitler and historical personages like Frederick the Great. Hitler, whose visage was omnipresent in state propaganda between 1933-1941, became an abstraction. By the same token, German propaganda also emphasized the severity and violence of German military setbacks, but with a unique spin. Allied bombing, the Soviet massacres of Polish officers at Katyn, and other actions of the Allies became staples of German propaganda after the tide had turned as it showed that Germany's enemies were merciless. The idea behind this emphasis upon the Allies' purported barbarity was to bind the Germans together through a policy of \"strength through terror.\" This dehumanization of the Allies' military underscored that no compromise was possible and this was a war in which there was to be no quarter given and none expected.  \n\nThese new strategies often dovetailed with established propaganda discourses that had been present within the Third Reich since 1933. The regime's castigation of the so-called \"November Criminals\" of 1918 also found new currency in this environment. Interrogations of German troops captured after 20 July 1944 often reported back that one key motivation for fighting on was to prevent a repeat of Germany's humiliating defeat at the end of the First World War.  One important component of the demonization of the Allied military was that German retribution was in the making. Since 1933, one of the central legitimizing planks of the NSDAP was that it had enabled German technology and genius to reach its full potential. The vaunted V-weapons tapped into this established narrative that German technical expertise brooked no rivals. But beyond rockets and other *Wunderwaffen*, National Socialism had always stressed the ability of the will to transcend any material obstacles. This propaganda's emphasis upon collective action in the face of numerical superiority fed into this notion that the will is superior to rational logic. Similarly, the destruction of German landmarks and the seemingly indiscriminate nature of Allied bombing heightened the sense that this was a cultural war and that the Germanic culture constantly trumpeted by the Third Reich was in existential danger. \n\nOne sinister aspect of the late war propaganda was its turn to a heightened antisemitism. Goebbels used the solidarity of Allied coalition of both the imperial Britain, hypercapitalist United States, and the Bolshevik USSR as evidence of grand global Jewish conspiracy against Germany. Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who by fortune escaped deportation and murder, would note in his diaries the increasingly shrill antisemitism in propaganda as Germany's fortunes waned. The widespread knowledge about the Holocaust amongst the German public imparted a weight to this propaganda that it might not have otherwise possessed. Although they might not have known the specifics of the Holocaust, most Germans were aware that something quite terrible had happened to the Jews in the East. Even though the antisemitism was troweled on so thick to strain credibility in this propaganda, it encouraged the expectation that the Allies would hold Germany collectively responsible  for the mass murder of the Jews. This does not mean that the German public accepted the NSDAP and Propaganda Ministry's antisemitism wholesale, but in some cases interpreted antisemitism quite differently than the state. One popular rumor among German civilians in 1943/4 was that Hungary had not been the target of any Allied  bombings was because the Hungarian government had spared its Jews. The SD recorded a number of complaints that because the Horthy government has ghettoized Jews in Budapest the Allies would not attack this human shield, and there was grumbling within the German populace that Hitler did not do the same for cities like Berlin or Hamburg. And some of this disgruntlement was not clandestine, but in direct petitions to Goebbels. There were a string of letters to the Propaganda Ministry after the mass operations to clear Hungary's Jews in 1944 demanding that they be used as human hostages against Allied bombing. But the general acceptance of some of the antisemitism produced by Goebbels's machine precluded any thought or possibility of a negotiated peace for much of the German public. News of the Morgenthau Plan, which would have deindustrialized Germany, the expansion of Allied bombing, and the scale of German reverses fostered the expectation of a Carthaginian peace.   \n\nThe effectiveness of this late-war propaganda is open to interpretation. While it could not rekindle hope in final victory, it did strengthen the resolve of some Germans to see the war to its bitter conclusion. Yet, even as propaganda turned to negative integration (uniting around a threat), it could not arrest the gradual estrangement of much of the German public to the National Socialist state. Goebbels himself appreciated this sentiment and his famous  February 1943 *Sportpalast* speech had veiled threats against the \"Golden Pheasants\" of the NSDAP who were thus far still enjoying a prewar lifestyle.  This late-war propaganda often worked in conjunction with greater arbitrary state violence directed against Germans, especially after the 20 July plot. Extralegal state violence had been embedded in the DNA of the Third Reich since 1933, but outside of political enemies and German Jews, most Germans' interaction with arbitrary state violence was the *threat* of it until around Stalingrad, when the security services began a much more thorough crackdown against shirkers and potential fifth-columnists. The 20 July plot helped to further this turn towards extralegal violence and other forms of domestic terror. \n\nIn this hypothetical scenario, a western German would have been obviously aware that the war had been going poorly. There were simply too many salient reverses to ignore. The Allied bomber campaign against the Ruhr and the sound of flak would have been something impossible to ignore. Their own government would have also publicized some of the Allied victories as an example that Germany's back was against the wall. By the the winter of 1944, the Red Army had begun to occupy German territory in the East (both in the Reich and those annexed in 1939) and Goebbels's propaganda ministry published lurid atrocity tales. Moreover, the advance of Anglo-American arms across France had eliminated what had been Hitler's greatest strategic victory in 1940. The retreat of German troops as well as the fall of the German city of Aachen in October 1944 would have been a reality that would have been difficult to ignore. \n\nThe mid- and late-war propaganda drive for mass action and a collective response to Allied aggression worked in often counterintuitive ways. While it stiffened resolve to not have a repeat of November 1918, propaganda along with the deteriorating war effort engendered a kind of grim fatalism for the future. Both rhetoric and reality heightened the sense of social anomie and the breakdown of society that came as bombing and wartime pressures destroyed the German infrastructure and stretched the civilian domestic economy well past its breaking point. The final agonies of the last few months of the war, as well as the violence meted out to Germans that shirked in their duties, helped to cement the postwar myth that Germans were double victims of the war- who were both subject to extreme violence from their military enemies, but also brutalized by a hypocritical criminal regime.  \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qu8ma/how_did_propaganda_change_in_nazi_germany_after/"]]}
{"q_id": "3l91la", "title": "Donald Trump claims that the writers of the 14th Amendment didn't necessarily intend for it to automatically grant birthright citizenship. Is there any truth to that? Did Lincoln or any of his colleagues say anything about their intent in crafting it?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3l91la/donald_trump_claims_that_the_writers_of_the_14th/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cv4ng57", "cv4obyn", "cv4pf4n"], "score": [15, 107, 5], "text": ["(on my phone, can provide sources on request, though most of what I am saying is easily verifiable) \n\nI am not aware of any evidence that it was not intended to grant birthright citizenship, and indeed, I find it hard to believe that it could be interpreted any other way. \n\nBut to pick up on the one kernel of truth that Trump is drawing from, the explicit, stated motivation was to ensure that freed slaves and their children would be granted citizenship. This is different from the dialogue around birthright citizenship today, which centers around immigration. In that sense, you can say that the amendment was not created with *today's* particular dialogue in mind, simply because the political climate and most important issues were different then. \n\nIf it sounds like I'm splitting hairs, it's because I am. But Trump isn't an idiot, no matter how he tries to portray himself in the media, and I'm willing to bet anything that he's intentionally twisting the \"technically true\" part of this statement into something outrageous that he can use as a political tool. ", "There is no truth to that at all, full stop.  Here's the abbreviated history of birthright citizenship in the United States.\n\n1. At independence, the United States inherited the citizenship laws of England.  Those were established in *Calvin's Case*, 77 E.R. 377 (1608).  Summarized, the court in Calvin's Case held that if a child is born a subject of the English king, they are entitled to the protections of the laws of England.\n2. When the United States declared independence, the state legislatures passed reception statutes establishing that the laws of England still applied.   New Jersey's 1776 Constitution, section XXII, for example, looked like this: \n\n     >  That the common law of England, as well as so much of the statute law, as have been heretofore practiced in this Colony, shall still remain in force, until they shall be altered by a future law of the Legislature; such parts only excepted, as are repugnant to the rights and privileges contained in this Charter;\n\n3. Between 1776 and 1857, this situation is more or less stable.  Then, in 1857, the Supreme Court decides the infamous case of *Dred Scott v. Sandford*,  60 U.S. 393 (1857).  Among other things, *Dred Scott* presents a pretty straightforward question of procedure, because the federal courts are only entitled to hear cases between *citizens* of different states.  If Dred Scott himself was not a citizen, he would have no right to file suit, and the case goes away.  This is exactly what the court did.  The *Dred Scott* court said that blacks were not citizens, should not be citizens, and could never be citizens, whether free or slave.  \n\n4.  *Dred Scott* becomes one of the major causes of the Civil War.\n\n5.  After the Civil War, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27-30 (1866), which says that \"all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.\"  This is under Congress' power to declare a \"uniform rule of naturalization\" pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution.  \n\n     >  \"Beyond question, by that act, national citizenship was conferred directly upon all persons in this country, of whatever race (excluding only 'Indians not taxed'), who were born within the territorial limits of the United States, and were not subject to any foreign power.\" *United States v. Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. 649, 682 (1890).\n\n6.  As the Supreme Court also noted in *Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. at 675, \"Congress, shortly afterwards, evidently thinking it unwise, and perhaps unsafe, to leave so important a declaration of rights to depend upon an ordinary act of legislation, which might be repealed by any subsequent Congress, framed the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and, on June 16, 1866, by joint resolution, proposed it to the legislatures of the several States, and on July 28, 1868, the Secretary of State issued a proclamation showing it to have been ratified by the legislatures of the requisite number of States.\"  \n\n7.  The 14th Amendment provides that \"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.\"  This re-establishes the rule of birthright citizenship in the United States.  The 14th Amendment is explicit about birthright citizenship because *Dred Scott* stripped the rights of citizens from free blacks.  \n\n8.  The clause that Trump et al. sometimes cite as a counterbalance, the \"subject to the jurisdiction\" part, is much narrower than most of the GOP candidates say it is.  \"Subject to the jurisdiction thereof\" was meant to exclude two categories of people from American citizenship.  Those are (a) Indians, who were treated as \"independent nations\" at the time, and (b) children of foreign diplomats.  *Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. at 705.\n\n9.  The *Wong Kim Ark* case is actually directly on point here, as Wong was born in San Francisco to two Chinese parents, neither of which were American citizens.  *Wong Kim Ark* isn't an outlier, either.  Previously, in *In re Look Tin Sing,* 21 F. 905, 910 (C.C.D. Cal. 1884), the California District Court held that birthright citizenship is something that attaches to American birth, full stop.  When discussing the citizenship status of the child of a Chinese immigrant, the court said, \"It is enough that he was born here, whatever was the status of his parents.\"  For over a hundred years, the right of citizenship has attached to the *fact of the child's birth here,* and has nothing to do with parentage.", "Related, but perhaps not to this sub question: How important is the perceived \"intent\" of the authors of the constitution vs what was written?  It seems like intent acts as a means of warping or filling in gaps via interpretation perhaps to conform to certain political views."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "22bzex", "title": "Why didn't Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey become English counties, with territories fully integrated with England?", "selftext": "The islands are very near England, I can't understand how they become mere dependencies.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22bzex/why_didnt_isle_of_man_jersey_and_guernsey_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cglplsh"], "score": [33], "text": ["The reasons why they didn't become fully integrated with England were different between the Isle of Man and the channel Islands.\n\nThe Isle of Man had never been part of England before the Norman conquest, and it was not part of England after the Norman conquest.  It had been ruled by Norsemen or Vikings since about 850 AD.  From about 1079, Man was part of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles.  This Kingdom was split in two in 1164.  Both these Kingdoms were nominally subject to the Kings of Norway.  \n\nIn 1266, there was fighting between the Norwegians and the Scots and the  Norwegians ceded the islands to Scotland in return for some money.  The Manx did not really recognize this shift in overlords until 1275 when they were defeated by the Scots in the Battle of Ronaldsway.\n\nIn 1290, King Edward I of England seized Man, and it remained English until Robert the Bruce of Scotland took it back in 1313.\n\nMan was kicked back and forth between England and Scotland.  \n\nIn 1405, King Henry IV granted the island to the Stanley family as a feudal fief (the feudal fee was to render homage and give two falcons to the Kings of England when they were crowned - which was not a very burdensome relationship.)\n\nThe Stanley family governed the island until the English civil war, when they were briefly ousted  by the Parliamentary side, but the Stanleys recovered control with the restoration.\n\nBy the 1700s, Man had become a smuggling base.  In 1765, the British Parliament, to suppress the smuggling purchased the Stanley family rights (but not the 'National rights') pertaining to the Isle of Man.  This allowed Parliament to control foreign policy, customs duties and trade laws.\n\nThe laws and customs internal to Man remained largely unchanged.\n\nIn short, the Isle of Man, though owing fealty to the Monarchs of England since 1405 (and in various earlier periods), was never part of England (or Scotland, though it owed fealty to the Scottish Monarchs at various times). \n\nWhen the British Parliament gained some control over the external and trade affairs of the Island, they never incorporated it into Britain, and its internal laws and governance structures remain distinct.\n\nThe Channel Islands are two separate 'bailiwicks' or administrations (The Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey), each with separate laws and legislatures.  The Islands were annexed to the Duchy of Normandy in 933 AD.\n\nIn 1259, King Henry III surrendered his claim and title to the Duchy of Normandy, but retained the Channel Islands, which, since then have been possessions of the Crown, but not part of England.  (The Queen is often referred to as the Duke of Normandy in her role as sovereign of the Channel Islands, but this has not been formally true since the Treaty of Paris of 1259.)\n\nThe Channel islands have been invaded, and briefly occupied by the French and the Germans on several occasions, but have always reverted to the English Crown.\n\nThe Channel Islands have been possessions of the Crown of England since 1066, but have never been part of England.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3q0rkm", "title": "Panel AMA: Devils  &  Ghosts, Heretics  &  Witches, Miracles  &  Magic in the Middle Ages", "selftext": "'Tis that time of year where we celebrate the things *that go bump in the night*, and in the past they bumped as loud as they do now....maybe louder? \n\nIn honour of the season, we've assembled some historians who research and study the history and sociology of things that went bump in the night one way or another during **Western European Early, High and Late Middle Ages** (some of us will even go to the Reformation and Renaissance for your questions). \n\nWe're here to answer questions about the long list of things variously called Medieval religion, superstition, or magic: devils, demons, ghosts, spirits, heretics, witches, sorcerers, the living dead, miracles and magic. \n\nThe historians below are in Europe and North America, and they will be in and out of the AMA throughout the day - so give us your questions, and we'll get to them all.\n\n/u/depanneur is interested in the integral role of magic in the pre-modern European worldview and the intimate role that the non-Judeo-Christian 'supernatural' played in the medieval imagination, from high politics to warfare to popular culture. He is most familiar with magic and the supernatural in the context of early medieval Irish history, but is willing to speak more generally on the origins of medieval magical thought, its role in every day life and the difficulties of applying terms like 'magic' and 'supernatural' to societies who may have understood those concepts differently. /AH Wiki  [here](_URL_1_) (Eastern Canada/USA, CST)\n\n/u/idjet lives in Toulouse and researches the medieval origins of heresy and witchcraft persecution, of medieval demonology, and the invention of the inquisition in France. /AH Wiki [here](_URL_0_) (France, GMT -2)\n\n/u/sunagainstgold studies religion, women, and religious women in the late Middle Ages and early Reformation.  (Eastern Canada/USA, EST)\n\n/u/thejukeboxhero studies religion in medieval society, including the representations of saints, ghosts, and other dead(ish) things in ecclesiastical texts along with the social and cultural values and anxieties they reflect. (Central Canada/USA,  CST)\n\nEdit: Late addition: /u/itsallfolklore is joining us as the resident expert on western folklore.\n\n(You may also be interested in the AMA from the same time last year, [*AMA Medieval Witchcraft, Heresy, and Inquisition*](_URL_2_))", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3q0rkm/panel_ama_devils_ghosts_heretics_witches_miracles/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwb2n74", "cwb2qx9", "cwb2yfo", "cwb39u9", "cwb3c8o", "cwb4gpr", "cwb4k39", "cwb4l8r", "cwb5ssk", "cwb67m5", "cwb79ze", "cwb7g4k", "cwb7igs", "cwb7smo", "cwb8wtq", "cwbc9ze", "cwbd5dm", "cwbg6oh", "cwbijii", "cwbllj1", "cwbm27t", "cwbn2am", "cwbq5ok", "cwbslr8"], "score": [9, 9, 7, 3, 15, 10, 3, 10, 3, 6, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 10, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["I've read about the Roman and Byzantine use of curse tablets before. Did the use of such tablets or something similar continue into Western Europe in the Middle Ages?", "How did view of magic and people who 'did magic' change in the late Middle Ages/early modern period.", "Goblins seem to be part of the folklore of many cultures all over the world (although with different names). Where did this belief originated? How did it propagated so widely?", "Was there always a strong distinction between the categories that you give above, from the perspective of the Latin Church? Cathars in particular came to mind, as they not only swayed away from orthodoxy but rather believe the Latin Church was worshipping a false god.\n\nThanks in advance for your answers!", "I'm going to a seminar next week titled \"Werewolves in Medieval Europe\", which sounds awesome, but I know very little about this topic. Can you guys explain whether 'werewolves' were found in myths from across Europe, or were they limited to specific regions/periods? I've also heard that there were 'werewolves' recorded in [Roman traditions](_URL_0_) - was there continuity between these stories and later medieval tales? I imagine finding a connection during the early Middle Ages must be quite difficult! ", "For all of you: why were witch trials highly sexualized and focused on the body of women? I know there were wizard trials but largely they focused on women. ", "How were accusations of heathenism or noncanonicalism used politically?", "What do you think about the ecstasy of St. Theresa? Deliberately sexualized orgasmic account or a failure of modern interpretation?", "Were there studied / academic / scholarly magicians during the (High) Middle Ages, or are these a later occurrence? Court magicians (like later court alchemists/astrologers)? If they existed, how did the church treat them?", "I'm curious to know if there are any examples of nominally Christian rulers in western Europe who attempted to use (or employ others to use) magic, spell-casting, or supernatural powers to assist them in battle. It seems like if belief in magic was integral to belief systems, it would be surprising not to try and use that power for military purposes.", "I touched briefly on some of this topic when I was writing a paper on religious motivations in the First Crusade last year, but it's definitely not my area of expertise. I'd love to hear more in depth stuff.  \n\nIn my own writing I discussed the very real fear of hell, the devil, evil spirits, etc. and how divine punishment was seen as an actual, concrete thing.  People very much feared for their immortal souls.  Was I correct in this? Or did people have a more abstract view of religion and the afterlife, along with the actual existence of demons and evil spirits?", "My favorite anecdote from the *Malleus Maleficarum* is the story of the wizard Puncker, who kills an entire castle garrison with enchanted arrows and is later beaten to death by peasants with shovels. Are there any other sources that link archery and witchcraft/magic in general? ", "Why was there an increase in the burning of witches in 16th century England?", "1. Were people who dabbled with folk/herbal remedies persecuted for witchcraft at any time?\n\n2. Were there any areas of Europe that had no significant persecution of witches/magicians?", "Yay, an AMA on a subject I was actively studying two weeks ago, perfect! Perhaps my question will be a bit silly, but when I am thinking about medieval magic, I am always thinking about more \"pagan\" influenced magic on one side (all the magical objects that appear in the stories of the knights of the round table, or even Merlin, for example) that seems to have existed very early and then suddenly more kabbalistic and neo-platonistic magic appearing during the Renaissance, with for example the key of Solomon, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, etc. What I wonder is, first, if my classification corresponds to reality, and secondly, if I am right, how did we go from a mostly pagan magic to a kabbalistic magic? I was under the impression that it appeared suddenly with the better access to Greek philosophical books, but now I am wondering if perhaps it wasn't more of a slow process.", "The suppression of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century included accusations that they worshipped a goat-headed god named Baphomet. Do we know if there were any truth to the accusations?", "A lot of the folklore mentioned here (magic, demons, ghosts, witches, etc.) has transitioned into modern popular culture to some extent. Are there any concepts or pieces of folklore like that that you've come across in your studies that didn't make that transition or just seemed to disappear over time?", "All right, /u/thejukeboxhero, come on down.\n\nThroughout the Middle Ages, women are consistently possessed by demons more frequently than men, and female saints fight against actual demons increasingly more often than male ones--although neither situation is exclusively female. Are there any broad demographical patterns, gendered or otherwise, in reports of who sees *ghosts* in the Middle Ages? How/does it change over time?\n\n(Excluding visions of dead relatives in purgatory. I want revenants walking the Earth.)", "Am I late? I got a super retarded  &  nerdy question.\n\nI was wondering, whenever I read about magic in a historical context, it's always \"boring\" stuff like curses, wisdom, prophecy, religion, poisons, healing, witchcraft... no action, you know?\n\nBut are there any mentions of proper Dungeons  &  Dragons stuff? Like fireballs, magic missiles, magical shield bubbles, hitting enemies with lightning bolts, polymorphing into a giant dragon, summoning an army of skeletons, wizard duels, that kind of thing?", "I know I'm late to the party but I'm curious about early medieval Western Europe. My two-part question is: what sort of perceived presence did spirits/demons/etc. have in\n\n1) *Christianized* early medieval Scotland, i.e. Pictland, Dal Riata, Strathclyde\n\nand/or\n\n2) Visigothic Hispania?\n\nThe meat of the question is basically: after early medieval Spain and Scotland converted to Christianity, at what intensity did pagan beliefs in spirits/faeries/what-have-you persist?", "How was \"the night\" (the specific time when it was dark outside) connected to belief in the supernatural?", "How exactly did the papal/medieval inquisition work?  More specifically, what kind of person became an inquisitor?", "Are there examples of people questioning the actual existence of witches in areas where there were witch hunts?", "So a few weeks ago, I asked [this](_URL_0_) follow-up question about witchcraft. The gist of the comment before me was that people who prosecuted witches felt that they were safe because God wouldn't allow the witch's magic to harm good Christians like themselves. Which leads to the question, if witchcraft required God's permission to work, then why was it punished at all? Wouldn't the fact that it worked  be proof of his divine approval or at least his apathy? Or am I looking for logic and consistency where there is none?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/idjet", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/depanneur", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jlvnn/ama_medieval_witchcraft_heresy_and_inquisition/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], ["http://www.historyextra.com/article/international-history/what-was-werewolf-myth-ancient-rome"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3kni3n/back_in_the_days_when_people_believed_witchcraft/cuz075w"]]}
{"q_id": "1it10m", "title": "Given the technology, political institutions, and social structures in the Game of Thrones series, which century does it most closely resemble?", "selftext": "I imagine there'd be some inconsistencies in these factors, and not all real world nation states were equally developed, but if we were to place this on earth, which time era would it be? (Not counting the dragons)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1it10m/given_the_technology_political_institutions_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb7rts9", "cb7t7ts", "cb7vmn9"], "score": [213, 19, 3], "text": ["This is mostly a ramble - I'm inserting things as they occur to me reflecting back on the shows and books. \n\nAt first glance, what we see in Game of Thrones is a bit of a mish-mash of various regions and periods of real-life Earth. The political structure of Westeros is strongly feudal, with the power very decentralised. The King of the Iron Throne is almost entirely dependent upon his immediate vassals, the Lords Paramount of the Seven Kingdoms, for actual troops, funds, and goods, having no standing army and only the tiny Crownlands as a personal demesne from which to draw his own military forces. There is essentially no real merchant class in Westeros, with all wealth passing through the hands of the noble families or their factors. The strength of the various duke and count equivalents relative to the king (do we ever hear of any ranks of landed nobility beyond Lords in the series?) means that the stability of the realm is highly dependent upon the personal qualities of the monarch and his relations with his vassals. Even within the series, we've heard about Robert's Rebellion, the Greyjoy Rebellion, the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and the War of the Five Kings, all happening within a single lifetime. All of this points to a kingdom in the equivalent of the Early or High Medieval Period.\n\nAt the same time, Westerosi bureaucracy is at a stage about equivalent to Europe in the 1600s - you have public debt (to the throne rather than to the king personally), an elaborate system of taxation and tolls for roads, customs, trade, etc, public works such as the Kingsroad, and the governmental post of \"Master of Coin\" overseeing the whole process. \n\nReligion does not occupy the same pride of place in Westerosi society that it did at any point in Europe. It seems to be largely a private affair - the Kingdoms tolerate worship of the Seven (the state religion) as well as the Old Gods in the north, and don't particularly seem to persecute (beyond a vague mistrust) foreign religions such as Rh'llor. We don't hear of any prominent schisms or heresies within the Faith of the Seven, nor is there any indication of persecution of interpretations differing from the orthodoxy. None of this bears any resemblance to the Catholic treatment of heathens or heretics within Christendom, though this can probably be put down to there being relatively little political friction between Westeros and the foreign heathens of Essos. \n\nMarriage is a religious affair in the South, requiring blessing from a septon to be valid. The state does not get involved in the process at all. Divorce doesn't seem to be possible, though you can break off a betrothal given sufficient cause (eg. Joffrey/Sansa). Marriage didn't become a religious sacrament in real-life Europe until roundabout the 13th century. The state and legal system began getting involved in the process by the end of the 17th century.\n\nJousting seems to be a particularly popular pastime amongst Westerosi nobility, and the form we see in the show (a single pair of warriors tilting at one another with a lance across a wooden barrier) only appeared at the turn of the 15th century. Prior to that it was mostly a general melee or a contest of a series of people trying to \"get past\" a single defender. Tilting finally disappeared in the early 17th century, but had been dying out for a long while.\n\nTechnology in Westeros is more comparable to the Early Modern Period than to the Early Medieval. We see windmills, watermills, and wheelbarrows. Castles are highly advanced, with the most impressive (such as Winterfell) able to hold off armies many *many* times the size of their garrisons. Barbicans, murder holes, very very thick walls and rounded towers, deep wells, etc etc all point to a long tradition of castle-building. Civic structures are shown with flying buttresses, gothic arches and vaults, as well as stone bridges with impressive spans such as at King's Landing. All post-12th-century in Europe (though Roman architecture had made use of arches and vaults, the technology had been lost for several centuries). And supposedly these castles have been largely unchanged for hundreds (or indeed thousands) of years. \n\nMetallurgy, particularly steel production, also appears to be well-established. Knights are invariably in full plate, which historically peaked in the 15th and 16th centuries. Even the common soldiery seem to be using steel armour and weaponry (rather than iron), which is particularly impressive/strange given the expense and difficulty involved.\n\nWe see plenty of examples of glass, both coloured and clear, in the TV series. Glass lanterns, glass windows, mirrored glass, \"far-eyes\" or telescopes. Primarily in the South, but still present and unremarked on as being particularly rare.\n\nLikewise the Wall. Ok, it's \"magic\", which is a good fudge factor, but just look at that elevator system in Castle Black, and consider the sheer logistics involved in repairing and maintaining a structure that size. Hauling blocks of ice to that height would be difficult without a vast slave army, let alone with the skeleton crew we've observed. Westerosi engineering is highly advanced, it seems.\n\nShipbuilding is somewhere between the 14th and 16th centuries. We see carrack equivalents, as well as cogs with forecastles and gigantic sails. We also see very large galleys in the east, equipped with catapults, ballistae and scorpions. Also, bizarrely, the longboats of the 9th-11th century Vikings dominate the northern seas.", "I think the author has stated much of it is loosly based on the houses of Lancaster (lannister) and York(Stark) in the [War of the Roses](_URL_0_) period of English history (late 1400s).", "[Tiako notes the influences he sees in this thread here](_URL_0_). It's quite a mish-mash."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ecbg1/what_wrong_ideas_about_medieval_europe_might_one/c9z0y4x"]]}
{"q_id": "3d9505", "title": "So Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old first cousin. Was that considered okay at the time?", "selftext": "So Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old first cousin. If you read the Wikipedia entry for her you can see that scholars don't agree on whether or not the marriage was scandalous, nor do they even agree on whether or not the two were earnestly lovers for more like brother sister.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nwhat gives? Were they passionate lovers? Was this type of marriage seen as scandalous at the time?\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d9505/so_edgar_allen_poe_married_his_13yearold_first/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct2zaj2", "ct3kx1b"], "score": [99, 17], "text": ["The average age of first marriage in the US has always been above 20 years old for women. [The Census](_URL_0_) (warning PDF) only officially started tracking the number in 1890 when the average age was 22. That is of course well after Poe's time. But some researchers have combed through local marriage records and found that it really hadn't varied much throughout the 19th century.\n\nTeen brides weren't that uncommon though. But it much less common for younger teens. So while a 16 or 18 year old getting married wouldn't have scandalized anyone, a 13 year old getting married might have. But it was legal and sanctioned. The age of consent in Maryland in the 1800s was 10, assuming the girl's guardians approved. When young teens married, it was almost always to another teen. What would have been scandalous would have been the 27 year old Edgar marrying a girl literally half his age.\n\nAnd there is some reason to believe that Poe himself regarded it as suspicious. He put Virginia's age as 21 on the original marriage certificate. I've seen arguments that this was to make it socially acceptable. I've also seen arguments that this was to avoid any questions about her guardians. They publicly re-did the ceremony a year later. So he was willing to publicly marry a 14 year old, even if he thought marrying a 13 year old was scandalous. \n\nSo scandalous? Maybe. It was certainly unusual, if legal, at the the time.\n\nAs to their personal life? I have no idea. Couples of the time didn't usually confirm or deny whatever sexual relationship they had. It wasn't proper for public discourse. And very few people even included sexual discourse in private letters or journals. There is no real reason to suspect that they weren't having sex, as that would be the normal course of things in a marriage. But frankly even that is speculation. It is likely we will never know what Edgar's and Virginia's sex life was like.", "Possibly the first thing to address is that this is a question concerning a historical figure\u2019s private life and in the early nineteenth century, people\u2019s private lives were exceptionally private. What might at first seem to be the Holy Grail in unraveling Poe\u2019s marriage can still leave us with questions.\n\nThere is his letter to his aunt Maria Clemm and also to his cousin Virginia dated [August 29th, 1835](_URL_0_works/letters/p3508290.htm).\n\nIn this letter, which was very damaged when found, he addresses himself mainly to his aunt, but this is not all surprising. When writing the letter he had not yet wed his cousin and so was asking her mother to bring her to him. He was responding to a letter from her in which she must have indicated that she might take her daughter to [Neilson Poe](_URL_5_). Neilson was Poe\u2019s rival and cousin and it seems he did not care to think of his Aunt and cousin going to Neilson and was sure that this would mean the end of his relationship with Virginia.\n\nHe writes, \u201cIt is useless to disguise the truth that when Virginia goes with N.P. that I shall never behold her again.\u201d This might lead one to think Virginia was going to marry Neilson, but this was not the case. The general consensus was that Neilson just didn\u2019t want Virginia to marry Poe. If this was because of their age difference, because he didn\u2019t like Edgar, or some other reason- is not known. \n\nHe concludes his message to his aunt saying, \u201cAsk Virginia. Leave it to Her. Let me have, under her own hand, a letter, bidding me *good bye* - forever - and I may die - my heart will break - but I will say no more. E.A.P Kiss her for me - a million times.\u201d\n\nConsidering this it is hard to imagine someone pleading for another if the feelings were only that of a brother and sister. It seems hard to imagine that Neilson would have felt the need to keep Virginia away from Poe if it was only sibling love at sake.\n\nHe then writes a short note to Virginia.\n\n\u201cVirginia, my love, my own sweetest Sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your Cousin, Eddy.\u201d\n\nHe calls her Sissy, yes, but there\u2019s nothing that indicates this means sister. As a touch of affection he calls her his little wifey, before they have even been married, when it seems she is going to leave him so that she can go out in society. I\u2019ll leave it to you to decide if these are the words of a (possibly hopeful) lover or brother.\n\nPoe had enemies and competitors and around him swirled many rumors, it is difficult to find the [truth from the fabrication](_URL_0_people/poevc.htm): After Virginia died there were those that said Poe was strange in the way he showed affection (but we do not know what specifically made it strange). Lambert Wilmer in 1866 said that Poe was very affectionate, but that Virginia might not have loved him as much as he loved her. Still one of her last acts on this earth was to kiss a portrait of him that she had under her pillow.\n\nThe problem with peeking into the private life of someone like Poe is that the majority of what remains of him is his work: poems and stories. Much of the scholarship done on Poe has been in these areas. Yet, I think it is dangerous to read works of fiction in search of autobiographical information. There is no way to know that Poe was thinking of Virginia when he wrote [\u201cAnnabel Lee\u201d](_URL_7_): *I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than a love- I and my Annabel Lee.*\n\nThe question then is: Would this marriage have been scandalous or abnormal for the time?\n\nFor this we must ask: What was a normal marriage of the time (early nineteenth century America)?\n\n Legally speaking a marriage united man and woman into a single identity with the assumption that there was no backing out of the deal (Hartog, p.3-4). What Edgar and Virginia entered into was something that, at least legally speaking, was a very serious matter. This doesn\u2019t mean that there was no divorce or separation. There is nothing in Poe\u2019s letter, for instance, that indicates the marriage was done on a whim, but instead that when Virginia came to Poe- they would be married. We cannot know with certainty how exactly Poe felt towards the thirteen year old Virginia and if people, in general, would have thought that this was inappropriate.\n\nAge of consent laws were usually from 10-12 in the U.S. In fact, Stephen Robertson from the University of Sydney, argues that people of the nineteenth century weren\u2019t particularly preoccupied with a girl\u2019s specific age but more whether she fit their expectations of a child or not. By this rationale, it would matter more how Virginia presented herself. She was thirteen and could be seen as a woman. Suggestions have been made that Neilson\u2019s offer to take in young Virginia were to prevent her from being married at such a young age. I cannot determine the validity of this. In a [letter Edgar wrote to Neilson in 1845](_URL_0_works/letters/p4508080.htm) he is friendly and speaks hopefully of bringing Virginia to see her sisters even though she was in poor health from a busted blood vessel (this was actually the beginning of her battle with consumption that would end in her death). If Neilson was uneasy about Virginia\u2019s age when she married, he eventually got over it- which is not hard to imagine since, as each year passed, there was less to be concerned with.\n\nVarious questionable sources give the average age of a woman to first marry in the early nineteenth century as 15-20. This is wide range, indeed, but it shows that Virginia was still young regardless. However, there is no clear evidence that supports the idea that there was anything shocking about their marriage at the time. They had a private ceremony, but then a public one. Like so much about Poe- there is not really enough to go on. \n\n\n----------------------------------------------\n\n[Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore](_URL_0_) is a wonderful source and I encourage everyone to make a visit to the city and see the small Poe house and museum there and all explore the wealth of information on their website.\n\nHartog, Hendrik, [\u201cMarital Exits and Marital Expectations in Nineteenth Century America,\u201d](_URL_6_), Georgetown University Law Center, 1991, \n\nRobertson, Stephen, [\u201cAge of Consent Laws,\u201d](_URL_4_) Children and Youth in History- Case Studies\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/MS-2.pdf"], ["http://www.eapoe.org/", "http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4508080.htm", "http://www.eapoe.org/people/poevc.htm", "http://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p3508290.htm", "http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/230", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neilson_Poe", "http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&amp;context=hartlecture", "http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174151"]]}
{"q_id": "3rir90", "title": "During Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, the Persian Empire used Greek mercenaries as elite troops. Did mercenaries from the time have loyalties to things other than money? It seems that the Persians trusted them to not simply defect to the highest bidder.", "selftext": "It just seems strange that the Persians would trust Greek mercenaries to be elite, loyal troops when a \"mercenary\" can in theory be bought quite easily by someone wealthier, as Alexander eventually came to be. Yet according to Richard Freeman's biography, these Greek mercenaries fought for Persia until the end. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rir90/during_alexander_the_greats_conquest_of_persia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwognst", "cwpjkg0"], "score": [22, 2], "text": ["To answer your question, I think it's best to understand that not all Greek Mercenaries were the same, although it's fair to say regardless of if they were rowers or hoplites that money was the primary concern regardless of if you were working for the Athenians or the Persians.\n\nThere's actually a large sum of documentation from Commanders and those like Xenophon that speak of the supply-demand system that was in place. Basically, each army had to pay the best, to get the best (which makes sense). It also wasn't unheard of to sign contracts that would guarantee a ration of food along with your pay, which would, to an extent prevent you from deserting or betraying your employer (honor was definitely a big deal when it came to these people, they weren't like the characters you see in movies that will betray whoever for their cut of the reward)\n\nIt's rather important to take into consideration the motivations behind becoming a mercenary, obviously many had military training, and many sought wealth through what they perceived as the best way (they weren't inheriting wealth by any means). In essence, whether it was a large monthly wage, or the promise of land and power; people often chose to align themselves with the highest bidder.\n\nTo be fair, this isn't always the case, Trundle's book on Greek Mercenaries mentions Xenophon stating \"Prince Cyrus did so not from need, but from a belief in Cyrus\u2019 good qualities\nand his arete or nobility (Xen. An. 6.4.8; Parke 1933: 29; Roy 1967: 319)\" so it is fair to assume that although the reward was the immediate inspiration for joining a cause, mercenaries also had other things influencing their choice of employer.\n\nHere's a link to the online copy of the book I mentioned, it basically covers any and all questions regarding the topic of Greek Mercenaries:\n\n\n\n\n_URL_0_", "Forgot to post this.\n\nBesides what was already said, Alexander had just razed Thebes to the ground (except for Pindar's house) so its likely there were a lot of anti-Macedonian Thebans in the Persian forces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Trundle_2004_Greek_Mercenaries_From_the_Late_Archaic_Period_to_Alexander.pdf"], []]}
{"q_id": "28kzgh", "title": "What is the most likely candidate for being the \"House of the Rising Sun\" in 19th century New Orleans described in the song of the same title?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28kzgh/what_is_the_most_likely_candidate_for_being_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cic2tyn"], "score": [17], "text": ["There's not really any way to be sure, the claim has been made of several establishments, but since the lyrics are so vague, with multiple versions coexisting, and the song's author(s) is/are unknown there's no way to compare the claims. It's also possible that it doesn't refer to a real place at all. 'Rising sun' could have been jargon for 'gambling house', 'brothel' etc. The type of place where punters are up all night  to get lucky and so see the sun rising in the morning. \n\nWe can approximate the origins of the lyrics from the earliest citations  - 1930s in the American South, but that's about it \n\nI recommend reading the article I've linked below as it gives details on the possible claimants and the origins of the song, many folklorists attribute the tune to an Old English folk song 'Matty Groves' which dates to the 17th c. or earlier.  \n\n_URL_0_ "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A12460772"]]}
{"q_id": "8v9dn4", "title": "Is it true that, before invading a city or castle, the invading army used to put dead bodies in catapults and throw them into the city or castle?", "selftext": "I read it on the internet, that in the old or medieval times, this practice was common. Can anyone who has knowledge on this subject, confirm if this is true?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8v9dn4/is_it_true_that_before_invading_a_city_or_castle/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1mrtqp", "e1n3qx4"], "score": [16, 5], "text": ["This isn't something I've studied in any detail so I condone the deletion of this post in case it isn't quite up to the sub's standards, however, this has come up in my studies once.\n\nWhen Nikephoros II Phokas invaded Crete in 960 CE he besieged the largest city on the island, Chandax. During Leo the Deacon's account of the siege he mentions the following,\n\n\"And now the general prepared yet another triumph on top of this \rnew triumph. He ordered his men to cut off the heads of the fallen host, \rand to put them in leather satchels to carry them back to camp, and he \rpromised to give a reward in silver\r to every man who carried a head. \rThe army, especially the corps of Armenians,\r received this command \rgladly, and cut off the barbarian heads and put them in satchels.Then the \rgeneral returned to camp by night. \r\nThe next day, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon and \rbegan to climb toward the vault of heaven, Nikephoros ordered his men \rto impale some of the barbarian heads on spears and set them up in a \rrow next to the wall that he had built, and to hurl the others at the town \rwith stone-throwing machines.\r When the Cretans saw the line of spears \rand the heads impaled on them, and the heads that were hurled at the \rtown and crushed against its battlements, and when they clearly \rrecognized them as the heads of fellow countrymen and relatives, \rstraightaway they were seized with horror and mental confusion, and \rwere paralyzed at the piteous and unexpected sight.Then the lamentations \rof men and the wailing of women were heard, and the town took on the appearance of one that had been conquered, with everyone lamenting \rand bewailing his loved ones. But even so the town would not yet yield \rto the Romans and surrender; but confident in the strength of their \rtown, they summoned up their courage and waited fully armed for the \rRoman assault, so that if anyone attacked they might defend themselves.\"\n\n\nNot exact bodies but it seems heads may have been catapulted over the wall during the siege. \n\nSource: The History of Leo the Deacon, Book I\r\n", "There were certainly instances where invading armies would use dead bodies as siege missiles.  I am not overly familiar with their use as an intimidation tactic but they certainly do come up when you look at the [history of biological warfare](_URL_0_) prior to the modern era.\n\nFrom the linked article on the siege of Thun l\u2019Eveque (1340):\n\n >  The duke caryed with hym out of Cambray and Doway, dyverse great engyns . . . and made them to be reared agayne the fortres, so these engyns dyd cast night and day great stones, the which bete downe the roffes of the chambers, halles, and towres, so that they within were fayne to kepe [to the] vautes and sellars . . . The ingens without dyd cast in deed horses, and beestes stynking, wherby they within had great[er] dystres thane with any other thynge, for the ayre was hote as in the myddes of somer: the\nstynke and ayre was so abomynable, that they consydred howe that finally they coude nat long endure\n\nIt should be noted that the primary function here seems to be to discomfit the defenders and not necessarily to employ biological warfare.\n\nHowever, from the same article, the siege of Caffa (1346) is more well known and is potentially the source of the Black Death plague's entry into Europe:\n\n >  But behold, the whole [Mongol] army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as though arrows were raining down from heaven to strike and crush the Tartars\u2019 arrogance. All medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humours, followed by a putrid fever.\n\n >  The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realising that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the\nhope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army.\n\nThe article goes on to say:\n\n >  While it is nearly certain that refugees from Caffa contributed to the spread of plague, it is less certain that the plague within the walls of Caffa was the result of biological attack.\n\nThere are several other incidents cited in the article and it's worth a read in its entirety.\n\nHowever, to answer your question, it's not clear if the practice of using corpses as siege ammunition was \"common\" but it certain was used to great effect in several instances."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://web.archive.org/web/20090326063758/http://microbiology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mwheelis/BW_before_1914.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "6rz7a7", "title": "Is it true that ancient Rome was 8 times as densely populated as present day NYC?", "selftext": "I think it has to be population across all boroughs. No way ancient Rome is more densely populated than Manhattan today. I read the statement on one of the LinkNYC billboards.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rz7a7/is_it_true_that_ancient_rome_was_8_times_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl9wij0", "dl9y9io"], "score": [19, 7], "text": ["The Aurelian Walls contain an area of 13.7 square kilometers, peak population within this area is estimated on the high end at 1m, at that population the density is 73k/sqkm compared to Manhattans 28k/sqkm all New York's boroughs are 10947/sqkm bringing a more accurate total to 6.63x more dense with Manhattan being about 1/3 as dense.  \n  \nSource: Maths  &  [The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome Population of Rome] (_URL_0_)", "According to [this](_URL_0_) comment by /u/Tiako on a slightly different topic, the population density wasn't as high as the numbers might suggest, since a lot of the city was outside of the ~14 square kilometers contained within the Aurelian walls."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://books.google.com/books?id=yaM0AAAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=The%20Cambridge%20Companion%20to%20Ancient%20Rome%20population%20of%20rome&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjKt4ik9JvPAhUL9IMKHfJoAIgQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14dtx4/there_were_more_than_a_million_people_living_in/c7c7y96/"]]}
{"q_id": "3nuhgn", "title": "To what extent do we believe we've uncovered the major archaeological sights of the world?", "selftext": "I was travelling across Czech Rep/Slovakia/Romania and the Carpathians recently and the dense forests there stretch for hundreds of miles.\nIt made me wonder how many ancient ruins/artefacts could be preserved around the world, just because these places are too vast to explore and have too much coverage to photograph from satellite.\n\nDo we have a way of knowing where we are likely to find archaeological sites in such a vast world? Do we think we've found most of them? Or do we just sort of wait until they are stumbled upon?\n\nEdit: title should read 'sites', not 'sights'.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nuhgn/to_what_extent_do_we_believe_weve_uncovered_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvro9jq"], "score": [28], "text": ["There is undoubtedly a vast number of sites that have not yet been identified.  There are also a vast number of sites that have in fact been identified, but have not yet been excavated in anything resembling an organized manner.\n\nThe process of finding a site can take many forms.  For most sites with mentions in written records (this includes cities mentioned in holy books such as the Hebrew Bible), there are often clues about their location (other cities near them, mentioned distances to these sites, geographical features, oral traditions, etc).  For sites without these sorts of textual trails or written clues, sites can be found in other ways.\n\nIn the part of the world I work in, most ancient cities are in the form of manmade mounds, or *tells*.  These tells have a distinctive shape, and often do not fit into the landscape geologically (i.e. there is a mound in the middle of what should be a flattish valley).  Examples of tells include [Tel Hazor](_URL_4_) in northern Israel, [Tel Barri](_URL_3_) in Syria, [Tell Begum](_URL_1_) in Iraq.  So it is often possible to tell where a site is just by walking through the landscape, and seeing the distinctive flat-topped slightly out-of-place hills made up of cities on top of each other.\n\nIn cases where tells are not the primary form of occupation, such as in the Neolithic period or in Europe, archaeologists use archaeological surveys (they use them in areas with tells too).  This involves basically walking through an area looking for artifacts, and recording their concentrations.  An area with a high concentration of artifacts could be a site.\n\nIn the US, and presumably in Europe, often times an archaeologist will do a brief geographical study, and analyze areas where it would be logical to found a settlement (near a water source, along a trade route, etc) and they will conduct another style of survey, where they dig small holes with a shovel at regular intervals (called shovel test pits) to test for the presence of archaeological remains.  Again, the concentration of archaeological remains among the network of test pits can inform as to the location of a site.  I participated in an excavation of a very small site in New York state which was hinted at in colonial texts, and narrowed down using shovel test pits, and I helped out with the next step of excavation.\n\nSo it is certainly possible to set out to locate new sites.  In addition advances in remote sensing ([Dr. Sarah Parcak](_URL_0_), currently at the University of Alabama, has done a lot of excellent work on identifying new sites in Egypt using satellite imagery) have also proven useful in discovering hitherto unknown archaeological sites.\n\nTo be honest, we know the locations of many, many unexcavated sites, but have not had the available funding/manpower/a compelling enough reason to excavate them.\n\nOne example of a site that has been known for a very long time but has not yet been excavated is [Tel Shimron](_URL_2_), a site that has been a nature preserve, and has been surveyed, but has not yet been excavated.  Even in a country like Israel, that has hundreds of active archaeological excavations every year, many of which are sponsored by foreign institutions, there are many unexcavated sites.\n\nFortunately, Tel Shimron is set to be excavated beginning in the summer of 2017 by a team of archaeologists who are currently finishing up excavations at Tel Ashkelon (Hopefully I will be one of them, but we will see)."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/sarah-parcak/", "http://beeldbank.leidenuniv.nl/index/parseimage/id/FT133198/thumbed/6", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimron", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Tell_Barri_1.jpg", "https://beautiesandbeards.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/hazor-aerial-from-north-tb112000205.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "crzceb", "title": "Is there any credibility at all to this \"discovery\" of ancient Chinese petroglyphs in America?", "selftext": "I was recently sent [this article](_URL_0_) by a family member regarding John Ruskamp Jr.'s study of petroglyphs in the continental US that he suggests are of ancient Chinese origin.\n\nSeveral things stand out to me, firstly that his field of specialty is biochemistry, not linguistics or archaeology; then there's the denigration of dogma and \"accepted history\"; and lastly he states some of the petroglyphs are Native American copies of Chinese ones which sounds like a thinly veiled cultural supremacy dogwhistle - perhaps suggesting that the Native Americans couldn't have come up with them otherwise? \n\nThe writer has an obvious bias towards this *underdog lone researcher trying to overturn the accepted worldview*.\n\nSo I'm pretty sure I'm right to be skeptical, but could anyone point me to more educated criticism or refutation?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/crzceb/is_there_any_credibility_at_all_to_this_discovery/", "answers": {"a_id": ["exbubh3", "exd1b84"], "score": [132, 18], "text": ["No there isn\u2019t. I\u2019m a archaeologist working in the US Southwest and have had to deal with the pseudoarchaeology that Ruskamp has been promoting for several years.  He came and talked at a local archaeology society meeting on the request of one member who was a fan. I was later asked by the society to come in and correct the record afterward. His arguments are laughably sloppy and full of special pleading. In a language where changing a character even a bit alters the meaning or makes it illegible he allows for tons of variation and substitutions in his \u201cidentification \u201c and then abuses statistical tools to give his arguments a feeling of scientific rigor to those who don\u2019t have a background on those subjects. In reality he just makes wild claims that very different imagery is the same and then designs a statistical test to \u201cprove \u201c it using his already deeply flawed data. He has no knowledge of rock art traditions in the region and if he did, he would know that many of the images he uses in his arguments have long and well documented trajectories of change through time locally and certainly don\u2019t appear out of nowhere as he claims. He combines things from all time periods and claims they are contemporary. He\u2019s a big self promoter and offers to talk to avocational Archaeology groups and sell tours in China. He uses a lot of the same tools as other fringe archaeologists to get stories on his work picked up by fringe publications and then cites them elsewhere as proof that his ideas are accepted. Jason Covalito has a little bit of context on him on his blog [here. ](_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: I just remembered that Angus Quinlan reviewed his book Asiatic Echos in American Antiquity (the journal of the Society for American Archaeology) for a special feature addressing pseudoscience. [link here. ](_URL_0_)", "As a Chinese art historian with a focus on ancient script, I can say for sure these in no way resemble any form of ancient Chinese (Not to mention or get into the sailing trajectories of ancient Chinese who largely went West, and the fact they never made it to the Americas in any large numbers or even at all as far as most of us know). Rectangular squiggles aren\u2019t enough to equate the scripts. And the author\u2019s insistence that Chinese writers were happy to rotate their scripts is flat out false. The fact his photo evidence of script isn\u2019t lined up into delineated into lines or distinct characters speaks to the inauthenticity of his claims. The earliest forms of Chinese text were written on oracle bones [(link)](_URL_0_) and were already organized into rows of consecutive and distinct pictographs. While Chinese pictographs were eventually broken into quadrant areas of individual meaning (due to the need to express more complex meaning) there is in no way a time when Chinese language organized itself into distinct squares like on a playground, where each square housed an individual character. If anything, I\u2019m much more sure that he falsified all of these images with chalk on some rocks across the US to garner acclaim and stir up controversy."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/new-evidence-ancient-chinese-explorers-landed-america-excites-experts-003087"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/asiatic-echoes-the-identification-of-ancient-chinese-pictograms-in-precolumbian-north-american-rock-writing-second-edition-john-a-ruskampjr-2013-createspace-independent-publishing-platform-charleston-sc-vii-171-pp-3433-paperback-isbn-9781491042205/F4AF3B2A9F40032C25B2CECEF8385956#", "http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/you-wont-believe-this-one-amazing-trick-a-fringe-historian-accidentally-used-to-blow-up-the-internet"], ["https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script"]]}
{"q_id": "757q0q", "title": "On 18 April 1930, the BBC announced that \"There is no news today\". What are some events of your field of history that could have been reported?", "selftext": "[On 18 April 1930, the BBC announced that \"There is no news today\".](_URL_0_)\n\nWhat are some events of your field of history that could have been reported?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/757q0q/on_18_april_1930_the_bbc_announced_that_there_is/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do44od0"], "score": [108], "text": ["I'll leave it to others to actually hazard answers to your question, but I think the 1930 incident that you refer to is sufficiently curious to be worthy of some attention in its own right.\n\nIt does seem to be true that the announcement of \"No news today\" was made; the BBC's own *Yearbook* for 1930 makes mention of the broadcast. But it may help to contextualise. The announcement came at a very early point in British news broadcasting history. The BBC had only been permitted to prepare its own news bulletins, rather than broadcasting already-prepared copy produced by a press agency, in 1928; in 1930, the broadcasting of news was still the responsibility of the Department of Talks, and no separate News Section would be established until 1934. There were no portable sound recorders and no easy means of sending broadcast-quality sound back to a central studio from the field; it was only in 1936 (on the occasion of the great fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace in south London) that a telephone report, with the sounds of shouts, fire engines and flames in the background) was first broadcast live. \n\nFurthermore, 18 April 1930 was Good Friday \u2013 a then fairly strictly observed public holiday on which British newspapers did not publish. This latter circumstance created a significant issue for the BBC, since at this point in its history it did not have its own journalistic staff. The existing news organisations of the day had bitterly opposed any suggestion that radio be allowed to become a real competitor to the press, and it was prepared to insist on the copyright it held on its own bulletins to prevent their being used as a source by the BBC.\n\nThe Corporation - which was and is publicly funded via payment by its audience of a licence fee \u2013 was thus forced to choose between developing its own, enormously expensive, news gathering organisation from scratch, something the newspapers would have decried as a waste of public money, and of reaching an agreement with the printed press. News gathering was not then seen as central to the BBC's mission - even though this was famously defined by its first Director General, [John Reith](_URL_0_), as \"to inform, educate, and entertain\" \u2013 so, under a 1924 agreement made with the two main wire news services of the day, the Press Association and Exchange and Telegraph, it maintained a staff of two editors and two sub-editors to go through the agency tickers to prepare news bulletins. The BBC made no claim to creating or even curating news; a surviving recording dating to 1936 reveals that a copyright notice stating that the news was \"Copyright by Reuter, Press Association, Exchange Telegraph and Central News\" was read out before the broadcast itself began. \n\nAll in all, then, the radio news of 1930 was, according to its historian Tim Crook, \"an unselfconsciously amateur operation\" which was \"held in contempt by Fleet Street journalists\" - that is, the staffs of the country's intensely competitive national newspapers.\n\nIt would be very interesting to know in more detail than we now do exactly what combination of circumstances led to the announcement you cite. The newswires themselves certainly did continue to operate over holiday periods, but it's possible at least some of the BBC news editing team were on holiday on the Good Friday in question, just as at least some of their newspaper colleagues - with no Good Friday papers to produce - would have been. I would suggest it's also extremely possible that the BBC team had by this point developed the habit of turning to the press of the day for guidance as to what news stories were considered most important and pressing, and using these leads to arrange the radio news bulletin. (It would be fascinating to run a study of any surviving news broadcasts of scripts against the same day's London evening newspapers to check on this, but certainly it does not seem impossible that the BBC's shoestring news operation lacked the experience and confidence to shape a news agenda on its own, and that its \"unselfconsciously amateur\" ethos did the rest.) Certainly I don't think that anyone working for the BBC at this point in its history considered that it was the Corporation's job to do more than act as a digest of already available news produced by other sources. There were literally dozens of newspapers, from *The Times* downwards, selling many millions of copies daily, that were already doing that job.\n\nOne further point worth making \u2013 which is a factor [stressed by the BBC itself these days](_URL_1_) \u2013 is that in 1930,\n\n > those in charge of the Talks Department, where News was based, drew a definite distinction between \"BBC news values\" and \"journalistic news values\".\n\n > It was an absolute rule there should be no \"sensationalism\". Parliamentary news, not known for its ability to grip the listener, was given special prominence.\n\nNot surprisingly, parliament had not sat that Good Friday, and so it was impossible for the staff on duty that evening to rely on one of the most usual \"leads\" for the nightly news bulletin.\n\nThe reality, then, was that the 18 April announcement was largely a product of the absence within the BBC of any team capable of generating its own news agenda in the absence of the usual guidance provided by the proceedings in parliament and by the newspapers of the day. Even as late as 1936 - at a time of growing international crisis, let's not forget - a junior BBC employee called Richard Dimbleby (later to become an extremely eminent broadcaster in his own right) could still write to the Chief News Editor that\n\n > a member or members of your staff \u2013 they could be called 'BBC reporters, or BBC correspondents' \u2013 should be held in readiness, just as they are at the evening paper men, to cover unexpected news for the day. In the event of a big fire, strike, civil commotion, railway accident, pit accident, or any other major catastrophe in which the public, I fear, is deeply interested, a reporter could be sent from Broadcasting House to cover the event for the bulletin.\n\n > At the scene, it would be his job, in addition to writing his own account of the event, to secure an eyewitness [and Dimbleby went on to give an earnest definition of how an \"eyewitness\" was to be defined]... and to give a short eyewitness account of the part he or she played that day. In this way, I really believe that News could be presented in a gripping manner.\n\nFurthermore, [the BBC broadcasting schedule](_URL_2_) for 18 April 1930 reveals that there had already been broadcasts of national and regional sports bulletins earlier that same evening. These seem to have gone ahead as normal; it was only the 15-minute political news broadcast scheduled for 8.45pm that was affected.\n\nThe idea that anybody thought there was literally \"no news\" on 18 April 1930 is thus pretty implausible. The phrase may have been the product of an incautious or hurried scriptwriter, and I suspect that whoever was responsible would have been pretty amazed to see their phrase entering the historical record, and being discussed so earnestly here on AskHistorians 87 years later.\n\n**Sources** \n\nTim Crook, *International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice* (1997)\n\nJonathan Dimbleby, *Richard Dimbleby* (1975)\n\nJackie Harrison, *News* (2005)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20130709200049/https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/18/april-18-1930-a-day-with-no-news/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/culture/reith-1", "https://web.archive.org/web/20130530172222/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/newswatch/history/noflash/html/1930s.stm", "http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/national/daventry/1930-04-18"]]}
{"q_id": "49kqmv", "title": "If Spartans were banned from keeping records, how do we know about that ban?", "selftext": "_URL_0_\n\nThis video makes the cliam that Spartans werent allowed to keep records, so many of their accomplishments and descriptions about their activities came from outside observers; my question is if a) that is an accurate statement and b) which specific sources do we have that describe their society (were there rogue spartans, or just outsider spartaboos)?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49kqmv/if_spartans_were_banned_from_keeping_records_how/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d0souzs", "d0srut9"], "score": [45, 3], "text": ["Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' makes note of Spartan customs and society in several places, principally in the 'Life of Lycurgus' and the 'Life of Lysander'. In the former especially he makes notes of how Spartan men were educated and raised. For your question, the following quote:\n\n\n >  None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so-called \"rhetras\" [proclamations] forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them. And as for minor matters, such as business contracts, and cases where the needs vary from time to time, it was better, as he thought, not to hamper them by written constraints or fixed usages, but to suffer them, as occasion demanded, to receive such modifications as educated men determine. Indeed, he assigned the function of law-making wholly and entirely to education. *Plutarch's 'Life of Lycurgus' 131-2*\n\n\nI am personally no expert on how long this custom may have lasted in Spartan society. It goes without saying, of course, that ancient scholars rarely listed their own sources and rarely were alive at the same time as the people/events they write about. In Plutarch's case, he was writing over 800 years after Lycurgus is thought to have lived. But I hope this provides something of an answer to your question, at least regarding sources.\n\n\nSource: Plutarch, 'Parallel Lives', Loeb Classical Library Edition, 1914", "Little follow up question,\nWhy were they banned from keeping records?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7V1a1I5BL0"], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "36he0q", "title": "What is the oldest music video that still can be viewed today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36he0q/what_is_the_oldest_music_video_that_still_can_be/", "answers": {"a_id": ["crdzpmv", "cre1pah", "cre2aos"], "score": [22, 10, 74], "text": ["Just a reminder from the mods:\n\nIf you're choosing to answer a question in /r/AskHistorians, there are three questions you should ask yourself first in turn:\n\n   1. Do I, personally, actually know a lot about the subject at hand?\n\n   2. Am I essentially certain that what I know about it is true?\n\n   3. Am I prepared to go into real detail about this?", "How do you define 'music video'?", "Your definition is wide enough that I'm fairly certain the [Dickson Experimental Sound Film](_URL_0_) would qualify. This is a rather famous film, featuring the first known example of live-recorded sound synchronized to picture, created in either 1894 or 1895.\n\nI would assume silent film accompanied by live musical performance/phonograph playback wouldn't count based on your desire for it to be able to be viewed today?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s"]]}
{"q_id": "6l5l69", "title": "Where did the stories of \"court wizards\" come from? Were there ever people purporting to be wizards working for kings?", "selftext": "I'd be assuming it would be British or European history, middle ages or so. Where have these stories come from in fact? Were there ever people who had such jobs or was it based on advisors to kings? or?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6l5l69/where_did_the_stories_of_court_wizards_come_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djrjoju"], "score": [52], "text": ["The idea of a court magician stems in part from real-life positions such as court astrologers, alchemists, and the like, as well as less-official positions attached to the court. Dr. John Dee, for example, was the court astrologer to Elizabeth I, and Dee's associate Edward Kelley was patronized as an alchemist by Rudolph II. \nAs far as the ultimate origins of the practice, it's hard to trace. There are historical records of rulers drawing to themselves advisers and others of influence; there are records of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian rulers consulting priests, exorcists, astrologers, etc. and fictional versions of these individuals and their exploits were evident in the records like [the stories in the Westcar Papyrus](_URL_0_). \n\nTo expand on this a bit in the European court context, let me steal a bit from [an earlier answer](_URL_1_):\n\n >  **Was there a court wizard or something like it?**\n\nNot often *explicitly*, but Edward Peters notes in [The Magician, The Witch, and the Law](_URL_2_):\n\n >  It has been said of the court of Louis the pious, son of Charlemagne, that every great man at it had his own personal astrologer. The texture of Carolingian court life suggests the plausibility of this remark, because in the heady atmosphere of transforming an Iron Age assembly of warbands and settlers into an ideal Christian kingdom, the Carolingian Empire often presents (as it did to itself) the image of a composite of late Roman imperial and barbarian Germanic styles of life and thought. the classical works that Carolingian scholars discovered, edited, and circulated among themselves were the very ones that managed to preserve much antiquarianism along with Christian piety.  The religious basis of Charlemagne's and Louis's *renovatio* has long been recognized. What has often not been recognized as fully is how much of the old learned world of late antiquity came with the Christian materials. In the sophisticated, learned, violent, and self-serving Carolingian court world those who had access to, and even a rudimentary understanding of, learned magic could easily find employers. No residual pagan superstitions or folk beliefs were necessary. The Carolingian aristocrats knew how to value learned magicians as it valued learned chroniclers, holy men, astrologers, wandering Irish scholar monks, and any other successful means of making their way through the rapidly changing post-tribal world of Charlemagne's renewed Roman Empire and Louis's rapidly deteriorating Christian kingdom.\n\nEven if not formally holding a position at court, the concentration of money and politics often created a demi-monde were magicians could thrive; in 17th century France for example, you had  characters like La Voisin, who reputedly peddled poisons, love potions, abortions, fortune-telling, and black masses to the royalty of the court of Louis XIV."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/westcar_papyrus.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6fjwb6/how_did_people_think_magic_was_real/", "http://www.worldcat.org/title/magician-the-witch-and-the-law/oclc/36179703"]]}
{"q_id": "9cizs2", "title": "Would Jesus Have Thought Himself A Roman?", "selftext": "Would most of his original followers considered themselves Romans? What about most Jews? What about the other peoples of Roman Palestine?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9cizs2/would_jesus_have_thought_himself_a_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5byyvi"], "score": [30], "text": ["Doubtful, only because the various peoples living  in the Roman Empire were not consider Roman unless they were citizens, and outside of Italy only a small percentage of the population were.  Citizenship was not broadly granted until Caracalla in the third century CE.  The peoples across the Empire generally considered themselves part of their ethnic background, or place of origin (Gauls, Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, etc.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1pyi8h", "title": "How did Mossad become such a renowned intelligence agency?", "selftext": "Is it because Israelis are so multicultural? \n\nIs it just good PR from high-profile operations?\n\n-Edit-\n\nI think maybe I'm unclear. I'm not presupposing Mossad is good or evil, nor am I asking about the public perception on morality of Mossad's actions.\n\nI am wondering how Mossad came to be regarded as a top-notch intelligence agency. What makes them effective? Is part of the answer the fact that Israelis have diverse backgrounds from all parts of the world?\n\nOr, if, as some people suggest, they're really not that effective, why do they have a reputation for being effective?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pyi8h/how_did_mossad_become_such_a_renowned/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd7hmh7", "cd7jwrl", "cd7rx0w"], "score": [55, 35, 10], "text": ["I'm not sure if renowned is exactly the word that you want. Mossad is very well known because many of their operations end up being things that can be seen by the public. In particular, they have absolutely no objections to [having people killed](_URL_0_). Now, if your goal is to have these things be public then you're doing a great job but you could make an argument that an agency like Mossad is doing it's best work if nobody ever hears about what they do. \n\nMossad has had [their fair share of failures as well.](_URL_2_) Their agents are usually caught with [fake Canadian passports](_URL_1_) much to the anger of Canada's government.\n\nSo I guess it comes down to how you define renown for an agency like that. ", "Mossad has pulled off several very high profile operations successfully, leading to the agency being perceived as \"punching above its weight\" for such a small country (Israel's population is only a few million). It's somewhat expected that former or current superpowers like the US, USSR/Russia, France, and UK would have large clandestine services. That Israel would be able to compete in the same class, so to speak, is unusual. For example, finding and abducting Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and bringing him to Israel to stand trial. (source: just Google it but the UNSC resolution #138 regarding the event is a place to start)", "Oh! Something I can actually talk about!\n\nSo there were a few factors involved in this, and they all kind of pulled together. I'm just going to go over them one by one.\n\nFirstly, Mossad got big by playing big. Israel is small compared to many developed countries, and you don't exactly look to the little guy to pull off big missions and such, but they did, and they pulled it off pretty well. There is an excellent little comment by /u/yetioverthere [here](_URL_0_) and one of the top comments on it by /u/gingerkid1234 is useful information for taking it with a grain of salt.\n\nSecondly, there was the way that tasks carried out by Israel were reported. Particularly in the Western powers who created Israel, and have a vested interest in keeping it around, any successful mission was reported and praised. World powers built them up so that the creation of the country would seem like a good idea, and so that the country would appear to be powerful and thriving.\n\nThirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Israel was a point of focus. Most developed countries have agencies or teams that have pulled off cool stuff, but we don't look at them. Israel, since its inception, has been a focal point for media attention. Particularly in the United States, Israel is talked about *all the time*. Do you even know the name of the French version of Mossad? Probably not. That's because we don't talk about it, but you bet we talk about Israel. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_conducted_by_the_Mossad", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad#Norway", "http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/tourists-with-a-license-to-kill-a-look-at-the-mossad-s-assassination-squads-a-678805.html"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pyi8h/how_did_mossad_become_such_a_renowned/cd7jwrl"]]}
{"q_id": "21uhyv", "title": "War photography from WWII and earlier seems to only show \"neat\" corpses. Was this something imposed on photographers or something they limited themselves to?", "selftext": "I know this is a bit of a generalization, but for the most part photography from pre-Vietnam wars seems to be mostly of individuals who died of bullet wounds. That is to say, the body is mostly intact and is not terribly bloodied, relatively speaking. We know, however, that vast numbers of war casualties don't look that way. \n\n(Note: I'm most familiar with American war photography and to a lesser extent, photos taken by the Viet Cong. So, it's possible other countries did capture this more.)\n\nWas photographing corpses of this nature something that was ordered of the photographers? Did the photographers self-censor? Did they take more graphic photos but the photos just aren't as widely known?\n\nAs a photographer and former historian, this has always nagged me. Modern photojournalism definitely shows more of the reality of war and conflict. I'm thinking specifically of photos from Nicaragua, the first Gulf War, lots of work done since the start of the \"age\" of terrorism, and so on. \n\nThanks in advance. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21uhyv/war_photography_from_wwii_and_earlier_seems_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgh0khx", "cgh17ik", "cghqkbl", "cggq6uk", "cggqke6", "cggvown"], "score": [3, 7, 2, 5, 38, 9], "text": ["*Krieg dem Kriege* / *War Against War* (1924) by socialist/anarcho-pacifist Ernst Friedrich is one contemporary collection of grisly, sardonically captioned photos taken on the battlefields and in the hospitals of World War I. He founded the First International Anti-War Museum in Berlin, which was later destroyed by the Nazis, where he displayed many of these images.\n\nYou can find many scanned pages from the book (and other similar volumes) online with some uncreative Googling, but I don't have the stomach tonight to link them myself. It's very NSFL stuff, and includes many images of obliterated corpses and (perhaps more famously) veterans with horrific facial wounds. \n\nThere is also a well-known [Alexander Gardner image](_URL_0_) from the Battle of Gettysburg picturing a soldier disemboweled by a shell, which would have been displayed at the time with the rest of his casualty photography. I can't think of any other well-known American Civil War images depicting graphic wounds, but as the photographers often didn't have immediate access to the battlefield, there's often a lot of pronounced rigor mortis in effect.\n", "EDIT: Made all these sources up on the fly. Happy April Fools! \n\nNot only would photographers self censor, but the AP issued a style manual on corpse photography, and the US Army would issue makeup kits to their photographers, so that a corpse could be tidied up for public consumption first.  \n\nField Manual BS-39-341 Combat Photography, pp 69\nAP Style Manual 1943, Chapter 5", "Pre-WW2 war photography had a mix of self-censorship and ordered censorship but its not quite true that all the corpses were neat. Depended on the political and commercial incentives of the photographers. I'd definitely be very wary of saying that we see more of the 'reality' now; photos are still dictated by the same incentives as always. \n\nAlready noted in this thread were the American Civil War photographers such as Brady and Gardner. They were working privately and to a certain extent both self-censored and manipulated the corpses as already noted, to produce sentimental and shocking effects. However they were definitely seen as showing 'the reality of war and conflict' as you put it - quote from a New York Times review of one of Brady's exhibitions:\n\n\u2018If our readers wish to know the horrors of the battle-field, let them go to BRADY's Gallery... Blackened faces, distorted features, expressions most agonizing, and details of absolute verity, teach us a lesson which it is well for us to learn\u2019 (NYT, October 6th, 1862 - I did an essay on the topic at uni). \n\nObviously from that point of view they were taking pretty graphic pictures - perhaps not the most graphic possible and they did manipulate the photos but the commercial imperatives clearly weren't all the way in favour of hiding the blood either. \n\nWW1, as mentioned, was heavily censored by governments and yes, corpses of both sides were deliberately sanitised in images - as noted above, only the political incentive of a pacifist would lead to more disturbing images.\n\nThe Spanish Civil War is an interesting example - with many countries neutral in the conflict, the political incentive to censor images is somewhat lessened. On the other hand, the commercial incentive to publish horrific images is unclear. Doesn't mean they didn't exist - the Daily Worker on Nov 12th, 1936 published a series of graphic pictures of schoolchildren killed by a bomb dropped on Madrid by Franco's side, from a German plane, including close up faces and plenty of blood, the incentive obviously being the political message of anti-fascism, whereas other papers refused to publish the images because the commercial incentive wasn't worth it for them. They deliberately transgressed what Caroline Brothers calls  'the conventions regulating the representation of death in the British press' of the time (War and Photography, Caroline Brothers). \n\nAs such, I don't think it's right to say there's been some kind of straightforward drive towards more 'real' photos of war. Obviously nowadays it's hard to control all the photos like the blanket propaganda of WW1 and there's a vastly increased number of images. But even in the American Civil War, photographers were producing what were seen as graphic images - but which at the same time were manipulated. There's no neat line of 'neat and false vs bloody and real'. The political and commercial incentives are largely the same and we obviously still have taboos and codes on what can be seen for everyday journalistic consumption. ", "To provide one example that I've been reading about recently, during WWI the British heavily censored all official and press photographs for reasons of public morale, which was understandable given the already low popularity of the war. However, even after the war ended, they continued to censor what was allowed into the archives (which would have included photos that never went through official channels) and removed most everything that showed heavily mutilated corpses/wounded, large numbers of corpses, etc.- in effect, rewriting the history of the war to present it as less brutal! In this case, at least, it was absolutely a measure imposed from the top down in order to control how the war was presented.\n\nSource: *Death's Men*, by Denis Winter", "The photos of World War II that we most remember are the ones that were widely circulated. They were published in *Life* or *Time* or the various newspapers. And there was some Government censorship (especially early on in the war) and some self-censorship on the part of the publications. There where many photos taken by war photographers that never were published anywhere and only seen after the war was over.\n\n\nEarly in the war the American Office of War Information censored any pictures of dead American soldiers for fear of what impact they might have on morale at home. Any battlefield/frontline photograph for publication had to be submitted for review to them by the publisher. They would forbid publication of a photo and put it into their \"Chamber of Horrors\"^1 . Mostly publications and journalists self-censored though, they knew that submitting a graphic or inflammatory picture would be rejected so they didn't try.\n\n\nHowever in 1943 there as a change in policy from the OWI and they started to allow publication of pictures and film showing dead American soldiers. This change was largely driven by public opinion showing a weariness and detachment from a was occurring far away from the homefront.^2 It was belived that if people at home saw images of their dead servicemen it would bring home the reality of the conflict. The first published photo under this new policy was in *Life* which published [this photo of three dead marines on a beach in the South Pacific](_URL_0_).\n\n\nHowever, even under this new more relaxed policy the OWI still controlled what kinds of photos were published. Again they relied both on direct censorship and the self-censorship of journalists and publications. They may have allowed pictures of casualties but they wanted them to be \"faceless, as censors feared the impact of a frontal photograph, and the wounded were always being attended by medical personnel\"^3. They also continued to censor overly graphic or embarrassing photos so the ones that were published are rather sterile and peaceful.\n\n\nHowever, that is not to say that the photographers didn't *take* photos of the horrors of war. Many of them did and some of those photos were published after the war ended. The [cover photo](_URL_2_) from one of the sources I reference is one of those pictures. It shows an a dead American GI with a leg twisted up toward his body. Other photos such as [this one WARNING: B & W but Graphic](_URL_3_) of a Frenchman who collaborated with the Germans at the moment of being executed by firing squad exist and were taken by journalists on the front lines.\n\n\n**Sources**\n\n1. [The Censored War - George Roeder, Jr.](_URL_4_) - I have the book, but this is a link to the abstract.\n\n2. [Censorship and Wartime Propaganda](_URL_1_)\n\n3. Lights, Camera, War: Is Media Technology Driving International Politics. Johanna Neuman", "It depends on how you define \"war photography.\" I'm a [researcher](_URL_3_) specializing in the Pacific theater of WWII and research various topics at different branches of [NARA](_URL_0_). I didn't note the image number at the time, but a friend came across an [80G](_URL_4_) image a few years ago that had \"not for public release EVER\" written on it, yet other photos will show bodies with no such wording, such as [this one](_URL_1_) (WARNING, B & W burned bodies) I found and scanned last week. Damage Reports for the brass and other service men to learn from generally featured photos after some of the wreckage and bodies were cleared out,  but [not always](_URL_2_). So, photos meant for public distribution were a lot less likely to be as haunting, but the \"internal\" war photography wasn't as censored. \n\n*EDIT* fixed bad link code that swallowed part of a sentence."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647822/"], [], [], [], ["http://life.time.com/history/wwii-buna-beach-iconic-photo-of-three-dead-americans/#1", "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am485_98/lane/media/censor.htm", "http://yalepress.yale.edu/images/full13/9780300062915.jpg", "http://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-188.jpg", "http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300062915"], ["http://www.archives.gov/index.html", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Photos/80-G-469127.jpg", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB57/1944DamageReport/PSNSWarReport.html", "http://www.researcheratlarge.com/", "http://research.archives.gov/description/520587"]]}
{"q_id": "4s5onj", "title": "Why do Sniper rifles in WW1 images and re-created gameplay footage have their scopes mounted to the left of the firearm? Is this accurate? What caused the change to top-mounted scopes?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4s5onj/why_do_sniper_rifles_in_ww1_images_and_recreated/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d576r4w"], "score": [22], "text": ["Could you be more precise? Which specific rifle are you thinking of?\n\nGenerally though, there's always been a problem with mounting scopes on military rifles for two reasons:\n\n-Interference with the bolt handle.\n\n-Interference with the stripper clip guide.\n\nIn WW1 in particular, there's also the issue of primitive optics. The Springfield 03 musket sight was an off the shelf product with (I assume) an off the shelf mounting rail. The sight is massive and appears in images that it was mounted on the side of the rifle to prevent interference with the bolt handle, As it does interfere with the stripper clip guide. Stripper clips were typically only used in military rifles, not commercial rifles so its likely that care was not taken to accommodate clips in the design of the commercial musket sight.\n\nAnother example of interference of a scope on both the stripper clip guide and the bolt handle is the 91/30 sniper variant: to mount the scope, bending the bolt handle is necessary.\n\nAnother example is the SMLE. The British MOD always insisted that stripper clips be used on the SMLE rifle, even in sniper rifles, so the scopes were therefore side mounted, on the left side to also avoid interference with the bolt handle.\n\nI'm not a historian but a target shooting enthusiast so I hope my fairly general answer will help."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "25m6nc", "title": "\"Two Native Americans landed in Holland in 60 B.C\" I just read that in a Cracked article called \"6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America\". what are they talking about?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25m6nc/two_native_americans_landed_in_holland_in_60_bc_i/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chikc04", "chikfyq", "chilbu5", "chimpi4", "chinzat", "chj0mtz"], "score": [4, 47, 54, 16, 7, 5], "text": ["Cite?  Original link?", "To quote Tiako from the [first time that this appeared here](_URL_0_), \"Huh?\"", "The people who were seen in what is now Holland were, in 60 B.C, referred to as Indians.  This should tell you that this claim is beyond moronic.\n\nThey were, in all likelihood, from the Indus Valley in *India*.  You know, where Columbus thought he had landed and named the people after.  *If* they had come from North America, they wouldn't have been called Indians--they would have been called by whatever group they came from, just like everyone else was everywhere else.  ", "Even though this particular story is apocryphal, there is some evidence of Native Americans (or Inuits) arriving in Europe before Columbus.  The evidence is from Columbus himself, who describes a story he heard about a couple from \"Cathay\" (China) when he visited Galway, Ireland, in 1477. \n\n > Men of Cathay have come from the west.  We have seen many signs. And especially in Galway in Ireland, a man and a woman, of extraordinary appearance, have come to land on two tree trunks.\n\nPossibly a couple of Greenlanders blown across the ocean in a log boat.", "What the fuck? Is this true??\n\n > One of the best examples of how we got Native Americans all wrong is Cahokia, a massive Native American city located in modern day East St. Louis. In 1250, it was bigger than London, and featured a sophisticated society with an urban center, satellite villages and thatched-roof houses lining the central plazas. While the city was abandoned by the time white people got to it, the evidence they left behind suggests a complex economy with trade routes from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.", "Always scrutinize the citation list of any online article.\n\n\nEspecially if it comes from a website that relies on click baiting, and is from square one pitched as a comedy site. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tocco/how_accurate_is_this_article/"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5w2ahr", "title": "Was \"Deus Vult\" ever actually used as a battlecry at any point in history?", "selftext": "What evidence is there that crusaders or Christians used \"Deus Vult\" as a battlecry? Are there even any recorded battlecries in history that we know of?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5w2ahr/was_deus_vult_ever_actually_used_as_a_battlecry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["de7p3j7"], "score": [6], "text": ["There were battle cries during the Middle Ages. For example, Antoine de La Sale's *Le petit Jehan de Saintr\u00e9*\u2014a sort of late medieval book of aristocratic behavior\u2014proceeds almost as if an encylopedia mentioning the various regions of France, their arms, nicknames, and battle cries. All of these were idiosyncratic to the region or lordship in question. These most likely were used in ceremony or in the moments before battle was joined. In an example from the thirteenth century, Joinville narrates how while on the Nile the Lord Walter of Autreche, having mounted his horse and resplendent in his finest arms, charged at the enemy from his tent shouting \"Ch\u00e2tillon!\" Walter then falls off his horse and dies to the Egyptian army. You, the reader or listener, are meant to think Walter was foolish, drinking wine and suiting up on his pavilion before charging the enemy alone; but, it also lets us see how such phrases may have been used.\n\nA battle cry\u2014defined here as a cry employed in battle\u2014, however, was more frequently used as a marker of identification among combatants. For example, in his chronicle of the thirteenth-century Ibelin family, Philip of Novara recounts how in a fight outside the castle of Dieudamour a brave Tuscan knight was killed by his allies because he could not say the King's password, *vaillance*, but instead cried out *baillance*. A poor French accent could get you killed amidst the chaos of the battlefield. \n\nHistorians and cultural critics have often named *Deus Vult* the battle cry of the crusades since it is the phrased shouted by those listening to Pope Urban II's speech outside Clermont in 1095. This is attested in many of the accounts of Urban's speech, and is one of the few things the competing sources agree on. But, there are reasons why this latin phrase is not likely to have been frequently employed. First among many is that it is in latin. Knights would have known some latin, and certainly would have been able to recite some liturgical, biblical, or otherwise colloquial phrases as we do with other languages today. It is even likely that some, limited number of nobles knew how to read and write in Latin. But, particularly as the twelfth century went on, the use of the vernacular was far more common. Whatever battle cry people would use would almost certainly be in French, Middle High German, etc.\n\nA final example to demonstrate this fact would again come from Joinville, who when writing his history of the Seventh Crusade in his later years remembered the French knights on the Nile shouting not *Deus Vult*, but *Montjoie*. *Montjoie* is a French word recorded across multiple chanson de geste as a rallying cry of legendary medieval heroes such as William of Orange and Roland. It is best left untranslated as its meaning remains contested among scholars. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "awq14c", "title": "Gaius Valerius Catullus is known for writing Catullus 16 - a poem whose first line has been called \"one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin.\" What was the public response to this poem at the time?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awq14c/gaius_valerius_catullus_is_known_for_writing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ehp4mw4"], "score": [38], "text": ["I think it's worth quickly considering the context of the poem. \n\nIt is addressed to two friends of his, Marcus Furius Bibaculus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus, a poet and senator respectively. In Catullus-16 itself, it is referenced that both Furius and Aurelius believed Catullus' poetry to be rather effeminate. The exact word used is *molliculi*, which can be translated to 'tender', 'gentle', 'delicate', 'sensitive' etc. Taken at face value, the poem is a rebuke to the idea that Catullus himself is effeminate through threats of sexual violence against Furius and Aurelius. However, as these two were friends of his, and the poem is so atypical of Catullus' other poems, it is thought that the poem is supposed to be interpreted ironically, at least in part, and certainly has wider meaning. The point being made is that the poet does not necessarily match the poetry, and that crude poetry isn't as good as more 'sensitive' poems. Catullus-16 is complicated, but it is chiefly a rebuke to the idea that you can know someone through their public work. In the same way you do not know John Cleese by watching Monty Python, or Steve Coogan by watching Alan Partridge, you do not know Catullus by reading his poems. Inversely, Catullus is saying that even if he is masculine, that does not mean that his poems also have to be masculine.  \n\nSo how was this message interpreted? It certainly seems to have stuck a chord with other Roman authors of the time. Ovid makes what appears to be the same argument in his own work, though more explicitly:\n\n*Believe me, my character\u2019s other than my verse \u2013*\n\n*my life is modest, my Muse is playful \u2013*\n\n*and most of my work, deceptive and fictitious,*\n\n*is more permissive than its author.*\n\n*A book\u2019s not evidence of a life, but a true impulse*\n\n*bringing many things to delight the ear.*\n\n*Or Accius would be cruel, Terence a reveller,*\n\n*and those who sing of war belligerent.*\n\nLater on, he explicitly references Catullus as a further example of an author not matching the character of their work. Pliny the Younger sent some of his own poetry to his friend Paternus with the following message (from letter 4.14): \n\n >  Some of them will possibly strike you as being rather wanton, but a man of your scholarship will bear in mind that the very greatest and gravest authors who have handled such subjects have not only dealt with lascivious themes, but have treated them in the plainest language. I have not done that, not because I have greater austerity than they--by no means, but because I am not quite so daring. Otherwise, I am aware that Catullus has laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of poetry in his lines: \"For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself, though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous and not too modest.\"\n\nHere Pliny is pre-empting a criticism he knows he will receive; that he does not imitate Catullus' lurid style even though the subject matter warrants it. Pliny explains that he does this because he struggles to be daring enough and is restrained by his own sheepishness. It also reveals that sexually explicit poetry really wasn't unusual in Roman society. Modern society may view sex as taboo, but the Romans (largely) did not. Pliny is expecting criticism not for too much explicit sexual content, but *not enough*. Pliny quotes Catullus-16 lines 5 to 8. \n\nThere is a lot of scholarly literature on the relationship between Martial's works and those of Catullus. Martial was, at the very least, a big fan of Catullus and imitated some of the sexual language used in Catullus-16. \n\nThe Roman author Apuleius, writer of *The Golden Ass*, was also a fan of Catullus. He was accused of using magic to seduce a wealthy woman, and his poetry (which often included magic) was used as evidence against him. He quoted Catullus-16 lines 5 and 6 in his defence:\n\n >  You who are slanderous enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus? \"A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed.\nBut for his verses there is no such need.\" \n\nSo overall, the poem would not have been controversial. It would have been a bit shocking, especially coming from Catullus, but that was the point and it worked. The poem deals with themes which were particularly pertinent to Roman writers and, going by how many subsequent poets used Catullus as an example, it was actually quite popular, and for many it was the go-to rebuke to people who thought they knew someone because they had read their work. We also have to consider that Romans did not have the same sense of taboo around sex that we do in modern times, and that sexually explicit poetry was not viewed as scandalous. The public response to the poem, at least from the evidence we have, is that people thought Catullus had a very good point. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1h8rwo", "title": "What would have actually been planned in Saving Private Ryan's climactic battle?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h8rwo/what_would_have_actually_been_planned_in_saving/", "answers": {"a_id": ["caryfh4", "carz1t5", "carzhci"], "score": [3, 10, 8], "text": ["Not really sure this is the right sub. I would suggest [historical what if](_URL_0_) but I don't know if it technically falls there either, being that it's not actually historical.\n\nInteresting question though, would like to see what others plan out.", "I imagine they would have just blown the bridge and left the area.  If Tom Hanks' character had any competence he wouldn't have tried to face the overwhelming superiority of armor, especially when right from the get go they say that blowing the bridge is an option, albeit the last one.", "Well, one flaw of it that pretty much every war movie has is the engagement range... Most of the battle takes place at about 15-30m, whereas most battles in WWII took place at more like 100m-300m.\n\nThe Germans inexplicably move their tank up without infantry support - that's pretty much a guaranteed loss. The fact that the infantry behind the tank are crouched and seemingly using the tank for cover would indicate that the Germans expect resistance to their movement to the bridge.\n\nYet they advance along a narrow front (i.e. one street), do not screen their tank, do not advance by bounds, do not use cover... They're basically asking to be wiped out.\n\nNow, the Americans do not seem to have placed their crew-served weapons in places where they can be used to full effect. They're engaging with machineguns at grenade range, whereas the Browning .30's they're using are theoretically effective out to 1400m, and probably practically effective out to 500m or so.\n\nAgain, there are no screens for the crew-served weapons - they are in positions that can be easily flanked or approached under cover, and they are not guarded by riflemen/submachine guns.\n\nMore likely scenario:\n\nGermans send a few scouts out along multiple approaches, with the goal of identifying American strong points.\n\nAmericans have placed their machine-guns in fortified positions with long fields of fire, supported by riflemen. This would be several hundred metres at least from the bridge, to allow space for multiple lines of defence. Americans would have a few pickets out to attempt to identify the main axis of the German advance.\n\nBehind the American front lines, they would have prepared numerous other strong points for their troops (and especially crew-served weapons) to fall back on. At the front lines and the secondary lines, there would also be mock strong-points - unoccupied or lightly occupied fortifications designed to draw fire from the main points of resistance.\n\nOnce the Germans have identified definite or likely American positions, they would select fire positions for their armour, then their infantry would move up into buildings surrounding those positions to ensure that there are no hidden anti-tank teams.\n\nThen, the tanks would move into position, and begin machine-gun and cannon fire at long range to suppress and neutralize American strong points.\n\nWhile the Americans are pinned by the tanks, German troops would move up along several axes, advancing by bounds. This means that the squad machine gun and half the squad would take up an overwatch position, while the other half of the squad moved up under cover. Then the forward squad would take up an overwatch, and the MG and the rest of the squad would move up.\n\nDuring all of this, the Americans would be attempting to determine the German's main axis, so that they can effectively sweep it with MG fire, and move riflemen into position to flank it.\n\nIt's possible that the tanks would be too effective, so they might have to immediately fall back to their second line of defense, likely leaving a few soldiers behind to give the impression that their lines hadn't shifted.\n\nMeanwhile, the American pickets (hopefully still hidden) and select groups of Americans might try to infiltrate the German lines in an attempt to knock out their armour. Absence of bazookas is a big problem here, as it means any anti-armour teams would need to sneak or fight their way past all of the German infantry (remember, the infantry is deployed along a wide front between the Americans and the tanks, with constant coverage of their axes of attack), and get within 20m or less for their AT grenades or molotovs to be effective. This would be difficult, to say the least.\n\nIn all honesty, an understrength American platoon with no anti-tank weapons, no mortars, no fire support, no air cover, no tanks, no heavy guns would have little to no chance against a determined attack by what seems like at least a platoon (more likely a company) of Germans supported by two tanks.\n\nThey might be able to hold them off for a good while, as the Germans would be leery of moving their tanks up without sufficiently clearing the buildings around them, but attrition is going to get to them, and the cannons on the armour is going to make any strong point with a good avenue of fire more or less completely untenable.\n\nedit: source - years of study of small-unit tactics"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/historicalwhatif"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5iavh6", "title": "Following World War 2, what was the global reaction to the reinstatement of the Colonial Empires of the newly liberated nations of France and The Netherlands? Was this not seen as hypocritical?", "selftext": "Having just returned from South-East Asia I have been made aware of the absolute carnage that de-colonization brought to the region. Was there any backlash from the Western Powers (USA, Britain, Canada) re. the reinstatement of the Colonial Empires of France and the Netherlands so soon after they themselves were liberated? Did this view change overtime as the Independence Wars continued?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5iavh6/following_world_war_2_what_was_the_global/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db7s0p1", "db8c6bj"], "score": [2, 5], "text": ["I find it a bit weird that you put Britain apart when it did belong with France and The Netherland in losing vast colonies to the Japaneses, who did invade Malaysia, Birma and parts of India.", "Well, decolonization definitely played into the Cold War.\n\nWhile the various European allies weren't keen on granting independence to all of their colonies, they didn't really have a choice. Postwar, the US initiated a massive economic rebuilding of Europe, known as the Marshall plan. However, there were strings attached to this; and the major one was decolonization.\n\nThere were a few reasons for US policy here; first off, the Soviets had an ideological reason for anti-colonialism, and were one of the major powers in favour of immediate decolonization, and they believed that would gain them many allies in Africa and Asia. Likewise, the US believed that these new nations would be good checks to Soviet expansion in these regions. As well, FDR and a lot of the American establishment were never big fans of European style colonialism; it had been a given in previous US foreign policy to prevent it from occurring within its sphere of influence in Latin America, and a decolonization push fit into their previous framework\n\nYou often hear of the moment of the \"end\" of the French and British empires when President Eisenhower demanded their withdrawal from the Suez in 1957, but this was just one of the more visible pushes from the US (and the USSR too) for the Europeans to quit their colonies"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "72yv2c", "title": "Did Henry II expect a war when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine immediately after her annulment from Louis VII? How is it that the king of England stealing (more or less) the king of France's wife (herself ruler of one of the richest duchies in Europe) didn't cause a war?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72yv2c/did_henry_ii_expect_a_war_when_he_married_eleanor/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnmtupm"], "score": [29], "text": ["It's a rather long stretch to say that Henry \"stole\" the King of France's wife, either more or less. Eleanor and Louis' marriage had been annuled by Pope Eugene III on the basis of consanguinity, as they were related within the 4th degree and hadn't bothered to obtain a dispensation for marriage. Though Eleanor certainly favored this result, the decision to pursue it was entirely Louis'. Had the marriage produced a male heir Louis would have been far less willing to part with Aquitaine (and the Pope less willing to annul the marriage), but after two daughters with Eleanor, Louis and his advisers began to believe that a new marriage would best solve the problem of succession. \n\nWhat Henry and Eleanor stole was the French King's right to have a say in the marriage of his vassals. This was particularly true in the case of Eleanor. As overlord to an unmarried female vassal, it was by tradition the King's prerogative to choose, or at the very least approve, her future husband. Louis had, perhaps naievly, relied on this traditional 'feudal' assumption to keep Aquitaine within his patronage, but this is one of those places where reality slaps the feudal ideal upside the head. Henry and Eleanor married without the King's approval, without Papal dispensation (they were also related within the prohibited degree) and Louis was faced with a vassal who controlled vastly more of France than the King himself and who, after becoming King of England in 1154, would be in control of more European territory than anyone since Charlemagne. \n\nI can't say what Henry *expected* from Louis, but warfare did result and Henry, as was the case through most of his life, seems to have been quite prepared for it. First, Louis demanded that Henry come to Paris and answer for his behavior, an order Henry had no intention of obeying. Next Louis entered a coalition with Theobald of Blois and Geoffrey Plantagenet, Henry's brother. Both men had sought to marry Eleanor (tried to kidnap her actually), and now they, the King, and some rebellious Angevin vassals began to move against Henry's fortresses. You could say Henry was taken by surprise, as he was about to embark for England when news of all this reached him, but he moved very swiftly to drive Louis' forces back into the King's domain, suppress his brother's rebellion in Anjou, ravage the Vexin, and basically muscle Louis into a truce within two months. \n\nThis was hardly the end of conflict between the Angevins and Capetians over French territory and the extent of French Royal power. Louis' son Philip II would drive Henry's son John out of Normandy and the Angevin territories in 1204, but in 1152 Louis VII was not in a strong enough position to overcome Henry II.\n\nSources: \n\nRichard Barber - Henry Plantagenet\n\nAlison Weir - Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1f19wh", "title": "Did throwing knives ever see widespread military use? Or we're they always just a novelty?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f19wh/did_throwing_knives_ever_see_widespread_military/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ca5wf6k", "ca60f3b", "ca64eni", "ca66xw6"], "score": [73, 10, 3, 5], "text": ["Throwing knives in the military?\n\nI know of no example.  \n\nIn modern times, knife fighting has been taught only to commando troops (see the [Fairbairn\u2013Sykes knife for an example](_URL_0_)\\).\n\nAnother case were the [trench knives](_URL_1_) of WW1, a \"silent\" weapon used in trench raids (together with clubs etc.), first on an improvised basis, later as regular issue gear. \n\nBut as a throwing weapon, knives lack penetration, and require a fair amount of training.\n\nThrowing axes called [Franciscas](_URL_2_) were used by the Franks, a Germanic tribe of late antiquity. They were heavy enough to break shields at short range. \n\n", "Not a historian, just a military member for awhile. What we're taught about military history and tactics is that you generally don't throw away your weapons, thus the throwing knife lacks utility.", "In a similar vein, tomahawks weren't ever thrown.\n\nFrom a tactical standpoint, why would someone throw their weapon at someone, only to probably miss? If they did hit, can they get to their tomahawk in time to fight off other attackers? A lot of fighters would figure that it makes more sense just to keep your weapon in your hand. \n\nSource: A few degree-holding re-enactors had a very interesting seminar at a rendezvous on tomahawks and knives and stuff.", "[Chakrams](_URL_0_) are pretty cool... And way better than knives, they always hit with an edge."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbairn\u2013Sykes_fighting_knife", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_knife", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisca"], [], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakram"]]}
{"q_id": "5p9bcf", "title": "In his book \"Settlers\", J. Sakai asserts that the Cherokee nation had a very sophisticated and Westernized society immediately prior to their march on the Trail of Tears, boasting a supreme court, two-house legislature, official newspaper, and budding literary tradition. Is all of this true?", "selftext": "I have never heard of a Westernized Cherokee state besides their old designation as a \"civilized tribe.\" Has any good research been done on Cherokee life immediately before their removal by Andrew Jackson?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p9bcf/in_his_book_settlers_j_sakai_asserts_that_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dcppq87"], "score": [97], "text": ["This is an accurate summary of the state of the Cherokee Nation in the southeast in the years immediately prior to Removal. The first [Cherokee Constitution](_URL_0_) was adopted in July 1827 and established a Westernized government modeled after the United States. If you visit New Echota, in northwest Georgia, which was chosen as the capital for the new nation, you can see a reconstruction of the building that once housed the Supreme Court, the General Council (which was divided into two houses - the Committee and the Council proper), and the national newspaper, *The Cherokee Phoenix* while the new capital was getting established. The adoption of the Sequoyah syllabary around this same time greatly boosted literacy rates in the Cherokee Nation as well, and *The Cherokee Phoenix* was published in both English and Cherokee. The rapid Westernization of the Cherokee was one of the many factors that prompted the United States to pursue the Removal doctrine. During his first State of the Union address, Andrew Jackson cited Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 (that no new state could be formed from an existing state) as a reason to force the Cherokee Nation and other westernizing Native nations out of territory already claimed by the States. No one really knew how to deal with new nations popping up within the United States. Jackson and the like certainly weren't entertaining any arguments that would have allowed them to remain where they were at the expense of the Euroamerican population.\n\nFor an easily accessible summary of how life change for the average Cherokee during the 1700s and early 1800s (pre-Removal), I always recommend Theda Perdue's *Cherokee Women*. While the focus is obviously on women, there's plenty in there about men too since changes in the lives of one sex usually results in and from changes in the lives of the other. This includes, for example, women being increasingly excluded from political engagement in their society as the nation westernizes. In general, though Theda Perdue's works are great and she has done a lot of work on the Cherokee during the Removal era if you're interested in more on that topic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://arts-sciences.und.edu/native-media-center/_files/docs/1803-1860/1827cherokeeconstitution.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "28e8xp", "title": "Why is baseball more popular than football in Venezuela, unlike with what is the case for the majority (almost all) of the South American countries? Is there a specific historical reason?", "selftext": "I know that the situation slightly changes now, while football gains popularity there, but, if one looks the history of football in Venezuela, it is extremely poor compared to even not so successful national football teams like that of Chile.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28e8xp/why_is_baseball_more_popular_than_football_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciaffwz"], "score": [29], "text": ["The popularity of baseball in Venezuela is the result of two factors, geography and oil. Since it is located on the Caribbean, it has had more trade with the US since it is accessible directly by water. Therefore, there have been more American merchants in Venezuela to spread American culture. \n\nThe second factor is oil. When oil was discovered after WWI in Venezuela, the country sold the rights for oil extraction for the most part to American oil companies. Many American oil workers came to Venezuela to work, bringing along baseball as a pastime. Soon Venezuelans picked it up and it has been popular ever since. \n\nA book that will be able to explain this all in more detail is: \n\nElias, Robert. The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold US Foreign Policy and the American Way. New York: New Press, 2010. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4n72nc", "title": "How was the Apollo 13 accident and crew survival portrayed in Soviet Media?", "selftext": "After watching the \"world response\" to Mark Watney portrayed in **The Martian**. I was wondering how Apollo 13 was portrayed around the world especially in the USSR. In my googling I was unable to find a review of the soviet media's coverage.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4n72nc/how_was_the_apollo_13_accident_and_crew_survival/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d41s65m", "d42354j"], "score": [23, 10], "text": ["I know they congratulated the success of Apollo 11, did they congratulate the successful return of the astronauts of 13 as well?\n\nFollow up question: when did the actual space teams (NASA and the Soviet space program) start to view each other as compatriots in the goal for space exploration? When did they both cheer each other's successes?", "I'm also unfamiliar with any reviews of Soviet coverage of Apollo 13 (at least in English), and if someone knows of such sources or sources on Soviet coverage on U.S. space achievements in general, I'd be happy for any tips!\n\nThat said, the histories of Apollo 13 mission do note that the drama united the world, and there are some grounds for that claim. As far as I'm aware from my study of Apollo 13 and of earlier US missions and their Soviet coverage (note that I don't understand Russian and hence my sources are very limited), the Soviets generally did portray civilian spaceflight in favorable light, although with a bit of \"sour grapes\" approach (\"manned missions to moon are little more than publicity stunts, extravagant waste of money and typical of Capitalist excess, when we Soviets can do everything necessary with Lunokhod robots!\"). Still, pioneers such as the crew of Apollo 11 were certainly congratulated, even if with reminders that the first man in space was still a Soviet citizen and that the Soviet Union led the space race in all the arenas that really mattered...\n\nThis was due to the fact that the Soviets were indeed reasonably serious if unfocused players in the moon race, but their hopes were irrevocably dashed when the supposed N-1 Moon rocket proved its fundamental unsuitability for this task by unblemished record of failure, in one case turning its launch pad and a large group of launch pad engineers to ashes in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever. Since they could not beat the Americans to the Moon, they did the next best thing (familiar to everyone with siblings) and denied ever having even been in the race, which furthermore didn't matter, really. Nevertheless, space exploration was fairly popular topic in Soviet culture, and given the cultural significance of Moon landings, they couldn't entirely ignore the U.S. successes. \n\nIn the Soviet media, there was nothing like the almost real time coverage of Apollo 13 mission, of course. But the drama was still followed as far as I know, and it is a fact that the Soviets offered every possible assistance they could render to the rescue and recovery efforts. The safe return of the astronauts was likewise hailed as a success, but unfortunately, I cannot really say anything about the extent of news coverage - only that it most likely was among other news from abroad. \n\nThe coverage of Apollo 13 mission specifically has been discussed to very small extent in Lovell's book *The Lost Moon* (republished as *Apollo 13*); recovery efforts are detailed in Gene Krantz's autobiography *Failure is not an option;* other sources would be welcome.\n\nEDIT: although I haven't seen or read The Martian, I very strongly suspect that the \"worldwide event\" theme really comes from real-life experience of Apollo 13."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6790qv", "title": "[meta] Why do you read/participate in AskHistorians?", "selftext": "Hello! My name is Sarah Gilbert. I\u2019m a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia\u2019s iSchool: School of Library Archival and Information Studies, in Canada whose doctoral research explores why people participate in online communities. So far, my research has focussed on the relationship between different kinds of [participation and motivation] (_URL_1_) and the role of [learning as a motivation for participating](_URL_0_) in an online community. I\u2019m also really interested in exploring differences in motivations between online communities. \n\nAnd that\u2019s where you come in!  \n\nI\u2019ve been granted permission by the AskHistorians moderators to ask you why you participate in AskHistorians. I\u2019m interested hearing from people who participate in all kinds of ways: people who lurk, people up upvote and downvote, people who ask questions, people who are or want to be panellists, moderators, first time viewers - everyone! Because this discussion is relevant to my research, the transcript may be used as a data source. If you\u2019d like to participate in the discussion, but not my research, please send me a PM. \n\nI\u2019d love to hear why you participate in the comments, but I\u2019m also looking for people who are willing to share 1-1.5 hours of their time discussing their participation in AskHistorians in an interview. If so, please contact me at ~~sgilbert@_URL_2_~~ or via PM. \n\nEdit: I've gotten word that this email address isn't working - if you'd like to contact me via email, please try sagilber@mail._URL_2_\n\nEdit 2: Thank you so much for all of the amazing responses! I've been redditing since about 6am this morning, and while that's not normally much of an issue, it seems to have made me very tired today! If I haven't responded tonight, I will tomorrow. Also, I plan to continue to monitor this thread, so if you come upon it sometime down the road and want to add your thoughts, please do! I'll be working on the dissertation for the next year, so there's a pretty good chance you won't be too late!\n\nEdit 3, April 27: Again, thanks for all your contributions! I'm still checking this post and veeeeeerrry slowing replying.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6790qv/meta_why_do_you_readparticipate_in_askhistorians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgokfl0", "dgokgb3", "dgokony", "dgokzgf", "dgol8wb", "dgoli8r", "dgomh2v", "dgomi5x", "dgomrwz", "dgoms6z", "dgon9c4", "dgonct9", "dgoo5vs", "dgoo61r", "dgoomy4", "dgopc00", "dgopk4b", "dgopniv", "dgopvf9", "dgoq7bb", "dgoqye0", "dgor0w2", "dgor9pk", "dgora5j", "dgosr78", "dgotac4", "dgotmnk", "dgou5fr", "dgougn7", "dgovlsp", "dgovr2l", "dgowe1t", "dgowmw8", "dgowwfr", "dgowxai", "dgox4l1", "dgox6g3", "dgoyd3v", "dgoyz1l", "dgoyzyj", "dgoz878", "dgp11ab", "dgp1dvn", "dgp31rb", "dgp5f0u", "dgp5stc", "dgp7bap", "dgp7vjt", "dgp7wud", "dgp8oyo", "dgpbtox", "dgpce5g", "dgpcfoj", "dgpioa0", "dgpizee", "dgpjrxt", "dgpkqbf", "dgpl2yq", "dgpq08x", "dgpu522", "dgpubcl", "dgq174g", "dgq8zu6", "dgqs1bc", "dgr8qgl", "dgt7ejw", "dgwdqcz", "dgzarb1", "dh6fcy5"], "score": [29, 3, 3, 5, 15, 3, 5, 3, 3, 31, 2, 3, 8, 11, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 8, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 11, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 10, 2, 5, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 3, 6, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Ultimately, history is my expression of nerd-dom. I love history, I love talking about it, I love being crazy enthusiastic about it...and most importantly of all, *I love getting other people as enthusiastic about it as I am.* :D AskHistorians is the perfect blend of casual and serious to allow me to get down and dirty with historical method but still have FUN with it.\n\nI can think of a lot of next level factors. I know SO MUCH MORE about the Middle Ages, especially off the top of my head, since I've been writing here. (\"If you want to learn something, teach it.\") I've made some fantastic connections with other AH regulars. AskHistorians needs more women both as readers and as panelists, and REALLY needs people who can talk knowledgeably about women's and gender history.\n\nIn the end, though, my significant participation (I am an active moderator as well as question-answerer) comes down to the fact that I believe AskHistorians does something special, important, and exciting. It's hard to think of someplace else that gets so many people excited about *understanding* the past for the past's own sake--not to fulfill a sense of WW2 hero-worship or to twist something politically. It's hard to think of another accessible place so committed to breaking down the barriers of proprietary knowledge that academia and academic publishing are so insistent on maintaining. AH does something I believe in, and the environment we've cultivated makes doing that FUN.\n\nI will e-mail you as well. :)", "Because sometimes there are interesting answers and/or questions. Most of the time I'm just frustrated by graveyards of what I consider to be perfectly acceptable answers, though. ", "If I'm interested in a particular topic, I can further investigate the source myself.  The contributors tend to provide good sources that are easy to read, as I usually don't know the first book to check out on the topic.", "Hi Sarah! \n\nI've been quietly following the dialogue as you organised this with the mod team, and I'm really excited that we have this chance to support you in your research! \n\nI forget exactly how it is that I stumbled across /r/AskHistorians. Like a lot of our readership past and present, I was a teenager fascinated by history around the time I joined. I'd graduated from school and just started a humanities degree, and when I discovered that Reddit could be useful for more than just cat pictures, I was overjoyed! \n\nAt first, /r/AskHistorians was basically just a place where I could procrastinate on my work while still feeling guilt free (or at least, less guilty!) because I was learning something. Sort've like how we always manage to discover those *incredibly interesting* around the time we're meant to be doing something more important. Even now there's a big element of procrastination to my involvement here, but this time I'm not just learning, I'm supporting community outreach, and promoting public interest in history! Whatever it takes to distract myself from my impending deadlines. \n\nBut if it were just about procrastination I wouldn't be here, four years and Lord knows how many hours later. It became clear to me pretty quickly that /r/AskHistorians really is something unique on Reddit and the wider Internet, and something which I wanted to be a part of. This project played an enormous role in feeding my passion for history, and I credit it above everything else for transforming me from a naive teenager interested in history for its wars and its battles to a naive early-twenties-er with a much broader and richer ~~understanding of my own ignorance~~ range of amateur interests. \n\n/r/AskHistorians has shown me how much there is to learn and why it's worth learning. It gives me fascinating windows into fields of study I never even knew existed. It's introduced me to an incredible community and a team of flairs and moderators who I am privileged to work with and alongside whom I feel woefully amateur. And it keeps bringing me back with something new every single day.", "I have two basic motivations for posting. The simplest is that I fill a gap. There's a dearth of fashion historians on Reddit in general - a lot of incorrect but popular history gets passed around on the subject, a lot of supposition or speculation, and personal experience (in modern clothes or reenactment attire) gets used as the be-all-end-all of proof. By having someone in my field here, I can correct misinformation and make sure that people asking questions in my area of fashion history - roughly 1660 though the 1950s - are coming away with an impression that's as close to accurate as I can make it. (Also, now that I'm a mod I can remove answers that might have stood previously, because I recognize the outdated assumptions they're based on even when they appear to be formally-written and cited.)\n\nThe other reason is that I'm a public historian at heart. I'm more into dating/sequencing than most fashion historians, which is certainly more of a \"behind the scenes\" issue, but my favorite thing about my day job (I'm a curator/collections manager in a small museum) is working on exhibitions. Recently I installed *Come On!: Portraits and Posters of World War I* and *Miner Street in 1900* (a map of a residential street in our town with photos and blurbs on the people who lived there); currently I'm working on making binders to hold labels for all of the objects placed on view in our historic rooms, figuring out what we know about them and what I can say to teach the people who actually want to read labels about their original owners (one rocking chair was from a Revolutionary War veteran!), their uses (the difference between an astral and a solar lamp), and their decorative arts styles (mostly Empire, some Sheraton).", "I'm generally insufferable about the minutiae about Italian society and culture, especially when discussing in the centuries immediately preceding the renaissance; so this is a great outlet for me.\n\nI kid (sort of). In any case, I find that anyone can name the Ninja Turtles and pass that off as cursory knowledge on the Italian Renaissance; however what most people don't know is that the Renaissance is the apex of centuries of economic, social, and political development; which left profound marks on Italy as well as the whole of western society. ", "Hello and welcome to our sub :).\n\nWell, ever since I have gotten interested in history or to be more specific Economic History, I have been something of an annoyance to my many friends, parents, cousins who had to put up with my lectures about rather obscure topics of which they had no interest in or anything to benefit from. It just so happens that my interests itself are very specific and there is no forum that is better for writing on such specialized topics.\n\nWhere else can I write long answers on topics ranging from [New Deal](_URL_0_), Socialism in [Soviet Union](_URL_3_) and [Yugoslavia](_URL_5_), the impact of liberalization of Cooperative Housing in Sweden, China's agricultural reform, [Marxism](_URL_1_), South Korea's [Industrialization program](_URL_2_) etc etc. I also [actively ask](_URL_4_) questions and I know the answer I am going to get is a quality one and which I can trust. The Moderators have been very kind in even granting me a flair.\n\nr/AskHistorians is truly a great place where you have a lot of people present who actually want to have an in-depth understanding of a topic and excellent moderation which ensures that there is a very conducive environment to do so. This combination of things is not present in other places. I view it as Singapore of Reddit.\n\n", "Hello Sarah and welcome!\n\nFor me personally, AskHistorians provided an incredble opportunity to expand and focus my hobby, which was at first very loose and could be defined as \"literally everything in the past is interesting and I need to know as much as possible\". With this attitude, I have devoured many answers on here as a lurker. When I decided to post questions of my own, I very quickly became attuned to the way inquiries on here are perceived and how it is best to approach them. Through the process of asking many, many questions I slowly became much more attentive and inquisitive in my normal way of approaching historical topics. Through this, I also started posting answers (to be sure - I still mostly like to think of myself as an inquisitive layman rather than anything else). Having posts removed or prodded for sources immensely helped in changing my approach to writing to something much more comprehensive. It also made me re-evaluate how much I know about certain topics and which areas can be called my \"expertise\". Subsequently I studied more of these particular topics and thus my interests became much more clearly defined. \n\nThe last step was recognizing how great the community on here is and having a desire to contribute, however slightly, to keeping the quality of the place high. Eventually this manifested in me accepting the offer to become a moderator.\n\nOverall, I love AskHistorians for its uniqueness among pretty much all of online communities and I cherish the ability of the sub to provide in-depth answers to the general public, as well as keeping the forum free of pettiness or rudeness, which tend to sour seemingly every facet of our collective online existence.", "I don't believe I'm a good candidate for an interview but, quite simply, history is fascinating. I love learning of (and researching) the things that have shaped the modern world: Conflicts that have drawn boundaries, people who have created recognizable modern artifacts, the stories of those who have made the world we know now.\n\nThis subreddit is a great resource for that. I've been able to answer a few questions myself but by and large I lean on the expertise of the more-qualified academic contributors.", " I am a \"people who lurk\" on AskHistorians. I will never post anything of significance in AskHistorians, such as this post. \n\nHistory is interesting to me, but not my strength. I am new to Reddit and up or down voting is not something I am used to, so that rarely happens either. \n\nI enjoy the well thought out questions and the very well researched answers by people that really have a passion for history. I usually get sucked into responses, follow their links and spend hours learning about topics I never knew existed or may have known about but not to the extent presented here. I found AskHistorians by chance when I was looking for good subs on Reddit as a new user. \n\nKeep the good stuff coming and I will passively sit on the sidelines learning about the history I never knew I wanted to know.", "I'm not an expert in anything historical, but I enjoy this sub because I love learning about random things. I do have an interest in history as well, obviously, though I'm not academic about it. The stuff people ask about here is really, truly random and there's nearly always someone ready to chime in with eclectic knowledge. This sub and ELI5 are a blast for me.", "I study history with a United States concentration at the University of Delaware.\n\nI come here to be among better historians than I (I hesitate to call myself one), to learn and ask questions, and maybe one day to be a panelist.", "I've asked enough questions on this forum to be highlighted for it so I'll answer from that point of view. Those questions have ranged from [fish tanks in ancient Rome](_URL_2_) to [Paul Bunyan and fakelore](_URL_3_) to the [Dyatlov Pass incident](_URL_0_) to \n[Mark Twain, medieval theology, and universal salvation with respect to Satan](_URL_1_). Those links show how AskHistorians rewards such inquisitiveness. The users in those threads (tagging to appease the bot: /u/QuickSpore, /u/itsallfolklore, /u/OnlyDeanCanLayEggs, and /u/sunagainstgold) have demonstrated over and over again that they are willing to take a good chunk of time to address the things that pop into my head while driving or reading or staring at my monitor at work daydreaming about being Spaceman Spiff. \n\nI can't think of any other venue in which such disparate areas of historical expertise coalesce into a knowledge pool this deep. Anyone who provides an answer here has clearly parsed through the reams of paper dedicated to their area of interest and distributed a product for users who seem to be looking for something between what you'd find in an academic journal and a well-written and sourced Wikipedia entry. And the best of the answers on here trend toward the former.\n\nSomeone else who answered you mentioned 'comment graveyards.' That's another reason I come here. I love those graveyards; they let me know that the moderators here are motivated individuals who are dedicated to keeping Snapple Facts far away from what I consider reddit's City upon a Hill. It's also how I've become comfortable with not tasking everyone who provides an answer to a question I ask to present a list of sources for me to go through to test the validity of an answer. That being said, I can already fill a library with the books AH has added to my Amazon wish list. \n\nThe users here also come from a variety of academic and professional fields, not to mention walks of life. The answers that they provide are clearly going to be informed in at least some way by those backgrounds. In that regard there's an aspect that I personally find appealing. I don't know from what angle any given user is going to approach my question and often that leads to the awakening of some latent area of interest in myself and other users. \n\nSo, learning is certainly the motivation for me participating here. I lurk around a lot of other places on reddit, but I rarely engage in any discussion elsewhere. The conversations that take place in most other subreddits aren't enticing enough to me. I got a guy at work who thinks people killed off the dinosaurs because 'they're fucking scary' and I can talk to him in person if I want. That's not to say that there aren't good conversations elsewhere on this website and across the Internet as a whole. Obviously, that's not the case. I just haven't found such a concentration of substantive discussion in many places outside AskHistorians.", "I first ran into AskHistorians when I was doing a Masters Degree in Ancient History, so I was already at the point of committing myself to further historical education beyond my bachelor's. I love history, I love talking about it, I love introducing things to people from history and being introduced to new things in turn. I was being exposed to a raft of new ideas and subjects during my Masters, and also on AskHistorians, the two fed off of one another in terms of expanding my historical awareness. Then I grew to love what AskHistorians was creating in terms of a particular community, and not long afterwards I was asked to be a moderator here, which I've now been for several years. I find it hard to imagine AskHistorians not being a part of my life.\n\nI don't post as much as I'd like any more due to having less time to do so, but I care very much about the community that I've been part of for so long, and I've made a number of very dear friends throughout my time here. That, along with my belief in what the community is doing, is probably why I've been a moderator for so long now. I feel that AskHistorians is a precious thing that needs watching and nurturing, its robust ability to maintain a polite discourse and avoid derailment is entirely due to human effort, both on part of moderators and the wider community.\n\nAskHistorians allows me to talk about history in a rigorous way that still employs a very different register to writing a paper; it's a public presentation that I'm in full control over. I'm feel like it's a creative and historical outlet, but also an opportunity to interest people, and hopefully change people's perceptions; a number of my historical focuses are considered fairly obscure, so I've always felt a little like I'm an advocate for them, simply by being around to answer comprehensively when someone does run into the Seleucids, or the Greco-Bactrians, and wants to know more.", "I am here because learning about history and sharing that knowledge is one of the most meaningful things I do. If I had to rank things that give my life purpose it would be something like 1)Family 2)Friends 3)Learning about history and sharing what I have learned 4) Career. This is a fantastic place both to learn and to teach. The q and a format means that rather than lecturing I am engaging with something the questioner already cares about. The need for rigor means that I must always refine my own knowledge - I know so much more than when I started. Compared with other history for this is a community much more dedicated to scholarship and  less interested in speculation or opinion. Indeed, I find that this place is uniquely respectful of knowledge (so many places treat opinions as equal, or hold people ability to participate more important than distinguishing between who knows what they are talking about) without being too deferential to outside authority. It is a blend of rigor and openness - anyone can answer, and their work speaks for itself. Since I am outside of Academia this is my chance to participate in a fairly substantial exchange about history; it is a great way for me to participate in something intellectual and stimulating and enriching. This also makes this a place worth maintaining and expanding and sharing, which is why I am a mod.", "I prefer the answers I see here even when the questions may be better asked in a different subreddit. The flaired users and mods provide a straight up better experience, including an effort at intelligent discussion and attempting to mitigate/disclosing biases. Not many other subs can offer that", "I'm a writer with a side passion for art criticism, and I study history in so far as it has to do with art and literature.\n\nIncidentally, it has a hell of a lot to do with art and literature, and so I study as much as my capacity would allow.", "I like to see a good scholarly rough and tumble.  \n\nNot just typical reddit BS but people who actually know things discussing them at a high yet accessible level.\n\nMy participation has lessoned over time, because most of the things I actually have read useful literature on have already been given high quality responses, so the effort of writing a high-quality response seeems less worth it.\n\nI still read a lot of great responses and back-and-forth though, and those are my favorite threads by far.", "Im a scientist and college professor, and I find thay r/askhistorians answers questions worth answering in a deep and nuanced way.  I also appreciate that the answerers often change poorly stated questions into better, more tractable ones.  ", "To me, AskHistorians creates some of the highest quality and most interesting content on Reddit. I was a History/Econ double major in undergrad and I've found so many questions and answers that have piqued my interest in the same way that many of my undergrad classes did. I love that people here are passionate about their fields of study and are willing to write in-depth and interesting answers on so many different types of questions. There are very few places where you can get such informed and interesting content and that's why I always excited to see what's new each day.\n\nI've had the opportunity to answer a couple of questions based on classes and research that I've done, and even was interested in a couple questions enough to go out and do a little additional research based on resources that I already knew existed. I know that I'm not always the right person to answer a question, but I always feel a little proud when I know that I can add something to this place. ", "I am not a historian. My focus has been scientific/computing, not history or sociology. However, history is important--it's referenced constantly, it informs current politics, and (to me, most importantly,) the methodology of the study of history is both interesting and useful to know more about. It's a way of examining data that I'm not directly trained in, and learning more about it helps me think and approach my own personal tasks differently. In short, not only do I learn about history, I learn new ways of viewing the world.", "There are a number of reasons I'm here. Let me count the ways.\n\n1) I love most areas of history, and I am absolutely guaranteed to find something new here every time I dip in. This was true when I was just reading, it was true when I started to contribute, it was true when I got flair, and now that I'm a (very new) moderator, holy shit, is it true. Even on questions with my areas of research and knowledge, where I think I know the answer and start typing, the mere act of telling someone else about something *always* leads me to question assumptions, do the digging into books and journals, and learn something new. And importantly, I get a deeper understanding, which is different and, I think, more important.\n\n2) I am a massive fan of online community as a concept. I've been a moderator and community manager in some form very nearly as long as I've been online, which is a little over 20 years now. Online communities have characteristics offline ones don't, which we're still only barely getting to grips with. AH has a huge sense of community even at the most public end, and that's all the more accentuated behind the scenes.\n\n3) I'm a re-enactor (sort of - I play in the Society for Creative Anachronism), and AH is fantastic for digging out the answers to thorny practical questions, because of the cross-disciplinary nature of a place where historians, archaeologists, literary critics, and others cross paths.\n\n4) I was a mature student on a distance-learning course when I got my BA (History  &  Literature). As such, I'm downright passionate about access to history for people who aren't in conventional academia, or indeed aren't in academia at all. As a graduate of such a course, I still have access to JSTOR and other such sources of information that the general public don't, and that's ridiculous. All of history should be available to anyone who wants to learn, not hidden behind paywalls or in ivory towers. AH fulfils that mission admirably, and not only gives access to that material via people who can assess it and explain it, but pushes it out into the wider world via social media and other outreach.", "I really enjoy how well regulated AskHistorians is, while still allowing the subreddit to have \"fun\" during April Fools. All the posts are informative and it allows an interesting look into how optimally reddit as a medium can work within an academic setting. I typically lurk and have thought about posting but I don't think I have enough expertise to answer most questions. For subjects that I know more about, I would probably answer if someone has not already, but I'm waiting on the perfect question to be asked for that!", "I just love the quality of answers, and the demanding requirements, that this sub has.\n\nThere are two areas of interest of mine, post WWII Nazi Germany, and LGBT rights.  I have asked questions here and there.  Unfortunately, not every one has gotten answered, but those that do are extremely impressive.  I just keep plugging away, though, here and there, and while I don't like to make repeated reposts and be annoying, I still look for the best ways to get answers.\n\nHistory was my minor in college, and it's fascinating to me, keep up the good work, and once again thank you to all who contribute and keep this site solid academia.  ", "Good people, good resource! I'm a first-year postgraduate going for a career in academia. Two big problems I've run into this year have been 1) not knowing what I need to know and 2) how to organize my thoughts on different things.\n\nTo the first, this place is great because I can look at answers from other medievalists here, and I can kind of map out how they ended up being able to give those answers, including some sources, if I want to follow that path myself. At the beginning of the year, I was a nervous wreck because of impostor syndrome--you feel like you're expected to know X Y and Z, everyone else knows all that by heart, and you're gonna get busted for not knowing those things that everyone else already knows. This place kinda helped break that. Everyone's asking questions, it's not a competitive environment. I taught myself to look at the great answers here and not think \"shit, why don't I know that already?\" and instead thing \"oh my god that's really cool, now I gotta ask more questions and get more out of this person!\" Basically, the closer you can get to approaching curiosity like a 5-year-old again, the better. Learn like a kid, articulate it later like an adult.\n\nAs to the second, answering questions genuinely helps me learn the material better. I figured that out when I was tutoring in undergrad, and it's still true here. Say I just read like five chapters from a history book on, I don't know, the history of literacy, and I'm still jittery from all the espresso I drank during. I could spend it writing down in notes, but if I'm totally honest with myself, notes are really time-consuming, and I don't retain them well. They're quick reference for essay-writing at best. But here, considering the volume of questions we get, chances are good I can answer someone's question related to what I just read or have read in the past month or so, and doing that is like...the best way I can describe it is that it's like laying all the pieces of a log cabin down in order, instead of just sitting on a pile of wood and rummaging through what you need. You don't really understand an idea unless you can package it in a way someone else understands easily. This is super lame and dumb and nerdy but I've started formatting my 'notes' that way. Instead of a bunch of bullet points, I'll make an imaginary question and write a paragraph or so answering it. I'm very aware that medieval stuff is a pretty inaccessible field, so being able to talk about it and show people how exciting it is can be fabulous.\n\nBasically, answering questions is universally good for everyone, and I get some nice selfish perks on the side! As long as I'm not a dingus and give bad answers, in which case none of the flairs here shy away from correcting each other in a helpful, respectful way.", "I just read stuff.\n\nThere is a great variety of topics and time periods on the sub. It's ways fun to read the well thought out responses and learn something new. \n\nI also find it fun to think about the person asking the question. What thoughts/discussions are going on in their lives. \n ", "When I first started posting here I was still in my last year of high school. I'm not sure I could say *why* I stuck around other than that I generally had nothing better to do and my girlfriend at the time thought I might as well write about stuff I enjoyed (she changed her tune later when she realized it took me upwards of an hour sometimes to put something together). Once I had determined I'd stick around, though, I realized that it was a good place to get used to articulating my ideas and synthesizing thoughts that I could use later for work. And it *has* been helpful, I'd credit AH with helping me gather my thinking together well enough for me to become confident in my understanding of how classical scholarship is actually done--I've always been good at Latin and Greek, but actually being scholarly is a very different thing. I dropped the Chemistry part of my double major about a year after joining AH and have never looked back. Even more recently it's helped me put together my thoughts better--a number of arguments in my undergraduate honors thesis started as posts here, and recently a user's question made me think about a particular politician's career more carefully than I had before. There's a lot of *really* interesting stuff that gets asked here, alongside the more regular \"what did Hitler think?\" and \"ELI5\" stuff that clutters the upper regions of the front page. Even those questions, until you inevitably get bored with them, are useful in helping understand how to formulate answers that, to a specialist, seem so trivially elementary as to be, at first glance, almost inept. And of course I just like teaching, mostly because I like the sound of my own voice. There's also the fact that, being one of the younger users on the sub, I can learn a lot from people above me. There are a lot of people here who are really useful if you need a little help with something. For example, /u/Astrogator, who works in one of the epigraphic databases, helped me out on some epigraphic work I was doing since the epigraphist at my university mostly does Greek stuff (btw Astrogator, one of the inscriptions, despite what I thought, did actually make it into the final draft of my thesis). And there's a certain degree of satisfaction in finding a nice little piece of the internet where people like me can hang out and not be swamped by the mind-melting barrages of memes that have destroyed at least one classics undergrad I know. There's something very satisfying, for example, in talking behind the scenes with /u/bitparity about some element of Greek syntax, only to realize it's in Byzantine Greek and looks utterly moronic to me. ", " Admittedly I tend to lurk. I'm finishing up my integrated masters in history and while my university is so bad it's largely killed my love of the subject, I still try to keep my eye out for any new theories and such, and if my knowledge is of any help then I will always seek to share it, if needed.\nI like to follow the philosophy of 'give no man neither advice nor salt, unless he asks for it' so try to stick to lurking until I can't contain myself any further. \n\nHope that answer helps. If you have questions, feel free to ask. ", "More of a lurker, but I'll post once in a blue moon.\n\nI'm a professional archivist, but I also publish history on occasion (mostly regional publications, and some pop-history for local newsletters). Browsing here gives me an idea of the kinds of topics that people are interested in hearing about. I like the variance in questions because the researchers I work with are sometimes so static, it gets very boring working, sometimes for months, on the same question.\n\nI also enjoy the open aspect of it. The academic atmosphere can be very authoritarian at times, and I like how anyone can participate here. It creates some problems with bad or incomplete information being passed around, but the moderation team here seems to be fairly good and proactive at forcing substantive participation. \n\nAll things considered it's a great resource for Reddit. I don't know that I'd put much weight in its value in my professional life, but after I've answered the same question about rural economics for the thirtieth time in a day, it's nice to unwind with something light.", "Finally, a question I'm qualified to answer!\n\nPlease allow me to begin with an anecdote:\n\nOne day when I was listening to NPR or some such programming, someone pointed out one of the virtues of listening to music on your favorite radio station rather than your MP3 player is that you have a chance to be randomly introduced to a song or singer you might enjoy which you otherwise might never have known about.\n\nIn a way, AskHistorians has been like my history 'radio' these past few years. Getting on here gives me the chance to learn about areas of history which I may not have even thought to explore.\n\nI've even been exposed to hypotheses and frameworks I would otherwise never have known. In turn, as any good armchair historian, I can apply them to my own areas of interest when seeking to understand or explain phenomenon.\n\nYet another charm of AskHistorians is a certain sense of solidarity I feel. I'm not really surrounded by many people who care or know much about the areas of history I'm most familiar with. By getting on AskHistorians I am reminded that there are not only others who enjoy the same kind of stuff I enjoy, but there are also regular people behind the computer like me who in fact know far more about this or that than I do. It feels reaffirming and provides me with a sense of solidarity I otherwise wouldn't have. \n\nEven though I'm a lurker, the tone of the subreddit and ability to respond to anyone (within community accepted boundaries) makes me feel more like a peer to some contemporary great academic minds rather than feeling like an anonymous fan connected only to such people through reading their books or articles.\n\nLast, and perhaps least importantly, it provides an endless stream of interesting trivia to whip out in conversation. I come here and generally feel comfortable with quoting things I've read because I have *trust* in the way this subreddit is maintained and moderated.", "1. I am interested in history, lest I inadvertently repeat it. There is little or no point in being interested about the present or future without being interested in the past.\n\n2. r/AskHistorians has such high standards that one is left with the firm impression that every last comment is peer-reviewed. It is even more reliable than r/AskScience.\n\n3. History is stories, and stories grab the imagination like facts cannot. I learned this crucial fact when watching the 2nd version of Cosmos, which was mostly (I think) written by Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's wife.", "I read and never comment. For me, this is a place where I can actually trust answers. The moderation team does such a good job, and other users moderate each other to such a degree that I feel fairly comfortable knowing what I'm reading is accurate. It's quite amazing how rare that feeling is on the internet. I can honestly say I have never read an article from the internet without seriously doubting most of the information in it. We live in an era where misinformation exists at every level, so it's nice to be a part of a place that cares so much about the truth. \n\nPlus I like history. ", "I dig through the archives often, looking for posts relating to subjects I'm interested in, either personally or as a question arising from a class I'm taking.  For the former, I'm generally treating AskHistorians as an encyclopedia, only better, because it tends to offer a diverse collection of answers.  For the latter, it's usually that I'm checking a lecture from a professor against other scholars within the field, to see how it matches up.  This is especially true if I already know that something I'm being taught in class is controversial, or else I'm hearing something that I recognize as wildly different from what I've previously heard.\n\nI also use AskHistorians extensively for getting an idea of the state of history as a discipline: what's the overall job market like; which fields are in most demand; what do historians think are the best/worst aspects of the industry.  I also trawl the archives to get insight into grad school.\n\nHonestly, I use it for a lot of things, the above just being the main ones.  AskHistorians is my one-stop-shop for all things history-related.", "I'll be your outlier I guess, to some degree, and that's why I am replying to this. Although, in a way, I am just a sort of nerd with great interest in history, and that puts me right in the majority group. Let me explain myself. I am a science teacher, raised in a house of economists, and a very avid reader of history/economy/sociology. My science education and frame of mind puts me off from historical romances, fantasy epics and unsourced historical claims or nationalist views of mankind common history and, instead, tells me to really value the process and production of the academic community. Here I can access snippets of that production, written at a level that I can keep up with. But that's not how I found this reddit, and I think that's the fun part.\nI also have a hobby. I have been creating a detailed alternative world for a long time. This alternative world follows all rules and logic of our World, be it climatology, tectonics or human history. Geology and Earth Sciences in general I can deal with myself, but, as I try to detail History for my con-world, I often find that my understanding of, for example, the bronze age society, is too limited. I have written a few specific questions here ([some answered](_URL_0_) - this by u/mrhumphries75 and others, [some not](_URL_1_)) that I don't think anywhere else on the whole internet would be answered to with sufficient quality and that I would never found answered in a wikipedia article. Often, just by lurking, I also get answers to questions that I hadn't even think of. This is what's specific and upmost nerdy about me as an AskHistorians user. I went from being a partially uncritical reader of Jared Diamond to a never-satisfied reader of everything beyond \"Guns, Germs and Steel\".\nI have also contributed sometimes. Nothing of significant worth or noteworthy but, as a portuguese citizen with some history books in my library, I can easily know specifics to some questions about Portugal and so I contribute to fill in, typically starting with \"while nobody more knowledgeable replies, here's something to get started\". I source what I say and stick with facts and very little analysis, because I know my limits as a contributor. Still (and I hope the mods read this in a favorable way), I've learnt to always expect \"removal\".", "I'm a lurker, not a historian.  I wouldn't even claim to be 'interested' in history more than any other topic of study.\n\nThe reason this sub appeals to me in particular is the high degree of academic rigour that goes into it.  I haven't found many online communities that care so much about the quality of their content.\n\nOne thing I find neat about askhistorians is how 'dumb' questions aren't discouraged.  There's always room to elaborate on a subject.  Contrast this with most technical communities where 'RTFM' or 'JFGI' are the go-to answers for many questions.", "I love history, but didn't study it at university. So I'm not qualified to answer questions. I ask them instead. I might be almost qualified to answer Napoleon questions. That would be great if I could one day do that :D", "Personally, I have a thirst for knowledge. Since I am only a junior in high school I obviously do not pertain the same level of information as other subs here, but I'll always make my attempts. History has been interesting for ever since I was in grade school reading books on Alexander the Great, and I hope to spend time in the future researching what is not known. Once again it is very hard for me to information, for example currently I'm researching Hellenic literature, specifically poetry, and have hit a wall trying to find a copy of Callimachus's \"The Pinakes\". While the members of this subreddit are extremely helpful some times stuff like this is mind-boggling hard to find. But I digress, my point is that I view this subreddit as somewhere to ask for directions, not to find answers. \nP.S. I've always had an interest in psychology, as well as philosophy, so I think what you're doing is super rad, best of luck with your studies!", "I read a lot of history, including getting pretty deep into primary sources on infrastructure and urban planning issues, but since I\u2019m not in the academic world, I don\u2019t really have any way to easily share that knowledge.  I would find it both daunting and a bit immodest to organize and write an entire book, or even a lengthy article.  I\u2019m much better at summarizing things into a succinct answer to a specific question.\n\nI'm happy to be interviewed, but my email failed.  You can PM me.", "I'm a lurker. I just like learning about history. Besides just a love of gaining new knowledge I think understanding history helps me understand modern events a little better. I'm not a historian so I don't believe I could actually answer anyone's questions competently. I suppose if I had a good follow up question I would comment. \n\nI will up vote some thing I find interesting, or a response I find particularly good. I don't think I have ever down voted anything here. Mostly because even if I dislike a comment or question I'm still interested in the discussion. ", "I'm a normal guy with no background in history, so I mostly lurk. I subscribe to this sub largely because the strict moderation results in top-quality content, something much of reddit -and the internet in general- is lacking in. Even if a fair bit of it goes over my head, I still enjoy reading the answers here and learning new things.", "I'm gonna go meta on a meta thread: this right here is why I love this sub and it sums up the reason why I have been reading every single thread that had been answered for at least 2 years now: in depth answers, follow up questions, great discussions...\nThis community is up there, a place where members agreed upon strict, deep, time consuming standards. I have a lust for knowledge and history is one of these things that interest me. But it's never easy to just take the time to read about it, to choose a book and get started. It's vast, both wide and deep. \nSo here I am taking a daily dose of random historical content. I love it. \n\nActually as I never post in this favorite subreddit of mine because of my inability to do so, I'll also take advantage of this occasion to thank all our great participating historians for what they do here. \n\nAlso, sorry for my English if I did any mistake. ", "* Practically the only sub where I can comfortably assume that what I read as answers are actually correct. A lot of other subreddits (if not all), if you read a comment that is purported as fact you sort of have to read it with skepticism (or at least should). A lot of \"factual\" comments elsewhere are either biased, incorrect, misleading, or some combination of all those. Here, I'm way more likely to trust the answers.\n\n* Interesting questions/answers.\n\n* I like history and I like learning about history.\n\n* Makes me wish that I could answer some questions. But alas, people here are smarter than I am. On very rare occasions, some questions I'll do some research on (particularly if the question doesn't have answers already) and learn more about it.", "I read AskHistorians because I find that the answers given are subject to an extremely high bar for quality. Therefore any answers that stay up absolutely deserve to stay up because they are well researched, intricately detailed, and are presented in a way that while adhering to rigorous academic standard, they are also very accessible to the layman.\n\nAskHistorians provides a new way of learning and thinking about the world, both historic and modern, and I can honestly say that this forum has contributed to my growth as a person. Meaning, my worldview, my opinions, and my thought process has been shaped by reading, studying, and processing answers that I've come across in this forum. Originally I had a passing interest in history and mythology in particular, but only passing (I'd read the history textbooks in high school to pass the time). But I can honestly say that every day that I come to this forum, I'll learn something new, many times things that I'd never consider as being a thing. \n\nFor example, I didn't even know, or could even conceive of there being a history of porn, a history of sleep, or a history of historic study itself! That's crazy, bruh. Answers here have helped me inform my political opinion, my thoughts regarding issues such as LGBT rights and feminism (it was actually an answer here that made me fully consider patriarchy theory!), colonialism and and its very subtle effects on today's society, and last but perhaps most importantly, have had an influence on my overall thought process and problem solving. \n\nI do not regret a second that I spend here, which is a lot more than almost any other website out there. ", "I like history and learning about it. I lurk here because I fear getting my comment deleted. I even double checked the comments here to check if it's legal to comment now. I do appreciate how strict it is here, as it is a very solid quality assurance. Admittedly it turns off my critical thinking radar which perhaps it shouldn't do, but it's comfortable to know that there are strict rules regarding the quality of comments.\n\nQuestion about your research though: do you take cultural context into consideration? I'm asking as I'm Dutch and people often assume redditors are American. ", "I started out posting here after someone linked an answer by /u/kieslowskifan \u2013 who is officially The Most Knowledgeable, Able and Impressive Contributor^tm here and probably on the whole internet \u2013 in another history subreddit and I was thinking to myself \"I can't do this exactly because that is impressive but I can at least jump in ans share some of the stuff I know\".\n\nInitially another motivating factor to start commenting here was that at the point I was right at the very start of my PhD, conceiving my research question and topic. During my MA thesis I had started to be very disciplined about writing daily and I though this might be a good way to keep up a \"writing regiment\" if you will and at the same time polish up my academic(ish) English (I'm a native German speaker).\n\nWhat I soon found that not only had I found a community of really interesting people, both in the users who ask questions as well in those who contribute, but also that the mission of this online space aligned very closely with something that has always been close to my heart: The spread of historical knowledge as a tool to educate and understand in a very open and accessible space. My original interest for my research topic (WWII Germany and National Socialism) arose in my teens because I was part of an anti-Fascist group in my home country that organized among other things, trips to memorial sites, historical workshops, and seminars for people who had no High School Diploma or had never visited university.\n\nWhat I found here was a space that aligned with what I see as one of the fundamental missions of the historic professions: The spread of knowledge. The fact that this space is driven not by traditional outreach or traditional academia in that content is designed by experts for an audience without their initial input but that it is in fact driven by user input, that experts answer questions they did not develop themselves is what in my opinion makes this space so unique.\n\nActually seeing how people perceive my field and what questions they have about it not helped me discover actual gaps that exist within historical research (who knew that there still isn't a definitive monogrpahy on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals in 2017?) but it also helped me devise my output better for consumption by a general audience and not just within academia.\n\nIt's has been amazing experience here so far, not just asking and answering questions but also having found new and good friends and a community that shares this passion for history.", "Hi Sarah.\n\nI started lurking AH maybe 5 years ago, when I left Digg and discovered Reddit in the search for something diverting to read during lunch breaks. I quickly found aggregators like /r/bestof and /r/depthhub, and the more those led me to /r/AskHistorians, the more I found myself just heading here directly. I have an armchair interest in history: I'm more after a good story, but I always prefer entertainment that has some intrinsic value, in this case actually learning something. Additionally, I have an armchair interest in knowing about other cultures and perspectives, so the diverse questions that come up here can be fascinating, especially when answered by people from all around the world.\n\nNot the type to just sit on the sidelines in any discussion, I used to chip in with answers here and there, but having seen flaired users provide links to previous good answers, I started \"helping out\" too: I had been an avid and thorough reader for some time so would often instantly recall great old answers and had great fun hunting them down. So that gave me a fun little hobby, a way to participate more often without getting banned, and a feeling of helping OPs. That activity brought me to the attention of the moderation team, who flaired me as a *Quality Contributor*. Some time afterwards, I was ~~pressganged~~ recruited to be a moderator myself.\n\nBecoming a moderator completely changed my relationship with this subreddit. Whereas before it had been a great place to hang out, with interesting people who had loads of interesting stories, now I could see what was *really* getting posted here, and how much work goes into giving participants that experience. So now for me, it's not a place to hang out anymore: it's volunteer work in service of a mission: to help to ensure that the OPs the best possible answers, and encourage expert users to feel welcome and valued so that they'll keep contributing, will stay, and more will come. So I still come here because I feel part of the team, and feel that the subreddit is providing something of value.", "I mostly just read and vote here, with occasional links to old answers and such. I would love to be expert enough in something to contribute, but it's actually kind of relaxing to have a place where you don't even think about upvotes because you're not commenting. (Am I the only one here with a compulsion to high score as soon as there's a number on something?)\n\nOne of the most appealing things here is how much it can surprise you. I can walk into my local academic library, poke around subject headings a while and come up with interesting reading. But it'll only be stuff I knew to look for. Here, you get to see other people's questions (about Hitler and otherwise), and the direction the answerer went with it, and frequently come across something unexpectedly fascinating.\n\nThe other thing AskHistorians excels at is giving you a peek under the hood. I get more historiography here than anywhere else, plus bonus academic catfights and research frustrations. \n\nAnd all in a shockingly civil space for the Internet. I don't even bother with sites I used to entertain myself with five years ago. I'd much rather learn something than waste a bunch of energy getting angry at random people I'll never meet.\n\nOh, and, you were interested in hearing from women, so  < raises hand > .", "I have little to no interest in understanding the \"big picture\" of most parts of history, it's just too abstract and broad to hold my interest.\n\nA lot of the questions that get asked (and find success) on this subreddit are bizarre and have a very narrow scope, which makes them hard to just find and grok using a search engine\u2014they're questions that absolutely require a \"real\" historian to put the answer into the appropriate context.  I find these kinds of questions and their answers much more interesting and entertaining to take in.\n\nPlus the sub is moderated with an iron fist, so the signal:noise ratio is great, making it a lot easier and more enjoyable to learn the answer to the asked question.", "Hey! I'm a bit late to answering this but I hope it'll help you out.  I started browsing AskHistorians years ago when I first created my reddit account.  At the time, I liked that there was a highly moderated forum where I could get answers to obscure questions I couldn't easily find on Google.  Over time, as I started studying history both as a hobby and in university, I began to realise that I could actually answer a few of the questions.  I remember exactly how excited I felt when I found my first question that I could both answer and that no one else had yet!  As soon as I felt that, I was hooked.  I'd also echo what some other users have said in that this is a great way to remember information.  I've found some great topics that really interest me that I otherwise never would have even thought about.\n\nIt took me 2 tries to successfully apply for flair which I really appreciated, as looking back at my first application it really wasn't up to snuff (I think I deleted the comment though, as I delete most of my unnecessary comments after some time).  Finally, I feel like I can reach an audience here that I otherwise wouldn't be able to.   People come to /r/AskHistorians with an open mindset, willing to learn.  Compare that to an area like the comments in /r/worldnews and the difference is stark.  In my area in particular there is a lot of misinformation spreading around.  Some of it is rather harmless but other bits are outright lies and demonise the Islamic community.  I personally have no problem if people have legitimate problems with something, but when they are basing their views on \"all Muslims are commanded to kill westerners and if they don't they're just lying to stay hidden until they strike\", it gets kind of annoying.  Thankfully, the moderation here takes care of fear-mongerers like that and allows the forum as a whole to actually delve into the issues.", "Fairly new here, unfortunately I don't have the time/ability to offer good answers so I lurk. I participate in AskHistorians because it is the first really good academically-oriented subreddit I have come across. The requisite high bar of quality for an upheld post and and heavy policing by the mods to maintain an academically rigorous environment means that there's a treasure trove of history and knowledge available from highly informed experts that I couldn't get even from an undergraduate setting. ", "I think that like most here I read this subreddit daily because I genuinely love history and engaging it in ways previously unknown to me. The greatest appeal, to me, is the insight given into the world of professional historians. It is a casual enough place to be accessible, but it is strict enough where intellectual rigor is required to be seen and appreciated. In a lot of ways, it seems like a useful bridge between being an armchair historian and a professional producing peer-reviewed works. In this sense, I've enjoyed testing my mettle against some of the titans of this board (many of you are tremendously impressive) with my methodology, subject knowledge, and prose and have been encouraged by my experience. Most importantly, I owe this community a degree of thanks to since my time reading and participating (albeit in a very limited manner) here was a partial factor in pursuing entry into a Master's program in history, which I will be starting in August- the \"So you want to go to grad school\" series of posts was particularly illuminating and I'm greatly anticipating starting my program and becoming a depressed, cantankerous burnout.", "As a lurker and a huge history buff since my childhood, I just love this sub. Not only has it suggested a wealth of academic books which I can read and enjoy (while being very accurate/presenting little bias), but it has also been a place for learning random, specific topics like Roman colonization during the Late Republican Era to Medieval sexuality to Bhutanese history that has expanded my knowledge past my comfort zone and has enriched me.\n\n\nLastly, the great amount of detail and sources backing the replies made on this sub are amazing, nay, inspiring. This is one of the few subs where people who are passionate and well learned on the topics come to meet.\n\n\nI rarely comment on this sub but when I do it's usually for books and Quebec history which is drilled like hell into us.", "Lurker, made some questions, maybe two or three. \n\nOnce I got to make a small two paragraph side-answer that wasn't deleted, and it made me so proud of myself. And I devoted a lot of research into it, which goes to show the quality standard in here. \n\nThe high standard moderation is what keeps me around. The everyday hitler questions gets somewhat boring but there is good stuff every week.\n\nI think the sub could improve if more historians from different countries and areas joined it, to wide the focus a bit, since many questions goes unanswered for lack of experts. I've tried to convince some historians into joining it, to no avail. Maybe send invitations or something? \n\nAlso, shouldn't you make a google survey? It may be tought to collect data from a comment section.", "I'm a lurker - I lack the knowledge to contribute in comments so I try to do my bit by upvoting and reporting. It seems to be almost the opposite here to the rest of reddit; in any other sub I would downvote a bad comment and only report in cases of offensiveness, whereas here I report bad comments and very rarely downvote. That is mostly due to the moderation policy (which I totally agree with)  where incorrect or inaccurate information is removed. In my opinion, that's what makes this place so great- I feel able to trust what I'm reading.\n\nI read this sub almost every day. Why? Because history is fascinating, especially when it's so well written and so welcoming to everyone regardless of their level of understanding. Oh, and you wanted answers from women, so \"hi\".", "Because I need to temper my thirst for knowledge with academical texts that aren't dry and sleep-inducing. ", "Oh hey I'm a UBC History BA grad.\n\nI love learning knowledge in general, and history in particular. It's too hard to find people interested in history in life. AskHistorians is a place I can read about history, offer my own knowledge, and engage with other people who really like history. It's basically where I can find people with a common interest as me.\n\nI'll email too.", "Because I myself do dream of becoming a historian. This isn't a possibility (currently), so I can ease the tension by reading answers by historians. Besides, answers here are very detailed and rigorously tested, which brings responses with amazing accuracy, contextualisation, and overall quality. It's unlike anything else in the internet, really.\n\nBesides, I also want that, when I become a historian myself, be able to actually contribute here. There's something about having a flair next to my username that brings unparalleled pride.", "I've always had s strong interest in wide range of 'history' topics (wars, economics, cultural norms, politics, etc.).   The internet is obviously full of information on all of this, but this sub stands out for two reasons:\n\n1) The oddly specific/strange, yet interesting questions.  I wouldn't dream up half of these questions if I tried, so I find myself learning about things that I quite literally probably would never do organically due to simply not knowing what I could/should even be asking.  \n\n2) Goes without saying the answers here are amazing.  Clear, concise, well sourced, etc.  In like two minutes I can learn something incredibly interesting that probably 90% of people don't know. ", "Mainly, it's because Public History to me isn't just a choice in concentration. I came up through the museum field, and talking to the lay public is pretty much my entire reason for pursuing history as a career. I am passionate about my interests, and I find satisfaction in sharing that passion with others in an informative way. I think that's particularly important here, on a website that both has a huge cultural footprint and can be kind of a cesspool at times. Participating in this place, I hope, makes the whole site better and gives me something to point to when people associate Reddit with the sprawling alt-right infestation on this site. \n\nI speak out in favor of public history and working outside the academia as much as I can as a somewhat distracted PhD candidate, but I'd be a hypocrite if I did not practice what I preached. \n\nI also find it easier to write here than on my own, more serious work. Part of that is just the freedom from needing to rigorously footnote everything. Mostly, its the knowledge that I'm engaging with another person to answer their question, with the immediacy of feedback and the fairly likely chance that I'll help start a larger conversation. It's entirely more gratifying than academic writing, though perhaps at the risk of being french fries to the kale salad of my actual work.\n\nI'll send you a PM to volunteer for a longer interview, if you're still looking for subjects.", "History is my passion. I originally went to college to be a history teacher but changed to straight history when I wanted to be a lawyer. Now I own my own firm and make my own hours, barely grossing six figures and trying to build my business. I have a house with a pool, a new car on a lease, health insurance, etc. However, I often fantasize about how it could have been if I rolled the dice and pursued my passion, to join the do what you love movement. Ultimately, the career prospects for historians are poor and the economic prospects poorer. I went to a state school where my professors wrote books and no one bought them. The best selling professor was a professor of historical tourism in national parks, who managed to sell a bunch of books in the gift shops of national and state park visitor centers. I had written almost a hundred pages between two 50 page reports on the history of the Cherokee Nation, but I as I read books that seemed like no one read them, I was worried about the futility of all that writing for an audience, essentially, of one professor and myself.\n\nAskHistorians was the first time I could try to answer questions to people who were interested in something to which I knew the answer. I have been banned three times and had a lot of comments removed. I finally created a new \"respectable\" username that I use only when I have the time to answer something in depth and in full accordance with the rules of this sub, and am even thinking about writing a history of imperial law in the new world that would utilize my trilingualness in English, Spanish and Portuguese, all because of the upvotes I got on this subreddit. And I am not even a flaired member of the community. My other username may eventually be, but I'm not letting that name get sullied by this trice banned username.\n\nAs a lawyer, I probably write about two hundred pages double spaced of legal writing a month, not counting copy and paste body text like you find in complaints or discovery. Yet an 8 page essay on here that's up-voted by five hundred people is more fulfilling than a win in Court... especially after having had so many answers deleted by the mods before I got my act together. \n\nSo, to wrap up, I write here because as a lawyer I constantly have to write academically (though the style is different) but not about anything people would find entertaining. Here, I feel like people are reading because they want to, and one essay potentially could be read by more people than everything else I write this year for 300 dollars an hour. ", "I'm one of those who lurk. I have no formal education beyond high school, but my upbringing and what education I did have gave me a love of learning and of history in particular.  I can thank my high school history teacher Mr Page for a lot of it. His genuine love of the subject was infectious and nearly 20 years later I'm still hooked. Unless questions arise about the film industry (my profession) I'm unlikely to ever be able to answer a question. \n\nFor as long as I can remember my go to books have been history. Now as an adult I have about two bookshelves devoted to the subject (though actual historians may turn up their noses at many of my selections). about half the tv I watch is documentaries. \n\nAskhistorians is always the first sub I check out. It's fascinating. People ask questions that would never occur to me and invariably I'm sucked into the answer. \n\nI don't know if this is of any use to you, but I hope it can add a bit of data to your project. ", "Very late, but since this is a long term project I feel justifying in still posting!\n\nI initially stumbled across Reddit a few years ago, around the end of my master's degree, and it was an escape for me from serious academic stuff. I came for memes, shitposts and endless references. I didn't even have an account for the longest time, because I just browsed looking for funny stuff. (I still do this, BTW, even though I'm actively involved only here. Contrary to popular belief, the mods ~~do~~ don't have a sense of humour. You wouldn't believe the amount of ~~shitposting and meme-swapping~~ deep intellectual discussion that goes on in the mod backchannel.)\n\nI created this account when I came across a post in r/history asking about the 'feudal system' for the purposes of game design. Since I had just started a PhD on the topic, I got super excited to actually contribute and did. The result was... underwhelming. The poster seemed a bit disappointed with the complexity of my answer and the difficulty of translating it into a workable game mechanic and other, more simplistic answers, got more attention. Like most of reddit, it was fun watching as an outside observer, but once I got involved it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I had hoped.\n\nThen through the r/history sidebar, I found AH. And it felt, all of a sudden, instead of watching other people, I was watching *my* people, people like me. They were talking about the kinds of things I like to talk about, in a way I found refreshing and exhilarating. It felt like a place I immediately wanted to contribute to, but I saw all the rules and restrictions on answers (which were a great thing) and so waited carefully to spot an opportunity for something I could answer. (To any lurkers doing the same thing now - the Tuesday Trivia provided the best opportunity).\n\nThe thing that really sold me on the community though was what happened soon after I had started answering some questions. Being just a baby-medievalist, I wasn't particularly confident and was very nervous about posting. But then along came a little orange envelope from none other than our very own /u/sunagainstgold telling me how much she enjoyed my answers and encouraging me as another medievalist to stick around. As anyone who's spent any time on AH knows, Sun is some sort of awesome answer-writing machine, and having someone like say they liked my writing was such a confidence boost. The fact that she was so encouraging throughout my time here is probably the reason I've gone on to be a flair and then a mod (both of which she prodded and encouraged me to do). While I'm still nowhere near her level, she's a model of how to be an engaged historian online and if I could even get close to the level of breadth, depth and entertainment-quality of her answers I'll be lucky. When I grow up I want to be /u/sunagainstgold.\n\nAnd through engaging with the sub and with Sun (and all the other awesome mods and flairs here) I feel I've really developed as a historian and developed my own thoughts on what being a historian means today. Writing semi-regularly here has given me much more confidence in pitching my writing to different audiences and really helped me in both academic presentation and in teaching first-year undergraduates. But what started as a way for me to practice writing and generally give myself an ego-boost by winning arguments on the internet has transformed into a belief that what's happening at AH is something genuinely worthwhile, that it's one very unique way of fulfilling a mission that I think all historians should undertake to inform the public in any way we can. And that's why I'm happy to be a tiny cog in this big history machine!", "I rarely use reddit, but when I found this subreddit earlier today I got very excited. The idea that hundreds of experts are willing to share their knowledge on a public forum, and that anyone can ask a question and receive numerous well-informed answers restores some of my faith in people! I studied History for 4 years at university and have a big problem with the research historians do being kept in an 'ivory tower' - it needs to be popularised. It doesn't seem enough, to me, for a select group of individuals to inform society in the light of history. Rather, society as a whole needs to inform itself in the light of history, and I think the most valuable historians in a given society are  those who work to get their research out into the open. An online forum like this is a wonderful way to popularise academic history!", "I am a bit late but... anyways.\n\nI used to read AskHistorians sporadically; one day I noticed an unanswered question about the experience of a citizen in Fascist Italy and though I knew enough about that to attempt an answer. And it happened to be in a fairly noticeable thread.\n\nNow, while general appreciation was welcome \u2013 perhaps a bit excessive \u2013 it also opened the door to some follow up questions that made me *question* how much I knew about the subject. Now, being not a professional, nor having studied history at higher educational level, I was aware that my knowledge was incomplete. But I believed that, no matter what, I had some clear well formed idea about the most relevant stuff.\n\nIn fact I was kind of wrong... The most interesting thing for me became the challenge to put a thought in a form that allows me to relate it to someone else: if possible retaining some degree of the real complexity of the issue \u2013 something that is not made easier by the fact that English is not my mother tongue. I do not think that knowledge implies the ability to relate everything to anybody; but it should mean that someone else who takes the time to read through it, should be able to get the idea.  This also encouraged me to learn more about a subject I like and allowed me to share some of it with other people who might have an interest in it \u2013 also, I think honestly that I can provide some decent content, especially since I can balance my non-professional approach with the availability of Italian sources, which may not be available in translated form.\n\nAs a reader, this process made me appreciate some answers more than I did before; I don't know how long it takes, or how much though goes into the process for others, but I can see how long it would take me to come up with something like that.\n\n\nA final note, and I believe a relevant one; while many focus on the high quality moderation, I have found this to be a rather welcoming community \u2013 one that actively encourages users who take some time and effort to contribute \u2013 which is an incentive to keep posting.", "I'm an assistant professor who teaches and studies history. I have been involved with many Internet communities over the years. I eventually gravitated almost exclusively to AskHistorians because:\n\n* It's a chance to practice explaining things to people. All writing is good writing in my eyes. \n\n* Sometimes the questions asked are, either purposefully or inadvertently, very good ones that stimulate a lot of thoughts for me. These thoughts can be along many different lines, but often things I write on here I can later use in teaching or blogging. Sometimes if I see a question enough times it makes me think, \"oh, this must be interesting to people, even if it's the kind of question academics tend not to ask.\" As someone who writes for popular audiences and is always looking for a fresh approach, that is useful. Some of my most popular blog posts were inspired by questions asked on AskHistorians (e.g., did the US warn the Japanese before Hiroshima? how much did the Germans know about the Manhattan Project? if Einstein hadn't been born, would the atomic bomb still have been built by 1945?). Occasionally something I will post on here will get a lot of traffic, as well, and that can be useful. (But self-promotion is not my primary motivation.)\n\n* As a form of procrastination it feels more intellectually useful than Facebook. (I suspect procrastination and \"time wasting,\" in limited amounts, is probably cognitively important; the brain seems to do work in such moments that it does not do when you are consciously trying to use it.) I enjoy answering other people's questions. It's part of why I do what I do, to feel useful and somewhat authoritative. I also sort of enjoy arguing with people (or at least correcting them), and it's a better outlet for that than the rest of my life. I try to limit myself to only about 20 minutes per day. \n\n* People seem to appreciate my efforts and answers and are nice to me on here, and I enjoy that. I only bring this up as a very basic psychological motivation, but also to contrast it with other Internet forums I have been involved with in the past \u2014 Wikipedia had too much of an anti-expertise bias, and the sourness of the whole endeavor got to me. \n\n* Lastly, Reddit is a powerful community if you write things on the Internet. It pays to know how it works, what it is interested in, how it responds to things. I suppose one could get that more passively by lurking. But seeing these things first hand is always better. The place has its ups and its downs. AskHistorians is heavily moderated to mimic the norms and idealized behavior of academia, so it is pretty comfortable if you are interested in those norms and idealized behaviors. The rest of Reddit is... not so much. But it's still something people who engage with the broader public ought to be aware of. ", "I'm very late to the party, but I suppose I could add my 2 cents.\n\nI have had a strong interest in history since I was 8 or 9 years old. I especially appreciated the vast variety of cultures and depth of time that there was to choose from when studying history. Throughout middle school, high school and college, I would become intensely interested in a specific cultures history for a period of weeks or months. I like to think that this fickle but intense interest gave me a basic knowledge about the history of lots of regions.\n\nAfter I graduated from college with a bachelors in History, I realized that my base of knowledge about the history of Africa was shockingly poor, outside of a simple understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and Egyptian history. So, I decided to buy some books and try to learn a bit more, especially about the era before Europeans came on the scene.\n\nAt the same time, almost 5 years ago, I found out about AskHistorians as a link on the r/history sidebar. For the first year or so, I answered a variety of questions about Finnish and Russian history, New England history, germanic kingdoms, as well as occasional answers about African topics. At the time, I didn't have an expectation that my interest in African history would last very long before I felt like reading about something else.\n\nBut, African history questions kept coming up, and very often the answers would not be very good, which motivated me to try and provide more informative, better researched answers and challenge mistaken assumptions. Also, I made a subreddit specifically devoted to African history, so that people interested in the topic could share book recommendations or otherwise discuss African history. Eventually, an African history flair messaged me privately and encouraged me to apply for flair. \n\nOnce I got flair, I really saw my role as filling a gap in knowledge, by trying to share information about the pre-colonial history of Africa. At the same time, because I am self-taught in African history, I felt motivated to try and encourage interest in others, and try and increase the number of Africanist flairs. \n\nThe mods noticed my enthusiasm for answering and activity on the sub, and they invited me to serve as a mod, which I did for almost 3 years. When I decided to serve as a mod, it was partly because I understood how big a job it was, and I felt \"many hands make light work\". But, I was also motivated by the hope that I could encourage other people who also have an interest in African history to apply for flair.\n\nHowever, in the 2 1/2 to 3 years that I was a mod, more Africanists were de-flaired for inactivity than new flairs were minted. When I first became a mod there were 12 africanists, and now there are only 8. Although the mod team did two separate flair drives where we specifically encouraged people knowledgeable about African, Indian, or other under-represented areas to apply, only a small handful of new flairs in those areas came out of it. The lesson I took away from that is Moderators and flairs don't have much power to encourage people to become experts/flairs in under-represented areas of history.\n\nSo, now I have tried to reset my expectations, and focus on providing answers to questions that interest me, without expecting to inspire anyone to become a flair.\n\nps- This answer focuses a lot on the activity of answering questions. I have asked a few questions about Indian or Pacific history, but they didn't get much response. I will ask questions about South African or Zimbabwean history because I know there are active flairs who will often answer them. Otherwise, I figure I am capable of researching any African history questions I might have. ", "I came to know about the r/AskHistorians through posting on r/genealogy . \nPart of the great enjoyment of genealogy is finding connections to history, and my research took me to very interesting places and times - and I find incredible intellectual satisfaction in learning as much as I could. \n\nI originally came on here asking a question as part of that, when I discovered ancestors who were part of the Africa trade after the abolishment of slavery. I realised that my question was too vague (basically I was trying to work out whether they were good people or not) and so didn't end up getting answered, but asking the question spurred me to think more and I went off and did a fair bit of research myself. \n\nI was drawn in by the sub, and absolutely in awe of the wonderful thought out answers. I can learn about so many different times and places. \n I haven't posted another question yet, but I have dipped my toes in to answer a couple of questions - mainly as second tier comments. My favorite answers are [this one](_URL_1_) where I talk about Aboriginal possum skin cloaks and [this ](_URL_0_) one where I talk a bit about the history of Japanese coins . After writing the second one, I made a little trip to the Japan currency museum and got to ask lots of questions to satisfy my thirst for knowledge. \n\nI studied history in university, but am now far from the academic world. I do have an intense interest in Australian history (my major) and as a long term resident of Japan I'm also interested in Japanese history around the time of the Meiji restoration. \n\nRecently, I've had connections with Christian schools in Tokyo, so questions about the history of Christianity are interesting - I just bookmarked a question about the treatment of Christians during the Second World War and I'll attempt to create an Ask Historians worthy answer. ", "I just found your post yesterday, when I was absent-mindedly letting the subreddit comment stream pass by, and somebody answered in here.\nSo, late, but better that than never.\n\nHistory has already interested me, and I spend some time in school working on extra-curricular local history research.\nTo be fair, it ended up with my teacher doing most of the leg work, but at age 14, that is maybe excusable.\nBut it gave me a first-hand experience of archival work, sifting through old files to find sources.\nTo this day, few things get me as excited as old documents: even the most mundane-seeming ones can shed light on the bigger picture.\nBut I digress. So, after school, I had to choose one from my quite diverging bunch of interests to pursue professionally.\nIn the end, history lost out to computer science, the tie-breaker being that I was worried about the job prospects in history.\n\nI made history my hobby: the majority of books that I read (sadly, not as many as I used to and as I would wish) concern history.\nThe majority are written by academics, but for interested laypeople with knowledge of the fundamentals, but not the specific niche.\nMost of them, by necessity of having to sell, focus on \"big history\": history of countries and regions, biographies of rulers, etc.\n\nThis is what I enjoy most about this subreddit: there are many questions asked about \"little history\" and specific details,\nsuch as the [history of the Stardust Club in Heidelberg](_URL_1_),\nthe [reasons for the dearth of variation in early modern given names in many European countries](_URL_2_),\nor [what were the working theories for the existence of twins before modern medicine](_URL_0_).\nWhile I often have a rough idea of what the answer might be, it's good to see it supported (or refuted!) by people who have the proper qualification and knowledge.\n\nThe downside with those questions is that more often than with others, one of two things happens:\neither they attract a lot of external commenters, which gives us many subpar and/or inappropriate answers, and means the mods have to work extra-hard;\nor, conversely, they get drowned by more popular topics.\nMilitary history, I'm looking at you... that is one of my pet peeves, the amount of military history questions here, because it's one of the fields I'm least interested in.\nBut they are popular, so I won't complain too much.\n\nMost of the time, I simply lurk and read.\nOccasionally, I answer the odd question.\nThis is always a hard decision for me, because I feel that for virtually every topic, there is a more qualified contributor here.\nI always feel that it's a judgment call.\nOn the one hand, I think that every inquirer appreciates getting an answer.\nOn the other hand, I think that not getting an answer is better than getting a bad answer, which is the reason for the heavy moderation.\nWhich I think actually makes this place more welcoming and helpful, even if that sounds counter-intuitive at first:\nby weeding out joke answers, rude replies, and speculation, we can all focus on the topics at hand, and on high-quality replies that we can actually trust.\n\nSo most of the time, I only pick up questions that haven't gotten an answer for at least a day.\nAnother reason I answer rarely is that it still takes me a long time to put them together: an hour at minimum, even for relatively straightforward answers.\nOne limiting factor here is that I have very few \"go-to resources\", and typically have to dig around longer for sources than I expect someone who works in their field had to.\nI also notice that phrasing and ordering my thoughts can take me quite some time.\nWhile I do academic writing in my field, computer science and history are far enough apart that they only share the absolute fundamentals of scientific research (don't plagiarize, provide sources for claims).\nThus, bringing my thoughts to paper in an ordered fashion is taxing and time-consuming for me, much more so than in my native field.\nHowever, I enjoy the exercise, so I keep going.\nAnd while I'm always a little worried that my answers are on the border of being acceptable, none of them has been removed up to now, so I guess my judgment of what questions I'm qualified enough to give at least a basic answer has been right so far.\n\nedit: I forgot to mention that I also spend a little bit of time every now and then on reporting inappropriate posts. I also point people to the correct section of the FAQ if I notice them asking a frequently asked question.", "I'm a bit late to this post.  I saw it last week, but I too am knee deep in graduate research.  I'm just finishing my MA thesis and will be starting my PhD in the fall.\n\nSome background for you, I was previously a working professional in the journalism world for more than a decade.  However over time, I developed an interest in ancient history as a means of bridging my two pasts, as someone who was born in Asia but grew up in the southern U.S.  \n\nAs my journalism work began to run dry, my involvement in history increased, not the least because those skills were quite transferable.  I credit this forum, as well as Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast, with getting me started on the path to professional history.  I've been on Reddit for six years, and have been involved in this forum in some capacity (as casual poster, a flaired poster, a moderator, and now an at-large poster) easily for the last five.  Even before Reddit, I used to frequent history forums on Paradox Plaza's web page (makers of historical wargames).\n\nI credit the sharp and critiquing minds of all caliber on this and other online forums with shaping me into the scholar I am today, not the least because when answering questions on this forum, I need to simultaneously navigate dual audiences: the academic and the lay.  I needed to anticipate and ready my responses to criticism.\n\nI continue to be involved because I think AH is one of the best forums for forcing historians to think critically about what their work means to a popular audience (which let us be honest, are our real funding bosses).  \n\nEven now, I consider this place to be a testing ground for my PhD comps.  Because if I can't hack it here, I certainly won't be able to hack it during test time."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186715", "https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/41432/1/paper0283.pdf", "ubc.ca"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t7kkr/how_did_the_us_economy_recover_from_the_great/ddl6nhe/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z1m1w/socialism_definition_of/deunceh/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vqk2v/how_did_south_korea_become_such_a_powerhouse/de4agzb/?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lktbb/did_the_soviet_leadership_actually_believe_in/dbwv0vn/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=front&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=AskHistorians", "https://www.reddit.com/user/Shashank1000/submitted/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/64mfx1/how_different_was_the_yugoslav_communist_economic/dg4361u/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=front&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=AskHistorians"], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ndbl2/is_there_a_consensus_on_what_happened_to_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5un69l/but_who_prays_for_satan_who_in_eighteen_centuries/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/663qa3/in_the_roman_empire_the_first_fish_to_be_brought/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5q448s/is_paul_bunyan_an_example_of_fakelore_what_would/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ea8bo/why_moscow_and_not_novgorod/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57ilen/economic_war_in_bronze_and_iron_ages_are_there/"], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57s6r2/why_are_most_coins_round_have_this_always_been/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/55vejx/it_can_get_pretty_cold_in_south_africa_why_are/d8eczp6/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rtzud/what_was_the_explanation_for_a_woman_giving_birth/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/63h1hw/my_grandpa_92_is_wondering_if_anyone_knows_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/62z39k/what_happened_to_the_given_namefirst_name_pool/"], []]}
{"q_id": "8cec5m", "title": "When and why Hindu deities started to have blue skin?", "selftext": "I noticed that not all, but a lot of Hindu gods are represented with blue skin. I don't know if this due to religious, symbolic or technical reasons but certainly there may be and explanation and a moment when it started.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8cec5m/when_and_why_hindu_deities_started_to_have_blue/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxevr6x"], "score": [75], "text": ["It's important to note that this is a popular misconception. Hindus don't necessarily believe the skin of deities like Rama, Krishna, Shiva, etc. are blue, they believe that their aura is blue. Many Hindus believe that one's aura is affected by their spiritual vocation. It affects how people see them, but the skin's color itself is considered irrelevant because deities choose their forms anyway. \n\nA blue aura, for example, is attached to those who have attained a great deal in terms of spirituality, but still choose to intervene in the physical world. Blue is considered a color of all-encompassing nature, the color of the infinite, the color of things which are intangible to some degree, esoteric, the epitome of Brahman, the ultimate beginning and end. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1vqjyc", "title": "was Tenochtitlan (circa 1450 if it maters) cleaner than large European cities of around the same time (say ....Rome)?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vqjyc/was_tenochtitlan_circa_1450_if_it_maters_cleaner/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ceuusn4", "cevaqmw", "cevlaeg"], "score": [14, 16, 3], "text": ["What about Venice? Since it was equally as \"watery\" as Tenochtitlan.", "There are ethnographic accounts (No sources for now, just from in-class discussion with my Art History/Mayanist/Olmecista professor) of the Aztecs being appalled by the hygiene of the incoming Spanish. This may be due to the fact that they were solider/explorer/15th century \"religious roughnecks\", but European culture of the time didn't place an emphasis on staying clean (in fact preferring the opposite). \n\nThe late epidemiologist Velvl Greene discussed European hygienic practices:\n > \u201cThe fathers of the early church equated bodily cleanliness with the luxuries, materialism, paganism and what\u2019s been called \u2018the monstrous sensualities\u2019 of Rome...\"\n\n > \"Cleanliness wasn\u2019t a part of the folk culture.\"\n\n > \"Within a few centuries, the public and private sanitation practices of Greece and Rome were forgotten; or, as Greene adds, were \u201cdeliberately repressed.\u201d\n\n\nAdditionally, Spanish Queen Isabel of Castille famously (and proudly) claimed to have bathed twice: at birth and marriage. \n\nFor the Aztecs: from David Carrasco's *Daily Life of the Aztecs*:\n\n > \"We can imagine, given all this emphasis on decorum, proper behavior, and guided training, that Aztec peoples valued clean, neat, and attractive personal appearance... Aztec peoples enjoyed bathing and personal cleanliness, and they used the fruit of a soap tree and the roots of certain plants for soap. They took cold baths but were especially committed to steambaths. Many homes had steam bathhouses, some of which have been excavated in the Basin of Mexico. These steambaths were used for ritual purification, during sicknesses, and to help pregnant wome, but also as part of daily hygiene.\"\n\nFrom Manuel Aguilar-Moreno's *Handbook to Life in the Aztec World*:\n\n > \"Cleanliness was one of the most cherished virtues of Aztec society for all citizens, not just women...Most people bathed often, and some bathed everyday.\"\n\nI have to go to class, but I'll expand from there later. ", "In addition to the ubiquitous *temazcalli* and emphasis on bathing (Motecuhzoma II was said to bathe twice a day) the emphasis on personal cleanliness most certainly extended out to the city. As /u/Ahhuatl alludes, there were workers employed daily to keep the streets clean, but my favorite example of the integrated hygiene practices of the Aztecs has to do with their poop. There were public latrines along the canals and causeways, whose bounty would then be collected via canoe to be used for tanning and fertilizer. \n\nHarvey ([1981](_URL_0_)) is a classic overview on the subject. It also includes a quote from the *Historia General* on personal cleanliness which comes up in just about any discussion of the subject:\n\n >  And when already thou art to eat, thou art to wash thy hands, to wash thy face, to wash thy mouth .... And when the eating is over ... thou art to pick up (fallen scraps), thou art to sweep the place where there has been eating. And thou, when thou hast eaten, once again art thou to wash thy hands, to wash thy mouth, to cleanse thy teeth."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805201/"]]}
{"q_id": "4c5lpd", "title": "How safe would Ancient cities like Rome and Athens be to walk around at night, for an average man?", "selftext": "Would I expect drunken brawls if a robbery? I have trouble imagining they would be what one would call safe.\n\nThanks in advance.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4c5lpd/how_safe_would_ancient_cities_like_rome_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1f8l1b"], "score": [186], "text": ["I made a longish post about this a while ago, which I still stand by. Long story short, we don't know:\n\nWe just don't know. A lot of people will use Juvenal, a satirist of the late first century who painted a very vivid picture of Roman life, to show that the city was very dangerous. However, this is roughly the equivalent of using a modern stand up comedian to get an accurate picture of life in Chicago--I have spent a great deal of time in Chicago and have yet to pay a bribe or get shot, but stand up comedy acts usually revolve around those two aspects. So Juvenal is funny, and he gives a good example of what the grumpy sort of conservative might say, but it isn't very useful in a statistical sense.\n\nSo another way people might look at this is whether the conditions for crime exist, although I personally think this is futile as I'll explain later. On the face of it, conditions for crime seem pretty ripe: there was very little in the way of active policing, grinding poverty and copious inequality. But these conditions can also be said to be fairly true for modern Mumbai, which had fewer murders in 2013 (187) than New York City (332), which is quite safe for an American city. Drawing straight lines from a set of observed material or social conditions to crime rate is usually not possible. After all, policemen are not necessarily better at reducing crime than, say, neighborhood organizations like what existed in Rome in the form of *vici*.\n\nBut this brings up an issue that is easy to miss: despite the common comparisons to third world cities, Rome is comparable to precisely nowhere on earth. In fact, this applies to every ancient city, as the industrial revolution and rise of globalization has irrevocably altered every settlement of significant size. There are places in the world where you can find villages or small bands that are relatively cut off from mainstream society and live in comparable material conditions as pre-modern people in comparable communities and then use comparative ethnography to understand how ancient communities lived. But there are no places in the world where you can find a city of a million in such material conditions. It is honestly one of the most frustrating and yet tantalizing parts of studying the ancient world.\n\nThat being said, it is possible to look at comparative stats from, say, Tudor London. One problem with this is that these statistics can be notoriously difficult to interpret--[this review](_URL_1_) of Stephen Pinker goes over some of the issues of pre modern crime stats. The second is that crime rates vary wildly in modern cities, so they probably would in ancient ones as well.\n\nEDIT: Wow, this got noticed. A great book on ancient Rome is Steven Dyson's *Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City*. It deals extensively with the city itself and is pleasantly \"fact heavy\". I can also recommend books on Roman urban life in general if anyone is interested.\n\nEDIT2: So apparently my quick comment about Mumbai got the most attention, which is great but further questions about that should be taken over the /r/AskSocialScience. [Here](_URL_0_) is a source for 2009 so you know I'm not making it up."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/30/new-york-crime-free-day-deadliest-cities-worldwide", "http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2011/11/steven-pinkers-medieval-murder-rates.html"]]}
{"q_id": "2fq9xh", "title": "In cultures that viewed lightning as controlled by or the act of a god, how were people who were struck by lightning and survived viewed?", "selftext": "Many cultures seem to have had sky-gods with control over storms and lightning: Zeus, Jupiter, Baal-hamon, Tengri, Yahweh, etc. Since people are struck by lightning and survive, I assume it had to have happened in the past too. I've never seen any accounts of lighting-strike survivors though, and I'm wondering whether being struck by lightning affected how they were treated in cultures where lightning had religious significance?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fq9xh/in_cultures_that_viewed_lightning_as_controlled/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckbvaea"], "score": [31], "text": ["I don't know of any specific details from multiple cultures, but I do think I can shed a little light on the issue from the Classical Roman point of view. I'm currently reading Virgil's Aeneid, detailing the life and travels of Rome's original founder, Aeneas, after the fall of Troy. Aeneas is the son of Venus, goddess of sexual desire and beauty, and Anchises, a mortal man of Troy. Naturally, Anchises got quite a big head from winning the love of Venus herself. According to the epic, Anchises' arrogance was so obvious that Jupiter, king of the gods, crippled him with a lightning bolt. Anchises was made humble again and became a key figure in his son's adventure.\n\nAs to the actual historical view of those who had been struck by lightning, I believe that the same sort of message would remain: due to some sort of sin or lack of piety, a god had sent a message to this person to repent or suffer harsher consequences. We understand that the Greeks and Romans saw nature itself as a reflection of the divine powers, and we can assume that should someone get a taste of the power of the god king, it was seen as no mere accident. I would be interested to know how other cultures saw the power of the lightning bolt and how surviving a strike could change a culture's view of an individual.\n\nEdit: Typos."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9pvrm7", "title": "What is the status of the Bering Strait theory of Native American origins? What are the plausible alternatives?", "selftext": "I have always been taught that Native American populations originated from an overland crossing at the Bering Strait, but I've seen some Native American scholars on twitter recently claiming that the theory has been disproven. See, for example, Dr. Adrienne Keene: _URL_0_\n\nIs the popularity of the Bering Strait theory losing steam? What evidence calls the theory into question?\n\nOr was it always psuedoscientific and I had no idea?\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pvrm7/what_is_the_status_of_the_bering_strait_theory_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e84osi2", "e84qs91", "e85y1hs"], "score": [47, 135, 5], "text": ["I'm no historian but a biologist, and I have a hard time understanding where the tweets you link to are coming from.\n\nThe current consensus is very much that the first humans to the Americas came from Eastern Siberia through what is today the Bering Strait. This has been pretty conclusively demonstrated not only through archaeology but from genetics. \n\nHowever, what *is* still up for discussion is when, how many times, and through which route these humans entered the Americas. The current mainstream hypothesis is that it happened over the dry land of *Beringia* which connected Siberia and Alaska  when the sea level was lower during the last Ice Age. The competing hypothesis is that they were a coastal civilization that followed the coast in boats, maybe similar to modern Inuits. If more than one group arrived, both hypotheses may indeed be right. [See this recent blog post for a  summary with further link](_URL_1_).\n\nThe timing of the migration is also hotly debated, as the main archaeological material suggests the Siberians arriving not much more than 12500 years ago. However, there are some (controversial) sites that may suggest an even older immigration event, which may not necessarily have left modern genetic traces. \n\nDifferent immigration events may of course have followed different routes. But they all have in common that they show immigration through the Bering region. There is one competing hypothesis, the so-called soultrean hypothesis, stating that at least one wave of immigrants came from Western Europe, but this is highly controversial and seems to have lost ground as the advent of ancient-DNA analysis have found no support for it. \n\nWhy it would be fashionable to deny immigration from Siberia, I have no idea about, but I would be interested in theories? What is the alternative they prefer?\n\n[Here is a popular science article referring to a relevant recent DNA study from the Univ. of Kansas](_URL_0_)\n\n[Here an article with a little background and links to other recent studies](_URL_0_)", "That paleo-Indians arrived in the new world by way of Beringia is now settled science. I recommend [this post](_URL_1_) by /u/RioAbajo with further commentary by /u/Reedstilt. There is archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence supporting that Native Americans are related to and likely descended from populations in central Siberia and entered the New World via Beringia and then followed an \"ice free corridor\" on the east flank of the Rockies (unlikely) or proceeded down the coast via boat or coastal route (most likely).\n\nDr. Keene is an accomplished  specialist in Native American Studies and appears to be arguing from a position that the origin stories of Native American groups should provide explanations of native origins in North America. Dr. Keene is a Native American and has written extensively on cultural appropriation. She has an Ed.D. from Harvard, but does not appear to have made any academic contributions to the question of the origins of Native Americans and routes to the New World. \n\nThere are two published theories of how the new world was occupied. The Beringia hypothesis has been around since the 1930s and was promoted in early studies by Paul S. Martin, Alex D. Krieger and others. Modern proponents of the Beringia land bridge theory include a number of prominent archaeologists, like Don Grayson, Tom Dillehay, Jim Adovasio, Gary Haynes and many others. Perhaps the most prolific current writer on the subject is David Meltzer. There was another very short lived theory on paleo-Indian migration that suggested that early humans in the New World got here via a land bridge or by boats from Europe and that the famous Clovis technology had its roots in the Solutrean lithic tradition. This theory, proposed by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian, has been largely discarded by now. As Meltzer puts it: \n\n > If Solutrean boat people washed up on our shores, they suffered cultural amnesia, genetic amnesia, dental amnesia, linguistic amnesia and skeletal amnesia. Basically, all of the signals are pointing to Asia as the origin of the first Americans.\n\nSo my take on the question is that the Beringian Landbridge theory is still the dominant paradigm in the discipline. ~~I will get some references for you in a minute.~~\n\nAddendum: Dr. Keene's assertion is based on a 6 part series of articles, that can be found [here](_URL_2_) that was originally published in \"Indian Country\" by historian Alexander Ewen. Ewen's approach (and this is necessarily a simplification) appears to be that the level of debate over facts about original colonization of the new world found in the archaeological literature, like controversies over dates and dating techniques, disputes over an ice free corridor, the [Solutrean hypothesis](_URL_3_) and arguments over genetics and linguistics render the entire debate pseudoscientific. This is putatively supported by \"evidence\" Ewen provides that American archaeology has its roots firmly embedded in a colonial foundation that suffers from an approach that has relied on social Darwinism and eugenics as explanatory vehicles in the past. While many of Ewen's assertions are worthy of careful review, his conclusion that the body of study on Paleo-indian movement into the New World is pseudoscience just cannot be supported. Further, his assertions that the historical level of debate over subjects like \"Clovis first\", \"Ice-free corridor\" and very early dates is evidence of illegitimate science is nonsense. The disputes are, in fact, evidence that positions and arguments have been and continue to be rigorously evaluated.\n\nSources:\n\nFitzhugh, Drs. William; Goddard, Ives; Ousley, Steve; Owsley, Doug; Stanford, Dennis. \"Paleoamerican\". Smithsonian Institution Anthropology Outreach Office.\n\n [The peopling of the Americas: Genetic ancestry influences health. Scientific American.](_URL_0_) \n\nStrangers in a New Land: What Archaeology Reveals About the First Americans\nby J. M. Adovasio, David Pedler\n\nFirst Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America by David J. Meltzer (2009)\n\n  ", "I'm going to go a bit against the grain here and say that yes, the popularity of the Bering Strait theory is losing steam. Since 1997, with the acceptance of an archeological site in Monte Verde, Chile, that dated human occupation back to 14,800 before present (BP), which was a full millennia earlier than it was previously thought humans had been in the Americas, there has been growing debate. A nice overview of it can be found at the National Parks Service website, which I will link here: [NPS Bering Strait and alternatives](_URL_1_)\n\nLets dive into the evidence though, and a bit of the history here. We can begin with Monte Verde. Thomas Dillehay has a great work on this titled The Settlement of America, a New Prehistory. What makes Monte Verde special is that it is widely accepted as an archeological site that does definitely showcase that humans were here before the Last Glacial Maximum. \n\nSo Monte Verde was discovered in 1975, and in 1977, Dillehay began excavating there. In 1982, radiocarbon dating of items in the site was done, and it was discovered that the site in general went back 14,800 years. It would take another decade and a half though for wide acceptance of this dating, and that occurred in 1997, when 12 other archeologists revisited the site. \n\nSo why is this important to this discussion? Because various studies have shown that the Monte Verde site is too early for it to have been occupied by individuals who migrated via the Bering Strait. One of these studies, from 2016, titled Postglacial Viability and Colonization in North America's Ice-Free Corridor, published in the journal Nature, argues that the Bering Strait route only became a viable path around 12,600 years ago, when the first plants and animals started showing up in the area. The authors of this article go on to say that it is unlikely that the earliest migration of humans to the Americas used this route, but that later groups may have used the path. \n\nJust a note on the Monte Verde site. In 2015, an article titled New Archeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile, was published in Plos One (it can be viewed [here](_URL_0_). Dillehay was one of the archeologists who went back to Monte Verde and helped author this study. What they discovered is that the site may go back 18,500 years. Interestingly though is that they also discovered the presence of items at the site that aren't found their naturally. Their argument is that those items were brought to Monte Verde from other people who brought them (or some of them) from far away. \n\nAnother take away from that article is the landscape of the debate now, that the authors point out in their introduction. They make the claim that the consensus among experts is that humans did arrive in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago. And while it is accepted that some humans would eventually travel to the Americas across the Bering Strait, the old model (the Clovis-first model, that said that the first humans came here via the Bering Strait) \"no longer explains the peopling of the New World.\" And this all has led to new debates, such as, how many migrations were there? Did the first humans arrive here by land or the coastline? \n\nThere are other issues though too. In 2010, an article titled Clovis and Western Stemmed: Population Migration and the Meeting of Two Technologies in the Intermountain West was published in American Antiquity. The authors were Charlotte Beck and George T. Jones. One thing that they point out is that the chronology of the Clovis-first model has broken down in recent years. For instance, in 2003, it was discovered that the Ushki site, which had long been held as the earliest site in Western Beringia, which also was seen as a prime candidate for a Clovis ancestor, wasn't as old as thought; it only dated back 11,000 years. This has caused a dilemma now as it erased the progenitor in Siberia, and has made the Clovis origins more complicated. \n\nAnother major issue is with the distribution of items associated with the Clovis people. For instance, the fluted point that we know as a distinctive Clovis technology may have actually originated in the east. As Beck and Jones point out though, while that may be the case (based on the distribution density of such items), we cannot be certain until more research is done. \n\nOne of the arguments that the authors make though is that the distribution of these items, that seem to spread across the continent very rapidly is that the Clovis people weren't migrating to these new areas, but that they were trading technology with other groups. The key thing here is that it is expected that other groups were here before the Clovis people. They actually emphasize that point, that people were at least in the Intermountain West before the Clovis people were present anywhere. \n\nTheir suggestion, and a view that they say is growing more probable, is a Pacific coastal route for early North American entry. \n\nNow, these authors aren't claiming to be drawing the entire picture. A main point that they are trying to get across is that the migration process is much more complex that we imagined. We have to consider that it may be that people migrated here in a variety of different ways, and entered the continent at different locations.   \n\n\nSo to sum up, the Bering Strait theory is losing steam. While it is certain that some people migrated to the Americas through the Bering Strait, it now appears that even before that, people were living in the Americas. Most likely, there were different migrations events into the continents, and the routes were varied as well. However, some of the things Dr. Keene is saying (or more specifically linking to, such as the 6 part article that debunks the Bering Strait theory) aren't correct either. As I believe this post shows, for instance, the Bering Straight theory isn't some unshakable idea within scholarship. While it isn't fully rejected, its accepted that we have to rethink it and acknowledge that it was only part of the migration. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://twitter.com/NativeApprops/status/1052993772685012993"], "answers_urls": [["https://phys.org/news/2018-05-dna-sequences-people-native-american.html", "http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/08/08/peopling-of-the-americas/#.W8tnws4zYkI"], ["https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090814111455.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jb2u8/what_is_the_main_evidence_proving_or_disproving/", "https://zenodo.org/record/1249986#.W8uHLRNKjVq", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis"], ["https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141923", "https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/other-migration-theories.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "3a9m1w", "title": "I have a very specific question related to the Third Dynasty of Ur in ancient Sumer.", "selftext": "I also just asked this in /r/askhistory but this sub seems a lot more populated.\n\nI'm writing a historical fiction novel that takes place in the years before and at the start of the reign of Shulgi, son of Ur-Nammu. I am trying to go by Middle Chronology, and using good old Wikipedia I can place the beginning of the dynasty at 2112 BCE (2047 short). 17 years later, in 2094 BCE (2030 short) Ur-Nammu dies suddenly in battle with the ousted Gutians and his son Shulgi takes over. I'm having difficulty doing the math here, as it seems like either Shulgi was an infant when his 48-year reign began, or he was possibly 17, or something else entirely. My question is, how old was Shulgi when his father died?\n\nBonus questions: Is there information on how long it took for Shulgi to come to power, whether it was immediate or took perhaps up to a year (poems indicate social chaos followed Ur-Nammu's death)? Perhaps if there was any sort of contemporary political intrigue that could be drawn upon for dramatic effect?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a9m1w/i_have_a_very_specific_question_related_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csaoe3i"], "score": [60], "text": ["All of the dates that you mention and that we know are years of rule, not years alive.  It is impossible produce anything more than a rough guess for the ages of Sumerian kings based on their reigns.  Google's algorithm confuses the start of the reign with his birth, so anything you see that indicates Shulgi's \"birth\" is a mistake for the start of his reign.  This issue is compounded by 1) the fact that there are Sumerian hymns that mention his birth (so reference works citing his years of rule are confused with his \"birth\" by a keyword algorithm), and 2) the chronology issues, which you already mentioned, confuse non-specialists, leaving only a vague sense of when things started and ended.\n\nWhen Utu-Hegal (of Uruk) died, Ur-Namma gained control of the region in 2112.  Shulgi took over when his father died in 2094.  Shulgi reigned a long time (48 years), so he was probably pretty young when he took the throne, but there is no way of knowing how old.  His first twenty one years of rule passed relatively quietly so he may have been very young, indeed, when he took the throne, but it seems doubtful to me that he could have been an infant since the dynastic control of the region wasn't that secure yet.  I'd reckon he was about 12 if you need a guess, but that's all it is.  It's a guess that allows him to live to be 60 years old, which is a standard number for the age of venerable kings in the Bronze Age so it has a certain mytho-literary charm.\n\nAs to your bonus question, I am not a specialist of the period, but I have never heard of there being difficulty surrounding Shulgi's succession.  Neither Van De Mieroop nor the Cambridge Ancient History mention it so it might just be a literary formula in a royal hymn to make Shulgi's reign seem more triumphant.  There doesn't appear to be any historical basis for it.\n\n* Marc Van De Mierrop 2007 - *A History of the Ancient Near East, Second Edition*\n* C.J. Gadd 1971 - *The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 2*, \"Ch. XXII Babylonia C. 2120-1800 BC.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6at5se", "title": "How come the mongols had a hard time taking European Stone Fortresses but not ones in China that were made out of stone?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6at5se/how_come_the_mongols_had_a_hard_time_taking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhhntcz", "dhhq82z", "dhi5avq"], "score": [9, 42, 42], "text": ["Follow up question, why didn't the invaders just starve them out? Surely the defenders had limited supplies. ", "did they have an easy time with Chinese fortresses? it took them si years to seize Xiangyang", "I'll start this with a caveat: my knowledge of medieval warfare is almost entirely limited to England and France, so someone with more knowledge and experience on the Mongols will undoubtedly provide a better answer. I nonetheless have a couple of books, namely Timothy May's *The Mongol Art of War* and Chris Peer's *Genghis Khan and the Mongol War Machine*, which look at how the Mongols fought and have information that I'll use to propose two complementary answers: that the Mongols did have a hard time taking Chinese fortifications, and that the nature of the European campaigns made siege warfare unwise.\n\nThe first thing to do is to put the Chinese campaigns in perspective: the war against the Jin Dynasty lasted almost 25 years and the war against the Song Dynasty lasted almost 40 years. The Jin Dynasty initially intended to use a combination of superior numbers and existing fortifications against the Mongols, but multiple defections by allies and client horse nomads saw their best pasture land cut off from them by the Mongols. Subsequently, the war became all about fortified cities, which the Mongols had to reduce one by one.\n\nThe Song Dynasty was protected by good natural defenses in the form of mountains between them and the Mongols and, though the Mongols did attempt to outflank them, they were able to hold off for quite some time and win several battles. Eventually the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng were besieged, and these held out for six years, until supplies ran out and the newly introduced counterweight trebuchet made considerable impact on the walls. With the fall of the twin cities, the Han River, and from it the Yangtze River, was now unprotected from the Mongols and they could strike wherever they wanted in Song China.\n\nWhat does this have to do with the European campaigns? Well, the important thing to note is that, after the initial 1241/1242 campaign, Mongol actions in Central Europe were almost entirely large scale raids, not actual invasions. Against raids, with a lack of time for circumvallations or heavy siege equipment, stone fortifications worked very well. Unless taken by surprise , they were difficult to damage with the equipment the Mongols would have had with them, thus making an assault a costly proposition."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "72piu3", "title": "What is the history behind why someone born on American Samoa can't be a U.S. citizen, but any pregnant person can travel to one of the fifty U.S. states to give birth to a U.S. citizen?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72piu3/what_is_the_history_behind_why_someone_born_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dnkuhf7"], "score": [62], "text": ["Any pregnant woman can travel to the US and give birth to a US citizen because of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The reason that the 14th Amendment exists is because of slavery.  \n\nLet's rewind a bit. Four years before the South seceded, the Supreme Court decided *Dred Scott v. Sandford,* 60 U.S. 393 (1857).  In *Dred Scott*, a black slave named Dred Scott had been brought into the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was banned.  Scott sued in federal court for his freedom, and the Supreme Court ruled that Scott had no right to sue in the first place.  Only citizens could sue, and slaves could not be citizens.  From the *Dred Scott* court's opinion:\n\n > In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.  [...]\n\n > [Negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.\n\n*Dred Scott* was a terrible decision, and is widely known as the worst decision in the Court's history.  Worse than *Korematsu v. U.S.*, legalizing Japanese internment, and worse than *Plessy v. Ferguson,* legalizing Jim Crow laws.  It was a major cause of the Civil War.  *Dred Scott* was a symptom of the dysfunction and disunion gripping the nation.  \n\nNow, let's fast forward to 1866.  The North has won the Civil War, reconstruction of the South is going on, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27 (1866), has extended citizenship rights to the newly freed slaves.  But there are doubts in the Congress whether the Constitution allows blacks and freedmen to be granted political rights.  A law passed by Congress could be reversed by a new *Dred Scott*, or a future Congress could decide to strip the citizenship of the freedmen by a future law.\n\nThe solution, of course, was to enshrine those protections into the Constitution itself, which was ultimately ratified by 1868.\n\nThis gets us to the relevant text: \n > *All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.*  \n\nIt means what it says: if you were born in America, you're an American citizen, full stop.  This includes children born in the United States to foreigners, *United States v. Wong Kim Ark,* 169 U.S. 649 (1898), but not the children of foreign diplomats, *Slaughter-House Cases,* 83 U.S. 36 (1873), nor \"Indians not taxed\", *Elk v. Wilkins,* 112 U.S. 94 (1884).  (Later, Indians were granted citizenship by the Snyder Act in 1924, rendering that question moot.)  This is generally in line with New World citizenship philosophy, but distinct from what generally happens in the Old World, where citizenship is transmitted by blood.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "683y6v", "title": "I am a hot-blooded young British woman the Victorian era hitting the streets of Manchester for a night out with my fellow ladies and I've got a shilling burning a hole in my purse. What kind of vice and wanton pleasures are available to me?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/683y6v/i_am_a_hotblooded_young_british_woman_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgzf1vk"], "score": [38], "text": ["O.K., so although this meme is pretty much played out now, there've been several comments that it was disappointing not to get an answer to the questions that flipped the original enquiry and asked about the experiences of young women, rather than young men. So I've attempted to provide a look at Victorian Manchester through female eyes. \n\nI need to caution that Manchester - which looked [like this](_URL_0_) in 1870 \u2013 has not been as widely written about as other cities, so I have drawn on some studies of other major cities as well; in addition, there would have been huge gulfs in experience depending on social class, and the \"Victorian era\" is in itself an extremely broad term, covering 60 years and some substantial shifts in lived experience and in the types of entertainment on offer. For all these reasons, consider this answer a rather broad one that attempts to cover young women's experiences in the big city generally, and mostly in the latter half of the Victorian period. \n\nLet's start, though, by considering what elements may have been unique to Victorian Manchester, which in the course of this period passed Liverpool and Dublin to contend, with Birmingham and Glasgow, for consideration as the \"second city of the empire.\" It was, to put it bluntly, an industrial hell-hole, albeit one that offered exciting opportunities \u2013 the main centre of cotton manufacturing in the UK at a time when Britain was a gigantic net exporter of finished textile products. This had several important impacts that we need to be aware of, of which the most important was that the city became a magnet for workers from rural or small-town backgrounds, who could easily find work in the myriad of factories that sprang up there, and lodgings in the vast swathes of slum housing that inevitably grew up as a result. All this meant that Manchester was home to a large number of young workers of both sexes who were a considerable degree free of the sort of restraints that they would experience at home. Adolescent and young women might live without parents, and sometimes siblings; the social bonds and restraints created by the church were also significantly weakened, and the Religious Census of 1851 revealed church attendance among working class people in major industrial centres to be scandalously low. \n\nBy the 1840s, then, Manchester was already the greatest and most terrible of all the products of the industrial revolution: a large-scale experiment in unfettered capitalism in a decade that witnessed a spring tide of economic liberalism. Government and business alike swore by free trade and laissez faire, with all the attendant profiteering and poor treatment of workers that their doctrines implied. It was common for factory hands to labour for 14 hours a day, six days a week, and the conditions in domestic service \u2013 which was the other main source of employment for young women \u2013 were only a little better. Chimneys choked the sky; Manchester's population soared more than sevenfold. Thanks in part to staggering infant mortality, the life expectancy of those born in Manchester fell to a mere 28 years, half that of the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside. One keen observer of all this was an already-radical Friedrich Engels, sent to Manchester in 1842 to help manage a family-owned thread business (and keep him out of the hands of the Prussian police). The sights that Engels saw in Manchester (and wrote about in his first book, *The Condition of the Working Class in England*) helped to turn him into a communist. \u201cI had never seen so ill-built a city,\u201d he observed. Disease, poverty, inequality of wealth, an absence of education and hope all combined to render life in the city all but insupportable for many. As for the factory owners, Engels wrote, \u201cI have never seen a class so demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress.\u201d Once, Engels wrote, he went into the city with such a man \u201cand spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful condition of the working people\u2019s quarters.\u201d The man heard him out quietly \u201cand said at the corner where we parted: \u2018And yet there is a great deal of money to be made here: good morning, sir.'\u201d\n\nFor all these reasons, it is hardly surprising that Manchester was also a noted centre of radicalism and an early hotbed of the labour movement in this period. The infamous Peterloo Massacre, in which cavalry had charged a vast crowd demonstrating for parliamentary reform, killing or injuring as many as 500 of them, took place in the city before Victoria's day (1819), but it cast a very long shadow over the decades to come. Manchester became of the biggest supporters of the Chartist movement, a (for then) radical mid-century organisation calling for a large-scale expansion of the franchise. \n\nSo, to summarise: to be working class in Victorian Manchester was to do work that was long, hard and dangerous; to be an interchangeable and expendable part in an industrial machine built by factory owners who laboured to resist unionisation; and to work in an environment in which \"health and safety\" was largely non-existent. Terrible accidents involving unguarded, whirring machinery and human limbs were hideously common. \n\nThere was every reason to seek escape in the city's entertainments.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://imgur.com/a/anqMa"]]}
{"q_id": "2caf0i", "title": "Why is the city of Persepolis in ruins?", "selftext": "What caused the city to turn to ruin? Why are he ruins so well preserved? What have we been able to learn about their society?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2caf0i/why_is_the_city_of_persepolis_in_ruins/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjdx8f8"], "score": [12], "text": ["The primary cause of the ruin of Persepolis (from the Greek *Perses* and *polis*, literally the city of the Persians) was Alexander of Macedon. After defeating the remnants of the Persian army under the satrap Ariobarzanes at the battle of the Persian Gate, Alexander captured Persepolis and the treasury intact. He allowed his troops to loot the city, reserving only the palaces and treasuries for himself. After several days of looting and celebrating their victory, a fire began in the palace of Xerxes in the east and rapidly spread to the rest of the city. It is unclear if the fire was set accidentally, or if it was deliberately ordered by Alexander in revenge. \n\n\nDuring his invasion of Greece, the Persian king Xerxes had burned the Acropolis of Athens, including several temples. This had happened in 480 BC, and Alexander captured Persepolis some 150 years later in 330 BC, so I am not sure how much the average Greek and Macedonian soldier would have known of it; but Alexander and his commanders would certainly have been aware of it. Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Persian empire, and so similarly had many temples and palaces that could be destroyed.\n\n The most reliable testimony of the event comes from Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian writing in 30 BC. He was basing much of his work on that of the Greek chronicler Cleitarchus, who was a contemporary of Alexander, but whose actual writings have not survived. Diodorus claims that a certain Thais, a woman of Attic extraction, urged Alexander that it would be the finest of his feats in Asia if he were to lead a triumphal procession with torches and set fire to the palaces and temples of the city, and thus extinguish the great works of the Persians. As the celebration was far advanced at that point, Alexander and his men were extremely drunk and apparently found her prompting irresistible. They formed a procession in honor of Dionysus and to the sounds of lutes and pipes put the city to the torch, Alexander and Thais being the first to throw their own torches into the palace. The resulting fire was so devastating that the Iranian Muslim scholar Al-Biruni in 1000 AD when describing the incident in his *Chronicle of Ancient Nations* wrote that \"People say that even at the present time the traces of fire are visible in some places.\" \n\nPersepolis remained the capital of the province for several decades under the Macedonian empires that succeeded the Persian one. The lower city where the common folk resided had not been as heavily damaged in the fire as the upper city of the palaces and temples, and so many continued to live there. It declined gradually however, in favor of the city of Istakhr some 3 miles to the north. By 200 BC the governors of the Seleucid empire had removed the governors residence to Istakhr, and as Istakhr continued to grow in importance, Persepolis fell further and further into ruin. By 224 AD, Istakhr had been made the capital of the Sassanid Empire, while Persepolis was completely deserted. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "23odr2", "title": "Has anyone ever been \"erased\" from history?", "selftext": "I was watching 300 last weekend, and in the movie, Xerxes tells Leonidas \"I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned, and every Greek historian and every scribe shall have their eyes put out and their tongues cut from their mouths! Why, uttering the very name of Sparta or Leonidas will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!\" \n\nI was wondering if this has ever happened to a person or group of people?  Are there any instances of someone attempting to do this?  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23odr2/has_anyone_ever_been_erased_from_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgyysnq", "cgyz501", "cgz36lr", "cgz4ooe", "cgz7f7c", "cgzaxer", "cgzcvcl"], "score": [28, 120, 2, 31, 9, 22, 9], "text": ["/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov would be a good guy to ask on this. Zhukov was not erased per-se but a major attempt to play down his role in WW2 was made in the post-Stalin era. Mod Zhukov did a rather long post on it a while ago but i forgot what the question was.\n\nEDIT: Thanks to caffarelli for finding the question: _URL_0_", "The practice, in Roman history, is known as *damnatio memoriae* and involves the deliberate condemnation of someone to have their memory,, as much as possible, wiped from the record. Of course, it is historically impossible to show that this was ever done completely successfully since it would not be successful if it were complete.\n\nThree emperors received an official damnatio memoriae - Domitian, Publius Septimius Geta, and Maximian. Other Roman senators also suffered this penalty in the official legal sense. It involved seizure or property, destruction or re-utilisation of statues and other monuments, and the like.\n\nI would tentatively suggest that in the Roman context it is tied to an idealisation of \"legacy\", and so what is worse than death is to have that legacy and memorial destroyed.\n\nA similar practice emerges in early Church history, where theologians and writers deemed (even centuries later) to be heretical, are censured and their works actively destroyed in order to not only halt their influence, but erase their presence.\n\nI can go into some more detail if you'd like, but perhaps one of the Roman specialists will turn up and elaborate on the Roman legal practice.\n\nedit: as two commentators have noted, I should also add that *damnatio memoriae* is indeed a modern term for the practice. Also that it did not only apply to emperors. Apologies for not making this more clear in my original text.", "Can anyone comment on the supposed Nazi punishment where apparently should one commit a heinous enough crime then ones family and extended family would be killed and their records erased?", "An entire period from Ancient Egypt along with its probable five Pharaohs was \"erased\" from history: (Amenhotep IV) Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Neferneferuaten, Tutankhamun (King Tut), and Ay of the [Amarna Period](_URL_4_)\n\n(Amenhotep IV) Akhenaten started off this period, but most people are probably more familiar with his son [King Tutankhamun (King Tut)](_URL_3_), and his wife [Nefertiti](_URL_1_) because of the incredible works of art they're associated with and the stories of their discoveries. \n\nAmenhotep IV changed his name to [Akhenaten](_URL_0_) and moved the capital city from Thebes, where it had been for almost 300 years, to Akhetaten a new city. He radically changed the religious system of Egypt from polytheistic to one focusing on the worship of Aten, the sun disk (to the near exclusion of all other gods). His reign was one of extreme richness and the art style changed pretty dramatically. But the new religion created a lot of tension / chaos / hatred and his line of succession was messy. After his death, the newly reformed religion reverted back to what it was before.\n\nAfter a few successors came and died, Horemheb became pharaoh and wanted to distance himself from the past, unpopular Akhenaten. So the entire city of Akhetaten and all its temples was destroyed and abandoned. The capital moved back to Thebes. Akhenaten's name was erased and replaced with simply \"the enemy\" in places, and Horemheb erased the probable five pharaohs of the period from the record books. He extended the dates of his reign to make it seem as if he succeeded directly from Akhenaten predecessor.\n\nMuch of what we know about the Amarna period is possible because the city and temples were not fully destroyed before they were abandoned and because many temples and buildings were taken down and their stones reused. Many carved stones were simply turned around so that their faces were covered and re-carved. Others were just dumped in quarries or were crudely broken and have been reconstructed. The pieces of the puzzle are still being put back together today, for example this from late 2012 about the life/death of Nefertiti: _URL_2_", "Thuthmose III tried to have his stepmother and co regent Hatshepsut erased from history by literally chiselling her name and image of walls and having her statues destroyed. That said the campaign was haphazard at best and we know plenty about her, although not as much as we would like about Egypt's only female Pharaoh. It certainly didn't help that all the images tat show her show her as a man in the dress of a male Pharaoh but all the epithets are feminine. Gave the first people to decode the hieroglyphics a real headache since they could find no record of her in the lists of royal names.", "There was a serious effort to erase a man named [Herostratus](_URL_2_) from the historical record.\n\nHerostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.  The Temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and was the favorite of the man who made the first list of the seven wonders:\n\n > I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for \n > chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging \n > gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high \n > pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of\n >  Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their \n > brilliancy, and I said, \"Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on\n >  aught so grand\".[2]\n\n- [The Antipater of Sidon](_URL_0_)\n\nThe temple was not only the pride of Ephesus, it seems like they had somewhat of a tourist economy built around it.  Herostratus burned the temple because he wanted his name to live forever.\n\nThe authorities of Ephesus banned his name from being spoken under the penalty of death.  Their plan would have worked if it wasn't for the meddling [Theopompus](_URL_1_) who as far as I know was the only one to record Herostratus's name in his history.\n\nTheopompus's works became well known, and he dragged Herostratus along with him.  He probably would have been erased without Theopompus.  We still would have known that someone burned down the temple, but not his name and probably not other details as well.", "[The Aztec ruler Itzcotl and his adviser Tlacaelel tried to erase from history all memories of a pre-Aztec Past, including the memories of the nomadic Mexicas who first founded their capital city of Tenochtitlan.](_URL_0_)\n\n\n > Shortly after the formation of the Triple Alliance, Itzcoatl and Tlacaelel instigated sweeping reforms on the Aztec state and religion. **Tlacaelel ordered the burning of most of the extant Aztec books**, claiming that they contained lies and that it was \"not wise that all the people should know the paintings\". **He thereafter rewrote the history of the Aztec people, placing the Mexica in a more central role.**\n\n > **Tlacaelel recast or strengthened the concept of the Aztecs as a chosen people, elevated the tribal god/hero Huitzilopochtli to top of the pantheon of gods,[4] and increased militarism.**[5] In tandem with this, Tlacaelel is said to have increased the level and prevalence of human sacrifice, particularly during a period of natural disasters that started in 1446 (according to Dur\u00e1n). \n\n > To strengthen the Aztec nobility, [Tlacaelel] helped create and enforce sumptuary laws, prohibiting commoners from wearing certain adornments such as lip plugs, gold armbands, and cotton cloaks. **He also instigated a policy of burning the books of conquered peoples with the aim of erasing all memories of a pre-Aztec past.**\n\n\nThis was most likely done by Tlacaelel in an attempt to establish the Aztec Empire as the dominant regional power. He did this by bolstering nationalism and removing any reminisce of the old and weak nomadic-Aztec past."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mera8/do_we_know_what_georgy_zhukovs_thought_of_the/"], [], [], ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nofretete_Neues_Museum.jpg", "http://www.dayralbarsha.com/node/124", "http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/01/07/king-tut_custom-d0ee41453f1a757002921cab83ab684624d63b91-s6-c30.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_Period"], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Artemis", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theopompus", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus"], ["http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire"]]}
{"q_id": "vbz0s", "title": "What evidence is there for gigantic (100m+ length) wooden ships in history such as Tessarakonteres, b\u01ceochu\u00e1n, and Caligula's Giant Ship? ", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vbz0s/what_evidence_is_there_for_gigantic_100m_length/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c5366ug", "c537ngh", "c538gdd", "c539duk", "c53adcu", "c53cm75"], "score": [34, 28, 3, 8, 4, 2], "text": ["The Chinese [treasure ships](_URL_1_) have been well documented as being that large. [Here](_URL_0_) is a wiki artical about the world largest wooden ships. The 100m area seems to be the \"practical limit\" (MIT Museum) for the technology however.", "Some big roman ship hulls were actually found \n_URL_0_\nunfortunately they were destroyed in the WW2", "_URL_0_\n\nInteresting List; the Treasure Ship is the only true Ship noted that's over 100m, the Romans built a barge that was around 100m and it's verified; the Treasure Ships exact size is still debated to this day.", "Really interesting read about the Vasa, a large ship built Sweden; it sunk on it's maiden voyage and there was a huge court hearing to try and figure out who to blame, this is what they concluded:  \n\n > In the end, no guilty party could be found. The answer Arendt Hybertsson gave when asked by the court why the ship sank was \"only God knows\".[28] Gustavus Adolphus had approved all measurements and armaments, and the ship was built according to the instructions and loaded with the number of guns specified. In the end, no one was punished or found guilty for negligence, and the sinking was explained as an act of God. The sinking of Vasa was a major economic disaster; the ship's cost was more than 40,000 dalers, a huge expense for the small Swedish state.[29]\n\nsource: _URL_0_", "A former professor (Dr. Bill Murray) wrote rather extensively on this subject recently, this is his newly released book:\n\n  _URL_0_\n\nI think you'll find some pretty compelling evidence for these larger ships in the Hellenistic era.  ", "This is rather amazing for its time.\n\n_URL_0_\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_wooden_ships", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_ship"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_largest_wooden_ships"], ["en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_%28ship%29"], ["http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Titans-Hellenistic-Hellenic/dp/019538864X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1340227746&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=age+of+titans"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6CsH9fBaE"]]}
{"q_id": "8s4wjy", "title": "How much did people in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian history know of their earlier history?", "selftext": "Did they know about Sargon? The Akkadian Empire? The Sumerian Empire? The Bronze Age Collapse?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8s4wjy/how_much_did_people_in_neoassyrian_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e0wwufj"], "score": [22], "text": ["The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal was credited to its namesake and rumored to be the inspiration for Alexander's idea for the library that was finished by Ptolemy in Egypt.  Assyria's ruler Ashurbanipal was said to be mastered in the Akkadian and Sumerian languages.\n\n  Most rulers at that time had a knack for stealing their neighbors idols and relics but Ashurbanipal is said to have had a much stronger interest, possibly coming from his days of a scribe apprentice or just as someone who knew these things helped you stay in power at that time in history.  \n\nWhen they found these tablets some of them were meticulously arranged on each shelf in the manner that they were originally collected.  The last line of each tablet was repeated on the next tablet.   Then they found other smaller tablets that showed the title of the works.  These were all the works of history, religion, natural sciences, astronomy, grammar and laws. \n\nThe tablets found were mostly in Akkadian in the cuneiform script; but a lot of those they still aren't sure where they originally came from.  There were also a bunch in the Neo-Babylonian Script and written in Assyrian as well.  \n\nWe may be able to thank the coalition of Medes, Babylonians and Scythians for much of the knowledge we have regarding this now as this library was in Nineveh and may have been burned by them which preserved some clay tablets by hardening them.\n\n*\"La biblioth\u00e8que du palais de Ninive\" 1880, Paris: E. Leroux  Menant, Joachim*\n\n*Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East. New York: Facts on File Roaf, M. (1990)*\n\n*Assyrian Library Records. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 42(1), 1-29 Parpola, S. (1983).*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6zb7vd", "title": "When and why did the patron system of supporting artists or scientists die off?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zb7vd/when_and_why_did_the_patron_system_of_supporting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmu5t8t", "dmupkr9"], "score": [6, 11], "text": ["Could you please define patron system in this context?", "For science, the right question is not really to ask when \"the patron system\" died off, but how scientific funding arrangements varied over time. There was never any \"patron system\" (which implies it was somehow formalized), there are just different arrangements by which people who were not self-funded got funding/support. In China, for example, scientific work was long part of the larger bureaucratic work of the state, which was a patron of sorts. In Europe, at different times and places there were very different modes of funding scientific work. Galileo deliberately worked to get himself embedded into the House of Medici, to be their \"in house\" scientist to bring them glory and occasionally be useful. Isaac Newton by contrast did his work in the context of a university, aided at times by the capabilities of the Royal Society of London, which as its name suggests was funded and chartered by the King. Charles Darwin paid his way through inherited wealth, but Thomas Henry Huxley originally made his wages by giving public lectures with charged admission. The German chemists and physicists of the late 19th and early 20th century made their money through affiliations with industry. And so on. \n\nThe way I think I would answer your question, though, is that science _professionalized_ in the 19th century. That is, its jobs and funding sources became much more regularized, and fell into a few specific categories, e.g., industry, government support, philanthropy, and education (the rise of the research university, which used undergraduate tuition to pay for faculty research time, happened during this period). The relative \"weight\" of those categories has fluctuated over time; in the mid-20th century, government funding became paramount. But even in the case of US R & D in the late-20th, early-21st centuries, [these trends have not been fixed](_URL_0_). The funding situation changes in important ways over time, and this does shape the kind of research being done. \n\nDoes individual patronage play a role? As a percentage of work, certainly less than it used to \u2014\u00a0there still are some cases of wealthy individuals who will pay for work to be done, or give money to foundations to dish out. But they don't make up a significant proportion of the work being done. When did that change? I'm not sure it _ever_ made up as much of a fraction as people sometimes think it did, but certainly by the 19th century that was seen as a more eccentric way of doing things, and by the 20th century, while there were still a few well-known individual patrons (e.g. Alfred Loomis), they were very unusual.\n\n(I don't know anything about arts funding.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://imgur.com/x43muWi"]]}
{"q_id": "1mfsvm", "title": "What was the reaction from the public when Japan switched to the Gregorian Calendar during the Meiji Restoration?", "selftext": "I would like to know whether a majority of the Japanese people just accepted this drastic change (especially since moving traditional holidays to the Gregorian Calendar has changed the season in which many of them are held) or if there was any significant resistance, and, if so, what kind.  Thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mfsvm/what_was_the_reaction_from_the_public_when_japan/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc8ujtw"], "score": [14], "text": ["While I wouldn't know where to start looking for an answer to this question, I'd like to point out that the historical calendar of Japan was not nearly as stable as that of the Western world. The calendar in official use underwent four revisions between 1685 and the Meiji Revolution. The last of them prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, known as the \"Tenpou\" calendar, was adopted in 1844; so older Japanese people would already have seen the calendar altered once in their lifetime.\n\nEnglish language information on this is scarce, but there's a paragraph about the Tenpou calendar in the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) on the era. By following the second citation in the paragraph [22] to Hayashi's article, you can find a little more information about Japanese calendar reforms during that period mixed in with a history of Japanese mathematicians."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenp%C5%8D#Calendar_revision"]]}
{"q_id": "ek03nt", "title": "In 1945-1946, the US sent George Marshall to China to negotiate a unity government between the Nationalists and the Communists. Was it a forgone conclusion that the Marshall Mission would fail, or was there some real chance of them reconciling their grievances?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ek03nt/in_19451946_the_us_sent_george_marshall_to_china/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fd6zo69"], "score": [22], "text": ["I am sourcing this answer from The Rise of Modern China, by Immanuel Hsu.\n\nAs some background, Marshall became a special presidential ambassador to China after Patrick Hurley, the previous American envoy to China, resigned his post in protest of the change in American policy in China. The USA had adopted a new policy that continued their support of the Nationalists, but on the condition that they not use American arms to conduct a civil war and that they try to reach some sort of settlement with the Communists, as opposed to the old policy of unconditional support for the Nationalists. There are then sort of two perspectives to the stated question: from the American side, did they believe they could achieve some reconciliation between the Nationalists and the Communists, and from the Chinese side, did they think Marshall could really help them settle their differences?\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFrom the Chinese perspective, there was basically no real chance that Marshall could succeed in his mission. The Nationalists and Communists were deeply distrustful of each other, and they were both confident in their ability to win a full civil war. They both paid lip service to Marshall's stated goals of ceasing the civil war, forming a coalition government, and integrating KMT and CCP forces into a national army, but they basically had no choice but to play along for the sake of politics. Marshall's background and position gave him a lot of prestige, and the fact that he represented the USA with all its power and the fact that he appeared sincere in his efforts to mediate meant that it would've been a tremendous loss of face for either party in China to snub him. Beneath the surface, they both saw Marshall's presence as an example of American meddling, and extremists in both parties saw him as an obstacle to their respective ultimate victories. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThere was some progress towards the stated goals of the Marshall mission while he was there, but the robustness of the agreements he'd managed to negotiate were put to the test once he had to make a trip back to the USA in March of 1946. As soon as he was out of sight, the KMT and CCP scrambled to make maneuvers on the battlefield again, and the war escalated into large scale fighting within a month. Once Marshall returned to China, he was able to establish a 15-day truce on June 6, but the Nationalists and Communists were now both convinced they could win a full war and had no desire to go back to peaceful negotiations under those circumstances. Once the truce was over, they began fighting again, and the Nationalists won almost every battle over the next few months. The Communists accused the USA of using mediation as a smokescreen for their actual support of the Nationalists, and the Nationalists amidst their wave of victories ignored Marshall's pleas to stop fighting. With the Communists now doubting Marshall's integrity and the Nationalists ignoring his advice, Marshall realized he had failed in his mission, and he was recalled in January 1947.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFrom the American side, Marshall was sincere in his efforts, and while he was present in China his active mediation did allow him to make a lot of progress towards setting the terms of a coalition government and integrating CCP and KMT forces into one army. His early successes caused Truman to establish a United States Military Mission in China, staffed with 1000 officers and men. The commitment of a man with the prestige of Marshall and the commitment of these resources do suggest that the Americans believed it was possible for them to succeed in their efforts. The Americans probably believed they could serve as mediators, but in the end choosing to take this role ended up winning them the goodwill of neither party in China. And given the on-the-ground conditions, with both parties in China believing they could win a full victory in war, there was never really a realistic compromise that could've left them both satisfied in the long-term."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9os155", "title": "Did the year 666AD cause any Christians to fear that that year would signal Armageddon?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9os155/did_the_year_666ad_cause_any_christians_to_fear/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e7y7wkf"], "score": [11], "text": ["While it is hard to disprove the claim that *no one* made the connection between AD 666, the Mark of the Beast, and the end of days, we can safely say that their fears were not widely shared and that they would have been well outside the mainstream of those who concerned themselves with the calculation of such things. \n\nOne important reason for this is timing. Dionysius Exiguus devised the calendar around AD 525 to work out new tables that would calculate the date of Easter, but the calendar itself would not see more widespread use until the 8th century. The Dionysiac Easter table represented one side in a multi-faceted and **intense** debate over how to date Easter. The table was only officially adopted in England for Easter calculations at the Synod of Whitby in AD 664, to the consternation of those that preferred other methods. However, more widespread usage in England would not pick up until the eighth century, spreading to the rest of Western Europe over the next few centuries. The salient point is that in the first few centuries after its creation, the table was used primarily for Easter calculations, not as a widespread calendar for ordinary use, even among the ecclesiastical community. \n\nThe second reason is that in the years leading up to AD 666, early medieval writers preferred other dating systems when formulating countdowns. These 'countdowns', or *summae annorum*, drew largely on conventions popularized by Isidore of Seville in his influential universal history, the *Chronica maiora*. While Isidore employed the *anno mundi*(AM) system used by authors within the genre, historian James Palmer argues that he was the first to use the six-age conception of human time as an organizational framework within a universal history in combination with the AM system. Like the AM system, the idea that human history was divided into six ages was nothing new, but since Augustine the belief that these ages were comprised of a predictable or fixed number of years had gone out of style. Some of these earlier theories had revolved around the idea that each age would be 1000 years in length, with AM 6000 marking the start of Christ\u2019s millennium-long reign on Earth. According to Isidore, the Incarnation had inaugurated the sixth and final age in AM 5197. His readers in the seventh and eighth centuries picked up on this, and in Ireland and France we see a flurry of countdowns to AM 6000. \n\nI\u2019m going to skate over a lot of the disagreement, but it\u2019s important to point out that the popularity of Isidore does not mean there was consensus on the exact age of the earth. Julian of Toledo famously proclaimed that AM 6000 had passed in AD 675 without event. Julian was reacting to a group of Jews who claimed that the earth was much younger than previously supposed, arguing that Christ was born to soon to have been the messiah if the six 1000-year ages were assumed. Julian rejects the 1000-year ages, adhering to the Augustinian tradition that ages were not fixed and that the End could not be known. \n\nDespite disagreement about the exact age of the earth, Julian\u2019s position reflects one crucial trend that seems to be fairly constant throughout the seventh century: there doesn\u2019t seem to be a strong connection between AM 6000 and the apocalypse\u2014 Palmer argues that it wasn\u2019t until the eighth century that there is evidence of attempts to resurrect the connection. Even then, the AM calendar never experienced widespread use in the West. More popular was the use of regnal years. Think, \u201cin the *n*th year of King [Name].\u201d \n\nAll that to say, in the run up to AD 666 it was unlikely that many folks had the AD calendar in the back of their minds ticking away. On a practical level, people kept track of the current year using different frameworks. Additionally, while there was general agreement that Christ\u2019s birth had inaugurated the last age and that the End was imminent, there does not seem to have been any general consensus about when that would be. Most writers still adhered to the Augustinian tradition that the End could not be known. However, when writers did sit down to calculate the current date relative to the steady march of human history, they used a method more conducive to the task. \n\nSources:\n\n* C. Philipp E. Nothaft (2018). *Scandalous Error: Calendar Reform and Calendrical Astronomy in Medieval Europe*.\n\n* James T. Palmer (2014). *The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages*.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2zcsui", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: Misconceptions and Myths on the Ancient World", "selftext": "[Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.](_URL_0_)\n\nToday\u2019s trivia theme was suggested by a question from /u/randomhistorian1 who asked \"What are some of the most common myths about the Roman Empire, and what is wrong about them?\"\n\nWe'll expand that to include the whole of Antiquity, from the earliest Egyptian kingdoms through to the Fall of Rome. So let's hear your tales of popular misconceptions that make you want to go \"Hulk Smash!\"\n\nNext Week on Tuesday Trivia: Lost in Translation!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2zcsui/tuesday_trivia_misconceptions_and_myths_on_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cphybbh", "cphz920", "cpi0c9d", "cpi0ggl", "cpi1mvc", "cpi3g4b", "cpi3xkm", "cpi6tcb", "cpia2sm", "cpiar3t", "cpiibtr"], "score": [22, 47, 65, 8, 29, 11, 16, 10, 8, 12, 12], "text": ["I'll kick things off with a question. Clothing: what did the different classes of Romans wear on a daily basis? Most popular entertainment sees them in togas (or a centurion outfit). What did the everyday Roman actually wear when out and about?", "I could be wrong, but it seems to me, in my experience, that many people today, particularly younger people, seem to hold a notion that ancient humans were somehow intellectually inferior to modern humans. To support this claim, they often point to the fact that modern civilization (at least in the industrialized world) is significantly more technologically advanced than ancient civilizations were. It also seems to me that such a notion is an important aspect of the various \"ancient astronaut\" theories that hold that extraterrestrials were the architects of the majority of ancient civilizations.", "I have to work hard to dispel my students of the notion that ancient Indian groups in America were passive simpletons who were inevitable victims of white greed. ", "How much of worshipping or spiritual service did the Romans do around Cesars reign?", "I guess the most famous one is the vomitorium. People say it was a room where they vomited. It basically meant exit.", "One of my favourites concerns the 'Vomitarium', which in the 'Horrible History' series by Terry Deary is described as a room where people could be sick during a feast so that they could then eat more food. \n\nI believed this to be true until last year, when I found it it couldn't be further from the truth. A vomitarium was the exit from an amphitheatre, so called because of the volume of people that would spill forth from it after an event. ", "My question is whether or not the Romans had a word for volcano. I have seen books and exhibits about Pompeii claim that there was no word for volcano, yet clearly Romans and Greeks referenced the root of Vulcan and observed ceremonies in his name. Additionally the roman empire was large enough that they certainly knew of the volcanoes in Cicely and perhaps elsewhere.", "Would the average person in the Roman Empire have it better or worse compared to someone in the Middle Ages? Call it years of Whig-influenced scholarship, but I can't quite pull myself away from the belief that Europe fell into a gigantic hole after the fall of Rome and didn't drag itself out until the Renaissance.", "I have often taken issue with the myths that tour guides spread about phallic decorations and graffiti in Pompeii. A penis in a street does not automatically mean directions to a brothel. The Lupanar in Pompeii was not decorated with an illustrated 'menu' of services offered, or it would have been a remarkably tame brothel. ", "\"Before people found out the world was round\u2026\" typically is mentally translated to 600 years ago rather 2500+ years ago. (I am uncertain of Babylonian/Near East knowledge of the matter, myself, though.)", "Roman saddles didn't have stirrups. In fact, the Romans barely had something that could be considered a saddle. The Roman saddles were most likely thick leather pads with four prongs (two in the front and two in the back) for support. They had no frames, trees, or weight distribution systems and therefore barely deserve the name \"saddle.\" Really, I'm more inclined to call them shabracks or bareback pads. \n\nThe Greeks did not have saddles. The had nothing like a saddle. If you were so inclined, you might use a blanket thrown over the horse's back. \n\nDespite not having saddles or stirrups, it's still entirely possible to use a weapon and ride effectively. And no, it didn't hurt their genitals. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6cq3fi", "title": "What is the earliest period of history that I, a modern man, could challenge a chess player to a match, and play with the same basic understanding of the pieces and rules?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cq3fi/what_is_the_earliest_period_of_history_that_i_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhwrjru"], "score": [36], "text": ["The short answer is around the year 1620 in France and 1880 throughout Europe (Italy held out on modern castling).\n\nIn terms of how the pieces move and capturing *en passant*, the rules were codified by Ruy Lopez de Segura in the late 15th century.  However, winning conditions differed at that time.  Then, you could win by capturing all pieces save the king, making it possible to win with king+bishop, which is a draw in modern chess.  Rules on castling were largely regional, and localities differed as to how the king moved.  Some allowed one king move per game in an \"L\" shape, like a knight.  This was inspired by chataraunga, the Indian precursor to chess.  Some allowed castling in two moves.  Some regions allowed a player to choose from several squares when castling.  France, then England, adopted our modern version of castling in the 17th century.  Italy held out, but eventually adopted the last of the rules we adhere to in modern chess.\n\nFor more, I highly recommend Murray's *A History of Chess*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5knf89", "title": "Was FDR's relationship with Theodore Roosevelt an issue in his elections? Were there any concerns of an \"elitist\" family winning the presidency twice?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5knf89/was_fdrs_relationship_with_theodore_roosevelt_an/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dbpnyx7"], "score": [17], "text": ["Follow up, what ever happened to the Roosevelt's? They go from a prominent political family to what?  \n\nEdit: family not party"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "br8ibe", "title": "Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov was shot through the temples on two seperate occasions and survived. How is this possible given the caliber of firearms of the time and the near sureity of a gunshot wound to the head being fatal?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/br8ibe/field_marshall_mikhail_kutuzov_was_shot_through/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eofobd5"], "score": [18], "text": ["If anything, this is one of the cases illustrating tremendous resilience of the human body can muster.\n\nGeneral Feldmarshall Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishev-Kutuzov has been wounded thrice in his career and, what is more curious, each time he was hit in the head. He received his first, and most serious wound on 8th August 1774 (all dates according to Gregorian calendar) during the fight in the vicinity of the village Shumy (now Kutuzovka), close to the town of Alushta, when a rifle bullet pierced his skull. Then, on 18th August 1788, during the siege of Ochakov, he was struck again by a bullet in the cheek. Last, and the least dangerous incident occurred on 2nd December 1805 during the battle of Austerlitz, when Kutuzov was again hit in the cheek by a small piece of shrapnel. This was most likely a minor injury, however, and Kutuzov refused to leave battlefield to be treated stating that this is an insignificant wound.\n\nThe first and most dangerous wound was a bullet through-and-through wound that entered somewhere in the upper part of the left temple and exited through the right temple, close to the right supraorbital ridge. Given that the wound did not caused vision problems in the left eye and only resulted in ptosis (drooping of the lid) and reported strabismus of the right eye it is very possible that the bullet traversed the skull above the eyes, most likely damaging right orbicularis oculi (circular eye muscle), superior oblique muscle and trochlear nerve. On the other hand this also mean that the bullet had to traverse the cranial cavity, damaging the brain. We cannot however exclude the possibility that the bullet ricocheted from the inside of the frontal part of the skull, changing its trajectory. Furthermore, Kutuzov was hit when he entered the trench located below the enemy positions and thus was hit from the above, making it possible that even though the exit wound was located relatively low, the bullet could have passed close to the skull surface, damaging the meninges and grazing the brain. Nevertheless, it is almost certain that such injury must have caused at least some damage to the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex. And there are reasons to think that this was exactly the case.\n\nAfter the recovery that was described as nothing short of a miracle, Kutuzov seemed to be experiencing frequent headaches, dizzyness and balance problems making him unable to dance, what can indicate chronic meningitis and cerebrospinal fluid leak, aggravated by a seepage during a long recovery time. It should be noted however that even brain damage could be alleviated over time by regeneration or re-routing due to relatively young age of the patient (Kutuzov was only 29 at the time and was known to be very healthy).\n\nAccording to both Alexander I, Kutuzov was known for his sexual apetite and the tzar himself was calling him 'a one-eyed satyr' while General Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron was apparently horrified of the Marshall's behavior, noting \"He would consecrate his evenings to love, or at least his idea of love. These women, such as they were, held over him a most absolute and scandalous influence; \\[...\\] He cannot exist without having three to four women around him \\[...\\]\".\n\nWhile characterizing Kutuzov, Langeron notes that the former appeared to be conflicted, showing vastly different traits of character, to wit:\n\n > No-one had more spirit but less character than Kutuzov \\[...\\] A prodigious memory, great education, amiable disposition, pleasing and interesting conversation, good nature \\[...\\], such were Kutuzov\u2019s charms. At the same time, violence, a boorish impropriety more suited to a peasant, especially in contacts with people of inferior status, rough simplicity \\[...\\] an overwhelming laziness and apathy, repulsive selfishness, a contemptible and disgusting libertinism, little discretion in financial matters. These were the flaws of this same man \\[...\\]  \n >   \n > He was capable of distinguishing good and bad advice. Knew his way in a discussion. Understood what the best course of action is, but all of this was paralyzed by indecision, an apathy in mind and body \\[...\\] During battles he would not move, not unlike a living statue, except to cross himself when he heard the whistle of a nearby bullet. He never ventured or even wasn't unable to change anything including dislocation of the troops. He never personally supervised reconnaissance, never investigated positions of enemy or his own troops \\[...\\] Large and fat, he could not sit in the saddle for long and was fatigued quickly \\[...\\] This same indolence poisoned his administrative duties: he had had to force himself to pick up the pen. His subordinates, deputies, and secretaries manipulated him freely and whilst he was undoubtedly more intelligent and better educated than them, he was unable to review and their work, not to mention supervise or direct it.\n\nThese passages are of particular interest, because they point out several traits that form a curious yet consistent clinical image. Emotional outbursts and asocial behaviour related to the diminished consideration of consequences (are axial symptoms of pre-frontal cortex damage, while hypersexuality, overeating, diminished response to fear and apathy are typical for the Kl\u00fcver\u2013Bucy syndrome resulting from lesions of temporal lobe. The prevalence of the former is consistent with the damage, as the bullet traversed the pre-frontal gyrus while only slightly and unilaterally damaging the left temporal lobe.\n\nIt should also be noted that Jean Joseph Massot, a physician in the employ of Russian monarch and assigned to the troops taking part in the Crimean theatre of war in mid-1780s (he tended to Kutuzov after he was shot during the siege of Ochakov), although very young, had an extensive knowledge concerning head wounds. He noted that this type of wounds is not uncommon among soldiers and although very dangerous and most often fatal, people are still known to recover even after suffering direct trauma to the cranium and resulting intracranial hemorrhage. He also made an observation that soldiers are not too unlikely to survive the shot itself and the removal of the bullet with apparently good prognosis, but they may still succumb to illness up to several days after the operation. Massot correctly assumed this is most likely caused by the combination of internal hemorrhage, exsanguination and increased pressure on cerebral structures that was impossible to alleviate with trepanning.\n\nThis indicates that it was not impossible, although still uncommon, to survive direct shot to the head. Furthermore, it is also possible that Kutuzov was shot by a Turkish marksman using not the heavy musket but rather a light hunting rifle, typically of much smaller caliber (I'm not an expert on Ottoman weapons, but contemporary German and Polish counterparts often sported caliber of .32 or .40). Small caliber could account for limited extent of damage and low velocity of the bullets meant much lower hydrostatic shock in soft tissue in comparison to modern firearms) meaning that direct hit to the brain would not result in wide temporary channel and resulting wide and most likely fatal damage.\n\nThe second wound. suffered in 1788 is sometimes said to be almost identical to the first one, as described by prince Charles-Joseph von Ligne in his letter to Emperor Joseph II, although this is quite likely a result of confusion and is contradicted by memoirs of Kutuzov's grandson and notes of Massot who has treated Kutuzov and described the situation in the letter to Catherine II. According to the latter, the bullet entered the left cheek, damaged the mandible and some teeth in the upper jaw and exited through the back of the neck, missing all important blood vessels (interestingly, this damage seems to be quite similar to one suffered by Henry V at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, although Henry was struck with an arrow). This time, although it was still a shot to the head, Kutuzov recovered quickly but soon after he noticed that the physiological symptoms of the previous injury increased, quite possibly due to strain caused by the wound itself and significant exsanguination.\n\nSumming it up, Kutuzov was wounded in the head three times, although only the first wound could have damaged the brain what led to psychosomatic problems Field Marshall continued to suffer until the end of his life and  that were worsening with subsequent wounds and progressing age. Contemporary medical accounts allow us to assume, that that recovery from such injury, although unlikely, was by all means possible.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nA.F. de Langeron, M\u00e9moires de Langeron, G\u00e9n\u00e9ral d\u2019Infanterie dans l\u2019Arm\u00e9e russe, Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris 1902.\n\nA.F. de Langeron, \u0417\u0430\u043f\u0438\u0441\u043a\u0438 \u0433\u0440\u0430\u0444\u0430 \u041b\u0430\u043d\u0436\u0435\u0440\u043e\u043d\u0430. \u0412\u043e\u0439\u043d\u0430 \u0441 \u0422\u0443\u0440\u0446\u0438\u0435\u0439 1806-1812 \u0433\u0433. \\[Notes of the Comte de Langeron. The war with Turkey 1806\u20131812\\] (Russian translation by E. Kamenskiy) in: \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0441\u0442\u0430\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430, 1908. vol. 134, no. 4., pp. 225-240.\n\nF.M. Sinelnikov, \u0416\u0438\u0437\u043d\u044c \u0444\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0434\u043c\u0430\u0440\u0448\u0430\u043b\u0430 \u041a\u0443\u0442\u0443\u0437\u043e\u0432\u0430 \\[Life of Field Marshall Kutuzov\\], \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0421\u0438\u043c\u0444\u043e\u043d\u0438\u044f, 2007\n\nN.A. Troitskiy, \u0424\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0434\u043c\u0430\u0440\u0448\u0430\u043b \u041a\u0443\u0442\u0443\u0437\u043e\u0432. \u041c\u0438\u0444\u044b \u0438 \u0444\u0430\u043a\u0442\u044b \\[Field Marshall Kutuzov. Myths and Facts\\], Centrpoligraf, 2003"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6cuxfk", "title": "Render unto Caesar: What was the effective taxation rate of the middle-class in Roman Judea during the time of Jesus?", "selftext": "There is quite a lot of discussion and documentation around what taxation was in ancient Judea and whether it was/wasn't biblical/just/sinful, but there isn't a lot as to what the actual rate of taxation was.  What I'm looking for is to understand what a normal middle-class person would pay in taxes per year and what the effective tax rate would be.  \n\nI'm also somewhat interested in whether there were progressive taxation rates or whether the Roman Empire operated on a flat/consumption tax model.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cuxfk/render_unto_caesar_what_was_the_effective/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dhy37nb"], "score": [13], "text": ["Broadly speaking the Roman state in its mature form accounted for two types of taxation, the vectigal and tribute. While *vectigalia* was often used as a synonym for the state's revenues as a whole it in fact describes specifically the revenue collected from rents on public lands and possessions and the profits gained from such property. It also describes importation duties, taxes on wills, and other indirect taxation. As such the vectigal only was collected from individuals participating in such activities. Tribute was the direct form of taxation paid by the individual to the Roman state. As of 167 it was no longer levied on citizens. Provincial tribute varied according to the province. Some provinces paid fixed sums. Gaul, for example, paid a fixed yearly sum of 40 million sesterces. In other provinces (e.g. Asia) provincial tribute was paid as a fraction (usually a tenth) of the grain harvest, which was then sold by the state. Provincial tribute was therefore raised on a provincial basis (usually in grain rather than cash), not necessarily individually. The state leased out contracts for the collection of the vectigal and tribute to publicans, who bid a certain amount to the state in advance and were allowed to keep the surplus. The result is that provincial taxation laws were often in flux, and the \"real\" taxation was usually greatly in excess of the money paid to the state. Publicans also need not necessarily follow any pattern in collecting the tribute. While collection of the vectigal was relatively straightforward (you just collect a certain percentage of various activities) in theory a publican could force a single individual to pay out the entirety of his bid (provided this dude was rich enough). To add to the problem, provincial governors were able to levy extraordinary duties on the provinces in order to maintain their military forces--one famous method of extortion was to levy extra grain taxes in excess of the amount needed to feed the army and then sell the surplus at a premium. \n\nAugustus massively reformed tax administration in the provinces. In the Principate tribute was no longer collected by publicans, who were relegated to collection of the vectigal. Instead, the census was extended to the provinces and local magistrates became responsible for the collection of tribute, which increasingly became an individual affair rather than a duty levied on the entire province. *How* exactly the provincial paid his tribute and what amount he paid depended on the province. I'm not too sure about Judaea, but in Syria, for example, men above the age of 14 and women above the age of 12 were responsible for an individual tribute (in addition to the province's tribute as a whole), although I don't know if we know by how much (almost certainly a fixed sum). Despite these reforms, of course, tribute in the Principate was not necessarily so straightforward. Provincial procurators had just as many powers as the publicans had before them, and an unscrupulous procurator could cause a lot of damage, as the procurator of Britain did on the eve of the Iceni's revolt. The system was more centralized and more efficiently administrated, but the tribute of the provincials was still often in flux"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3qyq5p", "title": "[META] What is the Reddit Alien logo for AskHistorians?", "selftext": "I see this was asked [three years ago](_URL_0_), but I suspect this is a different alien. From the descriptions in that old thread I don't think this is the same logo.\n\nIt looks like the alien is wearing a crown and holding a book. Is it some monarch who was a historian?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qyq5p/meta_what_is_the_reddit_alien_logo_for/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwjfe8r"], "score": [39], "text": ["Hiya, our Snoo is Emperor Justinian - here's a thread \n\n[Who or what is Snoo dressed up as?](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wu4eb/meta_so_whats_the_explanation_for_the_logo_what/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1waa9b/who_or_what_is_snoo_dressed_up_as/"]]}
{"q_id": "ft35oi", "title": "AITA for turning off my husband?", "selftext": "Some background: my husband has been married before, I haven\u2019t (although I was briefly engaged once). I come from a strong Protestant background, and my husband spent most of his life as a devout Catholic before seeing the light about ten years ago. He\u2019s also older than me \u2013 I\u2019m about the same age as his older daughter from his first marriage. Oh, and we\u2019re in kind of an arranged marriage, which is normal in our culture.\n\nI think our marriage has gotten off on the wrong foot. When I first met my husband, I was watching some entertainment and he came up in disguise and kissed me, which really startled me and I didn\u2019t respond well. It was awkward and I just tried to ignore this strange guy who was really taking liberties. Then he left and came back in his real clothes and introduced himself as my husband, and I could tell that he was annoyed that I hadn\u2019t known who he was.\n\nOn our wedding night \u2026 we didn\u2019t consummate. He was very nice about it at the time, and he has been every night since, but he\u2019s said some *really* hurtful things about me to his friends afterward, like that I smelled too bad to get near, and they all believe him. He\u2019s also telling them that I don\u2019t look like the pictures that made him agree to marry me \u2013 like, \u201cI\u2019m not even sure that they\u2019re her\u201d-levels. He basically thinks I catfished him, and he feels hurt and betrayed.\n\nI admit that it\u2019s possible that the picture was a bit touched up, and people may have been overly flattering in their descriptions of me because they wanted this marriage to go through. AITA for not making it clear ahead of time that I\u2019m a normal person and not a babe?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ft35oi/aita_for_turning_off_my_husband/", "answers": {"a_id": ["fm685ot", "fm6ghlh", "fm4rq7g", "fm4szyn", "fm4t3vl", "fm4tas2", "fm4xzo6", "fm51awi", "fm599fy", "fm5a8lz", "fm5cv1e"], "score": [6, 3, 4, 23, 65, 16, 21, 15, 3, 6, 15], "text": ["NAH. I totally understand why you aren't into him. He sounds really narcissistic and overbearing. Accusing you of catfishing him just because your pic showed you in a cute outfit and flattering makeup is way over the line. \n\nBut, to be fair, your post history mentions this is his first time in an arranged marriage. I know they're pretty common in his culture, but if he's used to love matches, it could be a pretty big culture shock for him. \n\nHonestly, it sounds like you just aren't right for each other. Maybe cut your losses and get an annulment?", "NTA--  Some couples just aren't meant to be married but just good friends. You're probably more like a sister to him.  Since you've come all this way  maybe he'll set you up in a nice cottage. I think his kids may also benefit from your kind nature.", "YTA. The man started a fucking Church for you, you could at least be honest.", "NAH - maybe he'll offer you some money to pretend the whole marriage never happened.", "NTA he\u2019s calling YOU a catfish when he\u2019s the one who came over to you in a disguise?? That\u2019s a red flag and you should try and get an annulment if you haven\u2019t consummated yet.", "NTA.  Arranged marriages are often awkward, I know it\u2019s normal in your culture but maybe it\u2019s time to embrace making your own choice. What is the guy like, anyways?  You said he has multiple kids?  Are you sure you want to be a stepmom right from the get-go?  And what happened to his previous wife?  Is she dead, or divorced?\n\nAnd, ya, it\u2019s shitty to catfish, but was your picture that far off or is he just being a dick and looking for an excuse not to marry you. Perhaps you\u2019d be better of as friends in the end.  \n\nAlso, you\u2019re the age of his eldest kid?  Yikes!", "NTA- So many red flags it sounds like a July 4th Parade. Get out while you can!", "NAH - you're not compatible. He's kinda TA for trashing you behind your back, though. I don't see this lasting, but don't beat yourself up over it. If he's been married numerous times, it might be a \"him\" problem. If he won't consummate, you won't get pregnant and there won't be a child to complicate things if you decide to separate. You're young, you'll probably come out on the other side of this just fine. I wish you the best.", "NTA, you\u2019ve stepped into a nasty situation way beyond your control, get out while you can and go live your best life well away from all that nonsense.", "NTA. And if you go along with an annulment who knows, you could get Richmond Palace out of it. Just be sure to hang up all those portraits he doesn\u2019t like somewhere everyone can see them.", "Oh honey, I'd say you're NTA. Did he tell you he was a cosplayer before you met? If not, he's being silly for expecting you to automatically take interest in his hobbies. Especially from a conservative culture like you both seem to belong to--you can't be blamed for not wanting to kiss a stranger while you're engaged! \n\nAnd what does he look like? Were his profile pictures all filter-free? Especially since he's older than you? That's what I thought."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6gfk75", "title": "Were any \"military comedies\" ever made by film companies of the Axis powers prior to or during WWII?", "selftext": "Hollywood made numerous [\"service comedies\"](_URL_0_) about life in the Armed Services during and just before WWII, mostly set during training with little if any combat onscreen. I've have searched for yet not found anything similar made in Germany, Italy or Japan, but would be fascinated to see one if it exists, especially a German or Japanese one.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gfk75/were_any_military_comedies_ever_made_by_film/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diq3gco", "diqh1hw", "dir6mbh"], "score": [17, 40, 2], "text": ["Follow up question. Would it have been legal to do so in Germany?", "Under the Nazi regime, the film industry became a very controlled enterprise. From June 1933, all cast and crew in Germany had to be licensed by the state and all films approved at every stage of production. By 1937 the industry had effectively been nationalised with the giant UFA forming the core of the business.\n\nWhile there were notable propaganda films such as *Jud S\u00fc\u00df* (Veit Harlan, 1940), *The Eternal Jew* (Fritz Hippler, 1940) and Leni Riefenstahl's seminal masterpiece documentaries *The Triumph of the Will* (1935) and *Olympia* (1936), these were in the minority. They are the best known German films of the era, but when Goebbels set the Nazi film policy, he prioritised entertainment over Nazi politics. In contrast to the Soviet Union, film was to be used to maintain public morale rather than to indoctrinate the population. Indeed, *Robert  &  Bertram* (Hans Heinz Zerlett, 1939) was the only anti-semitic musical comedy ever produced under the Third Reich, the exception in what was otherwise a highly popular genre. \n\nThat's not to say that Nazi cinema in the 1930s was untouched by \"light\" or subtextual propagandising in every film, with situations and characters conforming to Nazi values such as a nuclear family, honesty and ingenuity. Particularly as the war progressed it became more fervent, with the disaster in *Titanic* (Herbert Selpin / Werner Klingler, 1943) being directly caused by English and American capitalist greed at the expense of the noble yet poor European victims.\n\nBut the goal of Goebbels was to provide an evening's escapist entertainment. As such, films about the military are relatively uncommon; when war is confronted (of course with Germanic or Aryan characters in the heroic roles) it is most often through the veil of time, such as the Napoleonic war or Seven Years' War. Or, for those in modern settings like *Three Sergeants* (Werner Hochbaum, 1939), the focus is on the characters' private lives rather than on war glories.\n\nMilitary Comedies wouldn't fit in to the German cinema of the time, where comedies were mostly farces or comedies of errors. They were intended to draw attention away from military matters, so it would defeat the point to have characters in military situations.", "This is not related to the film industry but the Wehrmacht did have other ways to utilize humor.  The official Tiger and Panther tank manuals included funny/risqu\u00e9 situations.  This was mixed with technical information.\n\n\"The illustrations in the Tigerfibel were done by Obergrenadier Gessinger and Unteroffizier Wagner. These included allegorical sketches, technical drawings, photographs and cartoons. The cartoons often involved an attractive blonde woman named Elvira who frequently found herself without any clothes or in a romantic setting with cartoon Tiger crewman. The Tigerfibel also contained many short, memorable verses and limericks referred to as \u201cmorals\u201d or \u201cmottos\u201d. All of this was done to capture and hold the attention of the fledgling trainees.\"\n\nImages in the link are NSFW\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?genre=military+comedy&amp;decade=1940"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.alanhamby.com/tigerfibel.shtml"]]}
{"q_id": "4j0zbd", "title": "Did many of the lands in the British Empire have a sense of how relatively small Britain was?", "selftext": "India, for example, or Australia, or take your pick. Would they have known that Britain is, relatively, fairly small? How did that knowledge, or lack thereof, impact the level of success the British Empire had?   \nI know this isn't a sub for theoretical history; so the idea of \"could that have changed Britain's success\" doesn't belong. I'm just wondering if the conquered lands knew that the size of Britain and were ok with it, or was that not really a factor in any case?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j0zbd/did_many_of_the_lands_in_the_british_empire_have/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d33h8pb"], "score": [28], "text": ["India and Austrialia are relatively later ventures, but one person with an infamously firm grasp of just how small the British Isles were was American independence supporter Thomas Paine. His pamphlet, titled *Common Sense*, was arguably *the* piece of literature which sparked revolutionary fervor in the Thirteen Colonies. I could summarize his viewpoints, but Thomas Paine says it as well as I ever could.\n\n > ...if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which when obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness\u2014There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.\n\n > **Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.** In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself. \n\nI don't know as much about the history of Canada/Australia/India/South Africa/any other particularly large British colony, but these themes of 'a continent perpetually governed by an island' - one of the most famous quotes in Paine's text - could easily be extrapolated onto any of those, especially India and Australia which are still sometimes considered continental landmasses in a way the U.S. never was."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "b4wi5m", "title": "What happened to all of the jewelry and royal accoutrements owned by Elizabeth I?", "selftext": " I\u2019ve always wondered how very powerful and famous persons posessions disappear.  I was thinking about Elizabeth I specifically, as was known to have lots of fancy items but only one ring survives that I know of (but any royalty begs the same question). What happened to all the other things like her necklaces and and rings? It seems like those things would be handed down... where does the jewelry end up when royalty passes on and how does it go \u201cmissing\u201d?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b4wi5m/what_happened_to_all_of_the_jewelry_and_royal/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejab1qj"], "score": [24], "text": ["At her death, Elizabeth I had thousands of garments in her wardrobe, so it was assumed for some time that she never gave anything away. But, in fact, it was quite common for her to offer courtiers pieces of her own clothing (or new clothing made for them) in order to express her continued favor in a cycle of gift-giving that reinforced personal bonds between the monarch and her subjects. Receiving a gown that had been worn by the queen was significant because it was worth a very large amount of money, and also because of its having been personally owned and used by her. The enormous wardrobe she left behind reflects not just royal excess in personal adornment, but also the many gifts she received and her need to give gifts to others.\n\nThe wardrobe was inherited by her successors, James (I) Stuart and Anne of Denmark, and Anne had many of the gowns updated and altered to fit her. This has been interpreted by some as parsimoniousness, perhaps in part due to an anti-Scot prejudice - but it was very, very normal, even for the elite, to make over older clothes. Fabric was incredibly expensive and was understood as a sort of investment for just this purpose. Anne is supposed to have said at first that she would not wear \"cast clothes\" (that is, someone else's cast-offs), but they were simply too good to waste. Other pieces were held onto longer and given out to be turned into costumes for court masques.\n\nThere isn't much more to say about this, unfortunately! The English monarchy didn't hang onto garments as museum pieces the way those of some other countries did. Elizabeth herself had a good number of untouched garments of her siblings even as late as 1600 - seven gowns and twelve kirtles of Mary's, and formal robes, riding coats, doublets with matching hose, a dagger, and more that were Edward VI's. I don't believe Elizabeth deliberately retained any of her father's things, but through taking the old London home of the former Duke of Somerset, Anne of Denmark did end up with a number of Henry VIII's garments (formal robes, cloaks, coats, shirts, etc.) which she never did anything with, and after the execution of Charles I they were sold and subsequently lost."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2eik0w", "title": "Looking back at it, how accurate/precise were your High/middle-school textbooks in relation to your field of study?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eik0w/looking_back_at_it_how_accurateprecise_were_your/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjzxu6c", "cjzyyoa", "cjzz9e7"], "score": [14, 6, 9], "text": ["Looking back, the history textbooks I was exposed to during middle and high school seemed to do a pretty decent job of presenting a basic and accurate historical narrative for most events (including the areas I studied in college and post-BA). While they obviously had their faults and gaps, I have a hard time really looking lowly upon them for what their publishers intended for them to be, basic narrative structures to assist the teacher in teaching the lesson/event. \n\nI'd also say that I personally believe that as far as teaching history goes, the textbook isn't nearly as important as the teacher is. Depending on how well the teacher is able to convey the material through lectures and notes, it can make or break whether or not students come away with an accurate yet rudimentary understanding of historical events. It'd be nice if everyone in high school learned the more intricate details of my field of study, but I don't expect that nor think it to be realistic. \n\nI myself did read books like James Lowen's [*Lies My Teacher Told Me*](_URL_0_) while in High School. Books like that certainly helped expand my interest and knowledge of history,  though I was lucky enough to overcome the \"second option bias\" and understand that while many facets of history are far more complicated than they are presented as in grade school, the basic facts and ideas are still presented factually (most of the time).\n\n/u/NMW wrote a pretty good post over at [/r/badhistory](_URL_1_) that discusses the idea of \"second option bias\" that helps give you an idea of what it is and how it can be avoided with good teaching and personal research.", "I mean ... there's just absolutely nothing in HS textbooks about my topic (not specifically shipbuilding, but 18th century navies in general). Weirdly, what I recall from high school is that the battle of the Virginia Capes wasn't even mentioned as being decisive in Cornwallis' defeat; we just got Concord and Lexington, Valley Forge and then suddenly the Americans won, because 'Merica. ", "In my experience: history as it was taught at secondary school (in the UK) bore almost no relation to the discipline I was taught as an undergraduate. The teaching of history at school was focused entirely on *what* happened, communicated entirely by events, dates and individuals. All that learning became almost useless when I got to university and they started approaching history as an interdisciplinary, analytical field concerned with *why* and *how* things happened.\n\nIn my experience, high school history teaching in the UK is guided entirely by survey textbooks, with almost no reference to or discussion of historiography. I don't think a teacher even uttered the *word* 'historiography' until my final year of school. I read history in my own time \u2014 thanks, in large part, to my father and grandfather being historians \u2014 but at school the teaching was so rudimentary that, looking back on it now, it just seems laughable. \n\nEssentially every British student leaves school able to give a rudimentary explanation of how the First World War started, and can parrot some pseudo-analysis about the alliance system, the naval arms race and pan-Slavism. But there's no deeper understanding, and I see that as a real problem: if you teach history as just 'things that happened in the past', you don't give any real sense of relevance. You just create this teleological narrative that misses out all the stuff that is: a) important, and b) *interesting*.\n\nI get that secondary schools have limited time and resources, and have to cater to a wide range of ability levels, so I'm not suggesting every student should be taught about Marxist interpretations of history, or should be forced to learn economic history. But I feel like you should at least teach students that history is an interpretive subject, and that it's about synthesising not just 'evidence' (which you're sort of taught to do, but mostly only with 'evidence' predefined as 'events') but interpretations, and that fundamentally there is no Unified Historical Truth.\n\nThe thing I really love about history as a field of study is that it teaches you to question assumptions, understand and interrogate biases, and to develop and substantiate arguments based on evidence and logical reasoning. But that kind of history isn't what you're taught at school; that's something I only learned at university. I didn't even go to university to study history, initially \u2014 I started out in political science, but transferred after doing some history classes and discovering this whole new intellectual world.\n\n... /endrant."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.worldcat.org/title/lies-my-teacher-told-me-everything-your-american-history-textbook-got-wrong/oclc/29877812&amp;referer=brief_results", "http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1pqzx5/objectively_speaking_what_the_nazi_regime_did_is/cd54xw0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2lb6hl", "title": "When was the t-shirt created?", "selftext": "Wikipedia states it was sometime between the Spanish-American War and 1913. Why is there such a gap between speculative dates? Were there multiple sources claiming to have first created it around this period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lb6hl/when_was_the_tshirt_created/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cltb4lx"], "score": [30], "text": ["Around the same time as cotton jersey (the material they\u2019re made from) and the knitting machine were invented. The knitting machine dates to 1589 when it was invented by William Lee (1) and by 1598 it had been refined enough to knit finer fibres like silk, to make silk stockings, cotton stockings, and wool. His assistant John Ashton added a divider mechanism that facilitated the process after Lee\u2019s death. \n\nLater, in the 18th century many companies were working to refine the knitting machine to knit with silk, cotton and wool. One of them was the Derby rib, where knits and purls (backwards knit stitch) are alternated, which creates a fabric even more elastic than regular knit. This is just like that stretchy fabric that forms the wrist bands and bottom of clothes like sweatshirts. \n\nT-shirts could have been made as early as 1844 according to this website (2), here\u2019s a knitting machine frame from that era, which knit wide pieces of fabric which would be cut down to make t-shirts, and other underwear. Here\u2019s an image of men\u2019s underwear (3) from that era, made of the same fabric as a t-shirt. The fabric was called Jersey, because it was an export from Jersey in the Channel Islands, but there\u2019s nothing in my skim of sites that attributes that name to more concrete findings. \n\nIn 1916,  Coco Chanel started to use cotton jersey in exterior garments like sweaters, dresses and the like. Keep in mind, then, men wore what we know as tank tops and t-shirts as undershirts, so it would have been viewed as making clothing from a scandalous fabric. \n\n1- _URL_0_\n\n2- _URL_2_\n\n3- _URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3634", "http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/docEX3a04.html?doc=13678&amp;cat=740", "http://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/docEX35a5.html?doc=13661&amp;cat=738"]]}
{"q_id": "33jl08", "title": "Other than Biblical sources, what is the earliest evidence of the existence of the Jewish people?", "selftext": "I know the Torah claims the Jews descend from a single patriarch Abraham (b. ~1800 B.C.E. according to the literal reading of the Torah), and formed a nation upon the Exodus from Egypt and the Revelation at Sinai (~1300 B.C.E.). According to scientific evidence- archaelogical, documentary, or other (maybe even contemporary verifiable accounts from other sources)- what is the earliest time and place that we definitely know they existed? And in what form- as a nation, religion, ethnicity or other.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33jl08/other_than_biblical_sources_what_is_the_earliest/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqliwn1", "cqln7q3", "cqlq3g3", "cqm7kx2"], "score": [87, 20, 21, 2], "text": ["The first verifiable mention of Israel comes from the Merneptah Stele in Egypt, recounting Merneptah's victories over the lands around him.  One of the lines of the stele is \"Israel is laid waste and its seed is no more.\"  This stele dates to roughly 1208 BCE.  Not exactly what you're looking for, but the closest answer I am aware of.", "I actually just recently watched [this](_URL_0_) PBS documentary about the origins of the Israelite peoples. It's really quite fascinating, and I think will help to answer some of the questions you might have, albeit over the course of 100 minutes or so.\n\nBut to answer your question, the basic answer is that, as /u/PrincessAnika pointed out, the Merneptah Stele is the earliest known mention of the existence of a group of people known as Israel.\n", "Funny you should ask this as I just posted something about this a few days ago. Below is a snippet by world renown Egyptologist Eric Cline who wrote about the earliest mentions of Judaism outside of the Torah in one of his books, saying:\n\n >  Merneptah is perhaps best known to students of the ancient Near East as the Egyptian pharaoh who first uses the term \u201cIsrael,\u201d in an inscription dating to this same year (1207 BC). This inscription is the earliest occurrence of the name Israel outside the Bible. In the Pharaonic inscription, the name\u2014written with a special sign to indicate that it is a people rather than just a place\u2014 appears in a brief description of a campaign to the region of Canaan, where the people whom he calls \u201cIsrael\u201d were located.\n\n\n > Source: Cline, Eric H. (2014-03-23). 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) Princeton University Press. (pp. 6-7)\n\nI'm a grad student studying early Christian history but I also have studied other areas around ancient Mesopotamia and Near East and have studied ancient Israel as well so I am a bit well versed on the matter.  If you have any further questions please let me know.", "You're using Jew and Israelite synonynously, when they never were so in the Bible. Jew refers to the tribe of Judah, which is only one of the twelve tribes. I'm not even sure if Jew in the religious sense (rather than Judahite) is an appropriate term before the Babylonian exile of thwle sixth century, as Jew implies common membership in a faith community that many even in the Judahite kingdom (King Manasseh and King Amon) manifestly were not part of. Judaism as a religion isn't really in existence until the very end of the Old Testament era."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qalTJzk4kO0"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "4ewfgi", "title": "When, and why, did people stop living in houses on bridges in major european cities?", "selftext": "I've seen this in films and in some books I've read, that houses were placed on the actual bridges in cities like London and Paris. Why do we not still have people living on London Bridge, for example?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ewfgi/when_and_why_did_people_stop_living_in_houses_on/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d244gim", "d24a5dp"], "score": [84, 30], "text": ["They still exist in areas of France and Italy. [Ponte Vecchio](_URL_0_) is a well known example.\n\nHouses were built on bridges when cities were walled in, as it was difficult to [expand building space](_URL_1_). Once walled cities were no longer a viable defense, cities could grow outward again; so they fell out of favor. The ones that survived have mostly become novelty and been converted to merchant districts, since it's more economically viable.", "In Paris, at the end of the 18th century, there were four bridges (\"ponts\") that had houses: pont au Change, pont Marie, pont Saint-Michel, pont Notre-Dame. The houses had been built there for several reasons, the first one being profit (they were leased). The houses were destroyed between 1786 (pont Notre-Dame) and 1808 (pont Saint-Michel) because the French Revolution had put a temporary stop on operations. The destructions are documented by two famous paintings by Hubert Robert, *La d\u00e9molition des maisons du Pont-au-Change, en 1788* ([link](_URL_0_)) and *La d\u00e9molition des maisons du pont Notre-Dame en 1786* ([link](_URL_2_)). \n\nThere were several reasons for these destructions, from what I've read the main to reasons were harmony (on the pont Marie, several houses had been destroyed by a flood during which several people died, and there were wide gaps) and urbanism (the edicts of the king indicate that after the destruction broad sidewalks will be constructed).\n\nEdit: besides people dying in floods, there were also health concerns (for example the pont Notre-Dame had stagnating bogs that reportedly stank), practical concerns (there was not enough rooms to have wide caves so a lot of commercial professions could not settle there) and structural concerns (some arches of the bridges had to be rebuilt after the house's destructions because people had dug caves in the bridges' structures.\n\n\nSources:  \n[*Les maisons des ponts parisiens \u00e0 la fin du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle : \u00e9tude d'un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne architectural et urbain particulier*](_URL_3_), Youri Carbonnier  \n[*Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments*](_URL_1_), F\u00e9lix Lazare, Louis Lazare  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.aviewoncities.com/florence/pontevecchio.htm", "http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab97"], ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/P1140649_Carnavalet_H_Robert_demolition_maisons_pont_au_Change_rwk.jpg", "https://books.google.fr/books?id=qjlfAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA414&amp;lpg=PA414&amp;dq=destruction+maisons+ponts+paris&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=kuxfORoNhB&amp;sig=0BrVUJ-R_LqnGW1Q3G2AT2vtV6g&amp;hl=fr&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwitwviQnZHMAhXMfxoKHXgeA9c4ChDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&amp;q=destruction%20maisons%20ponts%20paris&amp;f=false", "http://www.carnavalet.paris.fr/fr/collections/la-demolition-des-maisons-du-pont-notre-dame-en-1786", "http://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5702_1998_num_17_4_2009"]]}
{"q_id": "6ghf53", "title": "I'm a wealthy 17th century Frenchman who wants to live in central Paris. Can I just go and buy an \"apartment\"?", "selftext": "I'm looking at an [early 17th century depiction of Paris](_URL_0_). Imagine that I want to live in one of the buildings in the background part of that picture (not the palace itself, but something reasonably close to it). Perhaps I'm a skilled craftsman, businessman, or lawyer; someone with above-average income by urban standards, but not royalty, nobility, or of \"extreme\" riches.\n\nI know that in the countryside or smaller towns, the wealthy tended to buy mansions or at least single-family homes, but I imagine even a well-off individual might not be able to afford an *entire* building in a prime location of the nation's capital, such as one of those depicted in the picture. \n\nDid Paris of that time have a concept of \"strata\", co-operative ownership, or otherwise ownership of a single apartment? If so, could I take on a \"mortgage\" to buy an apartment, or did I have to pay in specie in full? Or was renting (from someone who owned the entire building) the only option available to me? And what would I do if there was a problem in a shared part of the building, like a leaky roof?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ghf53/im_a_wealthy_17th_century_frenchman_who_wants_to/", "answers": {"a_id": ["diqab7c"], "score": [21], "text": ["Followup question:  As an \"bourgeoisie\" apartment dweller as described in the post, what social services were available to me at the time? Would fire protection or garbage pickup be part of what I could expect living in one of those buildings? Before the advent of modern policing, what protection against burglary could I rely on? And would I send my kids to a dedicated \"school\", or are church schooling or private tutoring the only education options available?\n\nI'm curious about these topics because based on a common narrative, \"modern\" city services and mechanics (police, fire departments, strata ownership, etc), is only considered to emerge in the 19th century. It's easy, therefore, to imagine cities before that as being archaic, unorganized population centers. \n\nBut looking at the picture above (early 17th century, i.e. of *The Three Musketeers* era), the city strikes me as a fairly complex and organized apparatus that would necessarily involve urban planning, building codes, civil engineering, and a bureaucracy to manage all that. So I wonder what other services and mechanics modern urban dwellers take for granted were in fact well-established in Paris or other capitals as early as the 17th century (or perhaps even earlier), but not well-recognized nowadays."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Palais-Royal.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3plkbi", "title": "Is the amount of infidelity portrayed in AMC's Mad Men accurate? Was infidelity commonplace in married men during the 60's?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3plkbi/is_the_amount_of_infidelity_portrayed_in_amcs_mad/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cw7pfaz"], "score": [31], "text": ["The only study of human sexuality from anywhere close to that time period that I am aware of is the Kinsey study. \n\nKinsey estimates that \"approximately 50% of all married males had some extramarital experience at some time during their married lives\" and that \"26% of females had had extramarital sex by their forties.\"\n\n[Extramaritial](_URL_0_)\n\nSo while it may or may not reach the levels found in a fictional setting, infidelity was something that was not uncommon. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html#extramaritalcoitus"]]}
{"q_id": "3dbqcl", "title": "In The Godfather Part 2, when Vito migrates to the US from Sicily, Immigration changes his last name from Andolini to Corleone (the town he his from), did this ever actually happen to immigrants in the 19th or early 20th centuries?", "selftext": "If it did occur, why? How common was it? Did it depend on the immigrants? What countries did this? Or was this all a myth created simply for a story?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dbqcl/in_the_godfather_part_2_when_vito_migrates_to_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ct3oyvt", "ct3v5oa", "ct41c55", "ct4s4o4", "ct68569"], "score": [84, 38, 10, 4, 3], "text": ["Disclaimer - not historian just a hobbyist.\n\nIt is a myth, at least as far as Ellis Island is concerned. Individuals coming to the US might change their name to help with assimilation process. It could also have been done to signify a fresh start to a new life in the states.\n\nSome immigrants also changed their names to make them more \"american.\" By that I mean that their name could be more easily pronounced.\n\nAs the second link suggests, many name change stories are just that, family stories. They provided a flawed connection to the family's initial entrance to the states.\n\nSource - _URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_", "In the film, the Immigration official didn't deliberately change Vito's name- he misheard the Italian translator and marked his name down as \"Corleone.\" It was a bureaucratic mix-up that Vito never corrected.", "Hello everyone, \n\nIn this thread, there have been a large number of responses which break our [rules concerning personal anecdotes](_URL_3_#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes), only relating personal, family stories. While they're sometimes quite interesting, they're unverifiable, impossible to cross-reference, and not of much use without more context. [This comment](_URL_0_) explains the reasoning behind this rule. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_3_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. \n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_1_), or a [META thread](_URL_2_[META]). Thank you!", "In addition to the fact that there weren't actually Ellis Island name changes, surnames based on geographical origin are common in Italy anyway. Italians have more surnames than any other ethnicity in the world--despite the fact that regular people only really started using them after the middle ages. Most of them are based on personal characteristics (ie: Russo means red, so like, someone with red hair), who their father is (ie: pretty much any surname beginning with \"Di\"), what they did for a living (ie: Palmieri means \"palmer\" or priest), OR where they were from (Like Napolitano, Romano, etc.). \n\nInterestingly, the very common last name Esposito *possibly* indicates that someone's ancestor was an orphan (espositi were orphans, derived from the same latin word as our word \"exposed\").\n\nI know we're not doing personal anecdotes here, but just for example, my last name is also the name of a very small village in Italy. My family didn't move here from there, they moved from another town, but it is possible that they lived there originally--although the name is both descriptive and possibly indicative of an occupation. \n\nI'm not as familiar with the naming conventions of other ethnicities, but I'd imagine that geographical surnames are common in most. ", "I feel the prevailing view that no errors were made at Ellis Island is not correct.  I actually feel stronger than that, but I'll leave it as 'not correct.' A moderator has told me, essentially, to put up or shut up. So, here's to \"putting up.\"  Quoting from the Smithsonian magazine citation: \n > \u201cNo names were changed at Ellis Island because no names were taken at Ellis Island.\u201d Instead, inspectors only checked the people passing through the island against the records of the ship on which they were said to arrive. If the name was misspelled, it was done so on the ship\u2019s manifest documents when a person bought their ticket in Europe. (Some immigration clerks on Ellis Island even helped correct these mistakes.) Regardless, these spellings *didn\u2019t typically follow* people to their new lives in America.^1 [my emphasis]\n\nNote the closing equivocation, despite the opening broad claim to perfection. The cited USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) \"Immigrant Name Changes\" website makes this similar claim:\n > [The manifests] were created abroad, beginning close to the immigrant's home when the immigrant purchased his ticket. It is unlikely that anyone at the local steamship office was unable to communicate with this man. His name was most likely recorded with a high degree of accuracy at that time. It is true that *immigrant names were mangled* in the process. The first ticket clerk may have misspelled the name (assuming there was a \"correct spelling\"--a big assumption). If the immigrant made several connections in his journey, several records might be created at each juncture. Every transcription of his information afforded an opportunity to misspell or alter his name. Thus the more direct the immigrant's route to his destination, the less likely his name changed in any way.^2 [my emphasis]\n\nIn my view, a mangled name is a changed name. Now lets look at the New York Public Library's effort entitled \"Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)\".  It starts\n > Between 1892 and 1954, over twelve million people entered the United States through the immigration inspection station at Ellis Island, a small island located in the upper bay off the New Jersey coast. There is a myth that persists in the field of genealogy, or more accurately, in family lore, that family names were changed there. They were not. Numerous blogs, essays, and books have proven this. Yet the myth persists; a story in a recent issue of The New Yorker suggests that it happened. This post will explore how and why names were not changed. It will then tell the story of Frank Woodhull, an almost unique example of someone whose name was changed,...^3\n\nIf you are left-brained, the NY Public Library has provided our disproof by example.^4 \"Frank Woodhull, an **almost unique** example\" [emphasis added] is all we need to throw a flag on the claim of Ellis Island perfection. QED. Note the caveats in all the citations.\n\nBut most of us hereabouts are not left-brained, so let's try to bound the issue, and Google \"data entry error rate.\"  The first return^5 gives \"the average benchmark of a 1% error rate in manual data entry.\"  The third return,^6 from Panko and Shidler of the University of Hawaii, cites a study by Mattson  &  Baars [1992] \"Typing study with secretaries and clerks. Nonsense words. Per nonsense word.\" This study gives an error rate of 7.4%.  European last names might be considered more or less nonsense words, but Panko and Shidler say \"the error rate for more complex logic errors is about 5%\".^6  With 12 million people we have 12 million last names. 1% of errors in 12 million is 120,000; 5% is 600,000; 7.4% is 888,000. All non-zero numbers.\n\nBehind the _URL_6_ paywall on webpage _URL_3_ is the arrival manifest of SS Aquitania at New York, 28 Sep 1923.  My grandfather and the ticket selling clerk did their work properly (See the discussions above.)  Someone at Ellis Island, not of the cruise line, changed out a vowel.\n\n----------\n^1 Smithsonian Magazine. _URL_1_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^2 USCIS. _URL_5_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^3 New York Public Library. _URL_0_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^4 \"If we can find one member of the specified set for which the example of a member of the set for which the specified properties do not hold is called a counterexample of the statement. Stating a counterexample of a conditional statement will thus disprove the statement. Note that here by 'disprove it' I mean 'prove it to be false.' \" Disproof by Counterexample. _URL_2_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^5 When Good Info Goes Bad: The Real Cost of Human Data Errors \u2013 Part 1 of 2. _URL_4_ Accessed 16 July 2015\n\n^6 Basic Error Rates. _URL_7_.  Accessed 16 July 2015"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/", "http://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/immigrant-name-changes"], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sxxhd/meta_why_is_a_personal_account_given_by_a/ce2cyv0", "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&amp;subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&amp;title=", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes"], [], ["http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island", "http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/#pABcoDkROUjz4Hk2.99", "http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/Logic/ProofTheory/DisproofByCounterexample.htm", "http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=try&amp;db=nypl&amp;h=4028173829", "http://ungerboeck.com/blog/when-good-info-goes-bad-the-real-cost-of-human-data-errors-part-1-of-2", "http://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/genealogy/genealogy-notebook/immigrant-name-changes", "Ancestry.com", "http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/Basic.htm"]]}
{"q_id": "6kxmqj", "title": "Was there ethnic cleansing in Israel/Palestine in 1948? What caused it? Is there a historical consensus on what happened?", "selftext": "Between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from  Israel/Palestine before/during/after the 1948 Arab Israeli war. In the Wikipedia article on the [1948 Palestinian Exodus](_URL_0_) there are reports that some claim the Arab generals encouraged them to leave, that most left on their own accord, or that many were forced to leave by the IDF or Haganah. I know this is a heavily politicized event and would just like to know what really happened. I could not find another post that relates to this exact question.  ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kxmqj/was_there_ethnic_cleansing_in_israelpalestine_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djqbkdw"], "score": [19], "text": ["Hi there,\n\nThis was something I explored extensively [here](_URL_0_), in a previous thread. It's an old thread, but I still think it rings true.\n\nSome basic responses, though:\n\n >  Between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from Israel/Palestine before/during/after the 1948 Arab Israeli war\n\nThis is incorrect. The number was likely closer to 700,000 total, with around 250,000-300,000 of them being expelled (though perhaps less, depending on who you ask; Benny Morris's estimates suggest closer to 225,000 at the most). There were around 800,000 (or up to a million) Jews who ended up leaving Arab countries before/during/after this war. I'm not familiar with anything that suggests 250,000-300,000 Palestinians left, and the Israeli government's estimates on its own were of at least 500,000, if memory serves.\n\nNow, whether that meets the definition of \"ethnic cleansing\" is actually a lot more complicated than one might think. The reason being, as I think I've explained elsewhere in this sub before, ethnic cleansing is both a politically charged and definitionally dubious term. There's no international law that clearly defines ethnic cleansing, and there certainly wasn't one back in 1948. So it's hard to retroactively apply terms. Nevertheless, if one defines ethnic cleansing solely as \"forcible deportation of civilians\", then yes, ethnic cleansing occurred on all sides of the war. However, if one adds in another component, which is the requirement that the main motivation be ethnicity, one runs into a problem: the motivations of these actions for both sides were more varied than ethnicity alone, and included things like legitimate security concerns where civilians had been aiding and participating in the war effort and would be left behind enemy lines. These types of questions have been litigated before, and are more complex than one might think. And when one considers another possible wrinkle, which is the meaning of the word \"systematically\", it gets even more difficult, as Israeli commanders acted essentially on their own for example and without any real central directive to expel Palestinian Arabs in particular. This is why Israel's population distribution of Palestinian Arabs after the war was lopsided; the south and north were handled differently, for example.\n\nI always try to veer away from using politically charged terms that have developed recently and applying them to historical events that predate said terms for that reason. I think there's an argument to be made both ways on the issue, and it's an interesting one, but of little value to ponder too deeply."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus"], "answers_urls": [["https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/244jny/on_a_forum_a_poster_claimed_today_that_all/ch3v5ni/"]]}
{"q_id": "2jvxcc", "title": "Did Nebuchadnezzar actually go insane and live in a cave like the bible said?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jvxcc/did_nebuchadnezzar_actually_go_insane_and_live_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clflbqi"], "score": [63], "text": ["So, the account you're referring to, for those who don't know, appears in Daniel 4:22ff.  \n\nFirst, the best commentary on Daniel out there is by John Collins in the Hermeneia series.  The thing is a master work.  I would encourage anybody interested in Daniel to check it out.\n\nSecond, we have a lot of historical problems in the book of Daniel--most notably the names of the \"Babylonian\" kings.  They appear out of order, the narrative turns to one king, then to another, then back to the Nebuchadnezzar, we have no idea who \"Darius the Mede\" is (likely a misremembering of the role of Media/Persia during later years).  \n\nThe answer to your question: no. Nebuchadnezzar did not go insane and live in a cave.  The text in Daniel is more likely about Nabonidus.  We know that Nabonidus was exiled, we also have a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrayerNab or whatever its sigla is--it was for sure found in cave 4 at Qumran...it might just be 4QPNab or something to that effect...either way).  This particular text, while fragmentary, is quite similar to what we see in Daniel 4, but actually names Nabonidus.  (There are also a lot of source critical issues with the Aramaic portions of Daniel...the Aramaic section of Daniel likely floated around in several pieces and was later brought together.  There's an article by a guy named Gammie [\"The Classification, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel\"] where he deals with all this stuff, but for the entire 12 chapter book.  I've been meaning to get back to /u/400-rabbits about doing another podcast with him on Daniel because of all the awesome issues with the book.  So keep your eyes out for that at some point.)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5edo8s", "title": "Aqueducts are vulnerable to being cut during a siege. What measures have been taken historically either to mitigate the loss of external water sources, or to prevent the damage itself from occurring?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5edo8s/aqueducts_are_vulnerable_to_being_cut_during_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dacb0bz"], "score": [6], "text": ["Followup, does this also apply to rivers? has anyone ever tried to cut off the water supply by rerouting a river."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1jpdyq", "title": "Has a \"secret society\" ever held large influence over any government?", "selftext": "By secret society, I mean anything ranging from The Illuminati to The Knights Templar to the Freemasons. \nEDIT: I apologize, I guess this is more vague than I thought. Did any group that is not a political party have an effect on the outcome of history? An example would be \"The illuminati controlled President Nixon and forced him to do X.\" Basically what I'm looking for is... has any government/leader been used as a puppet, with any of these societies pulling the strings?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jpdyq/has_a_secret_society_ever_held_large_influence/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbgyjbj", "cbh20bu", "cbh3mlg", "cbh4tw1", "cbh6ma3", "cbh6p1k", "cbha6dx", "cbhah5f"], "score": [9, 14, 11, 6, 2, 26, 3, 6], "text": ["How are you defining a \"secret society\" in this context?", "The Knights Hospitalier owned at various time the islands of Rhodes and Malta, but I'm not sire they count as secret.", "How do you define \"large influence\"? A substantial number of major figures in the American Revolution and early American politics were Masons, so that may qualify in some sense, but I don't think membership in a society necessarily means the society itself has a \"large influence\".\n", "What do you mean by large influence? King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to The Knights Templar but then they were arrested and/or killed.", "While not exactly a society, you could say the Borgia's influence in both Spain and the Papal States. They had 2 Pope's (Callixtus III and Alexander VI), great influence over Pope Innocent VIII, bought the Papacy for Alexander VI, decimated the Papal Guard with his awful son Juan and his other son Cesare was insane, but an amazing commander whom he wanted to groom to become the next Pope. \n\nAll in all the Borgia's knew how to control through power, deception and finances. Both horrifying and beautiful in how they played the game of life.\n\nEDIT: I was referencing Alexander VI's (Rodrigo Borgia) sons ", "There were two fairly notorious, fairly initially-secret organizations in post-Restoration, pre-1945 Japanese society that were instrumental in shaping the face of Japense ultranationalism: the Black Ocean Society and its offshoot, the Black Dragon Society.\n\nThe Black Ocean Society was mainly composed of ex-samurai who were displaced by Japan's rapid industrialization. Over time, their numbers swelled. They eventually incorporated several criminal elements. This merely added to their nascent violence, resulting in a variety of criminal wars with the seedier elements of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese society.\n\n(At this point, it sort of becomes a pulp novel. The Black Ocean Society had - allegedly - a full-fledged training base. Stories tell of assassinations, bomb plots, prostitute-spies, moonlight chases across rooftops, knife fights, and more! Not *really* historical but definitely historically flavored.)\n\nBy the turn of the 20th Century, the Black Ocean Society was strong, influential, and pervasive enough to actually be of some use to the government. They were strongly nationalist and believed in the imperial mission as well as the superiority of the Japanese nation. In the Korean and Chinese wars, they served as informal intelligence agents and - some say - as saboteurs for the Army and Navy.\n\nHowever, given its criminal elements, the Black Ocean Society was still held as being a little distasteful and certainly not something the new members of Japan's middle and upper classes would participate in. Enter the Black Dragon Society. Its members included cabinet ministers and professional spies. It was said that the Black Dragon Society also had a spy school and a mini army of highly trained agents. In short, the Black Dragons performed much the same function as the Black Ocean and created all sorts of chaos in occupied China.\n\n---\n\nCuriously, it has been speculated that due to both societies' ultranationalist outlook, their adherence to ancient customs, and their strong vaguely quasi-mystical traditions, that they may have influenced the formation of the Thule Society in Germany.", "In pre-WWII Germany The Thule Society was an occultist group with strong nationalist and racial beliefs  that formed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei which Adolf Hitler would form into the NSDAP. There isn't much evidence Hitler himself was ever a Thule member, but its membership does read like a Who's Who of many power Nazi party officials. Many of the Thule Society's occultic teachings would find place with Heinrich Himmler who incorporated a lot of occultic symbolism and occultic ritual into the SS, even though such occultism was publicly suppressed by law among the general population. As a result there are a lot of conspiracies tying the Thule Society to the Nazis.", "The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was a secret society from 1858-1924 with its main goal of an independent Ireland. The Brotherhood prominently was involved in the election of Charles Stewart Parnell - Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and President of the Land League, altogether one of the most powerful men in Ireland from ~1879-1886. Allegedly (the source for this is pretty sketchy and we may never know if it's true) Parnell swore an oath to the Brotherhood after his release from Kilmainham Prison. \n\nIRB members infiltrated or founded almost every organisation of Irish nationalism and independence - from the Irish Volunteers to the Gaelic Athletic Association. In 1916 using their influence in the Irish Volunteers they orchestrated the Easter Rising against the British. Michael Collins was an enthusiastic member of the Brotherhood and President of the organisation from 1920-24; the first President of the Irish Republic Eamon de Valera was also a reluctant member of the IRB, though he joined it during the Easter Rising as a necessary way of gaining information about the Rising rather than an ideological inclination (he was opposed to secret societies).\n\nDuring the Irish War of Independence the IRA took prominence over the IRB and membership waned. The IRB split over the treaty issue - whether to accept the Irish Free State or to fight for full independence and a fully united Ireland - and finally dissolved itself in 1924.\n\nThis might make the IRB seem like a strong a centralised force that controlled every facet of Irish republicanism, but in actuallity the strength and organisation waned throughout its life - it was paramount in 1916, very effective during the Land War of 1879-1882 but throughout its life it was riddled with internal conflict over the direction of the organisation. While it never directly held influence over a formal government its connections along with the American Clan-na-Gael with the leadership of the Irish republican movement (Valera, Collins, Parnell) deserves special mention - though its connection with Valera and Parnell was more one of convenience and shared goals rather than actual commitment. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "32sv1n", "title": "How did East and West Germany differ in how they dealt with the legacy of Nazism, both officially (school curricula, official policy, etc) and unofficially (popular media, culture)? To what extent did their respective systems of government enable or inhibit their reconciliations with the past?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32sv1n/how_did_east_and_west_germany_differ_in_how_they/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqeqqa7", "cqer42d", "cqestoo"], "score": [3, 27, 36], "text": ["Not an expert but as there's no real answer yet:\n\nWest Germany: a lot of Nazis became part of the system, judges and politicians (not the elite, but party members of the NSDAP). Sorting them out was a major point of the youth movements in '68 and the development of the \"German Fall\"  , the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The young Germans basically blamed their parents to be old Nazis and holding onto the old system. Though the allies forced the German population to look at the horrors of the concentration camp and the third Reich (also the Nuremberg trials made it clear for the German public what had happened) . So no one publicly stood by the old times, though a lot of people kept their copy of Mein Kampf. The Germans also quickly forgot the war because the economy was booming and life post war was good. German Gem\u00fctlichkeit and Heimatsgef\u00fchl (longing or feeling for home, kinda like patriotism but I wouldn't call it that cause it has a different meaning in Germany) developed in movies and music (Volksmusik, Schlager). The youth began to listen to rock n roll and rolling stones, and setting themselves apart of the elder generation. In Germany it was next to rebellion also distancing from the old times. Real  reconciliation started when the generation, which was born after the war or was to young, gained more and more social and political power (~70s).\n\nEast Germany (less sure about this): I think the Soviets portrayed west Germany as 'old Nazis' , and used it for their propaganda: west Germany equals evil. As far as I know real reconciliation never occured, but of course there were people from the SS/NSDAP living in the eastern zone, which was ignored by the regime. \n\nI don't know if it helped but that's what I recall from history class in (Western, but unified) Germany.\n\nEdit: the part with the movies", "East Germany, as a matter of political theory, displaced blame for the atrocities of the Nazis onto West Germany. Fascism was characterized as a bourgeois government form, which had naturally been eradicated by the rise of Socialism in the East, but was still alive in the bourgeois West. There's a lot more theory here, but that's the gist. Transferring the blame was made easier by the fact that most Eastern politicians were Communists from before WWII, and had thus been persecuted by the Nazis.\n\nThis is in contrast with West Germany, where after 'denazification,\" many former Nazis were allowed to return to positions of power. This was used in propaganda by the GDR (East) against the FRG (West). \n\nOn the other hand, official commemoration of the Holocaust didn't really happen in the East. Monuments listed the dead by country, but didn't differentiate ethnic Poles from Polish Jews, for example. \n\nOssies also focused on WWII as a class struggle. In Sachsenhausen, the closest concentration camp to Berlin, there is a huge granite obelisk, with red granite triangles on it. Red triangles were given to political prisoners in the camps--mostly Communists. (Pink triangles went to homosexuals, black to criminals. Communist Jews wore a red triangle and a yellow together to form a star. There are [more triangles](_URL_0_), as well.) So, rather than tell the story of the mostly Jewish victims of the camp, they focused on the Communist martyrs. There's a huge interpretive building outside the camp as well, with big Socialist Realist stained glass works telling how the Communists fought gloriously against the Nazis.\n\nIn the West, the crimes of the Nazis weren't really grappled with until the 1960s, when young people who had come of age after WWII started poking around and being outraged at some of the history behind the people in charge. In the 1940s and 50s, the control of the Western Allies over the FRG was more visible (the occupation of Germany only came to a legal end in 1991) and the Allies were worried about creating a strong, democratic, allied state more than they were worried about justice for past crimes. It was easier to cooperate with former Nazis than to wipe them out of the picture. (after all, almost everyone with experience in running the country for more than a dozen years was a Nazi).\n\nAs the Cold War dragged on, Eastern Europe became a haven for former Nazis--because the East used the former Nazis in the West as a propaganda tool, they didn't want to find former Nazis in their own backyards, and so didn't cooperate with trying or extraditing them. On the other hand, West Germany continued to grapple with its Nazi roots, and understand, atone for and come to terms with the horrors of the past in a way that East Germany did not, and, I would argue, that was based on the openness allowed by a democratic form of government, as opposed to a dictatorship.\n\nI hope this answers some of your questions.", "I'm not a historian, but I wrote a paper on how East Germany dealt with the legacy of fascism while I studied abroad in Berlin, so I've dusted that off. I can't speak to how W. Germany dealt with it, though, so I'll give half the picture and I'm sure someone else will come along with the other half. (Jesus Christ this became a lot longer than I anticipated, sorry in advance.)\n\nThe DDR (E. Germany), to begin with, had a problem of establishing state legitimacy that the BRD (W. Germany) didn't really have. To gain this legitimacy, the DDR essentially built up a \"foundation myth\" of sorts entirely centered on the history of communism in Germany. The liberation of the concentration camps (especially Buchenwald) was attributed to communist-led resistance within the camps. The promulgated narrative was of German communists leading ethnically and politically diverse bands of antifascists from within Germany itself to conquer fascism.\n\nSo, in tune with this narrative, after the workers' uprising in June 1953, which attested to the shaky legitimacy of the Communist regime, Buchenwald was turned into a national memorial, and a memorial was erected to Ernst Thaelmann, the murdered leader of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany, at the Buchenwald crematorium. \n\nLike Jews were forced to wear a gold star, communist victims in the Holocaust were forced to wear a red triangle, which became a symbol of heroic resistance in art. Socialist realist novelists like Marchwitza, Bredel, and Gotsche told stories spanning generations, constructing a specifically German socialist tradition, progressing from defeat to ultimate salvation by the Red Army.\n\nEast German historians used Marxist linearity and \"historical materialism\" to link the Communist Party to uprisings in German history like the medieval Peasants' War and the 1848 revolution. Marxist thought considers socialism the natural result of revolution stemming from the oppression of the proletariat inherent in capitalist structures, so Marxist East German historians re-interpreted fascism as the last gasp of the elites to protect their interests from the laborers. With this re-interpretation, antifascism and anticapitalism became more or less synonymous. The Berlin Wall was characterized as the \"[antifascist protective wall](_URL_0_).\"\n\nGerman monopolists were blamed for instigating WWII, and the non-resisting majority were not accounted for. WWII was a story of the superior social structures of the socialists inevitably defeating imperial fascists, and the DDR really pushed the narrative that it had always been communist and was the first victim of Nazi aggression. Non-communist Nazi resistance, the racial aspect of Nazism, and the mass collaboration allowing for the SS terror system went largely unmentioned. Mass exterminations were largely left out of the narrative as well, because DDR historians were only allowed to understand Nazism in the economic sense of state monopoly capitalism. Non-political victims of the Third Reich were by and large ignored.\n\nBecause of the \"scientific\" inevitability of Marxist history, individuals were largely absolved from blame, and the lesson taken from the rise of fascism was something akin to \"don't be capitalist.\" As (at least according to the narrative) antifascists, East Germany considered itself a co-victor in WWII. My paper has a quote from a DDR student saying \"When I imagined WWII as a child, it was as if everyone had somehow been a member of the White Rose or had met secretively in back courtyards and basements to organize resistance and print pamphlets.\" \n\nNaturally, considering the official historical narrative, many former Nazis made careers in the East German regime. Arno von Lenski, for instance, was an assessor of the Volksgerichthof in Nazi Germany, in a capacity where his signature was appended to multiple death sentences, but in the DDR, Ulbricht awarded him the \"Medal for Fighters against Fascism 1933-45.\" Ernst Grossmann was an SS guard at Sachsenhausen, which largely housed political prisoners, and served on the Central Committee of SED in the DDR, and was decorated as a \"Hero of Work.\" These are two of many examples of the blind eye turned towards the contributions of individual collaborators in the Nazi regime.\n\nOn committees such as the *Opfer des Faschismus* (Victims of Fascism) and the Union of Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (VVN), both party-sanctioned groups, non-political victims were originally included, but by the late '40s were already marginalized. Even non-communist political victims, like the supporters of the July 20 coup, were excluded from the VVN in 1949.\n\nEntire concentration camps were forgotten in the official record, like Marzahn, which held Sinti and Roma but not communists. It took until the 1980s until DDR historians could discuss Jewish persecution and bourgeois antifascist opposition, but even in 1984 lesbians were arrested for visiting Ravensbrueck, the site of persecutions of homosexuals. The Volkskammer did not accept German responsibility for the Holocaust until April 12, 1990.\n\n**Sources:**\n\nBrinks, J.H. \"Poilitcal Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic.\" *Journal of Contemporary History* 32.2 (1997): 207-17.\n\nDiner, Dan. \"On the Ideology of Antifascism.\" Trans. Christian Gundermann. *New German Critique* 67 (1996): 123-32.\n\nHell, Julia. \"At the Center an Absence: Foundationalist Narratives of the GDR and the Legitimatory Discourse of Antifascism.\" *Monatshefte* 84.1 (1992): 23-45.\n\nJurausch, Konrad H. \"The Failure of East German Antifascism: Some Ironies of History as Politics.\" *German Studies Review* 14.1 (1991): 84-102.\n\nMonteath, Peter. \"Narratives of Fascism in the GDR: Buchenwald and the 'Myth of Antifascism'.\" *The European Legacy* 4.1 (1999): 99-112. \n\nPlum, Catherine. \"The Children of Antifascism: Exploring Young Historians Clubs in the GDR.\" *German Politics  &  Society* 26.1 (2008): 1-28.\n\nTimm, Angelika. \"The Burdened Relationship between the GDR and Israel.\" *Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy.* Budapest: Central European UP, 1997: 166-180.\n\n**TL;DR** East Germany created a foundation myth regarding antifascism and socialism which promulgated the narrative that East Germany was socialist and had always been socialist, backed by Marxist historical materialism. The myth essentially turned East Germans from promoters, collaborators, and silent toleraters of Nazism to victims of fascism, at the expense of pretty much every non-communist victim of the Nazi regime."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges"], ["http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistischer_Schutzwall"]]}
{"q_id": "4388xt", "title": "How were headaches understood in pre-modern medicine?", "selftext": "I very frequently suffer from severe headaches/migraines,and recently became curious about how these ailments were diagnosed, understood, and treated before the development of (broadly speaking) modern medicine.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4388xt/how_were_headaches_understood_in_premodern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czgdtyw", "czgeywk"], "score": [6, 56], "text": ["I just read a book (The Technology of Orgasm by Maines) that states headaches were historically believed to be a common symptom of \"female hysteria\". Hysteria was believed to have various causes at different times in history. Some people thought it was caused by the womb wandering around the body and interfering with other functions, others thought there was a build-up of fluids in it that had to be coaxed out. There were a lot of other crazy theories, too many to mention. A common treatment was to induce \"hysterical paroxysm\" by pelvic massage, which as described sounds an awful lot like masturbation to orgasm (but doctors assured each other it wasn't because as they all knew, *real* orgasms could only happen during penetration). Funny enough, for mild headaches, sex or masturbation is still recommended as a treatment option.", "Classical medical writers understood there were different types of headaches. The basic classifications are picked up by their medieval Persian, Arab, Greek and Latin students, although the names and types can shift rather confusingly.\n\nAretaeus of Cappadocia in the 1st century AD described three types of headache based on duration and presentation. *Cephalalgia* are characterized by short duration (defined as \"even if it continues for several days\"). Chronic headache he calls *cephalea* or *heterocrania* based on location in the head. If it's a chronic or recurrent pain that jumps around to different places, *cephalea*. Oh, but then there is *heterocrania*:\n\n >  The pain remains confined to a certain part of the head. Once it has started abruptly, it brings about horrible and terrifying things. The face is distorted spasmodically. The eyes remain glassy and rigid like horns or move to and fro forcedly. The patient is dizzy. He suffers from pain deep in the eyes...His sinews hurt suddenly as if someone has beaten them with a piece of wood. He is nauseous, vomits, the vomit is bilious. He collapses...He moves away from the light, the dark makes the disease less serious. His sense of smell is disturbed. He is weighed down by life, searches for death.\n\n...You were asking about migraines?\n\nIn large part through Alexander of Tralles, Aretaeus' classifications are picked up by many Greek and Latin medieval authors. Heterocrania becomes *hemicrania*, I guess because it is clearer to say \"this specific headache is in one place\" instead of Aretaeus' \"a headache in one place, but it can be in different places in different people\".\n\nAlexander is more interested in what causes headaches than Aretaeus was explicitly, although the basics for what caused *hemicrania*--an excess of bad humors--were apparent in Aretaeus' prescribed treatment if hemicrania grew too terrible and lasted too long. Buckle your seatbelt, because here we go:\n\n1. Sometimes the pain is mild and the treatment is equally mild. (Really, that's all he says here.)\n\n2. If the pain lasts and gets worse, bleed 'im! \"Incise the vein at the elbow. First, have the patient drink wine for two days.\" (I *think* the point is hydration, but, you know.) And this must be accompanied by emptying out phlegm and toxins through existing orifices: \"empty out the bowels by a laxative or a clyster.\" Then \"At one time you drive out through the nose with sneezing remedies, at another through the mouth with expectorants.\"\n\n3. The next step is to bleed the patient on the forehead.\n\n4. After that: \"Shave off his hair and place a cup at the crown of the head...carry out a good-sized incision at the crown. Incisions that get to the bone are beneficial to hemicrania.\"\n\n5. And if that *still* doesn't work? Well, you might die, but otherwise you get to experience the thrill *again*. \"If the wounds [from the crown incision] have become scars, then cut out the arteries...one is situated behind the ear, clearly pulsating.\"\n\nShould you be so fortunate as to live during the 12th century, on the other hand, you might find the cures suggested by the *Antidotarium Nicolai* a bit more palatable. This text, as its name suggests, is a list of mostly herbal or herbal-ish antidotes for various conditions. It links headache with chronic upset stomach (which, by the way, Constantinus Africanus associates with his version of migraine *in women*, an interesting mention of gendered medicine), epilepsy, leprosy and paralysis as conditions that make it difficult for people to talk.\n\nThe *Antidotarium* prescribes an herbal remedy it calls *Yeralogodion memphytum*, which is germander, for its two types of headaches: \"cephalarcia\" and \"emigrania.\"\n\nCephalarcia is a recognizable corruption of cephalalgia, and I'm sure you can see where this is going: hemicrania thus becomes emigrania--and through French, our modern *migraine*.\n\nOh, and medieval headaches were as bad as those of 1st century Cappadocia. Miraculous cures for hemicrania are very fair game in the collections of miracles gathered and submitted for canonization of new saints in the later Middle Ages. And it's the *Antidotarium* that perhaps says it in the most medieval way possible:\n\n\"Those [suffering from headaches] who are so vexed by turmoil in the head that they seem possessed by a demon.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1a894i", "title": "Wednesday AMA: We are UOUPv2 and alltorndown. Ask us anything about the Mongolian Empire!", "selftext": "From the rise of Temujin to the fall of the Khanate we'll answer any questions you have about the Mongolian Empire.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a894i/wednesday_ama_we_are_uoupv2_and_alltorndown_ask/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8uzcyo", "c8uzdgt", "c8uzf90", "c8uzfkp", "c8uzgoe", "c8v05q4", "c8v0csf", "c8v0t9n", "c8v12ac", "c8v12se", "c8v1b52", "c8v2nu9", "c8v310b", "c8v4azl", "c8v4rgl", "c8v50t2", "c8v527g", "c8v60xf", "c8v6fly", "c8v6v8x", "c8v7fun", "c8v8ggo", "c8va8qa", "c8vacc0", "c8vdmzk", "c8vfv9z", "c8vht25", "c8zcv6z"], "score": [13, 8, 5, 4, 7, 12, 4, 5, 5, 7, 5, 8, 3, 3, 6, 6, 3, 4, 6, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3], "text": ["Thanks for doing this you two!\n\nPrior to the establishment of the Mongol Empire, how did the various groups in the region identify ethnically? And what effect did the establishment of the Mongol Empire have on establishing a congruent \"Mongolian\" ethnicity (assuming it did)?", "One thing I have heard repeatedly on this subreddiy was the Mongols haf superiot logistics.  Could you expand on this?", "What did the Mongols do with their plundered wealth and booty? Do they ride their horses wearing gold and trinkets? Also, who were the people that traded with the Mongols? Was there any backlash for trading with people that were conquering everyone?", "Could either one of you explain the origins of the legal code of Yassa, its importance, and how it may/may not ( I dont know) have had an impact on subsequent political development over the lands the Mongols conquered and ruled? was their a lasting impact of this law on the non-mongols they ruled?", "What was the greatest defeat the Mongols suffered and how did they rebound from it.", "How much do we know about the political situation in Mongolia before Temujin? I find figures like Khabul Khan and Bodonchar really fascinating, but I've never been able to find much about them beyond the tantalising, obviously at least semi-mythical references in the SH. Did they really exist? Did they unite the Mongols before Temujin did? Was it unusual that Temujin himself to be born into a period when the Mongols didn't have central leadership?", "How could the mongols maintain an empire as large as they had? What happened to a town if it surrendered peacefully? Are 'mongoloid' features (which I think is the formal term for people who 'look Asian') all derived from Mongols, or Gengiz Khan, or did Chinese people look like that even before that? \n\n\nWhat were the main reasons for the downfall of the Khanates (successors to the Mongol empire). Why did the mongols convert to Islam? Did the Persians convert to Islam due to Mongol hegemony?\n\n\nCan the Turkic empires (chiefly Ottoman and Mughal) be called successors to the Mongols?\n\n\nSorry in advance for so many questions, I've always been fascinated by the Mongolian empire!", "What was the relationship between Temujin and Timur?  I know they were distantly related at least, though with that bloodline that's obviously not saying much.  Is there any historical through-line from the Khanates to Timur's later conquests?", "Do we have anything like accurate figures for the death-toll or an idea of the lasting damage inflicted upon the conquered/invaded territories under Genghis Khan and his successors?", "What was Ulaan Baatar like at the height of the Mongolian empire? Did the Mongols concentrate wealth there?", "Is the tent thing true?  The one about how they'd put up a white tent for peace if a city surrendered, then another one for combatants would be killed, and then another for everyone?", "This was prompted by an earlier conversation with yodatsracist, but did Chinese peasants frequently flee from the tightly controlled society to the comparative freedom of the Steppe? He brought up the example of Cossacks, who were often escaped Lithuanian peasants, but I assume that can only work because they shared an ethnicity.\n\nwas there an inflow of wealth into Mongolia as a result of the empire, or did the riches largely remain with those who settled in the new lands? What happened to Mongolia after the empire collapsed, particularly after the fall of the Yuan?\n\nIs the story about the intellectual contest between a Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist true?", "I saw an episode of The Human Planet which talked a bit about Mongolians hunting with eagles that they had trained. How far back does this practice go? Was this a pretty popular thing in Mongolia?", "I'm not sure if this is within your specialty, but why did the Timurid Empire fall apart so quickly after Timur's death, whereas the Mongolian Empire under Genghis Khan lasted (although split up) for many years?\n\nSecond question, why was the Ilkhante so much weaker than the Golden Horde?", "1). Mongolia not being a densely populated place, I'd imagine that a large portion of the adult male population took part in the campaigns for them to be able to muster enough manpower to conquer their much larger neighbors. What happened to women, children, and the elderly while most of the men were away in Central Asia, China, Middle East etc. Did they follow the men, complicating the logistics, or did the stay in traditional Mongol lands? Would the women and children have any difficulty on their own, without the protection of men for extended periods of time?\n\n2). On lengthy campaigns, how did the Mongols procure the necessary weapons, armor and horses? Things like composite bows, armor piercing arrows were probably not easy to manufacture on  the go.  I'm sure they had trophy equipment, that may not necessarily be what the Mongols were comfortable or trained to use. \n\n3) Did the multinational, multicultural and multilingual aspect of Mongol armies complicate their organisation and discipline, something which the Mongols are famous for. How did they deal with this?", "How Mongol was the Golden Horde? From what I've read most historians seem to say the Golden Horde was in effect a \"Kypchak/Cuman successor state, just with some Mongols  &  Volga-Bulgars thrown in and Islam added to the mix\".", "What effect did the Mongolian conquests have on the middle east and, by extension, Islamic religion? I seem to remember reading something about the sack of Baghdad having a profound effect on the Muslim world at the time.", "I'm a foreign envoy attending a Kurultai.. How much is known about what went on there? I'm presuming there were at least a few people attending that would describe the events and relay word back home?\n\n", "I have read that Mongolians do not give their horses names, but called them by their color and other defining traits. One source I found said that the word(s) used included information about heritage, gender etc. but I feel like this would be a hell of a long calling. Do you have any information about this? \nAlso are there any cultural tidbits you'd be willing to share? I think the Mongolian civilization was just fascinating, but always to find the same mundane facts all over the web.\n(Sorry if this is more of a cultural rather than historical question, I've just never had the chance to ask anyone who might be knowledgeable and I find it really interesting.)", "I don't know if this question, qualifies, but the Timurid dynasty which later formed the Mughal empire in India were descended from the Mongols. But Wikipedia mentions that their patriarch, Babur, was greatly Persianized in Ferghana.\n\nWhat does this mean? Did he simply become fluent in Persian, did he marry Persian women? Did he even look anything like his Mongolian ancestors? I'm very interested in this period of Babur's life and I couldn't get hold of any copies of the Baburnama. \n\nThanks a lot !", "To what extent did the Mongols settle the lands they conquered? Did they migrate to China, Persia, etc, or did they just rule?\n\nDid more traditional Mongolian religion (like Tengriism) disappear as Mongol rulers adopted Buddhism, Islam, and other foreign religions?\n\nThanks for doing this! Mongolian history is fascinating, and I've been trying to learn more about the groups and events that high school history skipped over.", "Two years on, what's been the most interesting thing in your opinions to have come out of the [Valley of the Khans Project](_URL_0_)? Have they shortlisted any potentially significant previously unknown targets? Have investigations moved forward and discovered any new titbits?   ", "What was it about the Asian steppe that kept producing these unstoppable armies of horse archers?", "What are some common misconceptions about the mongolian empire?", "did the mongols really conquer x amount of territory in 1 year?\n\n(x = whatever huge amount of territory they conquered in 1 year according to a show i saw on the history channel. sorry, i'm tired and can't think straight but i'm genuinely curious.)", "Are you two still answering questions?  I was looking forward to this AMA all week, and now that it's here I see that I am 18 hours late!  \n\nIn case you are still answering questions, here's one: I have heard that, as a sign of respect/honor for particularly stalwart or virtuous foes, the Mongols would trample any surviving enemy combatants or generals under their horses.  If this is indeed accurate, why did the Mongols consider such a death honorable?  What was their reasoning for not letting the honorable but defeated enemy live?", "How come the Mongols never conquered India (except for perhaps a few of the northern/fringe areas)? Was it mainly due to the Himalayas and the humid climate? (That's what a few other threads have said)\n\nI know that later descendants in various forms conquered most of India (like the Mughals), but that wasn't what we would call the Mongol Empire", "When did the Mongols first start using siege engines in their sieges?  And if they didn't have such engines at first, because they hadn't captured Chinese or Persian engineers, how did they win their first sieges?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/07/mongolia-valley-of-the-khans/"], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "a16y8o", "title": "Did the Founding Fathers of the USA really not envision career politicians? Was that aspiration ever attained at all?", "selftext": "I was watching a clip of Sen. Ben Sasse on Colbert, and he repeated an idea that I've heard countless times since forever:  \n\n > \"The Founders didn't have a vision of the world where people wanted to be in politics, move to DC, and stay there forever.  You're supposed to think the place you're from is the most interesting place in the world.  We use the term historically \"public service,\" because you go to Washington to serve for a time then go back home.  Right now most people in Washington, their biggest long-term thought is about their own incumbency.\"\n\nAs the audience did the obligatory applause for this feel-good truism, I realized that every Founder I could name off the top of my head was a lifelong politician with about 30 years working in federal politics and government.\n\nIs there any truth to this notion at all?  Certainly, it's wrong to say that Jefferson or Madison couldn't imagine it.  Was that ever the \"norm\" for national politics?  If it was merely an aspirational desire, was it ever acheived to any degree?  And why did so many of them discard that ideal to further their own careers?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a16y8o/did_the_founding_fathers_of_the_usa_really_not/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eas6lfq"], "score": [3], "text": ["There is a long standing debate about the nature of elected office. \n\nOn the one hand is the **delegate** model of representation. Our elected legislators are there to express the interests of the people who elect them. They should not express their own conscience nor invoke their own expertise where it conflicts with the interests or opinions of the constituency. In this model, the representative should be of short-duration for fear that their will be captured by the interests and fashions of the capital. Sasse is arguing this view. \n\nThis model was contested most famously by Edmund Burke in his formulation of the **trustee** model of representation in 1774. The people select a trustee who is somewhat autonomous and may act in the common good or the national interest, as opposed to the parochial interests of the constituency. Burke encapsulated this as:\n\n > \"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.\"\n\nBurke is considered the father of modern British conservatism. He was a leading MP during the Revolution, lending his support to the grievances of the American colonies and promoting a peaceful reconciliation between Britain and America in advance of Lexington and Concord. The founding fathers were not only aware of Burke, but intimately and actively involved in that exact debate. \n\nSources: \n\nBurke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll (1774) from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854)\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ry4im", "title": "What was day-to-day life like in a \"Hooverville\"?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ry4im/what_was_daytoday_life_like_in_a_hooverville/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cdsbeym", "cdsq0o8"], "score": [11, 2], "text": ["It seems to have ranged from tolerable to utterly miserable, depending on where you ended up. The camp that sprung up in Central Park in New York City was known to be less harsh than some of the others, especially in the summer months. But it was relatively small (a few dozen families). There was a huge Hooverville set up in Washington DC by the Bonus Army (WWI vets seeking expedited benefits) but it was demolished by General MacArthur.\n\nOn the other hand is a famous account by John Steinbeck of an apparently typical \"squatter's camp\" located near an irrigation ditch in California. He writes:\n\n\"There is more filth here. The tent is full of flies clinging to the apple box that is the dinner table, buzzing about the foul clothes of the children, particularly the baby, who has not been bathed nor cleaned for several days. This family has been on the road longer than the builder of the paper house. There is no toilet here, but there is a clump of willows nearby where human faeces lie exposed to the flies - the same flies that are in the tent\" it goes on from there. \n\nThis account (titled \"Death in the Dust\") would eventually spur the writing of the The Grapes of Wrath.", "A little bit of a tangent, but can anyone elaborate on the sort of ideologies of the people in Hooverville? Were there socialists resident? If so, how prevalent was socialist ideology? What would the attitudes of residents have been towards race?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "5hfn2q", "title": "What would happen if someone fell into a Gladiator Arena during a battle?", "selftext": "Say there was a fight going on and some spectator fell into the pit of the arena, either accidentally or on purpose. \n\nWould the unfortunate victim be brought back on the stands or would he have no choice but to endure gladiatorial combat?\n\nAre there any records of spectators falling into the gladiator arena's either on purpose or accidentally?\n\nSorry if this is a silly question. Just curious. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hfn2q/what_would_happen_if_someone_fell_into_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["db0ix85"], "score": [27], "text": ["I have information about the closest thing to it, which is people being thrown into the arena by a guard, ordered by the Emperor.  This is a quote I found in a paper and I chased down each reference and it's the same thing basically, the Emperor is wronged in some way by someone.  They or their loved ones are tossed into the arena as a punishment/execution.  Here's the quote.\n\n\"The blood lust of the spectators, populus and emperors alike, the brutality of the combat, and the callous deaths of men and animals still disturb modern sensibilities. Certainly, Rome was cruel. Defeated enemies and criminals forfeited any right to a place within society, although they still might be saved (servare) from the death they deserved and be made slaves (servi). Because the life of the slave was forfeit, there was no question but that it could be claimed at any time. The paterfamilias of the family had absolute control over the lives of his slaves (and little less over those of his wife and children). In the army, decimation was the consequence of cowardice. The plague was ever present, as was the capricious whim of the emperor, who might seize a spectator from the crowd and have him thrown into the arena (Suetonius, Claudius, XXIV; Caligula, XXXV; Domitian, X; Dio, LIX.10).\"\n\nPerhaps someone with more indepth knowledge knows of specific incidents, but all I found were always intentional and by a guard throwing or the emperor pushing someone into the arena.\n\n\nThe Suetonius sections can be read in detail here:\n_URL_0_\n\nDio section here:\n_URL_2_\n\nOriginal thing I found that lead me to those (not really a source):\n_URL_1_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6400/6400-h/6400-h.htm", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/59*.html"]]}
{"q_id": "9dlnoe", "title": "The movie 'Apocalypse Now' mentions socialist weapons manufacturing workers in France intentionally sabotaging ordinance as an act of solidarity towards the socialist North during the Vietnam war. Is there any truth to this?", "selftext": "I'm talking about the scene when the main protagonist comes across a small French colony in the heart of the jungle and the host at the dinner table is recounting his experiences of the Vietnam war.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9dlnoe/the_movie_apocalypse_now_mentions_socialist/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e5ihr1o"], "score": [42], "text": ["I wrote something on the French perception of the Indochina war (to call it the \"First Vietnam War\" is not common in French historiography, and could be said inaccurate as a lot of fighting was in places where the ethnic Vietnamese are a minority) [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThere was a relative indifference of the French population to this conflict, but the French Communist Party (PCF) and left-wing movements and intellectuals were quite involved in antiwar activism. To quote the 1952 op-ed of the March 6th, 1952 communist newspaper *l'Humanit\u00e9* : *\"F\u00e9licitations au succ\u00e8s du Vietminh. Nous sommes de c\u0153ur avec lui. Nous envoyons aux troupes du Vietminh notre fraternel salut et notre t\u00e9moignage de solidarit\u00e9 agissante.\"* (Congratulations to the Vietminh success. We are with all our heart with them. We send to Vietminh troops our brotherly regards and tokens of acting solidarity). Sabotage was not unheard of in communist trade unions (remember that we are only a few years after the R\u00e9sistance developped an entire art form of sabotage) : an example during the hard social conflict of 1947 (mostly unrelated with the war in Indochina) is the sabotage of the railway between Paris and Lille (which led to a train accident and 16 dead) : you can see  [here](_URL_1_) a very interesting newscast of the time. Later on, during the Algerian events, there would be a famous group of left wing French anticolonial militants that would engage in actively helping the FLN (called *porteurs de valise*, most famously with the *R\u00e9seau Janson*, defended in their trial by a renowned left-wing lawyer, R. Dumas).\n\nThere were strong rumors of sabotage among the troops, who deeply resented this : to quote an example, in the memories of Jacques Jauffret (a veteran of the 1er REC in Indochina in 1953-1955), titled *Crabes et Alligators dans les Rizi\u00e8res* :\n\n*\"A mon arriv\u00e9e en Indochine, en f\u00e9vrier 1953, mes camarades me mettent tout de suite au courant : il faut v\u00e9rifier tout le mat\u00e9riel venant de France: des ouvriers politis\u00e9s de nos usines d'armement ont pris l'habitude de saboter les armes et des munitions destin\u00e9es aux combats contre des communistes, nos adversaires en Extr\u00eame-Orient.[...] Nous sommes d'autant plus furieux que le mat\u00e9riel am\u00e9ricain nous parvient dans un parfait \u00e9tat. Il nous arrivait m\u00eame souvent de d\u00e9couvrir dans une culasse de canon de char, une cartouche de cigarettes Chesterfield, plac\u00e9e l\u00e0, \u00e0 notre intention par les ouvriers des usines de Milwaukee. \"*\n\nWhen I landed in Indochina, in Feb. 1953, my comrades put me in the know : one must check any ordnance or equipment coming from France : politically-minded workers in armaments factories took the habit to sabotage weapons and ammunitions to be sent to fight communists, such as in the Far East.[...] We are all the more furious that american supplies always come in impeccable condition. We even sometimes found in a tank cannon a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes left there for us by the Milwaukee workers\".\n\nSuch sabotages and their intentional nature (could also have been that the French postwar industry was lacking in quality) have been accredited in historical literature^1 yet both remain a matter of debate in France (the topic is obviously politically laden). \n\nIn any case, the scene in Apocalypse Now is definitely realistic and the result of sound historical research as it depicts the resentment towards the Metropolitan French Left-Wing such colonist hold-outs would have felt, and the idea of sabotage would have been a rumor frequent in former veteran circles.\n\n----------\n\n^1 : Pass\u00e9s \u00e0 l'ennemi. Des Rangs de l'Arm\u00e9e Fran\u00e7aise aux Maquis Vi\u00eat-Minh 1945-1954, Adila Bennedja\u00ef-Zou, Joseph Confavreux, Tallandier\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/98osk6/do_the_french_regret_the_vietnam_war_as_much_as/e4ig609/", "https://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu01014/deraillement-d-un-train-a-arras-suite-au-mouvement-de-contestation-de-l-automne-1947.html"]]}
{"q_id": "1akeoy", "title": "I've heard it mentioned in non-academic contexts, that the Roman Empire didn't die, it just became the Church.", "selftext": "I'm wondering if there's any truth to that saying.  Excuse my extra comma in the title.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1akeoy/ive_heard_it_mentioned_in_nonacademic_contexts/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8ya05v", "c8yaxgm", "c8ye3ey", "c8yfnwp", "c8yhrtk"], "score": [60, 40, 7, 2, 2], "text": ["To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, from one way of looking at it that is correct, but from another, perhaps more accurate way, that is not correct.\n\nI would argue that this thought comes from two different streams in scholarship: one is that the \"fall\" of Rome was really just a transition, and the other is looking at the Church as a source of continuity and unity. I think the first point has some validity to it but is *far* overstated, and can't comment on the second. But arguing that the Roman Empire didn't die because of the church has a certain degree of perversity to it. The empire was *much* more than just a church.", "The Church did provide some degree of continuity in several ways.\n\nFirst of all, the Pope had, for a long time, temporal authority over the city of Rome and Latium, the old center of imperial power. \n\nSecond of all, the church provided a universal source of authority for western European political institutions just as the Emperor had being in the past. Just as the emperor once appointed governors, the kings of Europe nominally derive their power from god, and the pope is the representative of god on earth. Obviously the nominal position of the pope vice-verse temporal monarchs was heavily contested but the idea is there.\n\nThird, the Church retained some of the old Roman administrative divisions in the west, the Catholic Church diocese were based on divisions made in Diocletian's time. It served as one of the strongest (maybe the only) continual institution from Roman times because Barbarian kings converted to Christianity and thus helped to preserve it. Churchmen also served in scholarly/bureaucratic functions for the rulers of their lands and thus a continuation of the old imperial bureaucracy.\n\nI wouldn't say that the Roman Empire -became- the church, but the Church was definitely a State institution of the late Empire and definitely the one which survived the most intact after 476 and thus provided one of the strongest lines of continuity to the empire.", "The Roman Empire didn't die, it just became the Byzantine Empire.", "I think this saying greatly exaggerates the authority of the pope. I'm not saying that he wasn't extremely powerful, but he rarely wielded the kind of direct authority you would associate with the emperor. Even a strong pope like Innocent III (pope around 1200 CE) had little control over the armies that supposedly fought in his name or even over his own legates, as his failed attempt to prevent the sack of Zara showed. \n\nThe old networks of the Roman Empire helped the Church establish itself, but it didn't wield anywhere near the same level of control. ", "The Pope did never command the legions. That is a pretty big difference.\n\nWell, the Papal States did have an army until the unification of Italy in 1860/1871, but it was a small, local thing.\n\nThe Pope did have a lot of authority (depending on the period) over the Christian kingdoms, but that is quite different from the authority of the roman emperors to send direct orders to the governors of the provinces."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6m4rr9", "title": "During a siege, what happened to the farms and the farmers outside the walls?", "selftext": "Were the people outside the walls be given refuge? Would a town or castle be able to support them? If not were they raped and killed? Was the farmlands destroyed to leave the people starving next year? If so was this used as a threat to get a surrender?\n\nIf I must pick a setting, I suppose the hundred years war since it saw sieges on towns and castles. But I would also like to hear from other points in history too.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6m4rr9/during_a_siege_what_happened_to_the_farms_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["djzumgw"], "score": [23], "text": ["The country and people surrounding a fortified centre were just as much a target as the fortification itself. The answer to all your questions is \"yes\".\n\nI'm sorry to say I can't talk in depth about the Hundred Years' War, so you'll have to make do with an answer about Classical Greece. In the context of that period (as in many others), the main thing to bear in mind is that sieges are extremely difficult and expensive operations. In order to assault a fortified position or town, troops and engines have to be deployed against the enemy's best efforts to fend them off, and many men are likely to die. In order to starve out the defenders, a full encirclement of a fortified centre has to be maintained for months or even years. Neither of these things were easy to achieve, especially in an era or relatively small armies drafted from ordinary people who had no military training and who had their own farms and workshops to get back to. For the attackers, unless their army consisted of leisure-class men or mercenaries, a long siege was impossible and a siege assault wasteful and all too often pointless. For the defenders, hiding behind strong walls with a big food supply seems like a pretty safe option; it will be all but impossible for the enemy to hurt you.\n\nSo how do you hurt an enemy whose fortress you can't break, and who refuses to come out and fight? Simple: you attack the things they can't protect. Farms, fields, and agricultural infrastructure (irrigation canals, mills, oil presses) are excellent targets for destruction. Flocks can be led away; crops can be trampled; trees can be cut down; farmhouses burned, wells spoiled, etc. etc. Anything that can be carried can be stolen. In addition, it was normal Greek practice for war captives to be killed or sold into slavery.\n\nThis form of warfare had several advantages. First, it could be presented as a sufficient goal in itself; since major urban centres were rarely captured in Classical Greece, the mere opportunity to ravage a significant part of the enemy's land was considered a worthy achievement for a campaign season. The enemy had been hurt and humiliated, and their property had been reduced, to the enrichment of the invader. We are told that Thebes benefited particularly from the Spartan devastation of the Athenian countryside in the Peloponnesian War, since the Spartans went to Thebes to sell all the loot:\n\n >  They bought up the slaves and the rest of the stuff captured in the war for a low price, and, since they lived nearby, they carried home all the equipment from Attika, [starting with the woodwork and the rooftiles of the houses](_URL_0_).\n\n-- *Hellenika Oxyrhynchia* 17.4\n\nSecond, it could destroy an enemy's harvest for the year, which could have devastating consequences in a subsistence economy. There are several examples of Greek states brought to their knees by just 2 consecutive years of crop devastation. An army had to be quite large and stay in the field quite long to achieve a sufficient level of damage, but the chance to win the war without any real fighting was always worth the effort. Even a state as large and powerful as Athens was not expected to be able to survive the systematic devastation of its countryside:\n\n >  At the beginning of the war, some thought the Athenians might hold out one year, some two, but none more than three, if the Peloponnesians invaded their country.\n\n-- Thucydides 7.28.3\n\nAdmittedly, ever since the publication of V.D. Hanson's *Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece* (1983), the question of crop devastation has been controversial. Hanson argued that it was not possible for Greek armies to do significant damage to vines or to cut down olive trees with the tools they had to hand, or to effectively set fire to grain crops (except for a very small window of time just before the harvest). As a result, ravaging and devastation must have been more symbolic than actual. The source I've just cited seems to disagree, and there are several others, but it should probably be understood that the ravaging of the countryside was often much less severe, less all-encompassing and less permanent than our sources would lead us to believe. \n\nAccording to Hanson, the *real* reason for the ravaging done by Greek armies was its third major advantage: it might provoke the enemy to battle. This would allow the attacker to avoid the ordeals of assault or siege, and deny the defender the advantage of a strong fortified position. It might seem foolish for a defender to leave his walls and towers to go fight the enemy in the open, but the frustration and anxiety of a farming population forced to watch as its land is destroyed cannot be underestimated. In his account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides gives us a taste of the mood at Athens:\n\n >  When they saw the Spartan army at Acharnai, barely seven miles from Athens, they lost all patience. The territory of Athens was being ravaged before the very eyes of the Athenians, a sight which the young men had never seen before and the old only in the Persian Wars; and it was naturally thought a grievous insult, and the determination was universal, especially among the young men, to sally forth and stop it. Knots were formed in the streets and engaged in hot discussion; for if the proposed sally was warmly recommended, it was also in some cases opposed. Oracles of the most various import were recited by the collectors, and found eager listeners in one or other of the disputants. Foremost in pressing for the sally were the Acharnians, as constituting no small part of the army of the state, and as it was their land that was being ravaged.\n\n-- Thucydides 2.21.2-3\n\nThis passage also answers your first question. The population of farms and villages outside of the main urban centre would generally seek refuge within the walls. Greek cities tended to have very large walled circuits, often encompassing not just the built-up centre, but also various sacred and public spaces, as well as some farmland; in the event of a siege, much of the open area within the walls would be covered in temporary housing as farmers and their families and slaves sought to weather the storm. The source I cited above on Thebes during the Peloponnesian War is very explicit about this:\n\n >  When the Athenians began to move against Boiotia, those who lived in Eurythrai, Skaphai, Skolos, Aulis, Schoinos, Potniai and many other such unwalled places were gathered into Thebes, doubling its size.\n\n-- *Hellenika Oxyrhynchia* 17.3\n\nIf there was a proper siege, this would obviously put enormous pressure on available food supplies. The Athenian example shows that it also caused tension within the city, because the interests and preferred policy of those from the countryside didn't always align with those from the city. However, fundamentally, this is why walled centres existed in the first place. Sometimes those who lived too far from the main city would gather into local forts and fortified places, which was also often where flocks of sheep and goats would be kept from the invaders."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vOArr1dXU"]]}
{"q_id": "7t5nvk", "title": "So...what was the Dreyfus affair?", "selftext": "It was apparently so important that all the contemporary French books all mention the character's position on it. What was it and why was it so prominent in French culture?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7t5nvk/sowhat_was_the_dreyfus_affair/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dtaiv52", "dtaoh6r"], "score": [8, 57], "text": ["Adding to this, what did contemporary non-French people think of the affair?", "The Dreyfus affair occurred in France during the 3rd Republic in the 1890s. The backdrop here is the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 which was a resounding victory for Prussia (which would later serve as the heart of a unified Germany) and involved a devastating siege of Paris as well as the annexation of the border areas of Alsace-Lorraine (which had been part of France previously). The war also caused the collapse of the prior French government (the Second Empire) and the formation of the 3rd Republic. As a consequence of all of this the overwhelming sentiment in France in regards to Germany was one of hatred. Think of US and Soviet relations during the Cold War, the French viewed the Germans as their natural and inevitable enemy and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was felt very keenly.\n\nInto this environment insert an event, espionage on behalf of the Germans obtaining secret military information from the French military. In 1894 a French artillery Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was put on trial in secret for this crime, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment on Devil's Island, a penal colony in French Guyana (the Northern coast of South America). It should be noted that Dreyfus had a Jewish mother and antisemitism in Europe was rampant, this will become relevant later.\n\nThis event garnered little attention at the time but the family of Dreyfus began working in the press to clear his name, certain that he was innocent. In 1896 the French head of counter-espionage came across evidence that led him to believe that the true spy was Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. Esterhazy was tried by a military court in secret in January of 1898 and found not guilty. Also in 1898 Esterhazy retired from the military and fled the country to live in the UK.\n\nMeanwhile, there was a growing public sentiment that Dreyfus was not guilty of the crime he had been convicted of, and had instead been made a scapegoat. This came to a head in January of 1898 (only days after Esterhazy was acquitted) when famed author Emile Zola wrote an open letter published by a Parisian newspaper accusing the French government of antisemitism and injustice in the treatment of Dreyfus. This is the famous \"J'Accuse...!\" letter.\n\nBecause the details of the trials of Dreyfus and Esterhazy were kept secret it was difficult to make an objective assessment of the true nature of their guilt or innocence. It was instead a matter of relying on other evidence and indications. (One of the key items of evidence in the case was a note or \"bordereau\" that was found in a waste basket at the German Embassy by a French spy. Extremely questionable handwriting analysis was used to tag Dreyfus as the author of the note.) In broad strokes the case became a rallying point in the cause of battling antisemitism in France at the time. And for that reason became somewhat of a cultural dividing line.\n\nIn 1899 the French Supreme Court struck down Dreyfus' conviction. Dreyfus was returned to France from Devil's Island and put on trial again, and again convicted, in a military court-martial, of treason. It should be noted that during this time there were riots and siege-like conditions surrounding the trial, by people who felt that this whole process was a grave injustice. One day after the verdict the Prime Minister offered to pardon Dreyfus, on the condition that he plead guilty. He did so and was pardoned, being released from imprisonment only 2 days later.\n\nAfterwards there were tumultuous changes in French politics and elections as well as military leadership. In 1906 the Supreme Court fully annulled Dreyfus' convictions and he was reinstated in the army as an artillery major where he would serve for a year until his retirement.\n\nAnti and pro Dreyfus sentiment would continue to run rampant for a long period, serving as a proxy for right-wing and left-wing political stances as well as anti-semitic and pro-tolerance feelings. During the period where the \"Dreyfus affair\" was at its hottest (around the turn of the 20th century) there was a marked uptick in anti-semitic publications, for example.\n\nI should note that I've left out innumerable details here, but in broad strokes I think this captures most of what's relevant. Imagine the OJ trial mixed with Watergate and that gives you a sense of the cultural phenomenon at play."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1hehp6", "title": "Why wasn't Jefferson Davis executed for treason?", "selftext": "I realize they attempted to try him, but he made bail (with money from some northerners), but I was always curious as to why Lincoln never pursued the execution of Davis. I mean thousands of young men were killed in a war of secession, and it seems weird that Lincoln, and the north, would be OK with allowing Davis to continue his career and life after all the destruction that was caused.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hehp6/why_wasnt_jefferson_davis_executed_for_treason/", "answers": {"a_id": ["catkk3q", "catq8fc"], "score": [40, 17], "text": ["Leading Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were indicted on charges of treason, but they were all issued blanket amnesty by Andrew Johnson before he left office.", "In the context of Southern culture, leaving the CSA leadership alive amidst the ruin of their defeat was a much, much worse fate than death. \n\nAny execution would have signaled that the Union still had something to prove, or something substantial to gain by their deaths. Leaving them alive highlighted the total nature of the Union victory and the CSA leadership's unimportance once hostilities were over."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "6vrdvt", "title": "Between 1865 and 1901, three American Presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) were assassinated. In 20th century terms, that would be equivalent to Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton dying by assassination. That would cause 20th century people to freak out. What was the feeling toward this in the 1800s?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6vrdvt/between_1865_and_1901_three_american_presidents/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dm2xwgy"], "score": [17], "text": ["To add on to this question, to what extent would the freak out (or lack thereof) be tied to the president's popularity? i.e. OP cited JFK, Reagan,  &  Clinton as possible presidential assassinations, but these are 3 supremely popular American presidents; Lincoln obviously has a certain legacy to him, but would Garfield or McKinley be more akin to a Jimmy Carter or Lyndon B. Johnson, thus setting off different reactions upon their assassination(s)?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6s1wl8", "title": "During world wars - were students still studying as usual or were there studies interrupted?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6s1wl8/during_world_wars_were_students_still_studying_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dla1otn"], "score": [5], "text": ["I feel as though your question needs a little bit of clarification. Students who weren't of military age didn't generally have their education disrupted, save extraordinary circumstances such as attacks or relocation. Many students, especially in rural areas of the U.S. midwest, customarily dropped out of school to help their families on the farm or for other reasons; only 41 percent of white U.S. riflemen (by its very nature, the Infantry ended up with many men of the lowest qualifications) in the European Theater of Operations had completed a full four years of high school or equivalent. With the passing of the Selective Training and Service Act by Congress on September 16, 1940 (Public Law 76-783), all men from the ages of 21 to 35 had to register for the draft and were liable for potential military service. Based on the initial provisions of the act, students who were in school and were inducted had their entry into service postponed until July 1, 1941 (a period covering about one more academic year) at the latest. After Pearl Harbor, men from the ages of 18 to 64 were required to register for the draft with the passing of Public Law 77-360 on December 20, 1941. Men from the ages of 20 to 44 were also made liable for induction into the military. On November 13, 1942, those men who were 18 and 19 who had already registered were made liable for service by the passing of Public Law 77-772. Many of these men, especially the 18 year olds, were still in school; these men were liable for service and could be called at any time; the student deferment did not apply anymore. Public Law 78-126 was passed on July 9, 1943 so that these men could formally petition their local draft boards to have their induction into the military postponed until the end of the current academic year if more than one-half of said year had been completed."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "9733zq", "title": "I'm Keagan Brewer, here to talk about medieval European wonders, legends, and supernatural beliefs. Ask me anything!", "selftext": "For a long time, I have been looking at the 'crazy' stories and beliefs from the medieval period to try to understand why they believed them (or seem to have). There are so many good stories that I wouldn't know where to start! I will be here for the next three hours. \n\nI've written two books, one on wonders in general, and another that brings together the sources for the legend of Prester John:\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)\n\nEDIT: 12:05pm I have to head to a meeting now so I\u2019ll be away from here for a while. Please keep posting your questions and thoughts and I will do my best to get to them as soon as I can! ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9733zq/im_keagan_brewer_here_to_talk_about_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e454ava", "e454ffe", "e454j6i", "e454pdb", "e454x07", "e4560c4", "e4564qs", "e4568t8", "e456pkj", "e456t11", "e4573yo", "e4577aw", "e45783r", "e457afw", "e458jca", "e458n09", "e458tgt", "e4596yg", "e45aoen", "e45b8mq", "e45bshy", "e45cdjk", "e45dkqj", "e45e97b", "e45ebeq", "e45goja", "e45hpov", "e45hv0w", "e45lsj7", "e45nj9l", "e45w4eg", "e45zq6y"], "score": [6, 3, 4, 21, 7, 5, 6, 5, 7, 10, 12, 16, 7, 8, 11, 8, 7, 11, 7, 7, 9, 5, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 5, 3, 2, 3, 3], "text": ["\nIf you were to be reborn as a woman in the Middle Ages, what place and year would you pick and why?", "What place did the Holy Grail have in Christian Theology? Like if I found it would my sins be forgiven or would I drop dead for being unworthy?", "Hi Keagan - I\u2019m wondering if, during your research, you came across any communications regarding the wholesale slaughter of Jewish communities in Europe. \n\nThe latest thinking that I\u2019ve been exposed to from right of center Rabbinic authorities is that crusaders were primarily rallied to a cause to keep them from being problematic \u201cruffians\u201d within their home kingdoms. Out of work soldiers looking to smash things types funneled into armies headed to the Levant.\n\nPrior to their arrival in the Levant, I\u2019m now told, they would destroy Jewish communities. \n\nWhen I originally learned about the Crusades, I was not taught that destroying Jewish communities was any part of their agenda. \n\nWas I misinformed then or am I misinformed now? Thanks for your time on this!", "/r/AskHistorians frequently receives questions about the belief in unicorns. As a folklorist, I answer that this was simply not part of folk belief in premodern cultures that were considered by folklorists or earlier antiquarians. It appears to me that this was a feature in bestiaries and an idea that circulated among the educated and the elite (in art, literature, etc). Have you seen any evidence that the medieval peasant in the field believed or even told stories about unicorns?\n\nThanks in advance for your thoughts on this - and for doing this AMA.", "When it comes to wonders and legends, I've heard a bit about monsters and animal saints in medieval Europe and I was wondering if you could shed some light on how the fit into a medieval worldview and theology. \n\nWere monsters such as the Cynocephali, Blemmyae, Skiapodes believed in and who believed in them (e.g. was it a popular belief, a scholarly one, both)? Did the belief in these creatures have any effect on theological questions of salvation? Could they be saved or be saints? \n\nSimilarly, for animals, I've heard of Saint Guinefort, so did at least some medievals think that animals could be saints and did that have any impact on their beliefs in the souls or rationality of animals? \n\nAnd, considering I've often heard these called \"monstrous races\" was there any connection between ideas concerning them and modern ideas of race?", " Can you share anything about the Knights Templar and there connection to Baphomet? Thank you.", "Hi Keagan,\n\nI\u2019m currently applying to English literature masters programs, looking to focus in Medieval Literature (and on folklore, legends, and supernatural beliefs)... pretty much exactly what you\u2019re here to talk about. So I\u2019m really excited to see some of the questions other people ask and the answers you provide. \n\nWhat have been your most useful resources during your time in the field. The ones you find yourself continually going back to, either to help with research or just for enjoyment?\n\nWhat would you recommend for someone who\u2019s looking to start their own research in this area?", "What are some of your favorite legends and beliefs you've researched?  Have you looked into the pictures of knights fighting human sized snails?  Also, is there any truth to the rumor that Slenderman is based off German legends?", "The Prester John Letter has been said to represent \u2018a medieval utopia\u2019. Is this view convincing? ", "What counts as a \"supernatural belief,\" in pre-Renaissance, pre-Enlightenment Europe?", "I hope this isn\u2019t too vague as I do not have it available to me at the moment, but I remember reading in the Annals of Fulda about a supposed demon that laid devastation to a village. I was curious about what prompted this to be included in the annals and why it did not discuss it more thoroughly. What events would be attributed to a demon in a village? Thank you. ", "I see your answer about the Church and belief in monsters - what about more supernatural beings? Was there any pushback against belief in things like fairies or brownies or changelings? What about things like hexes or wards? ", "Hi Keagan, thanks for the AMA.\n\nI would be in interested to know about what people in medieval Europe imagined for the future. Are there any examples of medieval science fiction or predictions of technological advancement from medieval sources?", "Does it make any sense to see the Arthurian legend as playing a role as a kind of legitimating propaganda for the Norman conquest?\n\nIf Arthur was a primordial \u201crightful king of the Britons,\u201d fighting against the evil pagan Saxon invaders (along with other forces of evil like witches, dragons, etc), then it seems to provides a kind of basis for regarding the Norman invasion as the overthrow of an illegitimate usurper-kingdom (along with the more conventional claims that Godwinson was a usurper, Edward left it to William, etc).\n\n(Also, Arthurian legend with its knightly court in Camelot resembles Norman culture more than Saxon culture (or, at any reasonable guess, sub-Roman Brythonic culture), perhaps further casting Norman invasion as a restoration of the rightful order -- although that might just be because the Anglo-Normans of the time had a hard time imagining a society in Dark Ages Britain which was too radically different from their own than anything else.)\n\n(Note: I'm not saying I actually think this is true, or that I'm advocating for it. I'm just laying out my reasoning in even considering this train of thought.)", "Were there any official manuals for how priests should deal with ghosts? And if someone suspected demons to be about, how would a priest or other church official determine whether or not that is the case?", "I hear the term \"cult of saints\" used in literature regarding European folk beliefs sometimes and am a little confused as to what it actually means.  Did people actively worship saints like they did gods, not as powerful of course, but under the subservience of god?  Or is this simply a term for the veneration of certain saints similar to modern Catholicism?", "Is there something like a concept of \"elf\", distinguishable from other supernatural beings, across Europe?  Or a \"dwarf\"?  More generally, are there any cosmopolitan classifications / systems for European humanoids?\n\nBy \"humanoid\", I mean intelligent and, well, vaguely human-looking animate beings but not with animal parts.  I'm thinking of Tolkein's elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls, not (say) satyrs, minotaurs, ents, Medusa, and such.  I'd like to exclude strongly religious beings like angels, demons, or Norse gods.\n\nBy \"cosmopolitan\", I mean similarities across cultures and times.\n\nBy \"classifications\": are there any inter-cultural clusterings where you can say, for example, multiple cultures have mischievous beings that hang around the house that you should bribe to prevent disorder, or beautiful and perilous creatures that live in some other place, or miners toiling beneath the earth?  Or are cultures pretty much *sui generis*, where knowing about (say) German humanoids doesn't really help in understanding Swedish humanoids?  Or do such humanoids just not have clusters: that is, there are so many different sizes, beauty, personalities, peril, and other properties, that reading a new tale with new characteristics for a humanoid would occasion you no surprise at all?\n\n", "Hi Keagan,\n\nHave you come across changes in supernatural beliefs during/after the Black Plague? I am aware of rise of morbid cultural motifs like the danse macabre, but I'm specifically interested in what ordinary people actually believed. \n\nFor instance, the Witcher videogames are heavily based on Polish mythology and feature a creature called a plague maiden (a hag said to carry the plague from town to town). Would people have actually believed that witches, demons, and other malevolent supernatural forces were behind the Black Plague?\n", "Do we know of any historical person who was believed to have been a changeling or a half supernatural being or were those ideas purely confined to folklore and fiction", "In the early medieval period, could a \"normal\" person be a miracle-worker, i.e., a farmer in the field one day does something amazing, magical or otherwise impossible, then goes back to being a farmer that evening, or is a miracle-worker by definition someone who set apart, blessed, cursed, in league with some otherworldly force, etc.?", "How did the Prester John legend originally start? If I remember correctly, he was claimed to be either the king of Kongo or Abyssinia.  If it was Kongo, wouldn\u2019t the legend be proven false because the Portuguese had to convert the king originally?", "I have always found folk remedies and health related beliefs fascinating. Are there any especially odd health/medicine related beliefs you have found in your research?", "I know this is past the medieval period, but I can\u2019t help but ask considering the nature of your work and the fact that you cited Game of Thrones as a current favorite. Hopefully you know about this:\n\nWas John Dee believed by contemporaries to be a sorcerer? Did people think he used dark arts in his role as an advisor to Elizabeth I? Was John Dee a master of whispers? Do you see him as possibly an inspiration for characters like Lord Varys or Brynden Rivers?  \n\nThanks for doing this AMA!", "First thank you so much for coming here to answer our questions! Since this weeks theme is the Mediterranean, can you speak to any legends or supernatural beliefs that were tied to the waters or coast of that specific sea?", "Hi Keagan, thanks for the AMA.\n\nAs a longtime devotee of Tolkien's writings, both fictional and non-fictional, I've often wondered how the community of historians views his broadly stated hints that his fiction was an attempt at positing a mythological history of English pre-history.  In particular, how are Tolkien's quibbles with Chadwick over the legends of Zealand and Nerthus viewed, and is the possibility that Tolkien saw Elendil as a fictional representation of Ing taken seriously?  If you'll allow me to sneak in a final question, I wonder if I could ask you about your opinion of Tad Williams interpretation of the Prester John legend in his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy?  ", "I've been reading the Vinland sagas and the fanciful tales of corpses sitting up and giving prophecies shortly after the death of their person really stuck out to me. The footnotes said it was a distinctly Icelandic thing, but didn't go into more detail. I'd never heard of other European tales like that. Can you talk about where that myth came from?", "In the medieval RTS game Age of Empires II, monks can collect relics, deposit it in a monastery, and thereby gain the player gold (the implication being that pilgrims come to view these relics and donate).  Is this an accurate reflection of how pilgrims were expected to engage with holy relics? Would poor peasants who journeyed for hundreds of miles be expected to donate a portion of their wealth like the old woman whom Jesus praises for donating two copper coins to a public treasury in the Gospels? Were the rich \u201cexpected\u201d to donate a larger portion of their wealth? Basically, my question can be summed up as: what\u2019s the relationship between relics and a pilgrim\u2019s wealth?\n\nAlso, did people similarly journey like that to view cabinets of curiosity, or did the nobility who had them keep them to themselves and fellow nobles they wanted to impress?\n\nWhat did Europeans think of the \u201chumanity\u201d of the Saracens? Did the Crusaders think they were demonic or just misled?\n", "Many Norman French ruling families were rumored to have \"fairy\" ancestors.\nRichard 1 joked about his family coming from, and returning to, the devil.\nDid these rumors have a practical effect? Did the clergy believe these stories? And if so, how could these fairy descendents be regarded as legitimate Christian rulers?\nDid the peasants have an opinion on this? ", "This might not be the right time period, but I have heard that demons could sometimes impregnate human women. How would one figure out that a child was fathered by a demon, and what would be done with the child? If such a child grew up, would they have any special traits or abilities?\n\nOn a somewhat related note, did medieval theologians believe that there were still living descendants of nephilim? ", "Considering a lot of these beliefs are no doubt remnants of pre-Christian Europe, have you found many/any good first hand sources on European paganism?", "In the song King Henry the ghost is depicted as having an insatiable appetite demanding the titular king henry kill his various animals in order for her to eat. Was this a common trait of ghosts in the period? ", "Hello, I am not sure if this falls under your categories, but I am interested in Bogomilism, their theology, relationship to Patarenes/Bosnian Church and Catharism and any possible beliefs that made it into later days.  Most sources I have found are in Bulgarian/Macedonian in which I am really only able to read road signs and ask directions.\n\nThanks!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.amazon.com/Skepticism-Routledge-Research-Medieval-Studies-ebook/dp/B01BC2QT54/ref=as\\_li\\_ss\\_tl?\\_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=&amp;qid=&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=askhistorians-20&amp;linkId=c80df003fd3e44b79ca1529946ad6e08", "https://www.amazon.com/Skepticism-Routledge-Research-Medieval-Studies-ebook/dp/B01BC2QT54/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me=&amp;qid=&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=askhistorians-20&amp;linkId=c80df003fd3e44b79ca1529946ad6e08", "https://www.amazon.com/Prester-John-Sources-Crusade-Translation/dp/1409438074"], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "19d5m5", "title": "A great deal of movies and tv shows would have us believe that there was an abundance of pomp and ceremony required everyday of the royalty. So what exactly did a king or queen do during the average day?", "selftext": "This is directed to any ruling family throughout history but I am most interested in the Medieval time period.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19d5m5/a_great_deal_of_movies_and_tv_shows_would_have_us/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8n1hb9", "c8n4hln", "c8n6geg"], "score": [16, 39, 6], "text": ["What region and time period are you talking about? Western Europe? Southern Europe? In the \"typical\" 1200-1800 era or BCE? \n\nFor instance, ancient Greek kings would have had a much different day than Chinese Emperors who would have been different from British Kings. \n\n\n", "I'm no expert but Louis XIV the Sun King (a name he received after demonstrating his central position in divine order by dancing as the sun at a court ballet at the age of 15) is basically the Royal I think of when pomp is used. To set the stage it is important to note this is the age of absolute monarchs. God himself had set these blessed individuals on the throne and it was well within their rights to do whatever the hell they wanted. Louis XIV is the epitome of this absolutist ruler. He is well remembered for the beautiful and captivating [Palace at Versailles](_URL_1_) is literally a monument to the level of decadence he believed befitted a King. [Obligatory Hall of Mirrors](_URL_0_) Wildly impractical the palace at Versailles served as but a crutch for the ceremony instilled in the daily life at Versailles. As Mckay, Hill et al. put it \"Louis further revolutionized court life by establishing an elaborate set of etiquette rituals to mark every moment of his day, from waking up and dressing in the morning to removing his clothing and retiring at night.\" Basically if you wanted something from the King, and you did because he held all the power, you had to fight for the right to dress him in his nighty! (Saint-Simone wrote some memoirs that both of my sources use, but I don't read French let alone late 17th century French but the translated ones should still be good primary sources) \n\n**Sources**\n\nA History of Western Society Volume Two Tenth Edition Mckay Hill et al\n\nWestern Civilization Volume Two Seventh Edition Jackson J. Spielvogel", "For most of this period, in England at least, quite a lot of the time would have been spent travelling - between great houses of the nobility, to war, to treaty signings, on pilgramage - or just between seasonable residences.\n\nPretty uncomfortable, mostly, but with occasional spasms of pomp and ceremony as the King passed through towns."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chateau_Versailles_Galerie_des_Glaces.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Versaillespanoraama2.jpg"], []]}
{"q_id": "tw51v", "title": "Does anyone here know a lot about the walled city of Kowloon?", "selftext": "I was hoping someone here knew where I could find a good documentary on Kowloon or just rant for awhile about the city. It was mentioned in a post earlier this week and has piqued my interest.\n\nThanks in advance!\n\nEdit for spelling.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tw51v/does_anyone_here_know_a_lot_about_the_walled_city/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c4q9h6a", "c4q9nl0", "c4qa116", "c4qaf85", "c4qb2or", "c4qc7nd", "c4qdzi7"], "score": [4, 11, 4, 35, 10, 21, 2], "text": ["not the most scholarly source but the funnest \n_URL_0_", "Lots of info [in this discussion](_URL_0_).", "Also try crossposting in /r/HongKong, there are a few people in there who have been in HK a long time", "My undergraduate adviser was an expert in this! He wrote this while still in school: _URL_1_\n\nIf you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I also wrote quite a bit on the subject, but mostly as an example of indigenous communities within the colonial context and ad hoc systems of administration working in tandem or working outside of the colonial system of administration.\n\nEDIT: I also had a hand in some translations that went into his paper: _URL_0_ I'd also like to recommend the book *City of Darkness* by Girard and Lambot, *Modern History of Hong Kong* by Steve Tsang, and *A Borrowed Place* by Frank Welsh", "[German documentary with english subtitles on YouTube.](_URL_0_)", "Just FYI, it's \"piqued\" not \"peaked.\" Weird english word #276\n", "Haha glad I piqued interest. I'll be following this thread, I'm interested in learning more myself."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.cracked.com/article_19590_the-6-weirdest-cities-people-actually-live-in_p2.html"], ["http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=55357"], [], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=IAweAQAAMAAJ&amp;source=gbs_book_similarbooks", "http://juh.sagepub.com/content/27/1/92.extract"], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lby9P3ms11w"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "243l7g", "title": "If a spectator fell from the stands into the games in the Colosseum in Rome, would he be killed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/243l7g/if_a_spectator_fell_from_the_stands_into_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch3fcly", "ch3lcw8", "ch3wbke"], "score": [4, 19, 16], "text": ["Didn't Caligula force a section of spectators to fight at one point?", "According to t[his source](_URL_0_) the first level of the Colosseum (the only part one could really fall from the stands into the games) is 34' high.  At this height, it's very likely that a spectator would suffer severe trauma (landing on one's head would almost certainly mean death) or otherwise life - threatening injuries.\n\nEDIT: formatting", "Gladiatorial matches are often misunderstood: they weren't orgies of blood and violence, they were spectator sports featuring highly trained combatants. You wouldn't be any more a part of the match for stumbling into the arena than a modern spectator at a boxing match would be.\n\nThe exception are the midday \"intermission\" events, but even those were executions of criminals, not just random guys."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/colosseum/dimensions-of-the-colosseum.htm"], []]}
{"q_id": "12v56q", "title": "Why and when did the Roman/Byzantine garum sauce disappear?", "selftext": "Garum was extremely popular in ancient Rome and Byzantium and yet, the cultures that stemmed from these ancient Empires didn't seem to retain a liking of the sauce. Why is this? \n\nAlso: when did garum stop becoming a popular condiment? It seems like it was still consumed by the Byzantines during the late medieval era, so where did it go? Did it presumably die along with them? Why didn't the Venetians, expatriate Greeks, or Ottomans retain a liking for it?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12v56q/why_and_when_did_the_romanbyzantine_garum_sauce/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c6ydb9z", "c6yf2ni", "c6yf7fj", "c6yiotk", "c6yljtw", "c8m1szl"], "score": [27, 7, 3, 3, 10, 3], "text": ["I don't know the answer offhand, but the economics of it seem pretty clearcut. \n\nGarum required a large fishing fleet. It took weeks to produce and required large beachfront facilities. Its specialist producers were in Spain and France, while its largest consumers were in Italy and Greece. \n\nSailors and ships were at a premium during the wars that attended the Roman and Byzantine collapses. The uncertainty of the times would have strained merchants who required large workforces, lots of land, and access to credit between shipments. War and conquest broke trade routes. Most importantly, new ruling classes, Germanic and Arab, entered the Mediterranean with no taste for fish sauce. \n\nSo: garum would have fallen in quality and become vastly more expensive even as it was falling out of fashion. ", "While not fully relevant, a British Chef remade some Garum (with some licence) with pretty good results.\n\n_URL_0_", "By the way does anyone know where one could find a recipe? ", "This question is why I love history, a short esoteric question turns into 30 minutes of research.\n\nNote on buying something like it: \n >  names including but not limited to nam pla in Thai, tuk trey in Cambodian, and nuoc nam or nuos-nam in Vietnamese", "So, essentially what I'm getting from these responses is that garum died with the Byzantines because it was expensive to produce due to the requirements of a large fishing fleet and a large trading network. \n\nWhile it is indeed true that the Byzantine Empire lost these two things during the last years of the Palaiologos Dynasty, I still don't quite understand why garum never caught on with the Venetians. They were a major maritime power that had a large fishing fleet, had access to pretty much all of the goods that Byzantines had access to (they basically took over the old Byzantine trade lanes), and furthermore, after the final collapse of the Byzantine Empire, harbored a large number of expatriate Byzantine Greeks (not to mention had been influenced by Byzantium for hundreds of years due to their trade to the Eastern Mediterranean). Why, then, was garum production not re-established in the Serene Republic? It can't be because they didn't like fish! Look at how many Italian (esp. Northern Italian) dishes are based on seafood, and remember fish consumption was a lot more common back during the late medieval period because it was by and large much cheaper than beef or pork. \n\nThere has to be some major reason that we're missing here.", "Ok, so I have been doing a research project on the Romans and in my reading I noticed that garum was central to roman self image (see ketchup for Americans). Needless to say, it piqued my interest as it came up over and over and over... they were obsessed with the stuff. So, of course I had to find out what all the hubbub was about. I did some research, found a little distillery in Milan that still made the stuff and ponied up the cash to have a bottle shipped stateside. I just tried it... it tastes and smells like death. I just brushed my teeth twice and the taste is still in my mouth. I'll chalk this one up as a loss and one of the rare times that my curiosity got the better of me."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPX8dpKG48M"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "33hf0k", "title": "I found an abandoned German gravestone on a Polish cemetery. Does anyone know anything about the symbol on top? Can anyone decipher the writing? Who's grave is this?", "selftext": "Edit 2: That is really interesting: I googled the name \"Otto Teichmann\" together with the name \"Rampitz\", the former German name of the town where the grave is located (now \"R\u0105pice\") and found [this](_URL_5_) issue of [Hamburger Anzeiger](_URL_6_) from 6th July 1936. In a small article with the headline \"Beisetzung der verungl\u00fcckten SS-M\u00e4nner\" (\"Funeral of the SS-men killed in an accident\") there is a paragraph in which the fate of Otto Teichmann is explained. Look [here](_URL_4_), it says:\n\n*\"Rampitz (bei F\u00fcrstenberg), 5. Juli. Der bei dem Kraftwagenungl\u00fcck des Musikzuges der Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler verungl\u00fcckte Otto Teichmann wurde am Sonnabend hier beigesetzt. Fast die ganze Gemeinde hatte sich zu der Trauerfeier eingefunden. Pfarrer Terno(?) hielt die Trauerrede. Nach der Einsegnung der Leiche formierte sich ein langer Trauerzug zum Friedhof, wo SS-Kameraden der Leibstandarte eine Ehrenwache gestellt hatten. Nach dem Gebet des Geistlichen und dem Abschiednehmen der Angeh\u00f6ren gr\u00fc\u00dften SS-Sturmhauptf\u00fchrer Garthe(?) und SS-Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Paulisch(?) ihren toten Kameraden und legten Kr\u00e4nze nieder\"*\n\nMy translation: *\"Rampitz (at F\u00fcrstenberg), 5th July. Otto Teichmann, who was killed in an automobile accident of the marching band of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was buried here on saturday. Almost the whole community has joined the funeral service. Pastor Terno(?) gave the eulogy. After blessing the corpse a long funeral procession headed for the cemetery where SS-comrades of the Leibstandarte kept an honor guard. After the prayer of the cleric and the leave-taking of the relatives SS-Sturmhauptf\u00fchrer Garthe(?) and SS-Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Paulisch(?) greeted their dead comrade and laid down a wreath.\"*\n\n--------------------------\n\nEdit: Solved!\n\nThanks to everyone who contributed! And very special thanks to [/u/LOOK_AT_ME_BALLS](_URL_2_) for deciphering most parts of the inscription and to [/u/chrxs](_URL_0_) for explaining the monogram.\n\nThe monogram consists of the letters [LAH](_URL_3_) for [Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler](_URL_8_). The [inscription](_URL_1_) says:\n\nOtto Teichmann\n\nUnterscharf\u00fchrer\n\nLeibstandarte\n\nSS Adolf Hitler\n\nFebruar 1916\n\n1936 (or maybe 1934?)\n\nSo it appears this Otto Teichmann was a member of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler: *\"The 1st SS-Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (abbreviated as 1st SS-Pz.Div. LSSAH) was Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard. Initially the size of a regiment (brigade), the LSSAH eventually grew into an elite division-sized unit.\"* (from the Wiki linked above). \n\nI'd guess he died in 1934 and not 1936 considering this information: *\"On 13 April 1934, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsf\u00fchrer-SS, ordered the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH) to be renamed \"Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler\" (LSSAH). Himmler inserted the SS initials into the name to make it clear that the unit was independent from the SA or army.\"* (also from the Wiki).\n\nSo we have an 18/20 year old member of the LAH dying before any of the events of WWII took place. What happend? Illness? Accident? Murder?  How could I find out more about him?\n\n--------------------------\n\nThat's the gravestone: [_URL_7_](_URL_7_)\n\nI found it laying on the ground of a cemetery in a small Polish village close to the German border. After the war the communist leadership of this town decided to bulldoze the former German graves to make space for new ones. \n\nMy questions: Can anyone identify the the symbol at the top of the gravestone? There definitely is a helmet recognisable. Did the grave belong to a German soldier?\n\nIs anyone able to read the inscription? I think I can read a \"1914\" and a \"193?\" at the bottom, but I can't decipher the letters. Maybe someone has experience in editing photos in a way that makes these letters readable?\n\n\"Fun\" fact: These two photos were the last ones I took with my old digital camera. Right after I took the last one the screen turned black... never to show anything at all again. This grave destroyed my camera and I want to know who is responsible! ;)\n\nThanks to everyone who wants to help! :)", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33hf0k/i_found_an_abandoned_german_gravestone_on_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cqkwarz", "cqkx7pz", "cqkzopp", "cql3cly", "cql5lcd", "cql8euj", "cql8g17", "cqld5dt"], "score": [9, 24, 19, 4, 7, 32, 2, 5], "text": ["Consider crossposting to /r/whatisthisthing.", "I speak german but the letters are too faded. It is written in [Fraktur script](_URL_0_).", "Go back with some water and wet the stone, it might make the text more contrasted so we can make it out", "I played around with the colours for a bit and am pretty sure that the last two lines are dates. My best guess would be Some February 1876 and 1. July 1934.\n\nThe \"Symbol\" is most probably a monogram, i agree with the other commentor on that one.\n\nPlease pm me when you got a better picture.", "It's a Fraktur calligraph. You'd have better luck in /r/Calligraphy to have them identify the actual letters. It's likely the initials of the person buried there.", "My best guess:    \nOtto Teichmann    \nUnterscharf\u00fchrer    \nLeibstandarte    \nAdolf Hitler    \nFebruar 1916    \n1936    \n\n_URL_0_", "Pretty sure the 'symbol' is a rendition of IHS / IHC;\n_URL_0_", "I found this. _URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/user/chrxs", "http://i.imgur.com/8XD669d.jpg", "http://www.reddit.com/user/LOOK_AT_ME_BALLS", "http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/1._SS-Panzer-Division_%22Leibstandarte_SS_Adolf_Hitler%22#/media/File:SK_LSSAH.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/cQ92tcg.jpg", "http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/newspapers/issue/3000094646190", "http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Anzeiger", "http://imgur.com/a/18mud", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_SS_Panzer_Division_Leibstandarte_SS_Adolf_Hitler#Early_history_.281923.E2.80.931933.29"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur"], [], [], [], ["http://i.imgur.com/8XD669d.jpg"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram"], ["http://www.leaders-reich.co.uk/2015/04/otto-teichmann.html"]]}
{"q_id": "8esufb", "title": "Is there a reason why so many notable events happened during the summer of 1969?", "selftext": "The Stonewall Riots, the moon landing, Manson murders, Gadhafi rose to power and Woodstock all happened in the one summer amongst other things. Is there a particular reason why so much happened during this time period?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8esufb/is_there_a_reason_why_so_many_notable_events/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxywosl"], "score": [49], "text": ["I suppose the first point would be to look at the counter factual:\nDid more notable events happen during the time period you mention than we would otherwise expect given a reasonable year to year variation? That is to say, if you allow for a certain 'randomness' and variation from year to year, we would naturally expect to see some years to contain a greater number of notable events, and some years less. Even so, take a look at the wikipedia entries for June - August 1968 and 1970:\n\n\n_URL_6_\n\n* Assassination of Robert F Kennedy\n* Nuclear non-proliferation treaty opens for signature\n* Rise to power of Saddam Hussein after coup d'\u00e9tat in Iraq\n* Glenville Shootout and Riots\n* Czechoslovakia invaded by Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.\n* The first ever Special Olypmics takes place in Chicago.\n* France explodes its first hydrogen bomb over the Pacific\n\n\n_URL_5_\n\n* Tonga gains independence from the UK\n* Isle of Wight Music Festival takes place, which with ~600,000 attendees is 50% larger than Woodstock.\n* The Women's Strike for Equality takes place\n* Anti-Vietnam War protesters bomb University of Wisconsin-Madison (Sterling Hall Bombing)\n\n\nNext we might ask: How significant or notable were these events in the context of the time? Certainly the moon landing was an event noted worldwide that was a watershed moment for popular consciousness regarding space travel and to a lesser extent the cold war. However, putting that aside for now, we can largely compare them to similar events that occurred in the previous or following summer. Who is to say Gadhafi's rise to power in Libya was more notable that Hussein's in Iraq, or the invasion of Czechoslovakia? Why should we consider Woodstock more notable than the Isle of Wight festival? Clearly civil rights and anti-war protests were common throughout the period, not simply in 1969. The French hydrogen bomb over Fangataufa changed the politics of the Pacific, culminating in such events as the New Zealand Navy sending two frigates in protest, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the declaration of a Nuclear Free South Pacific, which substantially realigned politics across the region, and indeed the politics of Nuclear Weapons [1].\n\nNext, I would note that the notability or significance of 1969 is at least partially due to a mythologisation of that time period, particularly in the USA. Complex social movements like the interrelated Anti-War, Civil Rights and Hippy movements are difficult to understand or even parse in their entirety. We have a tendency to focus on key events, which act as stand-ins for the entire phenomena. The \"I have a dream...\" speech has become in retrospect a focal point for the decades long Civil Rights Movement. The image of the Grande Arm\u00e9e withering away in the Russian winter has become the focus of the entire Napoleonic Era. The large social changes that occurred in the USA and elsewhere during the post war era that  are often condensed into a sort of shorthand byword: ['The Sixties'](_URL_0_). In turn, this is often further condensed into simply ['The Woodstock Generation'](_URL_3_) or ['the summer of '69'](_URL_2_).\n\nWoodstock was likely a significant event to those who attended. But its enduring fame can be more easily ascribed to the sensational images of the artists, crowds, and traffic jams which made, and continue to make, great media. The images of Apollo 11 taking off, or Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the lunar surface, even more so. Critically, by 1969, television was now [nearly ubiquitous](_URL_8_) in the American household. Further, from its introduction in 1953 colour TV was [beginning to take off](_URL_4_). These technologies allowed the spectacle of these events to be captured and broadcast to a larger audience than ever before. What's more, high quality film and other images from these events survives to this day, allowing them to live on in the popular imagination in ways that events where television cameras were unavailable or even prohibited access such as the contemporaneous bombing of Laos, which remains the [most heavily bombed country ever](_URL_1_). With some 37% of the country still [uninhabitable due to unexploded ordinance](_URL_7_), people in Laos would undoubtably consider this event to be the more noteworthy.\n\nIn the end, no agreed upon definition of 'noteworthy' or 'significant' exists, nor can exist. History is the result of uncountable significant interrelated events. In the face of this immense complexity, we can only choose a few key phenomena, which we hope might serve as a lens through which to understand the wider context of that time. 1969 stands out in part because of media availability, and in part because the events you mention have been used by the generations since to mythologise that particular period of American history.\n\n[1] Clements, Kevin P. (1988) Back from the brink : the creation of a nuclear-free New Zealand. Wellington NZ: Allen  &  Unwin."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://edition.cnn.com/shows/the-sixties", "https://apjjf.org/Ben-Kiernan/4313.html", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c", "http://likethedew.com/2012/03/04/we-can-all-join-in-how-rock-festivals-helped-change-america/#.WuDxzYhua70", "https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-100-year-march-of-technology-in-1-graph/255573/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/03/laos-cluster-bombs-uxo-deaths", "http://www.tvhistory.tv/Annual_TV_Households_50-78.JPG"]]}
{"q_id": "4rggm5", "title": "Rules update: 'Trivia-seeking' is now 'example seeking' for purposes of removal", "selftext": "Not everyone always agrees on what trivia is. Partially for that reason, the moderators of /r/askhistorians have changed the wording of the rule against \"trivia-seeking questions.\"\n\nWe've often struggled with the wording of this rule [(it used to be called \"throughout history\")](_URL_0_), but while the name of the rule has changed, the meaning of it hasn't.\n\nBecause we have a limited number of moderators and a limited slate of moderation tools, we have to forbid questions that generate large numbers of low-quality answers. Without such a prohibition, we'd spend an extraordinary amount of time on a handful of questions, and the rest of the subreddit would suffer.\n\nSo please, keep your questions as narrowly focused as possible. If your question can be summarized as \"tell me random stuff about X\" or \"tell me about X in several centuries around the world,\" you're better off asking it in /r/history.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rggm5/rules_update_triviaseeking_is_now_example_seeking/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d511hfd", "d5186dy", "d51ebmh"], "score": [15, 12, 3], "text": ["\"What's the earliest X\" questions-- yay or nay?", "I have an idea, not sure how feasible it is. What if, instead of removing such threads, you use AutoModerator to lock the thread so that only flaired users can make top-level comments?", "Since I'm more interested in using history to learn about stuff, I've always found myself tempted to ask questions that skirt pretty close to this boundary.\n\nFor instance, would it be removed if I were to ask a question about, say, wars that dragged on for more than a decade? If I asked if there tended to be commonalities between them, or simply what tended to cause wars to find no decisive end? I could specifically ask about the second Punic war, or the last Byzantine-Sassanian war, or the Mongol conquest of the Song, but I'm really only interested in the specific war for what it tells me about the bigger picture."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nub87/rules_change_throughout_history_rule_is_replaced/"], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1xz3t1", "title": "Why did Hitler declare war on the US following the US's declaration of war on Japan four days earlier? Would the US have engaged in Europe otherwise, or just stayed in the Pacific?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xz3t1/why_did_hitler_declare_war_on_the_us_following/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cffz2ed", "cfg3u97", "cfg48f8"], "score": [80, 41, 9], "text": ["In *Zweites Buch* (Hitler's follow-up to *Mein Kampf*) he addresses his opinions on the U.S. and his view of the long-term future of Europe.  Straight copy-pasta from Wikipedia:\n\n*\"Hitler declared that for immediate purposes, the Soviet Union was still the most dangerous opponent, but that in the long-term, the most dangerous potential opponent was the U.S.\"*\n\nHe viewed America as a mixed bag... \"racially degenerate\" because of immigration from all corners of the world... yet also having an impressive base of German-Anglo leadership including some of the strongest eugenics projects outside of Germany.\n\nI think at the very least, we can fairly assume that he underestimated our economic/manufacturing potential and what that would mean to the war.  He saw it more than most people did, he says so in *Zweites Buch*, but I don't think anyone grasped the scale of the war machine the U.S. could become, and he probably underestimated the timeline it would take to develop.", "The US was already engaging in Europe before the declaration of war through Lend-Lease and similar policies.  The US Navy was guarding merchant ship convoys between the US and Britain.  German U-Boats, in turn, ended up sinking a couple of destroyers in late 1941.  After the sinking of the USS Kearny, Roosevelt gave [this speech](_URL_1_) declaring a planned increase in military capabilities in the Atlantic.  The Germans cited the speech in the [declaration of war](_URL_0_) delivered to the US.\n\nIn other words, things were ramping up well before the declaration of war.  The Germans had every reason to believe that the US would eventually enter the war and the US was already aiding the Allies.\n\nThe US declaring war on Japan and the Tripartite Agreement provided a convenient reason to openly declare war.", "This question depends on the common misconception that the United States was not already engaged in war in the European theater before the Pearl Harbor.\n\nAmerican ships were actively hunting German U-boats in the North Atlantic at least as early as July of 1941. American aircraft and ships, with American crews and flying the American flag were fighting Germans with casualties and lost ships on both sides for months before the declaration of war. Further than this, the USA was essentially allied with UK giving them all the direct support they were capable of giving. The American leadership was clearly intent on being a part of the war, only delaying actual declaration of war mostly due to PR reasons and because there was no actual reason to do so yet, while their army was still being raised.\n\nPearl Harbour was a convenient excuse to shut up the isolationists, and a nice flag to rally the people around, nothing more.\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DECWAR.htm", "http://www.usmm.org/fdr/kearny.html"], ["http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/undeclared-war-in-the-atlantic-the-u-s-navy-versus-the-u-boats/"]]}
{"q_id": "6iqyx3", "title": "King James wrote the \"Counterblaste to Tobacco\" against the use of tobacco in the mid-17th century. What was King James's motivation in writing this and was this a common perspective?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6iqyx3/king_james_wrote_the_counterblaste_to_tobacco/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dj8u4cd"], "score": [11], "text": ["Not an answer but some cool digitized versions of related content!\n\nOpening page to the Counterblaste: _URL_0_\n\nAn image from a document in agreement with the counterblaste called \"Two broad-sides against tobacco: The first given by King James of famous memory; his counterblast to tobacco. The second transcribed out of that learned physician Dr. Everard Maynwaringe, his treatise of the scurvy\" as well as the title page of Maynwaringe's treatise:\n\n_URL_2_ \n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/hs87j7", "http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/peit76", "http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/03zht3"]]}
{"q_id": "2tmfry", "title": "In Renaissance Europe (~1300-1700) how difficult would it be for a poor person to become educated?", "selftext": "In the renaissance, prior to mass public education in Europe, how hard would it be for someone to pull themselves up by their boot straps so to speak? Would a driven but poor child be able to get an education through churches, libraries, ect? How difficult would that be? How rare would it be for someone who was born poor to become an educated, wealthy individual?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tmfry/in_renaissance_europe_13001700_how_difficult/", "answers": {"a_id": ["co0dzs8", "co15okc"], "score": [36, 2], "text": ["Where and who and the political and economic on-goings matter a lot.  There's an [excellent social history by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie](_URL_0_) that deals with your question very directly. \n\nLadurie follows a Swiss peasant, Thomas Platter (1499), as he rises through the world by catching on to the new Reformation humanism.  Despite beginning his life as a vagabond Platter was able to participate in a fast growing economy of education, typically seeking employment as a teacher no sooner than he had learned material himself.  Thomas Platter also benefits from the easy availability of credit-- gold from the monasteries destroyed by the Protestant Reformation or from the New World.  By wisely borrowing for investment in an environment of high inflation Platter comes to own several properties.  In turn he is able to send his sons to study medicine (a higher form of learning than classics) at the best French universities, and so in two generations education raises the Platters from pigpens to places as court physicians.\n\nPlatter was definitely a highly motivated individual, willing to do things like postpone marriage and invest his low wages (working at one point as a apprentice ropemaker) in books and Latin/Greek/Hebrew lessons.  His life isn't \"easy,\" but the main thing distinguishing him from his less socially mobile family is his consistent motivation and his luck in choosing a \"boom\" industry like classical education during the Reformation.  In many parts of Europe, definitely central Europe, the Reformation had the character of a broad social revolution, displacing classes and the values that had upheld them, ultimately creating many opportunities for social mobility in the revolutionized Protestant society.\n\nThough Ladurie would never slight Platter's gumption as a historian his work is dedicated to contextualizing Platter's success.  Much more could be accomplished in the favorable circumstances of Swiss humanism circa 1530 than say a French village circa 1400, if only because in 1400 far fewer people care about learning Hebrew and none of them would pay good money to a ropemaker who says he can teach it.  There's no single answer to your question, but asking it speaks to larger question about social mobility in different European contexts.", "There were regulations in medieval London providing for the education of poor students. Many schools were run by churches, but some were independent; there were even \"dame schools\" run by female teachers. As we can see by this and similar sources, in the late Middle Ages it was not too difficult for anyone in a town to get a basic education. This applied largely to commoners who intended to become merchants, lawyers, etc., but also to ordinary peasants who just wanted to be able to read their business contracts: there was a very active land market in the late Middle Ages. \n\nIt is a common myth that only people training to be clergy were educated; in fact, many children--both boys and girls--got a good basic education. This is testified to by the many surviving letters and wills written by both men and women. Universities, of course, then as now, were harder to get into. Also they, unlike the preparatory/grammar schools, did not accept women.\n\nP.S. this is really a medieval answer, not a Renaissance answer, but your time period includes two centuries of the Middle Ages so here it is"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.worldcat.org/title/beggar-and-the-professor-a-sixteenth-century-family-saga/oclc/34824285&amp;referer=brief_results"], []]}
{"q_id": "4yl58j", "title": "Is there any serious evidence for settled civilisations during the last glacial period (i.e., pre-12000 BCE)?", "selftext": "It's interesting that states formed in six different regions around the world at roughly the same time (3000 - 0 BCE) _URL_0_.\n\nFrom what I understand, it wasn't until the end of the last glacial period that changes in the climate enabled humans to develop agriculture and settle into permanent communities.\n\nIt looks like this led to steady population growth, with states developing independently in different regions of the world as population density increased to a point able to sustain complex societies.\n\nDuring the glacial period, most water was held up in ice caps, so more land was either desert or tundra than currently. On the other hand, it's not the case that everywhere was inhospitable for agriculture -- only that favourable regions were less common than today, and in different areas. That makes it seem strange that humanity collectively waited until the same time period in different areas of the globe to settle down.\n\nIs it possible that complex societies developed during this period, possibly in areas which are now underwater? I'm not talking \"Ancient Atlantis\" pseudoscientific theories, but perhaps societies on the level of North American chiefdoms, with multiple settlements and agriculture.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4yl58j/is_there_any_serious_evidence_for_settled/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d6os6q3"], "score": [22], "text": ["This is a frequently asked question, and we had a very similar thread recently. Take a look at [the answers](_URL_0_) by /u/Brigantus and myself. \n\nBy way of summary, it is **possible** that some society like that could have existed, but given everything we know currently is highly **improbable**. \n\nGiven that we have significant amounts of archaeological evidence for foraging societies, especially in the upper Paleolithic, it would be surprising for us to lack any evidence a society that should have a greater archaeological footprint (a chiefdom, like you postulate). That we should have so much evidence for societies with smaller archaeological footprints, yet none for societies with theoretically much larger footprints is pretty damning evidence from an archaeological stand-point. \n\nThe problem is that in archaeology we never seek to disprove anything - given the incomplete and partial nature of the archaeological record, it would be difficult to conclusively disprove any assertion. This is why I say that the existence of such a complex, Pleistocene society is **possible**. However, this doesn't mean anything goes in archaeology: we can use the evidence available to us to describe the *most probable* explanation and the likelihood that is the correct explanation. This is why I say is is **highly improbable** that such a Pleistocene society could exist, given all the evidence we have available to us. Unfortunately, this lack of \"certainty\" in a more scientific sense leaves the doors open for the kinds of pseudoarchaeology you mention, where they claim that we can't disprove that aliens built the pyramids, for instance. While they are correct in saying we cannot disprove that, that doesn't mean we can't say that is a highly unlikely explanation for the evidence we have.     "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_formation"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4x3811/if_there_had_been_a_large_empire_like_the_mongols/d6d1k1p"]]}
{"q_id": "7f0cm3", "title": "Did Hamilton have a Jamaican accent?", "selftext": "Having grown up in the Carribbean til he was 17, did Alexander Hamilton ever have or retain an accent that made it a dead giveaway where he was from?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7f0cm3/did_hamilton_have_a_jamaican_accent/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dq8nkmo"], "score": [83], "text": ["[Good answer here.](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ivea3/did_alexander_hamilton_have_a_noticeably/"]]}
{"q_id": "5rip17", "title": "When and how did the title \"Paladin\" or \"Knight Paladin\" become popularly associated with a Knight who is also Healer? From the history of the term it would appear earlier usages were describing knights involved in mostly offensive operations?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5rip17/when_and_how_did_the_title_paladin_or_knight/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dd7um2l"], "score": [185], "text": ["Paladins are an invention of high medieval French literature, especially those *chansons* dealing with Roland and his exploits. They're also known as the Twelve Peers, and are, you guessed it, twelve highly esteemed noblemen who serve the (fictionalized) Charlemagne. In the most prominent of the chansons, they die with their leader, Roland, while defending Roncevaux Pass from the Moorish hordes. \n\nThat's pretty much it. There were no actual guys called paladins. Knights were not called paladins, except perhaps as a literary allusion. Charlemagne did not spend ten years campaigning against the Moors in Spain; he spent about four months there, before withdrawing his army to deal with domestic troubles. The historical Roland was a minor lord and killed not by tens of thousands of treacherous Muslims, but by outraged Basques whom Charlemagne's army had treated rather shabbily.\n\nMy guess would be that Gary Gygax or someone else involved in fantasy roleplaying games seized upon the name and built a player class around it."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8aqqym", "title": "The U.S. Constitution, the 2nd amendment, and the \"comma debate\"", "selftext": "I remember being told multiple times, by both teachers and a few lawyer family members, that when the U.S. Constitution was sent out to each state for ratification there were \"typos\" in some of the copies. Most notably, the comma after Militia in the first sentence of the 2nd amendment was missing on some State copies.\n\nFrom a legal perspective this could change/shape the debate over gun control currently taking place drastically. However, I am unable to find any real reference to this \"discrepancy\".\n\nIs this just some \"wive's tale\" I've been sold my entire life?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8aqqym/the_us_constitution_the_2nd_amendment_and_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dx14f4e", "dx1knu6"], "score": [93, 27], "text": ["The short of it: the current debate over gun control has almost nothing in common with the debate that our founding fathers were having. \n\nStarting with the comma point though: I haven't heard of the typos before, but I have heard the rest. This is indeed a ubiquitous argument. There's even a pretty common meme out there that goes so far as to say that a [single comma](_URL_0_) gave Americans the right to own guns. I can't comment much on the validity of this argument. I'm sure as far as the contemporary Supreme court goes, anything is possible. If we're asking however what the original intent of the 2nd amendment was, there's a much more straightforward place to look.\n\nIn the Constitutional Convention, here the debate is clearly concerned with how to avoid the creation of a standing army, and so by extension, how to ensure that the militia remains a viable fighting force. That is, if \"viable\" is even the right word. The basic tension around this subject seemed to be that while on paper the militia was the ideal guarantor of a free republic, on paper, their performance left much to be desired. The \"shot heard around the world\" was the fruit of militias, but the victory at Yorktown was the culmination of Continental Regulars. Which do you choose?\n\nThere's a famous moment at the Convention. In a discussion about standing armies, Elbridge Gerry suggests a limit on the standing army of, \"two or three thousand men,\" to which Washington, \"silent for weeks now, turned in his chair and in a stage whisper proposed that the Constitution also include a provision declaring that, \u201cno foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops.\u201d\n\nAnyone that knows how taciturn Washington typically is gets double the humor out of this anecdote. This is one of the fun parts about studying this angle though. Washington, understandably, has some things to say here.\n\nTo Gerry's credit however he was prescient other things. Namely he correctly anticipated that the Constitution-as-is would be poorly received by the public, and so it would be left to measures like the 2nd amendment to assuage peoples' fears about a tyrannical central government. At least that is the long and short of it. And where is the militia today? That gives you a hint about how effective the 2nd amendment ultimately was.   \n\nThere are many more details in between, truncated in the interest of time/length. Let me know if there's anything further required. \n\n*Sources*\n\nWaldman, Michael. *The Second Amendment: A Biography.* Simon  &  Schuster, 2014.", "It sounds like a wive's tale. The problem with most contemporary discussion of the 2nd amendment is that everyone forgets that prior to the [doctrine of incorporation](_URL_1_) The Bill of Rights only constrained federal government.  \n\nAt the time the Constitution was ratified, several states had the explicit right to bear arms and/or serve in a militia in their state constitutions. Here's the right to bear arms in [Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1776](_URL_2_):\n\n >  That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. \n\nThe Federalists did not think a federal bill of rights was necessary, but it became clear that without one, the Constitution would not be ratified. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was not to constrain state governments, but the federal one.\n\nStates, at the time the Constitution was ratified, were much more like sovereign nations than our modern notion. Each had long histories of self-government and individual rights. So the impetus for the Bill of Rights wasn't a fear that Massachusetts or Virginia would suddenly deprive their citizens of rights to assembly, worship, arms, et al, but that the newly formed federal government would. \n\nIn this context splitting hairs about commas is absurd. As second amendment scholar Glenn Reynolds [notes](_URL_0_):\n\n >  Madison's own proposal for integrating\nthe Bill of Rights into the Constitution was not to add them at the end (as they have been) but to\ninterlineate them into the portions of the original Constitution they affected or to which they\nrelated. If he had thought the Second Amendment would alter the military and/or militia provisions\nof the Constitution he would have interlineated it in Article I, Section 8, near or after clauses 15 and\n16.51 Instead, he planned to insert the right to arms with freedom of religion, the press and other\npersonal rights in Section 9 following the rights against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws.\n\nGiven the debate of the time and well-established history of individual rights in the several states, the wording of the second amendment would've been clear to any contemporary reader regardless of commas."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.businessinsider.com/the-comma-in-the-second-amendment-2013-8"], ["https://www.azcdl.org/Reynolds_ACriticalGuidetotheSecondAmendment.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Constitution_of_1776#Declaration_of_Rights"]]}
{"q_id": "2qj945", "title": "My father and brother both remember an ancient commander using mirrors to blind the enemy's horses, but I can't find anything about it on the internet. Did something similar actually happen?", "selftext": "Neither can remember any details, only that it involved horses and mirrors (and that it was a famous commander, apparently). I'd appreciate any help, thanks!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2qj945/my_father_and_brother_both_remember_an_ancient/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cn6qalj", "cn6rmsk", "cn6s133"], "score": [31, 9, 7], "text": ["I'm sorry, I can't find the specific source myself, but I remember this story pretty well as being in the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* (\u4e09\u56fd\u6f14\u4e49). I believe it was during a battle between Liu Bei's forces and Cao Cao's -- two of the three major warlords during the end of the Han Dynasty, in the early 3rd Century AD. I can't find the exact instance in my copy right now, so I apologize for this being unhelpful. Also, keep in mind that ROTK is a heavily fictionalized and romanticized account of the actual events of the Three Kingdoms period -- it's likely that the story of the mirror shields is more folk tale than truth. \n\nIf nothing else, the use of these mirror-shields to stop a charge is depicted in the film *Red Cliff*, [and a clip of this scene is at this link.](_URL_0_). Hardly an authoritative source though. ", "There is also [Archimedes and the Burning Mirror](_URL_0_) which Mythbusters also [did a thing on](_URL_1_).", "What you remember is probably  a [1959 movie](_URL_0_):  \n\n*Pursued by the Egyptians, who were sent to finish him off, Solomon thereafter devises a plan. He lines up the remnants of his army on a hill, prompting the enemy to charge. The Israelites, who have arranged themselves to face east, then use their highly polished shields to reflect the light of the rising sun into the Egyptians' eyes. Blinded, the Egyptians are prevented from seeing the chasm in front of which the Israelites have positioned themselves, and the entire army rushes headlong over the edge and falls to its death.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.traileraddict.com/red-cliff/move-aside"], ["http://www.unmuseum.org/burning_mirror.htm", "http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/01/episode_46_archimedes_death_ra.html"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_and_Sheba"]]}
{"q_id": "1uyyyo", "title": "In light of Sharon's death: What actually happened at Sabra and Shatila? Was it the israeli's fault or have they just been given the blame for Lebanese Christian terrorists?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uyyyo/in_light_of_sharons_death_what_actually_happened/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cen3nh3"], "score": [115], "text": ["Oh, I wrote my bachelor's thesis about this. Well, about the Kahan commission. The Kahan commission was an Israeli commission, led by several Israeli judges, who were tasked in finding out exactly that - what happened at Sabra and Shatila and how much blame falls on Israel. The conclusion of the report was clear: the Phalangists were directly responsible for the massacre, Israel was indirectly responsible and Ariel Sharon had a personal responsibility. It was seen as a bold and impressive move by the international community - a nation that looked to recognise its own mistakes and responsibilities, an exercise in democracy.\n\n\nThe problem, however, is that the Kahan commission was - despite its unprecedented admission of guilt from Israel - a whitewash. Well, not a total whitewash, since it did lay some blame at the feet of Israel and Sharon, something that was fairly unprecedented at that point. But it was hard to deny those facts - even if you believed the most hardline Israeli version of the events, they'd still carry that responsibility because it happened in territory occupied by the Israeli's. The Kahan commission was a whitewash, however, because while it was undeniably the Phalangists carrying out the massacres, Israel - and Sharon - played an active part in making it happen and can't get away with just an admission of \"indirect responsibility\". \n\n\nThe short version of what happened, then. Two months after Israel invaded Lebanon, a deal was struck after mediation by the international community. The PLO fighters and Syrian troops would get free passage to evacuate from West Beirut. All was going well, until the assassination of the recently elected Christian president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, on 14 September. The very next day, the IDF invaded West Beirut. By the 16th, the entirety of West Beirut was under Israeli control, having met little resistance after the evacuation. The IDF surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel's allies in the war, the Christian Phalangists under command of  Elie Hobeika, were sent into the camps under orders to remove any remaining PLO fighters. During the next three days, between 700 and 3000 Palestinian refugees were massacred under the eyes of the IDF. \n\n\nWhile the IDF later claimed they knew nothing of what happened and were powerless to stop it, even while the massacres were ongoing, the international press managed to catch wind of it. What followed was a storm of protest and outrage, even in Israel itself. At first, the Israeli government wasn't prepared to budge - they did nothing wrong, they claimed. In the words of prime minister Begin: 'Goyim are killing Goyim. Are we supposed to be hanged for that?' This position became untenable once 300.000 to 400.000 Israeli's came out onto the streets in protest. The pressure, both internal and international, was insurmountable and by the end of September the Kahan commission was born. \n\n\nThe Kahan commission - officially the \"Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in Beirut\" - was named after its chairman and then president of the Israeli High Court, Yitzhak Kahan. Along with another high court judge, Aharon Barak, and Major-General of the IDF, Yona Efrat, they were tasked in finding out what happened. In their conclusions, they lay the blame at the feet of the Phalangists. Israel and the IDF could not have foreseen the massacre, let alone stop it. They held an indirect responsibility. Then minister of Defence Ariel Sharon and a few military men (including Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan and director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy) were held *personally* responsible. As a result of this, despite his initial refusal to do so, Sharon left his post as minister of defence, yet stayed on as minister without portfolio. Saguy was fired and Brigadier-General Amos Yaron was suspended from leadership positions within the IDF for three years.\n\n\nDespite loud praise coming from Israel's allied governments in the West, there was a lot of criticism too. I'll keep these fairly short, but feel free to ask for more information. The commission was criticised for the following:\n\n\na) Ignoring witness statements it declared to be biased, such as the testimony of the Jewish-American nurse Ellen Siegel who was present at the camps at the time of the massacre and was about the presence of Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers and officers' testimonies were accepted without question.\n\nb) Assuming the presence of PLO fighters in the refugee camps. This was one of the major criticisms on the facts mentioned in the report. The IDF claimed that the PLO didn't keep their part of the evacuation deal and left a large contingent of fighters in West Beirut, including 2.000 fighters in Sabra and Shatila. No source is given for this claim, except press releases of the Israeli government. More damningly, the IDF claims the massacre resulted in 700-800 casualties - but what happened to the other 1200-1300 fighters then? And seeing as many of the casualties were women and children, how is this explained? Moreover, in the immediate aftermath of the takeover of West-Beirut, the Chief of Staff described the area as \"quiet\". An intelligence officer was quoted as saying that the camps contained no \"terrorists\". Worse still, the Phalangists that were sent into the camps numbered only 150 - if they were supposed to confront 2.000 soldiers, that seems a bit optimistic in the capabilities of the militia. In all likelihood, the camps contained no PLO fighters.\n\nc) The second point of major criticism was the ability of the IDF command posts to see what happened in the camps. The Israeli forward command post was a five story building a mere 200m away from Shatila. According to the report, the IDF command couldn't have seen what happened in the camps, not even with binoculars. A ludicrous claim, as independent tests shortly after the massacre proved this wrong - even without binoculars. And even if they couldn't see everything in the camps, there was a mass grave just 300m from the command posts that would have been very, very hard to miss.\n\nd) The report concluded that the IDF had no way of knowing that the massacres were ongoing. They reached this conclusion despite recognizing that the militia shared the IDF command post, where several Israeli\u2019s overheard and reported such communications as militia members radioing Hobeika with questions about what to do with 50 women and children and later with 45 prisoners \u2013 the responses being \u2018This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that, you know exactly what to do.\u2019 and \u2018Do the will of God.\u2019 respectively. Another message reported 300 casualties at that point. All these events were reported by members of the Israeli staff to their superiors, but were not acted upon. Even on the 17th of September, Israeli reporter Ze'ev Schiff got an anonymous tip from inside the military staff that a massacre was occurring. All these things are accepted as fact in the report. Nonetheless, the commission concluded that the IDF didn\u2019t know the massacre was happening. \n\ne) There were accusations that Israel even supplied material aid in the massacres, in the form of supplying bulldozers and illuminating the camp with flares at night. Supposedly, Hobeika\u2019s militia was flown into Beirut by the Israeli military as well. \n\nf) Another point of criticism revolves around the question if Israel knew of the possibility of a massacre before it even took place. This knowledge would imply criminal negligence or would even imply complicity. The commission mentions this possibility, but rejects it without giving any reasoning. The criticism here is summed up by the words of author Izhar Smilanski:  \u2018We let the hungry lions loose in the arena and they devoured people. So the lions must be the guilty ones, mustn\u2019t they? They did the killing, after all. Who would have dreamed, when we opened the door for the lions and let them into the arena, that they\u2019d gobble people up like that\u2019\nThere were in fact many reports of concerns and predictions shortly after Bashir\u2019s death about the nigh-on certainty of revenge and massacres, including by Mossad leaders, the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Prime Minister. \n\ng) In addition to the last point, Hobeika\u2019s militia was known for its brutality and for the massacres it committed, even before Sabra and Shatila. There were plenty of other militias who could\u2019ve been sent in, but the Phalangists were chosen. The implication is clear.\n\nh) The punishments suggested by the commission were often ignored. Sharon lost his minister of defense post, but stayed on as minister. He was even allowed to chair in several defense commissions, leaving him in de facto control of the defense post. Eitan wasn\u2019t punished because he was on the verge of retirement. Yaron wasn\u2019t supposed to have gotten a command for three years, but was appointed as chief of manpower and training shortly after the publication of the report.\n\n\nThese were just a few of the criticism on the report. Since then, there have been a few other commissions \u2013 most notably the MacBride commission \u2013 but these haven\u2019t been accepted by Israel. Any criticism has been sharply countered, with browbeating, lawsuits and disinformation. \n\n\nBut let me be totally clear: Israel holds a direct responsibility for what happened in Sabra and Shatila and there are some very damning pieces of evidence that imply that members of the Israeli government and IDF were well aware of what was going to happen beforehand, most notably Ariel Sharon. \n\nIf there are any questions or if you want to know more about anything, just ask. I left out a lot because this is long enough as it is. As for sources, should I just upload my Bachelor's thesis? It's not in English, though. \n\ne: How the hell do you leave space between paragraphs on this site? Goddamn.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24lkd9", "title": "Why didn't Pedro II of Brazil try to reclaim his throne?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24lkd9/why_didnt_pedro_ii_of_brazil_try_to_reclaim_his/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch8h2fm"], "score": [22], "text": ["Pedro II was very old and ill by the time of his exile and also thought that exile was, at the very least, a somewhat \"honorable\" means of leaving Brazil. \n\nThere is also some debate as to whether or not Pedro II fully understood the circumstances of his exile. His aides and family members may have shielded him from the full consequences (Roderick J. Barman, Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825-1891, 2002).\n\nEdit: a word. \n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "7n3m42", "title": "Did people really walk differently in medieval times?", "selftext": "This popped up for me on twitter, asserting that people walked using the ball of their feet first, instead of the heel.\n_URL_0_\n\nIt (and the video linked on the article) don't back the claim up with any sources.  Does evidence actually support their claims?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7n3m42/did_people_really_walk_differently_in_medieval/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dryy7al"], "score": [91], "text": ["A similar question was asked several months ago. Check out [this answer](_URL_0_) for more information."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://mentalfloss.com/article/505105/why-people-walked-differently-medieval-times"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/74penu/walkin_medieval_did_people_walk_on_heels_first/do0s36x/"]]}
{"q_id": "5m60ul", "title": "What was life like inside the Kowloon Walled City?", "selftext": "My father walked past the walled city every day, but he was too scared to enter for fear of being robbed. Was the Kowloon Walled City as dangerous as people thought it was? Also, what are some misconceptions people have about the walled city that should be cleared up? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5m60ul/what_was_life_like_inside_the_kowloon_walled_city/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dc1kqqp", "dc2a15g"], "score": [35, 3], "text": ["Oh, hey. I never thought I'd see a question on this sub I'm semi-qualified to answer. That being said, it's been a little too long since I've done much reading on Kowloon to feel confident giving any kind of specific or full answer here.   \n\nInstead, I'll point you to Greg Girard and Ian Lambot's *City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City*, which is likely going to be the primary English source. It's most commonly known as a photo book, but includes copious amounts of text compiling interviews with the city's residents, along with substantial historical information. It's more thorough than one would expect, and covers education, employment, infrastructure, class, culture and the histories of particular buildings such as the central yamen/administrative office (which still stands), which had multiple lives as it was repurposed into different things, i.e. a retirement home run by the Protestant church. The book can be very expensive now, but luckily there was an updated edition in 2014 with apparently (I haven't read it) more information than the original, which can be found for reasonable prices (it's still a very photo-heavy book, so it will still be a bit costly).   \n\nAs for misconceptions, the popular idea of Kowloon Walled City was as a lawless, dirty, crime-ridden epitome of chaotic urban density and anomie, when in fact many former residents have described a strong sense of community in response to the poverty, density and poor infrastructure. Shared social spaces such as the former yamen seemed to be important, and there were several areas of charity/social work such as the school, almshouse and retirement/community center (most of which I believe were run by the Protestant church? though there were also [Hung Shin](_URL_1_), Fuk Tak and [Tin Hau](_URL_2_) temples, the latter of which is one of Girard's [more iconic images](_URL_0_)). Although the city's reputation is one of high crime, most residents were ordinary working class Hong Kongers, and several expressed concerns over finding adequate/affordable housing in the wake of the Walled City's inevitable demolition.  \n\nReally, I'm a little rusty, but the Girard/Lambot book is a wonderful resource for anyone curious about daily life in Kowloon at the height of the Walled City's population in the late 80s.", "Related question: Who built the Kowloon Walled City? Was it just local residents? Shady Chinese construction companies? How structurally stable were the buildings?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/05/article-2139914-12EF3370000005DC-213_964x630.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_Shing_Temple", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Hau_temples_in_Hong_Kong"], []]}
{"q_id": "422gd4", "title": "I read a claim that the Hutus and Tutsis are actually the same and were first split by the European colonists who entered the region. Is there any support for this claim?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/422gd4/i_read_a_claim_that_the_hutus_and_tutsis_are/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cz7iu1t", "cz7ixer"], "score": [19, 4], "text": ["No, while there is substantial overlap, there are real generic variation between the two population groups and Hutu animosity towards Tutsis, who migrated into what is now Rwanda, is a source of long grievance in the local mythology. There's also clear physiological differentiation, to my untrained eye, as the Tutsi tend to look much more like Africans from the Horn, who I lived and worked with for some time, while the Hutu are a central African people.\n\n[Tutsi probably differ genetically from the Hutu](_URL_0_)\n\nWhere did you read that?", "Have you seen these?\n\n[How can the hate between hutu's and tutsi's be explained from a historic perspective?](_URL_1_)\n\n[The Tutsis during the Colonization of Rwanda](_URL_0_)\n\nThey are what cropped up in a search of AskHistorians for \"Hutu Tutsi\", and they seem to answer your questions.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/08/tutsi-differ-genetically-from-the-hutu/"], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13lysa/the_tutsis_during_the_colonization_of_rwanda/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kkm29/how_can_the_hate_between_hutus_and_tutsis_be/"]]}
{"q_id": "268krh", "title": "What did Native Americans think of Venus Flytraps?", "selftext": "I was looking the plant up and realized that their territory was the eastern United States. That would imply that the native nations would be aware of them. Was there any special interest towards the carnivorous plant, or were they just another little swampland novelty?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/268krh/what_did_native_americans_think_of_venus_flytraps/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chp3vln", "chp85tv"], "score": [6, 5], "text": ["Various Siouan bands including the Cheraw, Chicora, and Waccamaw of what is now coastal North Carolina were known to have used this and other plant species as part of traditional herbal healing. Many cultures from every corner of the globe from time immemorial to the current day both self-treat and/or have some version of a \"medicine man\" who collects plants, animals, and minerals to both treat and prevent physical as well as spiritual (curses etc...) disease. The VFT held no special place above and beyond the myriad of other natural cures traditionally practiced by the various native tribes. On the other hand the writings of  Peter Martyr D'Anghera, \"DE ORBE NOVO\", in the sixteenth century (written in latin) do seem to perhaps depict the ritual use of this plant.", "In the biological classification system indigenous to the Southeast the major categories of life, there's a major category for humans, four-footed mammals, birds, below-world animals (a category that combines what the Linnean systems would call reptiles, amphibians, and fish), and plants. The various invertebrates were sometimes placed in their own category and sometimes included as a subdivision of below-world animals. \n\nThese categories, however, were recognized as imperfect and that various species bridged the taxa. The [liminality](_URL_0_) of these species invested them with special cultural significance and power.  These included species like bears (between the Two-Footed humans and the Four-Footed animals) and bats (between the Four-Footed animals and birds). Carnivorous plants, the flytrap and the pitcher plants, were seen as linking plants to humans or to predatory animals.\n\nThe flytrap's liminal position made it particularly potent in hunting medicine.  The Cherokee would trade for *yugwilu*, (depending on the context, could refer to the flytrap or the pitcher plant, or the roots of either) even after the Removal. It was particularly favored by fishermen because a small bit of yugwilu (presumably the flytrap in this instance) would augment the bait, employing the liminal power of the flytrap to attract a fish and prevent it from slipping off the hook. The water from a pitcher plant aided in memory.\n\n**Sources**\n\n* [Ethnobotany of the Cherokee](_URL_2_)\n\n* [The Southeastern Indians](_URL_3_)\n\n* [Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality", "http://books.google.com/books?id=OdwKAQAAIAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Sacred+Formulas+of+the+Cherokee&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=a1R_U4HpG8ObyATt1IKgCg&amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=flytrap&amp;f=false", "http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2293&amp;context=utk_gradthes", "http://books.google.com/books?id=jw2GSQAACAAJ"]]}
{"q_id": "22d9su", "title": "Why is the Second Sino-Japanese War not lumped in with World War 2 like the rest of the fronts are? What are some interesting stories/facts about the conflict?", "selftext": "I've never understood this. China is never considered one of the allies and the conflict, apart from Nanking, is rarely discussed in history class (at least in America). In some way or another it involved almost every country that was a combatant and the outcomes are still being seen today yet I know hardly anything about the topic. \n\nSomebody fill me in!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22d9su/why_is_the_second_sinojapanese_war_not_lumped_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgltpbq", "cglu0tw", "cgm8ur2"], "score": [11, 2, 2], "text": ["Even at the time, the question was problematic. The United States, as a matter of foreign policy, had made the strengthening of China a priority well before the actual Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria infuriated the United States and helped unleash a chain of events culminating in the American economic sanctions that the Japanese used as pretext and justification for Pearl Harbor. \n\nDespite that, the conflict did not become international until the onset of world war II. While there was violence that occassionaly spilled over - the sinking of the Panay - they were limited in scope. Perhaps if the Panay had led to immediate war, the Sino-Japanese war would be considered the same as WWII, but it didn't and isn't. \n\nWhen the US formally declared war in 1941, it was on the basis of Pearl Harbor not China. Therefore they are considered separate (but linked) events. \n\nYour other question about China being considered one of the allies, this was also contentious. The United States pushed repeatedly for China's involvement, while the UK was skeptical. Ironically on France, the positions where opposite - the UK pushed for more French involvement, while the US was skeptical. Ultimately the final and most important outcome of membership as a allied power was a position on the United Nations (which is the formal name that Roosevelt used for the allies during parts of the war) security council, which was negotiated during the war. Both France and China made the list. ", "China was considered an ally hence their permanence seat on the UN Security Council  along with the other major allied powers: USA, France, UK and USSR/Russia. Their was some issue though since China itself was in a civil war between the communists and nationalists at the start of the war as well as for years after the end of WW2. Some people do consider the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War as the start.  that was a regional war though where as the invasion of Poland brought the UK and France into the war along with their empires which covered much of Africa along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.  You could argue it wasn't really a world war until December 7 1941 which saw America enter the war along with the Japanese invading European held Asian territory thus connecting the Pacific front and the European ones. It's really just a matter of choosing when you feel the term best applies.", "1939 is generally considered to be the start date of the conflict because it was at that point that multiple powers were at war (UK, France, Germany, Poland).  The Sino-Japanese War was, as the name states, between China and Japan, despite the fact that Germany, the Soviet Union, and the US were involved to some degree on the Chinese side.\n\nAs for interesting stories about the war, I have a few...\n\nOne of the direct causes of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was the Japanese annexation of Manchuria in the Mukden incident of 1931.  One of the prime instigators was an officer named Kenji Ishiwara.  For his work in the incident, he had expected to be executed for violating orders, but he was instead promoted, and became vice chief-of-staff for the Kwantung Army.  Once there, he rapidly grew disillusioned with the IJA presence in China, and became one of the few outspoken dissidents against Tojo and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, culminating in his forced retirement after demanding Tojo be executed for treason.  Talk about an about-face!\n\nIn the battle of Kunlun Pass, the Nationalist Chinese deployed a fairly large force of Soviet and Italian tanks to rapidly encircle and wipe out a Japanese force.  Amusingly, this might be the only instance of Italian tanks winning a pitched battle without German support.  Unless you count the German equipped infantrymen, at least.\n\nWhile the Marco Polo incident is typically seen as the moment when the 2nd Sino-Japanese war started, the war itself did not truly begin until Nationalist troops attacked the Japanese \"marines\" (which were really more ground troops attached to the Navy) in Shanghai.  Actually, the attack on Shanghai was a questionable idea.  Von Falkenhausen, the German military adviser to Chiang Kai-Shek, advocated a strategy in line with German defensive doctrines-namely, to pull back troops behind a massive defense line between Shanghai and Nanjing, which was heavily fortified and likely would have made the Japanese losses even steeper than they were in real life.  However, Chiang felt that the only way China could win was with external intervention.  Many foreign nations had concessions in Shanghai, and he felt that by \"bringing the battle\" to them, he could get their intervention.  Alas, the gamble failed.\n\nHersham's Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze provides several good stories about the Battle of Shanghai.  In addition to the 400 heroes of the warehouse, there's also a bit about the the Japanese cruiser Izumo, which was a 19th century rustbucket that was basically the IJN's way of saying \"we're helping.\"  That lone cruiser provided enough naval artillery support to stop the Chinese troops from overrunning the Japanese marines.  The Chinese tried to sink it many times, via divebombers, torpedo boats, onshore artillery, and I believe at one point the use of frogmen was considered, but all failed.  That cruiser would survive until the remnants of the IJN were wiped out at Kure Naval Base in 1945."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8cnm73", "title": "Did Reagan\u2019s Star Wars project really contribute to the fall of the USSR? Was the collapse mostly dues to internal or external factors?", "selftext": "I find it hard to believe that the US \u00ab bankrupted \u00bb the USSR because of Star Wars, since I\u2019ve read that, although the exact figures are unknown, the USSR\u2019s military budget was consistently decreased throughout the 80s (I unfortunately can\u2019t find the source right now).\n\nIf their military spending decreased, how can the Star Wars project, which was supposedly intended to force extra military spending, be considered a success?\n\nI\u2019ve read The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky, which talks a fair bit about the fall of the USSR and (although it\u2019s been a while since I read it) he doesn\u2019t invoke any external factors as causes of the collapse.\n\nWas the USSR\u2019s collapse only (or mostly) due to internal factors or did Star Wars, Reagan\u2019s other policies or some other external factor have a major impact?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8cnm73/did_reagans_star_wars_project_really_contribute/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxgq0lh", "dxgyo9f"], "score": [45, 3], "text": ["**Part I**\n\nThe short answer is that while the Soviet Union did collapse in no small part because of budget deficits and economic stability, and while SDI did play a complicated role in arms control negotiations towards the end of the Cold War, responses to SDI were not a major factor in either the collapse of the Soviet Union, nor in the end of the Cold War.\n\nFirst, about the Strategic Defense Initiative.  SDI, simply, was a defense program that was supposed to render nuclear weapons obsolete by creating a system of anti-ballistic missiles (or lasers) that would be able to intercept any Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads fired at the United States or its allies. The first call for such a program was in President Reagan\u2019s \u201cAddress to the Nation on Defense and National Security\u201d, [given]( _URL_1_) on March 23, 1983:\n\n > \u201dWhat if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?\nI know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. It will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. And as we proceed, we must remain constant in preserving the nuclear deterrent and maintaining a solid capability for flexible response. But isn't it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is.\u201d\n\nNow, while this was a momentous announcement, it is largely a concluding section to a larger speech, one that effectively is given to justify increased US military spending since Reagan came to office in 1981. The general thrust of the speech was: \u201cthe Soviets have increased their military spending and research since the 1970s, the US has fallen behind, and needs to spend more to catch up.\u201d Small note: while it has been argued, with some documentary evidence from Reagan\u2019s diary, that the film \u201cThe Day After\u201d had a profound influence on his desire to eliminate the nuclear threat, that made-for-TV film was broadcast in November 1983, some eight months after this national address.\n\nCongress [appropriated]( _URL_0_) $1.39 billion for the initiative in 1984, but this was largely for research. The project was considered to have a final cost of $70 billion, soon [rising]( _URL_2_) to $170 billion, with no operational defense before 2000. Ultimately SDI was renamed in 1993, and then reorganized again in 2002 as the Missile Defense Agency. While it continues to conduct anti-ballistic missile research, the results have been mixed, and to date there is no ballistic missile shield rendering nuclear weapons obsolete.\n\nSo, so much for SDI. Now let\u2019s look at the Soviet response to the program. The impact that the announcement of SDI had on Soviet strategic thinking has been debated. First, it\u2019s worth noting that the Soviet defense industry and the Politburo *did* plan responses to SDI:\n\n > A decision of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of 15 July 1985 approved a number of \"long-term research and development programs aimed at exploring the ways to create a multi-layered defense system with ground-based and space-based elements.\" It should be noted that no commitment to deployment of any of these systems was made at the time. The goal of the research and development effort was \"to create by 1995 a technical and technological base in case the deployment of a multi-layered missile defense system would be necessary.\"\n\nThese \u201csymmetric\u201d defense responses largely revolved around developing a ground-based missile defense, and a space-based defense. However, it\u2019s also important to note that the Soviet ministries proposing these measures were largely repackaging projects that they already had on the books, rather than creating entirely new systems from scratch, and that in any case no development to the point of deployment was considered for at least a decade. Furthermore, Soviet ministries involved in defense projects were confident in developing \u201casymmetric\u201d responses to SDI (ie, mechanisms for allowing ICBMs to bypass SDI defenses). \n\nUltimately, as stated by Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst on Soviet and Russian nuclear forces:\n\n > \u201dThe new evidence on the Soviet response to SDI largely corroborates the prevailing view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program does not present a danger to its security, for it could be relatively easily countered with simple and effective countermeasures. The evidence also helps answer some important questions about the concerns that the Soviet Union had about the U.S. program, the reasoning behind the choices that the Soviet leadership made, and the process that led to those choices.\n\nSo SDI does not seem to have greatly altered Soviet military spending. \n\nWhich is not to say that the Soviet government did not care about SDI! The key difference is that it is not that SDI caused a new round of massive military spending, but that there was the fear that it and similar programs might at a time when Gorbachev was already committed to lowering defense expenditures. It clearly was a major item in arms control negotiations between the US and Soviet Union, most notably in the Reykjavik Summit in October of 1986: Gorbachev offered massive reductions in nuclear weapons if Reagan would agree to scrap deployment of (the then-nonexistent) SDI. Reagan refused, but offered to share the technology with the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev was suspicious about (\u201cYou don\u2019t even want to share petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools, or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American revolution.\u201d). The end result was that both parties walked away without any agreement. As Reagan noted: \u201cGorbachev is adamant we must cave in our SDI \u2013 well, this will be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.\u201d\n\nSDI played a major role in US-Soviet arms control negotiations in the 1980s, but it was more of a complicating factor, rather than a decisive factor \u2013 if anything it made coming to a comprehensive arms control agreement more difficult. \n\nNow, I\u2019d like to turn to the Soviet economy and its role in the Soviet collapse.\n", "u/Kochevnik81 Do you have any idea why Reagan offered to share SDI? Was it a bluff on top of a bluff? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/us/cost-of-missile-defense-put-at-70-billion-by-1993.html", "https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm", "http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-12/news/mn-7383_1_star-wars"], []]}
{"q_id": "2a8qcm", "title": "Was fragging in Vietnam real or just a myth?", "selftext": "Are there any documented examples of an officer being \"fragged\" during the Vietnam war?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2a8qcm/was_fragging_in_vietnam_real_or_just_a_myth/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ciskl0u", "cisvvxg", "cit0vs2", "citaj9b"], "score": [60, 27, 14, 2], "text": ["Yes, there are hundreds of documented cases of either attempted or successful fraggings among US troops during the Vietnam War. By \"successful\" I mean cases in which the fragger killed his intended target. All of these fraggings occurred in rear areas. We have no records for what happened in the field. Eyewitnesses have, in some cases, reported fraggings in combat, but eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Also, separating intentional from accidental friendly fire in a combat zone can be extremely difficult for investigators. In almost all of the documented cases, the fraggee was either a NCO or junior grade officer, and the fragger an enlisted man of lower rank. \n\nSources:\n\nCortright, David. *Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today.* Haymarket Books, 1975.\n\nLepre, George. *Fragging: Why US Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers In Vietnam.* Texas Tech University Press, 2011.", "What is fragging?", "It wasn't unique to Vietnam either. From my Grandfather's memoirs, who served in the British Army in WWII:\n\n > Soon we were off to Royston to a tented camp for the rest of the summer, there to meet the rest of the outfit, clerks, cooks, heavy lorry drivers, 47 all told.  The Commanding Officer of this new concept was a Major De Winton, an infantry officer, reputed to be a cousin of the Queen, and was a Regular Officer.  I didn\u2019t care much for him, there was this gulf, and I can\u2019t say I didn\u2019t smile when I heard later, when we were in the desert and he had left us to rejoin his regiment, that in an attack on some enemy position, he had been wounded by 5 .303\u2019s in his back. The Germans don\u2019t use .303 ammunition, we do.  At the end of the war, in Italy, now a Brigadier, a woman, a school teacher walked up to him while he was inspecting a guard, shot and killed him with a revolver, for political reasons, it must be said.\n\nCorraborating source: _URL_1_\nAlthough there's plenty to be found on the assassination, it should be noted I found it hard to find corroborating evidence for his wounding beyond the awarding of a DSO in 1944, which would be the right time period. I doubt somewhat that such a story would make it to print given the circumstances at the time. The relationship between the \"blue blood\" officer corps and the generally working class enlisted men was a source of much tension, especially after WWI (\"Lions led by donkeys\" and so forth).\n\nThe memoir itself: It's up on Amazon somewhere as an ebook but I'll be buggered if I can find it. Here's a dropbox link in the meantime: _URL_0_", "This is an interesting question, one that I'm not qualified to answer, but I'd add that the more interesting component is whether it was more common in Vietnam than other wars with comparable troop structures. \n\nIt plays into what I believe is the common myth of extreme military incompetence (drug abuse, officer murder, civilian murder) during the Vietnam War - arguably perpetuated by contemporary popular culture with a very specific anti-war agenda. Separating the fact from fiction in the US military during the Vietnam War is an interesting project I'd like to hear more about. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.dropbox.com/s/spsyldtnl43qplf/Archie%27s%20Memoirs.doc", "http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&amp;GRid=21622858"], []]}
{"q_id": "4vpdch", "title": "In \"1493\" Mann states Japanese samurai helped protect silver shipments from highwaymen near Acapulco in the 1600s. Is there any evidence to support this story?", "selftext": "The story in question is on [page 414.](_URL_0_) \n\nI admit, I would love to watch a movie about 17th century samurai protecting silver caravans through the mountains of Mexico, but I'm having a devil of a time verifying Mann's claims here. Demographically, we know Eastern Asian migrants added to the growing multicultural landscape of post-contact Mexico, but the samurai claim seems too good to be true. I wondered if one of our Mexican or Asian specialists can shed light on the story, and if it has any basis in fact. \n\nAre there stories of Asian mercenaries fighting in the wars of conquest in the Americas? Stepping back even further, where did the earliest Asian migrants to the Americas come from, and where did they settle in this New World?\n\nThanks in advance!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4vpdch/in_1493_mann_states_japanese_samurai_helped/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d60uhkp", "d6269jx"], "score": [9, 8], "text": ["Found a previous post from a few years ago, by someone questioning the same thing.\n\n_URL_0_", "The source of Mann's account is Edward R. Slack Jr., \u201cThe *Chinos* in New Spain: A Corrective Lens for a Distorted Image,\u201d *Journal of World History* 20 (2009): 35-67. Mann seems to have creatively misread the article - hard to resist such a tantalizing anecdote that underscores his narrative of early globalization (and which ultimately became the basis of a [graphic novel](_URL_0_) that he helped to write.) \n\nIt's worth quoting the relevant sections of the Slack article at length:\n\n > Spanish galleons transported Asian goods and travelers from Manila to colonial Mexico primarily through the port of Acapulco. During the two and a half centuries of contact between the Philippines and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a minimum of 40,000 to 60,000 Asian immigrants would set foot in the \u201cCity of Kings,\u201d while a figure double that amount (100,000) would be within the bounds of probability. From Acapulco they would gradually disperse to the far corners of the viceroyalty, from Loreto in Baja California to M\u00e9rida in Yucatan\u2026.\n\n > Among the scores of Asian peoples that were widely defined as *chinos*, in the early decades of the 1600s Japanese converts were held in high esteem by Spaniards in the Philippines and New Spain for their bravery and loyalty. In 1603 and 1639 when Chinese residents in the Pari\u00e1n of Manila revolted against their Iberian overlords, Japanese swordsmen distinguished themselves in combat. Without their assistance, Sangleyes would surely have made the Philippines a colony of the Middle Kingdom. Thousands of Japanese converts, traders, and ronin made the Philippines their home prior to the closing of Cipango to Iberians in the 1630s. They lived in a suburb of Manila called Dilao, with a population estimated at 3,000 by 1624.\n\nA couple of points need to be made here: the first is that the overwhelming majority of Asian immigrants to New Spain were Filipino or Chinese, and the Japanese represented a relatively small minority. The second is that the military service of the Japanese under the Spanish took place in the Philippines, not in New Spain. Mann makes a fanciful leap when he places katana-wielding samurais in Jalisco, defending silver shipments against escaped-slaves-turned-bandits.\n\nThe real story of Japanese migrants in 17th-century New Spain is a little more mundane, but still quite fascinating. The French historian Thomas Calvo has written about a circle of Japanese merchants who climbed the social ladder of colonial Guadalajara, whom he referred to as \"honorary whites\" in the racial hierarchy of New Spain. \n\nOne of them, Luis de Enc\u00edo, was described in a 1634 notarial document as being \"de naci\u00f3n jap\u00f3n,\" while also identifying his name as Soemon Fukuchi. (The suffix *-emon* might possibly indicate a samurai lineage.) Enc\u00edo operated a small shop in the bustling commercial city of Guadalajara, and was granted a monopoly over coconut and mescal sales in 1643 - the peak of his economic fortunes - although he complained of being broke when he died in 1666.\n\nHis son-in-law, Juan de P\u00e1ez - who was born in Osaka - had more luck in the business world. P\u00e1ez managed the finances of the city's cathedral, and was named as godfather to the children of various prominent Tapat\u00edo families. Although he was listed in documents as a \"merchant\", he seems to have provided a variety of financial services from money-lending and speculation to real estate deals.\n\nIt's not entirely clear how either of these men wound up in New Spain, but it's possible that they either were part of the retinue that followed ambassador Hasekura Tsunenaga during his 1613-14 visit to the colony, or - more likely - were Christians who fled religious persecution in Japan, possibly by way of Manila.\n\ntl;dr: No, there really isn't any evidence of samurai protecting silver caravans in Acapulco. But there were quite a few Japanese merchants plying their trade in 17th-century Mexico, and one of them became a member of the financial elite of Guadalajara.\n\nSources:\n\nThomas Calvo, \"Japoneses en Guadalajara: 'Blancos de Honor' durante el Seiscientos mexicano,\" *La Nueva Galicia en los siglos XVI y XVII* (Guadalajara: El Colegio de Jalisco, Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos), 159-171\n\nMelba Falck Reyes and H\u00e9ctor Palacios, \"Japanese Merchants in 17th Century Guadalajara,\" *Revista Iberoamericana* 22 (2011): 191-237\n\nSof\u00eda Sanabrais, \"'The Spaniards of Asia': The Japanese Presence in Colonial Mexico,\" *Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies*, 18-19, (2009): 223-251"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://books.google.com/books?id=-lB3sy0aH4AC&amp;pg=PA414&amp;dq=1493+mann+samurai&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjYrpadpqHOAhUBTSYKHRsaB5oQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&amp;q=1493%20mann%20samurai&amp;f=false"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/118ims/in_1493_charles_mann_makes_a_brief_mention_of/"], ["https://youtu.be/oS6iadiZtrQ"]]}
{"q_id": "2ynzv0", "title": "What was the reaction of the American public when Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis?", "selftext": "Did the public think that this marriage was inappropriate or even a bad idea, as it was only 5 years after JFK's assassination?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ynzv0/what_was_the_reaction_of_the_american_public_when/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cpbi4zw"], "score": [11], "text": ["I always heard the marriage was not consummated and was strictly a means of supporting her after JFK was assassinated. Is that true or was it a media cover story? Was Onasiss a friend of the family when JFK was alive? Was the marriage based on some sort of chivalrous tradition? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1h6ghq", "title": "Why does the Erie Canal parallel Lake Ontario? Why not just go through Lake Ontario? (Thanks!)", "selftext": "There MUST be a good reason . . .", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1h6ghq/why_does_the_erie_canal_parallel_lake_ontario_why/", "answers": {"a_id": ["carbap4", "carbfar", "carbzdt"], "score": [9, 93, 15], "text": ["I apologize in advance: I do not have a professional knowledge of this subject.  However, your question made me curious and I spent some time looking it up online.  Here are my conclusions.\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_2_) mentions that an earlier plan *was* to link up to Lake Ontario, but the company doing so ran into problems:\n\n*\"The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, chartered by the New York legislature in 1792, was the ancestor of the Erie Canal. The goal of this company was the creation of an uninterrupted water transportation route from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario by improving and linking the Mohawk River, Oneida Lake, and the Oneida River. After experiencing immense technical and financial difficulties, the company only created a one mile canal to by-pass the Little Falls of the Mohawk River. Although the company collected tolls for use of its canal, this revenue barely provided enough funds to keep its lock in working order.\"*\n\nA second web page, [An Economic History of the Erie Canal](_URL_0_) confirms this: \n\n*\"The initial thinking was to link the Great Lakes System to the Hudson River by way of a canal connecting with Lake Ontario. There was traffic on the natural rivers south of Lake Ontario which empty into the Hudson River.  The beginning of the Erie Canal project can be traced back to the creation of two Inland Lock Navigation Companies, a Western and a Northern version, as corporations in 1792. A corporation was a relatively rare form of business at that time and had to be created by special legislative act. The purpose of the Inland Lock Navigation Companies was to establish a water route connection between the Hudson River on the east and Lake Seneca and Lake Ontario on the west. The Inland Lock Navigation Company built dams and locks but was not able to build more than two miles of canal during the rest of the 1790's.\"*\n\nDue to this costly failure, investors could well have been wary of a second plan to link up to Lake Ontario.  This second source had the most information about the planning of the canal that I could find online (in a short time).  Unfortunately, the actual decision about where to build it is never fully addressed anywhere I could find, except to note that it was based on a survey and meant to link up New York city with Lake Erie. \n\nI have three speculations that probably do not belong in this subreddit.  \n\n1) The canal was, at first, very shallow and was designed to allow horses to pull cargo.  Such barges might not have been able to deal with the deeper waters of Lake Ontario.  \n\n2) New York City was a major port city trading with Europe, and may have worried that shippers could bypass it by heading up the St. Lawrence river (however, the St. Lawrence Seaway was not yet built at the time).  \n\n3) The decision could have been a political one; cities along the railroads (and later, highways) grew, while those bypassed by them shrank or disappeared.  The Erie canal connects many cities and towns in New York State.  The history of the canal is full of proponents seeking funding from the federal and state governments, and it was finally the governor of New York who began it.  He could have been thinking about winning or rewarding voters in those towns.  ", "In addition to the political reason of benefiting New York City and not Canada, there were good technical reasons.\n\nThere are also good technical reasons for going the way that they did. Going via Lake Ontario would have been much harder than going overland. Lake Ontario is at lower elevation than Lake Erie (577 ft above Sea level for Erie, 243 feet above Sea level for Ontario), and the lakes are only a few miles apart at the narrow point. There would have to be locks straight up and down that difference in elevation. To give you a sense, that's where nature put Niagara Falls.\n\nThe Canadians actually did build a canal to do just that -- the [Welland Canal](_URL_1_), started around the time Erie was built. It runs just 26 miles and connects the two lakes through massive locks. The original Welland Canal cost more than the entire 363-mile Erie Canal -- [$8 million](_URL_0_) compared to [$7 million](_URL_2_). And it only got you as far as Lake Ontario -- the Atlantic Ocean was still blocked by the Saint Lawrence river, which wasn't navigable without additional improvements at additional cost. The whole system wasn't finished until 1871, almost 50 years after the Erie Canal.", "Simple. While the canal and the lake both end at the same point in the West (Buffalo more or less) they don't START at the same place in the East. Lake Ontario connects to the the Atlantic through the [St. Lawrence Seaway](_URL_1_) which as you notice dumps out far to the north. This would add a considerable amount of travel time for ships wanting to use the seaway to access the lake. It also doesn't connect to the US anywhere before northern NY. It is however still the most important route in and out of the Great Lakes because even very large ships can make it through. \n\nNow if you look at a [map of the Erie Canal](_URL_0_), you will observe that it connects to the Hudson River in Albany. This is extremely important because the Hudson River connects to Long Island. New York City was, and still is, the most important trade hub on the East Coast. Prior to the Erie Canal any goods brought into NY could move north or south very easily but moving them west was a problem. The Erie Canal connects NYNY to the Great Lakes above Niagara Falls. \n\nThe significance of this cannot be overstated. The Erie Canal means you can go from NYNY, through the [Sault Ste. Marie Locks](_URL_2_) all the way to the tip of Lake Superior in Minnesota by water. If you really wanted to then you could sail down to New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Before the spread of railroads this was bar none the fastest way to ship goods so far across the country. And even with the trains it was more efficient to move bulk cargoes like timber and iron ore. The Erie Canal connected the East's busiest port with the entire North East. \n\nAs for Albany itself it is a low point in the mountains and the state capital so it was a good place to connect to the Hudson. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.applet-magic.com/eriecanal.htm", "Canals.org", "http://www.canals.org/researchers/Canal_Profiles/United_States/Northeast/Erie_Canal"], ["http://www.wellandcanal.com/hist.htm", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Welland_Canal", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_canal#Proposal_and_logistics"], ["http://www.eriecanal.org/maps/canal_system-1903.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grlakes_lawrence_map.png", "http://www.exploringthenorth.com/soo/locks.html"]]}
{"q_id": "b7ilax", "title": "How accurate is the Bible in its account of Ancient Israeli history? What do modern historians accept as facts and what is rejected as falsehoods. How much do ancient historians lean on Biblical accounts of Ancient Israel to piece together knowledge of its history?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b7ilax/how_accurate_is_the_bible_in_its_account_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejtmlob"], "score": [5], "text": ["It is impossible to answer this in detail in a short manner, but I can give a few pointers. Generally the field can be divided into sort of a maximalist - minimalist way of interpreting the subject. On one hand you have researchers who consider The Old Testament a reliable source unless proven otherwise and on the other hand you have the researchers who don't accept anything that is not verified by external sources. Another way is to divide the academic research into positivist, humanist and ideological history (K.L. Noll). Positivists don't accept anything that is not verifiable or falsifiable and much of the ancient Kanaan history doesn't fall into either category.\n\nSo what hypotheses can be supported with reliable confidence regarding Ancient Israel and the Bible? The majority of the Pentateuch (first five books) are considered to be myth by scholars. There is no evidence to support the stories about tower of Babel, Noahs ark or even Moses and the Exodus although we have quite a good understanding of where the origin of these stories might come from (Epic of Gilgamesh for example). Joshua and Judges are also considered to be fiction although some poems might date to 11th century BCE. The emergence of the Israelites in Kanaan was a gradual process and didn't likely follow an exodus from Egypt. There are however theories that suggest that the exodus story might have had some basis on people called *Hyksos, Shasu or Habiru.*\n\nAfter this we start to enter accounts that are somewhat historical. I'm inclined to think that the stories about David and Solomon are not true as such, but this is not a view all researchers share. It is possible that the story of Solomon was copied from King Ahab of Israel and edited by Judean scribes to make their origin story greater than their more powerful northern neighbour Israel. Archeology supports the hypothesis that the Kingdom of Israel emerged first followed by Judah later in the 9th century BCE. Thus it is more probable that David and Solomon, if they have existed, were nothing more than tribal chieftains in Judah overshadowed by the Israeli kings in the north.\n\nStarting from the 9th century BCE we start finding external sources that confirm many stories in the Bible. For example the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in around 701 BCE is found in the Bible in Isaiah, Kings and Chronicles but it can also be verified by Assyrian accounts and archeological findings, more precisely from a boatload of Assyrian arrowheads. There are still many accounts where the Bible doesn't match what we know from other sources. For example the return from Babylonian captivity and rebuilding of Jerusalem in the supposed late 6th century BCE is contested by archeological finds which date it earliest to 450 BCE.\n\nIt's an extremely interesting topic and one greatly contested except for the earliest accounts which are widely considered mythological by historians at least. Two great books on this subject are *The Oxford History of the Biblical World* edited by *Michael D. Coogan* and *Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion* by *K. L. Noll.*\n\nEDIT: Grammar"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "5xdtir", "title": "Why have there been so few Viking age arms and armour found?", "selftext": "I mean all they did was fight, fight, fight. The amount of armour and weaponry produced for their raids must have been huge. How then is it that we have only found one complete Viking helmet? I find it so hard to believe as there must've been hundreds of thousands if not over a million produced. Why then are archaeological finds from other cultures from that period (the Byzantines, Francians) yet so little from the Vikings?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5xdtir/why_have_there_been_so_few_viking_age_arms_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dei7dmt"], "score": [38], "text": ["We have a lot of weapons from the viking age, but indeed very few helmets -- this is a bit surprising, as one would expect well-equipped warriors to invest in a helmet if at all possible, so why don't they survive? There are a few archaeological and social reasons to consider.\n\nMost of our swords, spears, and shields come from persons' graves, or else from water deposits. Both of these archaeological 'contexts' are what archaeologists call structured depositions or 'ritual deposits' (ritual, here, meaning that there is some sort of social 'rite' that happened that left these things behind; the ritual need not be a *religious* rite per se).\n\nWhen persons were buried, certain kinds of objects were commonly included in the grave (brooches for women, for example), while other kinds of things rarely were. When you compare cemeteries and settlements, you notice that, for example, only certain kinds of pottery (in England) make it into graves, while others are more common among the living. That is, there's a deliberate choice going into what kinds of things are put in the grave. The grave isn't a complete random sampling of everything people had.\n\nBurials of people with weapons have lots of swords, shields, spears -- but very few helmets (Gjermundbu being the notable exception). This is, incidentally, a pattern that holds true across most of the early middle ages. We have tens of thousands of weapons from graves between c. 400 - 1000, but only a few dozen helmets. Perhaps helmets were exceptionally rare, but it seems more likely that helmets were simply not the sort of thing you used in the burial rite.\n\nLikewise, we find a lot of weapons deposited in water, often lakes or rivers (and often near crossing points in those rivers). These include swords, TONS of spears, axes...but not helmets. Again, these deposits are structured / seem to result from rituals. Like burial, the helmet doesn't seem to have been as important in the ritual.\n\nSo...why not helmets, too? This is actually a really hard question to answer, because we're still struggling to explain why weapons of any kind were buried in the grave or cast into watercourses. Scholars used to think that weapons were placed in the grave so warriors could fight with them in valhalla, but there's actually no evidence to support this theory and it's largely fallen out of favor (especially since Christians buried their dead with weapons for hundreds of years, too; Effros 2002). Now, most scholars agree that burial with weapons was a way to show off the social status of the family who was burying the dead -- it showed (literally, in the case of cremation burials) that they had money to burn, and it made the dead person *look* like the kind of important person that his or her heirs wanted him or her to be remembered as. You buried corpses with weapons so everyone would remember what a great warrior they'd been, and to encourage them to support you -- the heirs -- on the basis of this legacy (Halsall 2010). The problem here, though, is that you'd think that anyone wanting to make the corpse look like a great warrior would include a helmet in the grave. And yet, the number of burials where you find a helmet with the corpse is extremely rare. There are the 'princely graves' in Valsg\u00e4rde and Uppsala from a century before the Viking Age, which include a *lot* of helmets. There are also lots of fragments of pre-viking helmets from Gottland, but there the helmets themselves aren't being placed in the grave. If social status is being claimed in the burial, the helmet isn't part of this ritual display.\n\nAnd something else is missing too, which is mail coats. We have 1 in a grave in early medieval England, and only a handful in Scandinavia. Why not?\n\nMy own research focuses on the burial of spears, and what I'm finding is that the burial of weapons with the dead wasn't just about the identity of the corpse, but also about the identity of the weapons buried with the human body. Spears and swords, like the warriors who used them, earned reputations and were (in the early medieval imagination) physically altered by shedding blood (Welton 2016). They actually absorbed some of the properties of the blood they shed into their metal, which could both make them physically and 'magically' stronger and also taint them / make them more prone to violence in the future. Texts talk about weapons with a lot of ambiguity: they are really important, but they also cause a lot of trouble. They have 'agency', that is they have the ability to do stuff on their own, to influence humans to make different kinds of decisions than the people would without interacting with the weapons. Hence, many of the weapons that are put in graves are broken or 'killed' before they are buried -- the burial rite, and the disposal of weapons in water, was a way to stop these weapons from getting out of control (Lund, in Carter et al. 2010)\n\nIn contrast to weapons, armor is described differently. In the English poem *Beowulf* (which was being sung during the Viking Age, but may have been written a century before it started), armor is described as part of the body that wears it (Bazelmans 1999). The poet blurs the lines between helmets and faces: Beowulf and his warriors' faces are 'hard under their helms,' as though the act of putting on a hard helmet can 'harden' your resolve / courage. Beowulf is recognized by his armor, not his body or his face. Grendel's actual skin is armor (Cavell 2014). When Beowulf goes swimming, he doesn't take his armor off. It's just *part* of who he is. In contrast, weapons in Beowulf are separable from the body -- a sword is stolen from a corpse, and causes no end of trouble. Another sword is loaned (and breaks!). A spear is described as continuing on the path along which it was thrown after its owner had died, a metaphor for how violence is difficult to control once it's set in motion. But armor stays with the body: it's personal, and it doesn't appear to be changed by the blood that its user sheds (unlike weapons, whose properties are tied to the violence acts they commit).\n\nSo, I think that there's a very good reason to bury weapons, and also a good reason not to bury helmets and armor. Weapons get tainted by bloodshed, and they need to be replaced every couple of generations so they don't get out of control. If thinking about it as a magical curse helps, I don't think that's entirely inaccurate: killing people made weapons cursed, and it's good to swap out a cursed sword or spear frequently so you don't have all that animus in your life. In contrast, armor takes on the positive qualities of the person who wears it -- Beowulf leaves his mail behind after he dies, and his loyal follower Wiglaf gets it. The armor kept alive the best qualities of the man, and allowed Wiglaf to take up the role of protector that Beowulf had occupied. Weapons are cursed and preserve negative associations with past violence, but armor is blessed with the positive properties of people in the past, and so you keep it around for generations, repairing or reforging it so that this 'magic' could continue to benefit the living.\n\n---\n\nSources / for further reading:\n\nBazelmans, Jos. By Weapons Made Worthy: Lords, Retainers and Their Relationship in Beowulf (Amsterdam University Press, 1999).\n\nCarver, M. O. H., Alexandra Sanmark, and Sarah Semple, eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Oxford ; Oakville, CT: Oxbow Books, 2010.\n - see Juli Lund's chapter\n\nCavell, Megan. \u201cConstructing the Monstrous Body in Beowulf.\u201d Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014): 155\u201381. doi:10.1017/S0263675114000064,.\n\nEffros, Bonnie. Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.\n\nHalsall, Guy. Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992-2009. Brill\u2019s Series on the Early Middle Ages, v. 18. Leiden\u202f; Boston: Brill, 2010.\n - Discusses why people were buried with grave goods, including weapons\n\nReynolds, A. and Semple, S. 2011. Anglo-Saxon non-funerary weapon depositions, in S. Brookes, S. Harrington and A. Reynolds (eds) Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G. Welch, 40\u201348, Oxford: Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser., 527.\n\nWelton, Andrew J. \u201cEncounters with Iron: An Archaeometallurgical Reassessment of Early Anglo-Saxon Spearheads and Knives.\u201d Archaeological Journal 173, no. 2 (July 2, 2016): 206\u201344. doi:10.1080/00665983.2016.1175891.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4b7dtw", "title": "Did the German's consider that their communications had been compromised?", "selftext": "At some point during WWII did the German High Command consider the possibility that their communications were compromised, particularly the U-Boat force when their casualties started to rise? Or was it another one of the taboo subjects that Hitler refused to consider or discuss?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4b7dtw/did_the_germans_consider_that_their/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d16th51"], "score": [104], "text": ["Expanded from two [earlier](_URL_0_), [answers](_URL_1_) \n\nThere are multiple reasons for the German's myopia regarding Enigma and the consistent success of Anglo-American code-breaking efforts during the war. Firstly, the Third Reich partitioned out its cryptography and intelligence units into each military branch and civilian agencies. This fostered a degree of interservice rivalry for scarce resources and the lack of any central agency prevented any collective sharing of information. These intelligence branches at various points almost stumbled upon the Allies' efforts when investigating German losses, but because of their relative isolation of German intelligence, these investigations could never see the whole picture. There was little capability to pool and disseminate information even within the military. U-boat captains were increasingly apprehensive about Enigma's security as the Battle of the Atlantic dragged on, but there was no way for their concerns to filter to the appropriate channels. Therefore, much of the German investigations into signals breeches were reactive in nature, such as examining upticks in U-boat losses, in which the fog of war could always provide an alternative explanation to the fact that Enigma had been compromised. \n\nOne extreme example of casting around for alternative explanations occurred in January 1943. *Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote* (U-boat Command-BdU) had ordered two U-boats to circle and await a supply submarine in Quadrant DF 50, but the supply submarine ran too slow, and the BdU ordered the submarines to a different quadrant. In the meantime, the *Kriegsmarine*'s own cryptoanalysis division had decrypted an Admiralty signal that gave the position of two U-boats Quadrant DF 50. The *Kriegsmarine* launched a subsequent investigation and concluded that German signal traffic had not been compromised on the basis that the British had described the U-boats as returning, not circling, and that the British signal did not note the changed rendezvous point. The *Kriegsmarine* investigation concluded that the British communique was a coincidence and Enigma remained secure. \n\nBut interservice rivalries and deficient investigations are only one part of the puzzle for Germany's collective failure. One problem that hampered the Germans was the military culture of the *Wehrmacht* that fostered a mentality that was ultimately counterproductive. The German military establishment did not place much stock into intelligence work as a proper military occupation, and thus its staff were seldom the cream of the crop. The military also looked only to the military for recruits for cryptanalysis and ciphers. This was in stark contrast to Bletchley Park, which recruited experts from outside military circles like members of the national bridge team or porcelain specialists whose hobbies and occupations trained them to see unusual patterns. The military's elitist cliquishness frequently looked down upon non-military personnel and was one of the main rationales behind the wide-scale adaptation of Enigma. The device represented a mechanization of ciphering and therefore could be trusted to trained conscripts. This snobbery came to fore when discussing Enigma as a source of Allied successes, one common explanation was that the device itself was being used improperly by a poorly trained operator. As losses mounted in the Battle of the Atlantic, BdU often conducted surprise inspections of traffic facilities to uncover sloppy discipline and found little to none, thus contributing to the false sense of Enigma's security. Adding to German woes was the relatively insular German academic establishment which was loath to cooperate with the military given there was a long-standing prejudice against practical application of their research. The military men in charge of Germany's efforts also tended not to conceive of wider applications of intelligence analysis. The Germans' decentralized intelligence networks also was geared to find immediate tactical information; using cryptography for strategic information was something that never quite occurred to them. The *Wehrmacht*'s decentralization fostered a degree of hyperspecializtion that hindered its ability to shift focus. \n\nAnother handicap that hobbled the Germans was their past successes had inculcated a sense of complacency. Early war German efforts at breaking Allied cyphers cemented an opinion that the Allies' cryptography was sloppy and not run by professionals.  When estimating their opposites, they frequently felt that while the British and Americans relied far too much upon technology, and not upon human capital. For the Germans, cryptanalysis was fundamentally a human occupation. Therefore they assumed that any attempt to break Enigma would rely upon human calculations (*geistige Arbeit*) and the mechanization of Enigma would preclude a brute force attack using human beings. Several times during the war, the Germans instituted precautionary attacks upon the Enigma messages in exercises and concluded that the machine could not be broken using German methods. Such a preconceived notion proved fatal for investigations into Enigma security because it fostered the tendency of the Germans to look for reasons other than Enigma to be the culprit. Some of this resulted in simple scapegoating such as considering the Italians' allegedly poor security to be the cause or some treason committed by German PoWs. Other times, the Germans considered Allied superiority in radar and radio-direction finding to be the culprit. Allied successes in cryptanalysis counterintuitively played a great role here as the speed at which Bletchley Park could decipher German messages and disseminate this intelligence was far faster than what the German intelligence  establishment considered plausible.       \n\nPrior to 1974, both German historians and veterans were quite dismissive of any notion that their cryptographic system had been broken and their measures were for naught. Two German reviews of the 1967 Polish book *Bitwa o tajemnice* (*Battle for Secrets*) by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk which revealed that Polish cryptographers had broken Enigma dismissed his claims and other veterans described the idea that the Poles could have cracked Enigma derided its claims as \"wishful thinking.\" Heinz Bonatz, the former head of the *Kriegsmarine*'s B-Dienst wrote in his 1970 history of German naval intelligence *Die deutsche Marine Funkaufkl\u00e4rung* asserted that Enigma was never broken and Allied silence on this success confirmed that German security measures were sufficient. Bonatz instead blamed Allied successes on a myriad of usual suspects ranging from Humint, superior radio-direction finding equipment, to sloppy Italian code security. In short, the mainstream German opinion prior to 1974 ascribed Allied successes to everything except Enigma. After the UK government's confirmation of *The Ultra Secret* there were still some veterans in denial, but most German commentators were in shock about the scale to which their security system had been compromised. \n\nAlthough the various German intelligence agencies bear a great deal of blame for large-scale systematic failures surrounding Enigma, it is also important to underscore their mistaken conclusions had some logical validity at the time. Allied radar and other material superiority was increasingly apparent as the war went on and many Germans did spy on the Third Reich for foreign powers. The Germans did try to use a Hollerith punch-card computer in 1943 to aid their cryptanalysis. The initial focus upon immediate tactical information makes some degree of sense for the quick and sudden type of war Germans wanted to fight. Even a more centralized intelligence establishment would not have resolved all of the material shortcomings and personnel problems given that such an agency would have still had to compete with other components of the Third Reich's war machine for scarce resources. Rectifying these problems was so vast it made the willful ignorance of Enigma's failure an attractive proposition. \n\n\n*Sources*\n\nAlvarez, David J. *Allied and Axis Signals Intelligence in World War II*. London: F. Cass, 1999. \n\nRatcliff, R. A. *Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra and the End of Secure Ciphers*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pwkb8/after_wwii_was_over_how_long_was_it_before_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/376i0e/wwii_question_is_it_accurate_to_say_that_a_major/"]]}
{"q_id": "2c5037", "title": "What is a Harlequin?", "selftext": "A number of female rugby teams are named harlequins, the title rolls off the tongue and is foreign to me so I looked into the name. I can find no gender association, and in what I can find the actors are portrayed as male. Additionally, it seems the term is derived from a \"devil\" type character, but has evolved into more of a complex jester. Is a harlequin a fool or playing the fool?\n\nThe sources I've been able to find are not primary and seem lacking so I wanted to ask here.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c5037/what_is_a_harlequin/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjc0y1q", "cjc6ary", "cjccl9b", "cjd19bu"], "score": [57, 16, 7, 2], "text": [" >  Walter Map, writing around 1190, tells the story of King Herla, whom he knew as its leader, and later adds:\n\n > \"The nocturnal companies and squadrons, too, which were called of **Herlethingus**, were sufficiently well-known appearances in England down to the time of Henry II, our present lord. They were troops engaged in endless wandering, in an aimless round, keeping an awe struck silence, and in them many persons were seen alive who were known to have died. This household of **Herlethingus** was last seen in the marches of Wales and Hereford in the first year of the reign of Henry II, about noonday: they travelled as we do, with carts and sumpter horses, pack-saddles and panniers, hawks and hounds, and a concourse of men and women. Those who saw them first raised the whole country against them with horns and shouts, and . . . because they were unable to wring a word from them by addressing them, made ready to extort an answer with their weapons. They, however, rose up into the air and vanished on a sudden.\"\n\nThis is a passage from \"Albion - A guide to legendary Britain, Jennifer Westwood, Granada Publishing, London 1985\n\nWalter White mentions this term in \"Notes and Queries\" also\n\nBasically a \"Herlethingus\" was the Middle English term that became an Old French term \"hellequin\" used by by the Norman monk Oderic Vitalis, who used the word to describe a group of bandits who attacked him in Normandy in the 11th century... separating it from its association with King Herla and coming to mean a band of unruly demons generally.\n\nEssentially the word was originally a pack of specific \"Wild Hunters\" associated with the soldiers of King Herla... which came later to mean a pack of demons generally.  A \"Harlequin\" is therefore a representation of the devil (or a devil).\n\nIt is a particularly apt description to call a Rugby team a familia herlethingi.", "I think the truth is that it's a disambiguous term that has been adapted by various people over the years to suit their own needs. In the case of the Harlequins rugby club, they wear a multi-coloured kit to echo their name in the theatrical sense but I think they'd much rather be described in the classical sense /u/zyzzogeton outlined :) The progenitor of the modern Harlequin is the character Harlequin from the Commedia dell'Arte, a sort of Italian pantomine.\n\nIn modern theatre, the Harlequin is often an MC or agent provocateur, who's role is... not quite a fool. There's a playful aspect to them that conceals a bitter truth or acerbic point. While the classical fool is about slapstick blunt humour, the harlequin will often use those same techniques to conceal a much sharper point. I think the phrase I am hunting for is \"Tragic Comedy\".\n\nFor example, in [\"Oh! What a lovely War!\"](_URL_0_!) the MC, often portrayed as a Harlequin, the only splash of colour amongst the white-uniformed clowns who portray the soldiers, is often seen playfully interacting with the soldiers - pushing them over, laying them down to sleep, handing them poppies, ushering them off stage - but the deeper meaning to the slapstick interaction is that each of these actions represents the soldiers death. This interaction between the clowns in their Pierrot costumes and the Harlequin also echoes the classical origin of the *character* Harlequin in Commedia dell'Arte.\n\nAn example of a classic \"Oh! What a lovely War!\" production:\n_URL_3_\n\nPierrot clown and Harlequin by C\u00e9zanne:\n_URL_2_\n\nI would thoroughly recommend looking up Richard Attenborough's adaption of the play on youtube. This is a great example of the Harlequins role:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThe chap in black is the one who'd be the Harlequin on stage. Note his role - he instigates the song, gets the soldiers moving, drives the train, hands out the poppies... he's driving the action without it appearing that he does.\n\nSorry if I'm waffling, it's a difficult concept to express :)", "Incidentally  the female rugby teams are named after leading rugby club Harlequins, who  originally formed as Hamsptead Football Club (Rugby being a variant of  football in case anyone was  wondering) in 1866. In 1869, not only were they forced to move from Hampstead, their membership was drawn from further afield so a name change was decided.\n\nApocryphally they were called Harlequins at the suggestion of one of their members simply because it was a frivolous name that kept the HFC identity that was monogrammed on their shirts.\n\nThe Harlequins: 125 Years of Rugby Football. by Philip Warner", "My favorite use of the term is in Harlan Ellison's short story, \"Repent Harlequin, said the tick-tock man\"\n\nIn this story, the \"harlequin\" is a whimsical-jester type character - who disregards conventions (in this case timeliness at all costs).\n\nA great read, if you're into thought-provoking, well-written short stories.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_What_a_Lovely_War", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr5ksOyxZRU", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5f/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_060.jpg/478px-Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_060.jpg", "http://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/archive/2002/ohwhatalovelywarcompany.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2ffl1v", "title": "What is the oldest legal document or contract that is still legally binding?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ffl1v/what_is_the_oldest_legal_document_or_contract/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ck8r4lz", "ck8s6vf", "ck8tzv6", "ck8um0x", "ck8w4j7", "ck8zszl"], "score": [72, 8, 43, 14, 20, 2], "text": ["Three clauses of Magna Carta 1297 still have force of law in the United Kingdom  \n*\"1. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.  \n9. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, as with all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.  \n29. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.\"*  \n\nClause 29 also remains part of the legal system of New Zealand (and possibly other Commonwealth states).", "As /u/phoenixbasileus (nice username btw) has pointed out, this honour probably goes to the Magna Carta. The next best one I can think of is the constitution of San Marino dating from 1600, but since this is a really interesting question I\u2019ll try to remember if there\u2019s anything earlier than the Magna Carta.\n\nEDIT: There\u2019s probably something older than the Magna Carta in internal governing laws of the Catholic Church, a papal decree or similar. Maybe some experts on Catholicism could give us more info on that.", "Ireland has England beat on this one. The oldest piece of legislation on the books (since 2007, when most every law from before 1922 was repealed) is the [Fairs Act 1204](_URL_1_). From what I can make out from D\u00e1il debates and so on, it was an act setting up fairs and regulating castles in Irish cities. \n\nThere are also a bunch of other thirteenth century laws still in force. The oldest one that's readily available online is the [Sheriffs Act 1293](_URL_0_), which is about judicial practice and landholding. (And, although legal history is not my strong point, looks like a *very* important piece of legislation.)\n\nEDIT: Punctuation.", "In terms of international law, what I commonly see cited as the oldest treaty still in force is the Anglo-Portugese alliance, which dates to 1386 and was an extension of an older treaty cited in 1373. I'd be curious to know if my understanding of this is correct or if there are other legally binding international treaties. ", "The 1491 wedding contract uniting France and Brittany also contained a close forbidding France from placing tolls on any road or bridges in Brittany. As a result there is no freeway (130km/h speed limit, contains tolls) in Brittany to this day and only expressways (max 110km/h, no tolls).", "This submission has been removed because it violates the [rule on poll-type questions](_URL_0_). These poll-type questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focussed discussion. \u201cMost\u201d, \u201cleast\u201d, \"best\", \"oldest\", and \"worst\" questions usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers.\n\nAlthough there are a few good answers in here, most of them are trivia responses and many violate the 20-year rule."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1293/en/act/pub/0001/index.html", "http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2007/en/act/pub/0028/sched1.html"], [], [], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions"]]}
{"q_id": "1psbj4", "title": "Of all the heavy things in the world, why did anvils become the thing that cartoon characters drop on each other?", "selftext": "Maybe not your typical history question but if somebody has studied the history of film and television they may have come across this? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1psbj4/of_all_the_heavy_things_in_the_world_why_did/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd5jhh0"], "score": [159], "text": ["While I don't claim to be an expert on animation or cartoons, I'm not sure there are any flaired users on this sub and I am probably the closest there is so I will try to answer you question to the best of my abilities. Please note, however, that I don't claim to be an expert in this field and that my claims could easily be disproven later. With that being said, we can begin....\n\nThere has been a fair bit of speculation on this answer so far and, while it is against the rules to do so, it is likely that we can only really speculate as to the answer to this question. I can almost guarantee that we will never know PRECISELY the decision making process that went into using an anvil as the archetypal \"heavy cartoon object\". I can, however, enlighten you on some possible answers. \n\nThe truth is that the development of Western cartoons and comic books are closely intertwined. They occurred at roughly the same time and, in general, followed the same sort of course as one another. Many techniques learned in cartoons were carried over to comics, and many techniques learned in comics were carried over into cartoons. The level of abstraction and general \"cartoonishness\" that both mediums share means that we see a lot of similar tropes and archetypes. \n\nIt is often difficult to understand in our modern day, but when looking at old mediums we have to recognize that certain tropes didn't exist at one time. For instance in comic books, there was once a time when things like \"movement lines\" or \"speech bubbles\" didn't exist. The idea that you could have panels of different sizes, or that you could have a speech bubble pointing \"off-scene\" to a character not featured in a panel were actual \"developments\" or \"breakthroughs\" in comic artistry. \n\nFor instance, many comics of the 1910s and 20s are very, very lifeless.  They are very static and repetitive BECAUSE comic artists had to play it safe. Even the original Superman comic (published in June 1938) was fairly lifeless compared to modern comics. Later artists like Jack Kirby would really revolutionize how comics were drawn. \n\nSee, animation \"tricks\" had to be developed over time. If you just threw down a copy of The Watchmen or threw on an episode of Fairly Odd Parents in front of a kid in the 1920s, a lot of the different tricks or tropes we take for granted would be confusing to them. \n\nNow, getting to your anvil question, in reality the \"falling anvil\" is just another one of these tricks. In order to show \"weight\" animators had to come up with some sort of symbol which denoted a \"very heavy weight\". Another example would be something like when a character touches something hot and their hand turns red. These are all animation tricks designed to express to the viewer a certain sensation without them actually feeling it. \n\nBut the thing is is that these \"tricks\" (movement lines, anvils, speech bubbles, etc.) have to be clear for them to work. Without a VERY clear meaning, they could never be adopted because they wouldn't make sense. I'm sure animation history is filled with examples of attempted \"tricks\" which never really took off because they weren't very clear.\n\nNow, the anvil works very well as a trick because it's meaning is very clear. After doing some research, I learned that it is generally accepted that the first time the \"anvil\" was used in a popular cartoon was in the 1942 Warner Brothers cartoon \"A Tale of Two Kitties\" (should have been a \"Tail of Two Kitties\", but whatever) which can be found here: _URL_0_ at about 4:30. \n\nNow, why did the anvil succeed as a symbol or \"trick\" denoting \"heavy weight\"? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, at the time it started to be used (again, if we're assuming the first one was in 1942) the anvil was still a fairly common item. While the \"medieval blacksmith\" may not exist anymore, anvils were still commonly used in general manufacturing and repair and most people would be familiar with it as an everyday object. Second, the only real attribute people would attribute to an anvil is that it is \"heavy\". In this way, it is a very recognizable and clear symbol. Other people have referenced pianos and safes as examples of other \"heavy objects\", but as you rightly point out, the anvil is the true archetypal heavy object in cartoons. The reason is that unlike a piano (which is attractive, expensive, heavy, makes music, etc.) or a safe (which is a complex piece of machinery, is used in bankrobbing scenes, holds money, etc.), the anvil is really, at its core, just a heavy metal object. There is no confusion about it: anvils are heavy. Finally, the anvil is an extremely easy thing to draw. We have to remember that a lot of cartoonists and comic artists were pretty lazy, and drawing a piano or a safe every time you want to use a heavy object was a pain in the neck. But an anvil is a very clear and very easy thing to draw which allowed other cartoonists and animators to adopt it without a lot of hassle.\n\nWhile it is tempting to think of the \"falling anvil\" as a trope, we have to remember that (historically speaking), tropes have to start somewhere. The \"falling anvil\" succeeded as a trope because it was a simple and effective \"animation trick\" like any of the others which were emerging in Cartoons and Comic books in the early 20th century.  Put simply. the anvil is an animation trick like any other: it is simple to draw, it has a very clear meaning, and is recognizable to many people, and for this reason it became a widely adopted symbol of \"heft\". The reason it has endured into the modern day is BECAUSE it was such a successful \"trick\". While it is safe to say that many people in our society would have no idea what an anvil was used for, 99% of them would recognize it as a symbol for \"heaviness\", which means that it was an undeniably successful animation shortcut. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyblox-p54"]]}
{"q_id": "b7z5zd", "title": "How did Britannia come to end its union with the European empire that was Rome? What were the repercussions of Britannia's Exit?", "selftext": "I imagine the people of Britannia were divided on the issue, but I'd love to know more!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b7z5zd/how_did_britannia_come_to_end_its_union_with_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ejw7g9y"], "score": [39], "text": ["Ah yes, the sorry story of the 'Exitus Britannia' (ExBrit, in Classics jargon) - truly a tale of woe and sheer incompetence that has rarely been matched in the centuries since.\n\nThe question of Britannia's leaving the Roman Union emerged in the Fourth Century AD. Although discontent had long been brewing at the meddling of unelected Roman bureaucrats who tried to dictate minutiae such as how round an olive needed to be, the immediate catalyst was the lack of control of the border. Specifically, the northern border: Hadrian's Wall had ceased to function as an effective border against the unruly Pictish neighbours, whose predilictions for the odd passtime of 'fitba!' or the strange ceremonial beverage imbibed during the 'Fast of Bucks' made them seem alien  to their civilised southern neighbours. As Britons took up the cry of 'Secure our Borders!', political pressure mounted for an official withdrawal from the Roman Union.\n\nPart of the issue was the unwillingness of the Roman Union to create a true 'European Army', that could serve to protect the borders of constituent states. The irony, of course, was that Rome was not actually in charge of Britannia's borders by this point - the regional government in Londinium had been running Hadrian's Wall for decades at that point, but had cocked it up so badly they were happy to let their citizens continue to believe that Rome was to blame for the unwanted migration. Indeed, ExBrit did indeed suffice to discourage migration from within the Roman Empire - but did little to stop the migration of differently coloured (ie blue) people that Britons actually cared most about. Another element that was held against the Roman Union was the lack of expansion eastwards, particularly as the rich, prosperous Eastern Roman Empire - based in Turkey - was not part of the Union. This greatly upset the inhabitants of Britannia, who saw the inclusion of the inhabitants of Turkey as a key selling point of the Roman Union. Lastly, Britannic fishermen seemed annoyed that the inhabitants of a small, unremarkable village in Armorica got to catch more fish than they did - it's not clear why this was the case, though some evidence suggests that these Armoricans were unusually strong.\n\nEven with these differences, ExBrit was by no means assured, and to understand why it happened we need to look to political personalities of the day. Power initially resided with a Roman patrician by name of Cameronus, who was greatly troubled by the divisions among his followers, and the potential for a splinter cult of ardent Romoskeptics led by Nigelus to undermine their power base. He devised a plan: a rare, sacred ritual, involving auguries taken from the internal organs of a sheep and an eel. The results of this consultation would, Cameronus hoped, lay the matter to rest, and keep Nigelus quiet a little longer. Yet Cameronus miscalculated - he had assumed that the auguries would turn out the way he wanted (a similar calculation had worked out in his favour just two years prior!), and he neglected to beseech the gods particularly convincingly to show his plan their favour. Lo and behold, the auguries returned - the omens were divided, but showed a clear path for leaving the Roman Union. The Will of the Sheep-Eel had made itself known.\n\nThe omens said little, however, about what this should mean in practice. Cameronus himself resigned in disgrace, the very eventuality he had plotted to avoid. A power struggle broke out: Borus, the court jester, at first seemed likely to triumph, but was stabbed in the back by his erstewhile friend, Brutus Govus. Leo Vulpes, the eternally disgraced, was swiftly eliminated. In the end, Maius Roboticus emerged from the contest as the compromise choice. Maius had supported Cameronus, but indicated a willingness to follow through with ExBrit.\n\nMaius, however, proved a poor choice. No plan for ExBrit could be agreed with the likes of Borus, Ruddus or Moggus, all of whom had very different ideas of what should happen next, and complained bitterly when they thought Maius even hinted at favouring other ideas. Negotiations with an increasingly perplexed Roman Union continued, with few points clarified about what the future relationship might look like. Within the normal course of Britannic politics, another faction would have stepped in to take over, but the most powerful alternative figure - Corbynius - had seemingly little interest in doing so. Maius, when confronted by angry citizens about the chaos, merely repeated ad nauseam that it was 'The Will of the Sheep-Eel', though she did not take the perhaps sensible approach of trying the augury again to make absolutely sure that this was what the gods actually wanted.\n\nThe chronicles stop suddenly in 419. We cannot know, but can perhaps assume that Britannic society quietly imploded, to the presumed relief of the rest of the Roman Union who were getting a bit sick of the whole thing. However, they only had a few years to gloat before Putilla the Hun invaded and destroyed them all anyway.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Sources**\n\nI have relied chiefly here on the excellent Terrence Proudfish, *ExBrit: A Disaster Surely Never to be Repeated, Right?* (Edinburgh, 2014). His approach might be balanced with the more critical M. Python, *What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?* (Jerusalem, 32).\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**EDIT: ExBrit is in fact satire, unlike its anagram (somehow) - April 1, 2019.**"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "21tbt7", "title": "Have the bonefields of the mongol massacres ever been found?", "selftext": "I recently came across the pictures and writings of the bonefields in Volgograd / peschanka area from the remains of the soldiers who died there. My immediate though was of the mongol organized massacres at nishapur and merv, the seige of Baghdad and the destruction of shu and chengdu. Has there ever been evidence of the remains from those events?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21tbt7/have_the_bonefields_of_the_mongol_massacres_ever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cggdp0i"], "score": [127], "text": ["**Below is a post for April Fool's day. I am not an expert on Mongolian highway construction and this post should be seen as satire only. There does exist a road of bones, however it is in Russia that was built during the Soviet Union under Stalin, you can read more about that [here](_URL_0_)**\n\n\nThe \"bonefields\" as you put them, in the Volgograd region was actually an exception, rather than a rule. The large piling of bodies was really typically an exception, the Mongols saw this as a waste of good resources. Mongols in general believed that everything could have a purpose in their great Empire, and the bodies of their enemies was no different. \n\nThe Mongol's in the other regions typically let the bodies decay then use the leftover bones as pavement for their vast stretches of roads. Once beaten down with their horses, the bones would crumble and form a great pavement for their mighty armies to cross upon.  The reason why there exists bonefields in the lower portion of Russia is because of the cold weather, which would freeze the bones and create a nasty mix of frozen bone debris, water, snow, and ice, which was not good for the horses. Therefore, in a rare instance, the Mongols simply left the bodies to rot and decompose, without using the bones. \n\nSource: \u041e\u0442 \u041a\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0432 \u0430\u0441\u0444\u0430\u043b\u044c\u0442\u0435, \u0418\u0432\u0430\u043d \u0422\u0438\u043c\u043e\u0448\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M56_Kolyma_Highway"]]}
{"q_id": "3g3u3m", "title": "Why isn't what happened to the Indigenous people of Australia considered a genocide?", "selftext": "Especially what happened to the Tasmanian aboriginal people, who were killed on mass. Paul Keating in the Redfern Park speech acknowledged the killings and rapes, and cultural destruction, and Madley (2008) states that what happened fits the UN definition of genocide. Yet there isn't even a Wikipedia page to discuss it (as there is for other controversial genocides), nor is it heavily discussed. What is the reason for this?\n\nMadley, B. (2008) From Terror to Genocide: Britain's Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia's History Wars, *Journal of British Studies*, 47, no. 1: 77-106.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3g3u3m/why_isnt_what_happened_to_the_indigenous_people/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ctulks0"], "score": [73], "text": ["There is a considerably complicated discourse when it comes to Australians and their native people and quite often the official narrative has been changed and adopted by different politicians for their own means. \n\nKeith Windschuttle is probably one of the most prominent of the conservative historians who has often played down the atrocities committed against the aboriginal people. Windschuttle became a favourite of former Prime Minister John Howard during his time in power to forward his own agenda. Howard rejected the 'black armband' view of history and wanted to instill a more proud, patriotic and ultimately white Australian historical narrative. \n\nStuart McIntyre, another historian, heavily objected to Windschuttle's methods and this started what was called [\"The History Wars\"](_URL_0_) in Australia which debated the severity of the force or violence used against the aboriginal people. If you also have a look at the page I linked to it does mention a little bit about genocide and it comes with quite a few citations.\n\nThe genocide debate revolves around the numbers and the official documents used. People like Windschuttle, a historical empiricist, would say that as there is no documented data of these supposed genocides, then there are no genocides. I suppose the key here, is that the reason much of the discussion about genocide has to do with a lack of contemporary documentation about it. The ambiguous nature of the wording of these documents too make it hard to make the final rule on a genocide.\n\nI'll wait for more expertise, but you should have a look at Stuart McIntyre's \"The History Wars\" as a good starting point on the aboriginal history debate. I also would recommend Jonathan Richard's \"The Secret War: A history of Queensland's Native Police\" as some interesting books to read more about this topic."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars"]]}
{"q_id": "ccvzrx", "title": "Why / when were * and # added to the phone?", "selftext": "Looking at old rotary phones they only had 0-9, but modern (touch tone?) phones also have * and #.\n\nWhy / when were they added? What was the first use case?\n\nWere there arguments over adding these?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ccvzrx/why_when_were_and_added_to_the_phone/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ett0je2"], "score": [4], "text": ["They had 8 tones in a grid. \n4 x 4  \nEach button was a combination of a row tone and a column tone.  \nSo from 8 tone generators you got 16 unique tones.    \n\nCivilian phones were 4 x 3  for 12 unique tones.  \nThe bottom row only had the number 0, but the phones were capable of 2 extra unused tones.  Early phones had no buttons in the * and # spots.  \n\nAs time went on, Bell found a use for the 2 extra tones so then they added the * and # buttons.    \n\nIn 1961 inventors at Bell Labs had to pick something to go there so they just chose two symbols found on a typewriter.  They went with * and #.   From what I read they chose them based on business usage at the time.  \n\nKind of as a joke, Bell scientists eventually officially named them:       \n* = sextile    \n\\# = octothorpe"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "154mon", "title": "Wednesday AMA: I am Irishfafnir, ask me questions about 19th century America!", "selftext": "Sorry for the delay, I was gathering material for my master's thesis and the time slipped by.\n\nI am but a low Masters student studying the history of the United States in the 18th and 19th century, with a focus on what is commonly called Jacksonian America. I focus largely on the political history of the time, and I should be getting published( god willing) soon regarding the differences in political ideology towards Latin America between John Quincy Adams and James Monroe. I am currently collecting primary and secondary source material for my thesis regarding the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829, commonly referred to as the last gathering of the revolutionary generation. I am most knowledgeable regarding the era post war of 1812 to the election of Andrew Jackson, but I should be able to to answer many of your questions from lets say the revolution of 1800 to the collapse of the second party system in the mid 1850's.  \n\nI know the sidebar says the Civil War, but this was originally supposed to be a joint AMA with another user providing more of the post 1850 answers to questions. The user unfortunately bailed and I was unable to find a replacement, so I would appreciate it if we avoided the Civil War questions, unless they are in the context of an earlier time frame.\n\nI should be around all night, and if I can't answer your questions I will try to find someone who will or point you towards a source.\n\n\nedit: Going to cook some dinner will return shortly to continue answering questions\n\n2nd edit- Answering questions until bed\n\n3rd Edit- Heading to Bed! Looking forward to answering more questions tomorrow! very interesting thus far!!\n\n\n4th Edit- Have to travel to visit family, will answer any remaining questions over break. Have a Great Christmas everyone.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/154mon/wednesday_ama_i_am_irishfafnir_ask_me_questions/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7j8lqw", "c7j8sop", "c7j8vql", "c7j92w4", "c7j9fjp", "c7jax4n", "c7jb18e", "c7jb7om", "c7jbfx7", "c7jbjkq", "c7jbkgi", "c7jbuen", "c7jc52d", "c7jcce7", "c7jcpir", "c7jf1je", "c7jh237", "c7jhgld"], "score": [20, 10, 23, 13, 4, 11, 6, 2, 10, 2, 9, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2], "text": ["Explain wild cat banks like I'm five. Were they really a better alternative to a national bank?", "At what time would you say the notion of an \"American Dream\" came into existence and how would you define that term? I ask in reference to the large number of immigrants coming to the US during this time period.", "How were the Founding Fathers viewed in the 1830/40s? Was there a deification/cult of personality type of outlook promoted or were the opinions of the time more realistic? ", "Can you talk at all about the particular currencies used in the US at this point? Were there regional variations at all (ie Florida more likely to use Spanish Dollars)?", "Who is your favorite public figure during this time period? I'm interested in your response from whatever angle you choose. \n\nAlso, what is your opinion on Daniel Webster, specifically his arguments about the nature of the union in his second reply to Hayne?", "What was the biggest technological advancement in the time period you study? I was thinking the steam engine but I'm guessing there is something even more revolutionary. ", "I understand the 19th century was when America began the great shift from cider to beer as our primary brain-cell-drowned. Exactly when and why did the transformation take place?", "what is your favorite eccentric person or strange event from this time period? ", "What impact, if any at all, did defeated Southern soldiers have on the homesteading movement westward? Did they try and stay ahead of their victors?", "How would slavery have continued after the civil war if the emancipation proclamation had not been issued? I always figured that it would have all been abolished anyways with the 18th amendment at around the same time it was abolished in the northern states.", "What were the differences in political ideology between JQA and James Monroe re: Latin America?", "What was the reaction stateside to philosophical movements like the Young Hegelians, which prompted the development of several strains of leftist thought in Europe - notably Marx, but many others as well?", "*How and why did the Temperance movement gain so much popularity as to create an amendment banning alcohol in the 20th century? Who, in general, were the people behind the movement?*\n\nDoes it have anything to do with Irish immigration and perceived vices of non-Protestant foreigners?\n\nWas Alcoholism rampant, was the alcohol stronger back then?\n\nI remember vaguely from High School that the Temperance movement was also tied with Women's Rights, as sobriety is supposed to have benefited wives?\n\nI also remember the movement was tied to religiosity and the church. Was it predominantly the Protestant church or did Catholics also push for the cause to limit or remove alcohol from America?\n\nThis last part is stepping outside 19th century America, but did the Temperance movement ever leave the English-speaking world? Did France, Germany, or Russia (I doubt it somehow...) ever have an equivalent Temperance movement?", "Separate comment for a wholly different question:\n\n*What turned America away from Isolationism at the end of the 19th century?* \n\nOr rather, was America ever more isolationist than others or was it always a contested policy since independence?\n\nEven into WWI there were strong supporters of \"keeping out of European affairs\". Yet by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th America was snatching up land from Spain, negotiating spheres of influence in China and opening up Japan, etc.\n\nWas this all in the name of continuing the isolationist policy (flank the coasts with friendly islands to dissuade attack on the mainland) or were there certain people (McKinley) trying to make America an Imperialist superpower?\n\nThis is definitely crossing a bit into the 20th century, but there's no such thing as clean lines in a historical timeline anyways so I thought I'd just throw these questions out there.", "Hi Irishfafnir, thanks for stepping up and doing this.\n\nI attend a smaller Canadian University and as such the only American History courses we have are survey courses, which is terrible for those of us who are interested in areas beyond \"America before 1865\" and \"America after 1865\". I was wondering if you could suggest a few books or articles that might pertain to life in the South during the Confederacy but aren't military history, or I suppose any prior to the civil war.I understand this is after your Andrew Jackson cut-off and I do apologize. I wish I knew enough to ask an intriguing question for you, so I suppose I will have to settle for this.\n\nIn the primary source material you have collected thus far, have you found anything that jumped out at you as weird or interesting or something you wouldn't expect?", " Hope I havent gotten in here too late.  What were the predominant forms of entertainment back then.  What were the social structures like at the time?  Had men and women started 'dating' yet or were arranged marriages still around?  Were parents arranging their childrens weddings or was it more a child's choice?  Im always particularly interested in how life was lived in different eras.", "Two questions: the ice trade has always fascinated me. Who were the major players and how were legislatures and justices dealing with conflicts/rights?\n\nWho are your favorite authors from the time period? They're all copyright free now and  I'm looking for good ebooks!\n", "What effect does the political ideals of Latin American slavery have on american policy between the Adams and Monroe era?  Is there a particular country you you like to focus on when dealing with Latin America? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "6zycpp", "title": "Athens at its height tends to be portrayed as some sort of utopia; what was it like for the middle class?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6zycpp/athens_at_its_height_tends_to_be_portrayed_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dmzn29g"], "score": [49], "text": ["It depends on what you mean by utopia, and also how we define \"middle class\". \n\nTo start with the latter, there was no middle class in the Athenian consciousness; there was a philosophical ideal of a middle between two extremes, but in practice the citizenry was ideologically divided between \"the rich\" and \"the poor\". The cutoff point was whether one had to work for a living, or whether one had the wealth (and slaves) to live off the work of others. Everyone who had to survive on his own toil was considered \"poor\". If we want to find an Athenian middle class, we will have to impose some modern standards on the sources. I suspect what you're looking for is not really a member of this artificial \"middle class\" (a term that comes with a lot of modern ideological baggage), but simply an Athenian citizen who is not desperately poor but also not one of \"the rich\".\n\nThe problem then becomes that this vague socio-economic class would have included a very wide range of people. The territory and population of Classical Athens was comparable in size to that of modern Luxembourg. Life for a skilled worker living in the crowded, urban, ethnically mixed Peiraieus would have been very different from that of a small farmer herding goats in the mountains on the border of Boiotia, three days' travel from Athens. The men who worked the land around Acharnai, the second largest settlement in Attika, would have had a different outlook on life from those who gambled their fortunes on trade with the Phoenicians and Etruscans. How do we define what their life was like in general?\n\nIt's worth pointing out that relatively few of the men in this arbitrary middle would have actually lived in Athens itself. Those who did not have enough wealth to have slaves do all the work for them would not have the spare time to hang around at Athens, hours or even days away from their fields and workshops. The city, then, was the playground of absentee landlords, who engaged in politics and the pursuits of leisured life, and of the so-called \"naval mob\", the urban poor who relied on the wages of the Athenian democracy for their livelihood. The Pnyx, the hill on which the Assembly was held, had a capacity of about 6,000; apart from the men in the Council, who were drawn from across Attika, most of the men who voted would have been wealthy political high-rollers and poor men eager to receive the compensation (1 drachma, a good day's wage) paid out to those who attended.\n\nFor the rest of the citizen body, the great democracy of Athens must have seemed like something that happened far away, unless they were specifically called upon to contribute. This could happen in a number of ways. Every year, a specific number of men were selected by lot from the citizen rolls to make up that year's jury courts - a nice way to make an extra buck, but also a way to exert direct influence over the laws of the state. Every year, too, the 500 members of the Council were selected by lot from eligible citizens, with a set number of Councillors provided by each of the demes into which Attika was divided. The Council ran the day-to-day affairs of the city and set the agenda for the Assembly, giving them considerable power to determine the course of the state. Finally, the citizen body was eligible for military service; many of the people on the high end of the \"middle\" would have been on the List, which meant they could be called up several times a year in wartime, and might be called up to fight overseas for years at a time.\n\nAll of these aspects of the democracy could be regarded both as an unrivaled opportunity to exercise personal power and influence (setting policy, upholding the law, defending the community) and as a terrible burden on the already difficult life of a subsistence farmer or skilled worker. The fact that the Athenian state eventually instituted pay for all the services it required (jury, Council, Assembly, and military service) was certainly one of its most democratic features, ensuring that no citizen would be forced to default on his public duties. Even so, it is easy to see why many Greek populations were happy to leave the business of government and war to the leisured elite.\n\nIn what other ways was life in Athens different? All Greek states had a calendar of public festivals, funded by the state or by generous contributions from wealthy citizens. Athens, however, famously had one of the most extensive such calendars, and one 4th-century orator complained that the city spent more on festivals than it did on its many wars. Great religious celebrations such as the Panathenaia or the Dionysia involved processions, theatre performances, dance competitions, sacrifices and public feasts - all of which both Athenians and foreign visitors could take part in. Like all Athenian public activities, the cost was largely shouldered by the elite, who were assigned the duty of funding parts of each festival as a responsibility to their community. The rich paid; everybody else enjoyed the results. These results - theatre plays in particular - remain among the most treasured and lasting products of Classical Greek culture.\n\nHowever, it is not clear to what extent the so-called middle was involved in any way other than as spectators. Tragedies tended to be about mythical kings and their trials and tribulations; they highlighted the lifestyle and works of the leisure class, often (as in Aischylos' description of the battle of Salamis in his *Persians*) at the expense of the achievements of ordinary people. Comedies may have reflected the common man more closely, but even there, the focus is often on prominent politicians or public figures; Aristophanes also liked to poke fun at the lifestyle of the very wealthy, whose sons served in the cavalry. While the Athenians stereotyped themselves as hoplites in wartime, rather than the more elite cavalry, even hoplites clearly still represented the upper stratum of society, unattainable by the majority of citizens. In many ways, the way the Athenians represented themselves in public (both politically and militarily) could be compared to the modern ideological \"middle class\", in the sense that few actually live the reality of it, and many more aspire to it and would like others to believe they are part of it.\n\nThis has ended up being a bit of a rambling post... Sorry about that - it would help if you could define the ways in which you've seen Athens described as a utopia, so I could focus my answer on the extent to which that is justified. Also, feel free to ask if anything is unclear."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "4ucg34", "title": "Cold War:Why the Fulda Gap?", "selftext": "Why was the US/NATO convinced the SOVIET Army would invade Europe by pouring through the Fulda Gap?  \n\nTactically for armored warfare it seems rushing across the flat terrain of Lower Saxony, driving a wedge between the US and UK sectors, as well as seizing or isolating Bremerhaven and potentially the major ports in the Netherlands would have been far more logically sound.\n\nNow that the Warsaw Pact has been abandoned for more than 20 years, do we have any knowledge of their actual war plans or tactical/strategic objectives had they invaded?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ucg34/cold_warwhy_the_fulda_gap/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d5ov4ws"], "score": [16], "text": ["They would have done both. The entire Warsaw Pact force wouldn't have gone through Fulda, a large part would have swept the North German Plain as you suggest. The drive through the Gap was intended to strike at the American military infrastructure in Germany, most of which was located in the Frankfurt/Middle Rhine area (such as the Rhein-Main air base and much of the pre-positioned equipment for American reinforcements.) If the Pact could hamstring the American military, the remaining NATO allies would theoretically have been able to be disposed of at the Pact's convenience. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3b08dm", "title": "Indiana Jones and the Mislabeled Collections Records", "selftext": "Back by popular demand*, it's the \"identify an artifact\" game. Last week I stumped everyone with [this ceramic head](_URL_1_) from the Sao culture of Cameroon/Chad.\n\nLet's start off with a new object. [What is the purpose of this?](_URL_0_) Extra kudos if you can correctly guess the culture, but that is not expected.\n\nEdit: [here is another view of the same type of object](_URL_2_)\n\n---\n*\"popular\" meaning \"one person asked us to do it\". Don't say we never did anything for you.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3b08dm/indiana_jones_and_the_mislabeled_collections/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cshm19r", "cshn7l8", "csho22j", "cshp4hm", "cshqd55", "cshr4cu", "csi6je7", "csi8amj", "csibi69", "csim621"], "score": [3, 3, 3, 8, 3, 6, 6, 2, 3, 2], "text": ["Totally out of left field, but is that some kind of fencing with a head on it? If it had some evidence of being in water I would suggest a fish weir but I've got nothing and just want to play.", "99% sure it's one of these [reachy grabby things](_URL_0_) decorated with a face", "So, this is my guess-\n\nThese are sacred representations of the deceased who attend meetings of the living, they are given seats (be they chairs, or the ground, or however else this culture sits down) and they are considered to be in active attendance to all of the meetings regarding important affairs, and the framework is to enable the face to be upright wherever it is placed.", "It extends outwards - towards the audience - so my guess is that its darting motion is meant to have some kind of shock value. So how about it represents a spirit (e.g. protective ancestors), and is used to scare bad spirits during a cleansing/healing ceremony.", "These posts are great.\n\nWas it intended to extend toward the person holding it, or toward another? And was it intended for large gatherings, small ones, or both?", "Is it to protect the graves of family by using shrunken trophy heads from captured rivals?", "Nobody guessed mine last week :( _URL_0_", "Since my items are relatively easy I think, you have to get BOTH of what these two items were for: \n\n[Sweet crumbs and carrots what does this cut off](_URL_0_) edit: it's just a pair of [sugarloaf nips](_URL_2_), why would you think anything else, identified by /u/vertexoflife\n\nand\n\n[Mother of pearl what is this supposed to squeeze](_URL_3_) edit: it just squeezes your hair, it's 2 different curling irons, the left one folds up for travel, the one on the right is a special one for making [papillote curls](_URL_1_), identified by /u/anthropology_nerd", "Hail from /r/archaeology! I am curious, how familiar would the average historian be with identifying artifacts such as these? Particularly such a wide range? \n\nI ask because I always imagined this kind of artifact identification was more in the realm of Archaeology rather than what a historian would spend time doing/learning? Please excuse my ignorance, I'm just curious. ", "Okay, new item, with a bioarchaeology twist. If you would have anxiety from viewing a human skull please sit this round out.\n\nHere we go. What would cause [this pathology](_URL_2_)?\n\nEdit: The lesions are called [cribra orbitalia](_URL_1_), and in the past was confidently linked with [advanced iron deficiency anemia](_URL_3_). Now, we understand [multiple pathologies](_URL_0_) can explain the presence of these lesions, and we oversimplify the diverse factors influencing health in previous populations by only entertaining one explanation for cribra orbitalia/porotic hyperostosis."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/0d6MP5v.jpg", "http://imgur.com/Ltuf6C8", "http://imgur.com/aGKpFZX"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.juvoproducts.com/filebin/images/products/full/REACHER32_2_FS.jpg"], [], [], [], [], ["http://m.imgur.com/UDCnVqN"], ["http://www.twgaze.co.uk/images/uploads/50a3bd4575eba-9549_7.jpg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP9PJsY5__4", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_nips", "http://www.antiqbuyer.com/images/ARCHIVE_PICS/Misc_archive/Ivory/P7180423.JPG"], [], ["http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rhonda_Bathurst/publication/24195589_The_Causes_of_Porotic_Hyperostosis_and_Cribra_Orbitalia_A_Reappraisal_of_the_Iron-Deficiency-Anemia_Hypothesis/links/00463524194679271f000000.pdf", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioarchaeology#Porotic_hyperostosis.2Fcribra_orbitalia", "http://i.imgur.com/uhBOzlN.jpg", "http://plaza.ufl.edu/maurih00/paleopathology.html"]]}
{"q_id": "6rabb3", "title": "Did the Soviets really send their infantry through minefields as if they weren't there?", "selftext": "I've stumbled upon something I find somewhat hard to believe in [this](_URL_0_) AH post:\n\n\n > Highly illuminating to me was his description of the Russian method of attacking through minefields. The German minefields, covered by defensive fire, were tactical obstacles that caused us many casualties and delays. It was out laborious business to break through them, even though our technicians invented every conceivable kind of mechanical appliance to destroy mines safely.   Marshal Zhukov gave me a matter-of-fact statement of his practice, which was roughtly 'There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a minefield our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with minefields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go.\n*(Eisenhower; Crusade in Europe, John Hopkins University, 1997)*\n\nI've also hear discussions about so called 'mine trampler' battalions, supposedly penal battalions sent to clear mine fields, a concept I find more plausible than presuming that the Soviets did that with every infantry unit.\n\nCan anyone help me figure out what the truth is?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rabb3/did_the_soviets_really_send_their_infantry/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dl3wa6w"], "score": [140], "text": ["Russian historian Aleksey Isayev addresses this in [his lecture on Zhukov](_URL_0_) (1:33:05). The long story short is that the myth was born of miscommunication. There was no \"mine trampler\" units, the intention was to train infantry to disarm simple mines so that it could proceed through minefields and not slow down.\n\n > \"There's a very famous story, allegedly coming from Eisenhower, about how if Soviet infantry encountered a minefield, it would advance as though there was no minefield there. This is a retelling over a broken telephone. In reality, Zhukov insisted that regular ordinary infantry should undergo sapper training, because simple mine disarmament, removal of simple minefields, can be performed by a person who has certain combat experience, and the implementation of this in ordinary rifle units, so they would not be stalled in front of minefields waiting for sappers and deal with minefields that they could handle by themselves, moving forward, and not remain in place, vulnerable to artillery attack.\""]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2s12ct/why_were_soviet_casualties_in_ww2_so_high/"], "answers_urls": [["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQDGnkck_Yo"]]}
{"q_id": "1mrt6e", "title": "What made the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia \"better\"?", "selftext": "I've been seeing assertions for years that the Army of Northern Virginia had some innate qualities that made it \"better\" than the Army of the Potomac, at least early on in the war.  This goes beyond generalship, but seems to imply, basically, that the rank-and-file Southerners were better soldiers somehow than their Northern counterparts.  But this is usually left unexplained.  Is there any truth to these claims?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mrt6e/what_made_the_soldiers_of_the_army_of_northern/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ccc1pal", "ccc5gr2", "ccc74fs", "cccc68i"], "score": [19, 13, 2, 3], "text": ["Early on in the War you had other factors that influenced the Army of Northern Virginia. General Lee took his cues for training and drilling the soldiers from General Jackson, who is undisputed as the greatest taskmaster of the entire war. He drilled his own brigade to the point that they could cover as many miles in a day as [cavalry](_URL_0_). \n\nThus you had soldiers who were just as well trained and drilled as the Union Army. Then superior [tactics and leadership](_URL_1_) resulted in the South winning the first real battle of the war. This set the mood for the rest of the war until Gettysburg, which was the first real defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia. So for the majority of the first part of the war, the Southern Army had better Leadership, Tactics, and most importantly, Morale. ", "One argument that's been made is that many of the Southern soldiers lived agrarian lifestyles and were already fair shots with a rifle, and were used to living outside exposed to the elements and doing hard labor. By contrast many of the Northern conscripts came from the large urban centers of the North and many had never held a rifle before let alone fired one, and were not used to living out of doors etc. The South also started out with vastly superior cavalry because horsemanship was highly valued for the southern elite, especially those that owned plantations or worked on them. Again, for northern soldiers growing up in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh etc. most of them had probably never ridden a horse before.\n\nsource is \"The Civil War: A Narrative\" by Shelby Foote", "I think the folks below made some good points in regards to the general statement that lifestyles of the front line soldiers had some impact on the general effectiveness of the soldiers.  \n\nI would also take a look at leadership as well.  While some of the fumbling around at the General Officer level is well noted and documented, I would argue it was the quality of mid-level officers (and to a lesser extent sergeants) that really make the difference.  \n\nI don't know the exact numbers of which side employed more West Point trained officers, but let's assume that it was relatively equal.  There are still several Military Academies in the South that are training large numbers of officer quality students.  VMI jumps to mind almost at once because that is where Stonewall Jackson was teaching prior to the war and where a good number of his Junior officers came from.  \n\nThis to me is the larger advantage.  Most of the troops were raw/green early in the war.  Southern troops may have had a bit of advantage in shooting and Northerner's may have had an advantage in discipline, but the true advantage is having low and mid-tier officers capable of carrying out simple and complex maneuvers under fire.  \n\nAs far as I can tell from what I have read and from courses that I've taken on the Civil War, this is where the real advantage for the South comes through.  There were many cases that the Northern General's actually had the correct tactics/counter tactics/maneuver/battle plan in place to defeat the Southern General's plan, but they are unable to have the plan properly executed by their battle units.  \n\nThe longer the war went on the less of an advantage this became.  Veteran Northern Officers that proved their capabilities moved up the ranks and helped pick their replacements with capable officers.  This is also where the numbers advantage started to pay off.  The attrition level of these mid-grade officers was rather high.  This meant that as the war ran on, education on the battlefield replaced other forms of military education.  \n\nIn summary:  The Generals and the front line soldiers were more or less interchangeable as far as my theory goes, but the mid-level officers made for a critical advantage early in the war.", "An additional point: in the early part of the war, the Union generals were under constant political pressure to capture Richmond quickly and end the war, regardless of their own strategic instincts. Defending against reluctant, ill-timed thrusts at Richmond was an easier task than carrying out those reluctant, ill-timed thrusts. It's easy to look like a good soldier when your army has a task that your general can execute.\n\nAlso about the quality of military leadership: the officers who broke their oaths and fought for the Confederacy were heavily concentrated among the junior officers of the US Army. (Overall I believe more West Point graduates fought for the Union, but the numbers were skewed by age and length of service.) This meant that the ANVa started the war with a huge advantage in regimental leadership. Later on, as these Confederate commanders were promoted above their level of competence and the Union was able to field its own battle-hardened regimental commanders, this advantage disappeared. But at the beginning of the war, it was very easy to look like a good soldier if you were reporting to an A.P. Hill or something like that."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/worsham/menu.html", "http://kms.kapalama.ksbe.edu/projects/2002/civilwar/battle02/historian.html"], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "5gsbnq", "title": "What were the activities of the VOC in South Sulawesi at the end of the 15th century? How much of an impact did it have on everyday life in the region?", "selftext": "I know that by the middle of the following century there was all out conflict, but what was life like in the decades before this point? Did the average person have much to fear from the VOC/Dutch, or were their actions more directed toward political entities?\n\n**edit:** I'm an idiot and actually meant the 1600s, not the 15th century. Numbers are hard.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gsbnq/what_were_the_activities_of_the_voc_in_south/", "answers": {"a_id": ["daus2oe"], "score": [128], "text": ["The VOC had no activities and no impact anywhere at all at the end of the 15th or even 16th centuries, mainly because it didn't exist until 1602. But I get the gist of your question, so here goes: the turbulent relationship between the VOC and Gowa/Makassar, the empire ruling all South Sulawesi, up to 1656, and its effect on everyday life. The VOC had no relations with any other S. Sulawesi state until 1660, so I will discuss only Gowa.\n\nOh, and a nice Dutch poem to start us off:\n\n >  Gentlemen, there follows now something of the malevolent Makassar,\n\n >  In the island of Sulawesi; in the entire East Indies there was\n\n >  No more villainous race than this, rascally, perjured, malign,\n\n >  murderous, malignant, savage, perfidious.\n\n >  [...]\n\n >  In short, they were scoundrels\n\n >  spawned by Lucifer, the most desperate ruffians...\n\nBut war and hatred were not the only facets of the VOC-Gowa relationship.\n\n# **South Sulawesi and the Arrival of the Dutch**\nIn 1607, the representatives of the five-year-old Dutch East India Company (VOC) received an invitation from the king of Gowa, the dominant state of South Sulawesi, to trade in his country. Little did either sides understand the transformative century of immense change that both Europe and South Sulawesi had just undergone.\n\nIn the first decade of the 16th century the peninsula of South Sulawesi was fragmented into a number of small complex chiefdoms, of which the most prominent included Gowa, Bone, Wajoq, and Luwuq.^1 This geopolitical situation would begin to shift in the early 16th century, when Gowa emerged as the peninsula's first state. It began with Tumapaqrisiq Kallonna (r. c. 1511-1546) of Gowa, who subjugated his immediate neighbors, created the first bureaucratic posts, and generally set the stage for expansion across the entire peninsula. This rapid expansion was accomplished by his son Tunipalangga (r. c. 1545-1565), who conquered the entire peninsula save Gowa's archrival Bone, vastly expanded the bureaucracy, and - perhaps most importantly - oversaw the establishment of the first permanent Malay community in Gowa's port capital of Makassar.^2\n\nWith the establishment of the Malays^3 - by far the most important merchant diaspora in 16th-century Southeast Asia - in Makassar, trade expanded greatly. Tunipalangga had conquered the main competitors of Makassar in his great conquests and allowed Makassar to emerge as the natural entrepot for produces from across eastern Indonesia, especially the fine spices from Maluku. Gowa's expanding empire itself provided a source of commercial wealth, for instance by selling tribute from its newly acquired vassals.^4  \n\nBy 1600, after a brief interlude in the early 1690s when a tyrant discouraged trade, Makassar had emerged as the preeminent commercial center of all of eastern Indonesia. Just one year after the VOC was founded, the Dutch reported that their Portuguese enemies were annually sailing from Melaka, their base of power in Southeast Asia, to Makassar to load their ships with spices. In 1605 Malay merchants may have suggested the *tumabicara-butta* (chancellor/prime minister) of Gowa to convert to Islam, who was soon followed by the young king himself. But Muslim or not, Gowa-Talloq^5 (see note 5 for why I'm calling it Gowa-Talloq now) committed itself to a general policy of free trade, at least in the port of Makassar itself.\n\nThe Dutch, of course, wanted to join the game. After an invitation from the king of Gowa the Dutch arrived, hoping to convince Gowa-Talloq to surrender its support for Portuguese Melaka... and were very disappointed to learn that the king believed that\n\n >  My country stands open to all nations, and what I have is for you people [the Dutch] as well as for the Portuguese.\n\nThe VOC sought to establish monopolies on key Southeast Asian produces, especially the fine spices of clove, nutmeg, and mace. They could then control prices and raise artificial profits. The continual of Makassar's trade of spices made such a monopoly impossible. Furthermore, Makassar was providing safe haven for enemies and competitors of the Dutch, such as the English (who established a factory in 1613) and the Spaniards (whose agent first arrived in 1615). Already, by 1614, a Dutch commissioner was recommending that the Company attack Makassar shipping in Maluku, the Spice Islands. \n\nIn 1615 the Dutch informed Gowa-Talloq that there was now a Dutch monopoly in Maluku and that Makassar ships should refrain from heading there. The king of Gowa's response was simple:\n\n >  God made the land and the sea; the land he divided among men and the sea he gave in common. It has never been heard that anyone should be forbidden to sail the seas. If you seek to do that, you will take the bread from the mouths of the people. I am a poor King.^6\n\nAs for daily life, not much would have changed - just a new group of merchants on the scene, just like the Malays had arrived in the late 1400s and the Portuguese in the early 1500s. The Dutch had not yet established a definitive monopoly on any of the fine spices and hadn't even acquired Batavia.\n\n# **The First War**\n\nWar began a few months later, when the VOC factor Abraham Sterck got frustrated about the king of Gowa not paying some debts. Claiming the government in Makassar had failed to protect him from the insults of the Spaniards (with whom the Dutch were still at war), Sterck left abruptly with a number of Gowa-Talloq nobles. The nobles resisted and seven were killed, including a nephew of Gowa's king. The harbormaster of Makassar and another royal relative was taken as prisoner of the Dutch. This incident infuriated Gowa-Talloq and almost resulted in the ousting of the English as well, since the English factor had for some reason left with the Dutch. The English managed to stay, but the Dutch did not.\n\n*And...* I hate to end on a cliffhanger, but I'm not even half done, but I've hit 9988 characters and it's 22:52 here. I'll finish tomorrow, promise. \n\n---\n^1 [Map of the current regencies of South Sulawesi, many of which retain the old kingdoms' borders. Note that these are in Indonesian; Luwu here is Luwuq, Wajo is Wajoq, etc.](_URL_0_) \n\nThere is an emerging consensus that there were no genuine states in South Sulawesi in 1500, insofar as it matters to distinguish an archaic state from a complex chiefdom. This is best presented in *Tale of Two Kingdoms: The Historical Archaeology of Gowa and Tallok*, archaeologist David Bulbeck's thesis, which most archaeologists cite. But on chiefdom vs state in South Sulawesi, also see *The Lands West of the Lakes: A History of the Ajattappareng Kingdoms of South Sulawesi, 1200 to 1600 CE* by Stephen C. Druce and *Land of Iron: The historical archaeology of Luwu and the Cenrana valley* by Bulbeck and Ian Caldwell, both by archaeologists. \n\n^2 On 16th-century Gowa, a lot of sources. If you want the pure, undistilled facts, I refer you to William Cumming's 2007 translation *A Chain of Kings: The Makassarese Chronicles of Gowa and Talloq*. But check the notes, because Cumming's translation often differs from other historians'. The simplest narrative secondary source, if a bit dated on the archaeological aspect, is the first chapter of Leonard Andaya's *The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi in the Seventeenth Century.* A lot of articles mention the 16th-century as well, but few exclusively so.\n\n^3 Itself a catch-all term for merchants from the Western Archipelago generally. Anakoda Borang, the first leader of the community that would later be known as the Makassar Malays, said that anyone who wears a *sarong* - from a Cham in central Vietnam to a Minangkabau from southwestern Sumatra - is Malay. See Heather Sutherland's chapter \"The Makassar Malays\" in *Contesting Malayness: Malay Identity Across Boundaries*. Also note that in Makassar usage, the word 'Java' (*jawa*) just means anyone who comes from the Central or Western Archipelago, including Malays. So the Makassar didn't really differentiate different groups of foreign Southeast Asians in language.  \n\n^4 For the rise of Makassar and its trading networks in the late 1500s, there is good information in Leonard Andaya's chapters \"Applying the Seas Perspective to Indonesia\" in *Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1350-1800* and \"Eastern Indonesia: A Study of the Intersection of Global, Regional, and Local Networks in the 'Extended' Indian Ocean\" in *Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri*. \n\n^5 Talloq was a small maritime kingdom that was founded during a succession dispute in Gowa around 1500. It was conquered by Tumapaqrisiq Kallonna and brought into Gowa's fold. But when King Tunipasuluq, who apparently did so many horrible things that the *Gowa Chronicle* applies *damnatio memoriae* on him and refuses to mention what he actually did, was kicked out, it was Karaeng Matoaya - king of Talloq - who was at the head. As *tumabicara-butta* and regent for the new boy king of Gowa, Karaeng Matoaya became the most influential man in South Sulawesi. Archaeologist David Bulbeck's research shows that during the reign of Kng. Matoaya, Matoaya's kingdom Talloq was actually considered more powerful than Gowa, at least as far as we can infer from dynastic marriage trends. During Matoaya's reign Talloq also controlled the port of Makassar. See Bulbeck's chapter  \"The Politics of Marriage and the Marriage of Polities in Gowa, South Sulawesi, During the 16th and 17th Centuries\" in *Origins, Ancestry and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography.* So I refer to the kingdom as Gowa-Talloq to better reflect this change in the latter's status.\n\n^6 Primarily from Anthony Reid's narrative account \"A Greet Seventeenth Century Indonesian Family: Matoaya and Pattingalloang of Makasar,\" one of few English-language narrative sources on the relations between the VOC and Gowa-Talloq. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://flutrackers.com/forum/filedata/fetch?id=652657&amp;d=1286465304"]]}
{"q_id": "2e2aux", "title": "Is the Queen of Sheba a true historical person or is she just a biblical fiction character created to emphasize on King Solomon's greatness?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e2aux/is_the_queen_of_sheba_a_true_historical_person_or/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjvgsop"], "score": [68], "text": ["Sheba is normally taken to be 'Saba' - in Yemen in southwest Arabia. It was often argued that it should be in the northwest of Arabia, but there is nothing mentioned in any texts of a kingdom called Saba up there, but they do mention a lot of other kingdoms.   Assyrian sources mention Sabean caravans travelling north around the 8-9th centuries,  just after Solomon's time period.\n\nWhether she's a queen or not is up for grabs - she could have been a consort sent out as an ambassador (north Arabian queens did this), and there are accounts of women occupying positions alongside men during the period.  Queens with executive power exist in North Arabia between the 7-9th centuries BC but not afterwards, and their existence in historical terms seems to disappear between 690BC to 570AD - (only one queen is mentioned in any historical setting  during this period and that was about a kidnapping).\n\nIn short, we have queens who took on roles as described in the story, but all our evidence is North Arabian.  If the same goes for the South, there's no reason why the story couldn't have happened.  The fact that their activity in history disappears after 690BC indicates that the story might be old, and fits the 8-9th century information we have about North Arabian queens.  \n\nThere quite a substantial section of ANE scholars who argue that Solomon wasn't real and so the story must have been made up, but that's another question. There's nothing to preclude either her activity or her existence, but we simply do not have enough data to be certain.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1ir0ro", "title": "When do you refer to something as a civilization? Why is there an Incan civilization but no French civilization?", "selftext": "I suppose I'm asking what you would define as a civilization and where the difference lies in calling something a kingdom, empire, culture or civilization.  \n\nEdit: Thanks for the responses, I realize now that it isn't a simple rigid set of criteria, this also puts a lot of history in a new light!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ir0ro/when_do_you_refer_to_something_as_a_civilization/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cb776tv", "cb778di", "cb7beqc"], "score": [60, 16, 10], "text": ["I'm rushing so bear with my oversimplistic comment:\n\nI wouldn't group kingdom, empire, culture and civilization together.\n\nKingdom is a form of governance. Empire requires a nation or established country forming ties and exerting dominion over vast regions. A culture is an amalgam of traits, traditions and ways of life (infrastructure, social organization and an ideology) that tie a people together. A civilization is a descriptor for a type of society. Cultural evolutionists and other anthropologists have (at first very tightly, now rather loosely) use the term civilization to differentiate between groups and societies that follow a particular way of life which includes: sedentarianism, some form of food production (like agriculture), social hierarchy, and writing system.\n\nThere is a notion for a French civilization (although it is usually grouped with others of Western Civilization). \n\n\nAs an anthropologist, we currently avoid the use of talking about \"civilization\" although it is a handy term to denominate specific traits (specially when dealing with architecture and writing systems).\n\nWhy you hear more of an Incan civilization not su much of a French civilization? I think it has more to do with the current general public perception of both cultures. French culture and history is known to be part of a Western civilization. Incas, for many -specially in the general public, would be considered closer to the notion of \"savages\" (a very very problematic term). By using \"civilization\" alongside with Inca it provides as air of complexity and development.\n\nSorry for the oversimplication (hopefully it is not confusing). I'm on the road!", "These terms don't see consistent use. Traditions pop up using them when it seems convenient.\n\n\"Civilization\" refers to a culturally similar group, regardless of political structure. We often refer to neolithic agrarian peoples and Bronze age peoples using the term \"civilization\". Modern France is regularly spoken of as being part of Western Civilization, but there's no rule to keep from speaking of \"French civilization\" and people do use this term.\n\nA kingdom has a king. An empire conquered lots of territory. A culture has some set of shared practices.\n\nThese terms aren't exclusive, nor are they used entirely in some clear, consistent way.", "The word Civilization comes from the Latin word for \"city\".  So, literally, a civilization is a group of people that build cities.  And with cities usually come some form of written language, laws, stratified class structure, official religion, etc.  In this sense the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs would all be Civilized, while, say, the Lakota Sioux and even the Mongols (initially) would not be.\n\nNow, in the age of colonization and *especially* in the 19th century the word became morally loaded.  \"Civilized\" people behaved in a certain way that was especially particular to Northern European Victorian-era people.  To call someone \"uncivilized\" meant they had bad English manners.  Many Brits would have called the Indians \"uncivilized\" in spite of the fact that their civilization beats ours by about 2000 years.\n\nMore recently we've begun using \"civilization\" to be nearly synonymous with \"Culture\".  I mean, \"the Mongol Civilization\" seems to make sense, right?\n\nIt's all still up in the air.\n\nKingdom, Empire, and Culture are all more easily defined.  A kingdom has a king ruling over it, and usually some sort of feudal structure where regions are centralized under other dudes who have sworn an oath to the king.  An Empire has an Emperor, and usually involves having one central city that's the economic and cultural center to which the goods of the \"colonies\" or \"provinces\" feed into.\n\nCulture refers to the materials and ideas that come out of a group of people.  Stuff, like pottery, clothes, weapons, buildings...these are \"material culture\".  There's also art and written culture as well.\n\nSo, the French have French \"culture\" because there's a lot of things and ideas that are particularly French.  But they're part of Western Civilization because their way of life--their cities, economy, laws, *and* some aspects of *culture*--all share similarities with the other places that inherited the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.\n\nThis is why, when I teach my Western Civ. class, I speak of Islam as being part of Western Civilization.  But I'm rambling now..."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3cr4d1", "title": "How easy was it for American soldiers to sneak war swag home after WW2?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cr4d1/how_easy_was_it_for_american_soldiers_to_sneak/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csyk1rn"], "score": [30], "text": ["Well, it depends what you mean, seeing as there wasn't much need to sneak it. War trophies were permitted by the Army, and really the most important limit was weight and portability. Main restrictions were on explosives, 'nonmilitary articles removed from enemy dead', and personal effects of POWs (although they could be bought from the POW, just not taken), as well as a few other items listed in the Circular cited below. The government even footed the shipping costs for occupation troops to send stuff home after the war, not exceeding 25 pounds, plus a premium for officers. In the case of firearms, all war bring backs were supposed to have capture papers though. Here is an [example of one](_URL_2_) for a .25 pistol. It basically showed that the soldier had gotten permission to send it back, and someone had inspected the weapon to make sure it was eligible. Weapons with their capture papers these days fetch a very high premium from collectors. \n\nAs far as what eligibility meant, originally, you could even bring back machine guns, as long as you registered it under the National Firearms Act upon importing it to the country (Side note: My old HS history teacher has an MG42 his father shipped home). Concerns that they wouldn't be properly registered, if only out of ignorance, meant that it was decided that they were no longer allowed in mid-1945 , but this didn't prevent other firearms from going home, either in shipments by occupation troops or carried along when sent back stateside. [To give you a sense of the numbers, 5,000 men of the 28th Infantry were sent home in '45, carrying about 20,000 trophy firearms with them!](_URL_0_)\n\n[Circular 155 is the main document that deals with this policy](_URL_3_), and as it states, the reasoning was one of morale:\n\n > In order to improve the morale of the United States forces in the theaters of operations, the retention of war trophies by military personnel, merchant seamen, and civilians serving with the United States Army overseas is authorized under the conditions set forth in the following instructions [See pages 3-7]\n\nSo anyways, the point is that it was exceptionally easy, as there was no need to sneak most items. There were restrictions in place, and a lot of paperwork intended to ensure that *non*-authorized items weren't sent, but as to how effective that was... not very. [To go to a rather macabre example](_URL_1_), Pacific theater trophies of human remains, mostly Japanese skulls and ears, but also items such as letter-openers made from arm bones, were being sent home by the thousand, despite the fact that orders prohibited the possession of enemy remains (Officers often didn't care, \"not want[ing] to discourage expressions of animosity toward the enemy\" - I would recommend Dower's \"War Without Mercy\" for more treatment of the racial underpinnings of war in the Pacific). Soldiers returning home, even before the war was over, were asked by customs whether they brought human remains with them, but it seems that efforts to actually check if their \"No\" was truthful were not very strenuous. A skull trophy, of course, was not quite the display piece that a rifle is, so combined with the lack of documentation, estimates are not easy to make, but could easily point to tens of thousands brought back to the US, with generally great ease.\n\nTL;DR: The military helped you send back most stuff, and the stuff you aren't supposed to, if it was small, was easy enough to sneak."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/occ-gy/ch18.htm", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/4092567", "http://i416.photobucket.com/albums/pp244/wleoff/CapturePapersEM.jpg", "http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/WD_Cir_No_155_28_May_45.pdf"]]}
{"q_id": "1z09l2", "title": "I've heard a story that Stalin's first wife was the only person he ever loved; and that after she died early, he became permanently cold and bitter towards the world. Is there any truth to this story?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1z09l2/ive_heard_a_story_that_stalins_first_wife_was_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cfpeeod", "cfppxii"], "score": [132, 12], "text": ["Amateur psychology aside, I don't think there is too much evidence that  his wife's death contributed to his politics particularly much.  I'm sure it did in fact cause him grief, but I have a feeling there is an underlying \"and therefore, he did what he did as leader of the Soviet Union\" being asked in this question.  To that end I would answer that no, I don't think there is a radical change in Stalin's pattern of behavior/ideology at any point.\n\nI wrote a post several months back about the consistency of his positions (more or less), which is somewhat relevant in this case, so here is the link if you'd like to read that as well: _URL_0_", "This does not directly answer your question, but to give a little insight on Stalin's personality three years before his wife died, here's a quote from *Ivan's War* by Catherine Merridale:\n\n\u201cIn 1904 a group of comrades were out for a walk along a river swollen from spring rains. A calf, newborn, still doubtful on its legs, had somehow become stranded on an island in the middle of the river. One man, the Georgian Koba ripped off his shirt and swam across to the calf, He hauled himself out to stand beside it, waited for all the friends to watch, and then broke it legs.\u201d\n\nStalin called himself Koba after a character in *The Patricide* by Alexander Kazbegi.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nI first heard this on Hardcore History \"Ghosts of the Ostfront,\" which gives a pretty interesting, albeit dramatized, portrayal of Stalin and the eastern front."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1olmdl/did_stalin_introduce_harsh_repressive_policies/cct9rir"], ["http://books.google.com/books?id=JmvyWJQpg9YC&amp;pg=PA36&amp;lpg=PA36&amp;dq=ivan%27s+war+calf&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=XHaJ8i1qoz&amp;sig=FtFN6-v4wkpgW-Ip2OfUNMuR_ak&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=mZ4OU6T_CrChsASshICQBg&amp;ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=ivan's%20war%20calf&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "6gnvh5", "title": "Did any Western Romans flee to the Eastern Roman Empire during the final stages of the Western Empire's decline in the 5th century? (Repost)", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gnvh5/did_any_western_romans_flee_to_the_eastern_roman/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ditxgme"], "score": [5], "text": ["This isn't really an answer to your question, but there has been a general recognition in the field that the \"decline\" of the Roman Empire was not obvious to Ancient Romans like it is to us. If you look at Rome at the beginning of the fifth century, things are great! Egypt and North Africa are growing lots of grain. Taxes are being collected annually. It's a Christian Empire, ordained by God and claimed in the blood of the martyrs (or at least that's how fifth-century poet Prudentius presents it. \n\nI would say that Ancient Romans didn't think of their Empire as being in decline. Augustine, who lived through the sack of Rome in 410, seems relatively unaffected by it. Even Justinian in the 6th century still has a sense that the Roman Empire is the whole Mediterranean. \n\nThis is not to suggest that people didn't flee the cities during moments of actual destruction. For more insight, check out Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "74zw4l", "title": "It's been said that being clean shaven only came into style because soldiers from World War I had to shave regularly in order to properly wear their gas masks, and the habit stuck after the returned from the war. Is there any validity to this assumption?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/74zw4l/its_been_said_that_being_clean_shaven_only_came/", "answers": {"a_id": ["do2m6kw", "do2omq9"], "score": [13, 78], "text": ["I\u2019m hoping that posting this isn\u2019t against the rules, but said by whom? I\u2019ve never heard this claim before, and it\u2019s not as if renaissance art\u2014depicting life well before the Great Wars\u2014only features men with facial hair. ", "This presupposes two things: firstly, that soldiers wore beards before WWI, and secondly, that they shaved for convenience in the field. For the British Army, both are false. \n\nIn the years before WWI, moustaches were essentially required by regulations. The regulations in place in 1914 stated that \n\n > The hair of the head will be kept short. The\nchin and the lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers, if worn, will be of moderate length.\n\nThis meant that, for soldiers old enough to grow facial hair, they were wearing moustaches. In civilian life, however, being clean-shaven was already fashionable - some men got into trouble for shaving before leave. Holmes mentions an incident where two officers from the Accrington Pals, who had shaved before going on leave, were upbraided for their choice. The reservists and new volunteers had never paid much attention to the regulation in any case. \n\nDuring the war, this regulation would change. During the summer of 1916, an officer was court-martialled for shaving his upper lip. In civilian life, he worked as an actor, and felt that growing a moustache risked a rash when he shaved it off at the end of the war, one which could jeopardise his ability to find work. This defence failed, but he was saved from being cashiered by the intervention of the adjutant general at GHQ, Lieutenant General Sir Nevil Macready. Macready was not a fan of his own moustache, and so quashed the sentence and had regulations changed to allow for the upper lip to be shaved. However, shaving in the trenches was not always practical. While the men did the best they could with razors and whatever hot water they could find (or even tea), many found it impossible to stay clean-shaven. Beards were, thus, not uncommon in the front line. In 1917, Joseph Maclean wrote, describing conditions in his trench, \u2018I haven\u2019t washed or shaved for a week and look like a Boche prisoner\u2019. However, when they went out of the line, men found shaving to be an essential part of the process of cleaning themselves of the dirt of the trenches. \n\nSource:\n\n*Tommy:\nThe British Soldier On The Western Front 1914-1918*, Richard Holmes, HarperCollins, 2004\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "3q86h6", "title": "Are there any important films we've lost forever because of the instability of nitrate film or just poor management in general with later film formats?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3q86h6/are_there_any_important_films_weve_lost_forever/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cwd4nle", "cwd99ch", "cwddn57", "cwddwqd", "cwdgrwy", "cwdk9ye"], "score": [97, 48, 9, 14, 11, 4], "text": ["Oh heavens yes!  Lost films are [actually an extremely common phenomenon](_URL_2_) and professional archivist groups such as [NFPS](_URL_6_) and the Library of Congress [Film Preservation Board](_URL_5_) work actively to slow the loss.\n\nNow as to the question of whether any \"important\" films have been lost, that's a bit subjective, though the Library of Congress estimates about [75% of silent films have been lost](_URL_1_), which is a simply incalulable loss for those wishing to study the history of film.\n\nIf you're looking for specific examples of notable lost films, probably the most famous example is [Metropolis](_URL_0_), though restoration attempts have been largely succesful, so that doesn't quite meet the \"forever\" criterion.  [Cleopatra](_URL_4_) might be a better example, because it was quite significant in the history of film making, and essentially none of it survives today.  On a personal note, if there was one lost film I could find, it would be [Humor Risk](_URL_3_), the Marx Brother's first film, now totally lost, probably forever.", "Poor management? How about a huge chunk of the popular TV series \"Doctor Who\"? Back in the 1960s, the video tape that British TV episodes were shot on was incredibly expensive, and the cost of storage was very high. Further, because of the expensive rights, many shows didn't *seem* to have much hope for future reruns. So, a decision was made to wipe the master tapes of \"Doctor Who\" and reuse them for other productions. This junking continued up until the early 1970s, when fans realized the horror of what was actually occurring. A huge number of episodes were wiped, but a good number of them were recovered because fans realized that a few copies still resided in the UK, and more existed throughout the worldwide British Commonwealth due to overseas transmission. Nevertheless, 97 individual half hour episodes of the program remain completely missing. (As an interesting side story, the audio tracks of every one of those episodes survive thanks to an incredibly zealous early fan who, in the days before VCRs, hooked up a reel-to-reel audio recorder directly to his TV!) This happened with a number of other British TV shows in the 1960s as well. Most notable is the missing first season of \"The Avengers\", and three extant episodes of the popular show \"Dad's Army\", but Doctor Who is by FAR the most famous example due to its continuing worldwide success.", "*London After Midnight* with Lon Chaney might be the most famous lost movie. [Here's a list of famous lost films](_URL_1_) from Mental Floss and a [more extensive list](_URL_4_) at Shadowlocked. Wikipedia maintains what is probably [the most complete list](_URL_2_). For more in-depth details, you might read [Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared](_URL_3_) by Frank T. Thompson. \n\nYou might also be interested to know that some films once considered lost were rediscovered because when they were submitted for copyright, the filmmaker was required to print each frame of the film on paper and submit it to the Library of Congress. The paper prints have been scanned and the film reconstructed and the quality is remarkably pristine.  Some of these films can be found on the excellent [Treasures of the American Film Archives](_URL_0_) collection. ", "Not sure if this is completely relevant here, but the original moon landing videos from Apollo 11 are lost. The original tapes holding recordings from the lunar module in SSTV format were all reused for later missions, and the only videos we have left are those of the TV broadcasts, converted from SSTV.", "Many popular South Korean films were lost due to poor storage and management, and recycling of film for other uses.  For instance *The Housemaid* was a blockbuster that was thought lost for many years, but two reels were found in storage, with subtitles scrawled on them.  \n\n\n > After owners of factories that manufactured a kind of straw hat popular among farmers realized that a strip of celluloid lent the headgear\u2019s otherwise flimsy brim an extraordinary sturdiness and, at the same time, made for a stylish decorative border, they began to purchase apparently worthless, worn- out 16 mm and 35 mm prints in bulk, once the films had finished their dollar- theater runs. Many classic titles were chopped into thousands of pieces as they were moved on a conveyor belt from exhaustion to extinction. When the popularity of the straw hats dwindled in the 1970s because of a rapid decline in the farming population, innovative chemists developed a way to efficiently extract silver from celluloid film. More invaluable works evaporated in that alchemical process, causing irreversible damage to South Korean film history; over 70 percent of films made before 1960 are now reported missing.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere's an interesting possibility that many of them are preserved in Kim Jong-il's film archive; he had a longtime program to copy popular films and ship them to Pyongyang.  ", "Much of Super Bowl I was lost due to the tapes being taped over. It's been mostly reconstructed now I believe but some parts are still missing."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film\\)#Restorations", "http://www.thewire.com/culture/2013/12/most-americas-silent-films-are-lost-forever/355775/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor_Risk", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(1917_film\\)", "http://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/about-this-program", "http://www.filmpreservation.org/"], [], ["http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvds-and-books/dvds-and-books", "http://mentalfloss.com/article/26045/10-famous-lost-films", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films", "http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Films-Important-Movies-Disappeared/dp/0806516046", "http://www.shadowlocked.com/201101211323/lists/15-historically-significant-lost-films.html"], [], ["https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2993-the-housemaid-crossing-borders"], []]}
{"q_id": "3nyxjd", "title": "Why did a number of Hellenistic rulers leave their thrones to Rome, a foreign power, in their wills?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nyxjd/why_did_a_number_of_hellenistic_rulers_leave/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cvt4jdl", "cvt5r21"], "score": [7, 31], "text": ["If I may expand this question, why did rulers of many cultures do this? I recall that Boudicca's husband did this as well.", "Lots of reasons. Often times the Romans would make a conquered territory a \"client state.\" A client state was a kingdom that did not have sovereignty, so that the inhabitants were still subject to the king's rule, but the king was subject to a Roman noble such as Julius Caesar or, later, the Roman Emperor. In these cases it, leaving the kingdom to be ruled by Rome was not such a crazy thing as the kingdom in question would have already been indirectly ruled by Romans for some time. \n\nThe reasons were various. If there was a lack of a successor or if there was political instability in the kingdom, it sometimes made sense to leave the kingdom to be ruled by Rome. A notable example is Pergamon, which was granted to Rome by Attalus III. There had already been a precedence to call Rome to assist in Pergamene conflicts, so Attalus was merely taking precedent one step further in order to prevent one Aristonicus, a bitter political rival, from gaining any power in the ensuing power gap. \n\nSources: Plutarch  \nThe Hellenistic World and the  Coming of Rome, Erich Gruen"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2n19a5", "title": "Were the LA Riots of 1992 really all about Rodney King verdict or was that just a catalyst for underlying tensions that were already building toward a boiling point?", "selftext": "I have always wondered this because in the US we are taught majorly about slavery and the civil war but continue education I saw that there are a lot of underlying principles besides slavery. I just find it hard to believe that the people would go crazy just because of one verdict. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2n19a5/were_the_la_riots_of_1992_really_all_about_rodney/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cm9ip65", "cm9mhwb"], "score": [57, 9], "text": ["You're asking a pretty big question because it deals with race relations and the way that the city of Los Angeles developed in part as a response to those relations. \n\n[The Death of Latasha Harlins](_URL_2_) is something that was thought to be a contributing factor. A Korean grocery owner believed Latasha Harlins was stealing some OJ. She tried to stop her, a scuffle ensued and then Harlins tried to leave. Du (the owner) got a gun and shot Harlins in the back (and the head). \n\nShe was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter which carried a max of 16 years in prison but the judge gave her 5 years of probation, 400 hours community service and a $500 fine. \n\nIt was seen as one of many double standards when it came to meting out justice. The King verdict was yet another slight to the African-American community. \n\nYou're also dealing with a region in Los Angeles that has had an incredibly complex relationship with that community from the time that the major migrations from the South occured. You have housing covenants which forbid certain homes to be sold to blacks or anyone of color. You have a history of rioting going back to the [Watt's Riots in 1965](_URL_1_) and people in the community who experienced them still being alive in 1992. Then you have the influence of the Black Panthers and the subsequent efforts by the FBI to undermine the Black Panthers and other groups for being subversive. Gang culture creeps in and changes whole communities. There's the effect that crack has on the community. That drastically changes the relationship many black communities have with law enforcement (and this is a development that has being going on for years before crack). \n\nThere are a lot of complicated socio-economic and racial issues that served as kindling for the riots and you could really take at least one course simply on Race in LA (as I did) to understand why the 1992 riots happened at all. I really gave huge broad brushstrokes because you're asking about something that spans the better part of 50 years but the point is that Los Angeles and the Black community have had a simmering and sometimes boiling tension for years and years by the 1992 riots. \n\nThis is mostly from memory but I remember one good source of info on the growth of LA and how various forces, races and interests molded the city (and thus how these forces might have impacted the black community in 1992) is [City of Quartz by Mike Davis](_URL_0_)", "There were a lot of simmering tensions in LA at the time of the riots. There were a lot of simmering tensions across the USA at the time of the riots. But they need never have boiled over into full-on riots--they didn't resulted in riots in other areas of the country. So saying that the tensions were building towards a boiling point anyway is to provide an inevitability to the riots that was simply not there. There were no riots when the Rodney King tape first came out, even though people were really angry and upset about it. There were no riots during the trial. There were no riots after the Latasha Harlins verdict. People were controlled and expressed their anger and search for justice verbally and in print. Sure, there was a lot of anger--basically every black person I knew in LA, from janitor to doctor, had been stopped by the police for \"driving while black\" or \"walking while black\". In other words, for existing. For being black and being in a nice neighborhood. That sort of situation. And there had been a lot of complaints but no change.  When the Rodney King trial  happened, people put their trust in justice, not rioting.  If you go back and read newspaper archives of the time, you'll see that people were controlled in their anger. They believed that now that this tape existed, which showed an  unresisting black man being viciously beaten by police, the police would be punished. When that didn't happen, *then* some people began expressing their anger in a violent way. But keep in mind, it wasn't \"the black community\" as a group that was rioting. There were some people who were rioting due to anger at this socio-political situation, and then there were a lot of others who were piggybacking on the riots to loot because they wanted to loot. Once you start to have a situation spiraling out of control, it has a way of self-perpetuating for reasons that were unrelated to the reason it started."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/dp/1844675688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1416622415&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=city+of+quartz", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Riots", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Latasha_Harlins"], []]}
{"q_id": "8eopyz", "title": "Why Belarus called as White Russia", "selftext": "I know there are lot of topics on the net but i couldnt trust them and want to ask I read 3 theory for a main reason\nFirst one those pieces of Slavs werent occupied by Tatars\nSec. they(byelorussians)wear white clothes\nThird one is they were Christianised when the others were still believe old Slav paganism. Thanks for every answer", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8eopyz/why_belarus_called_as_white_russia/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dxxf1pv", "dxxgp72", "dy21gsd", "dy41x0d"], "score": [46, 3, 4, 2], "text": ["Belarus comes from Belorussia, which is literally just \"White Russia\" in Russian. Historically several different regions in the area were defined as \"Russia\" or \"Rus\" with a modifier in front: Black Russia (modern Western Belarus), Red Rus (Southeastern Poland/Northern Ukraine), Great Russia (the historic lands of Russia centred around Moscow), and Little Russia (mainly Ukraine). Now why White Russia was called White, there is no definitive answer. Various theories exist, which you've noted, but the only thing we can say for certain is these terms date back centuries (White Russia, or a version of it, is first recorded in 1381).", "Hi, it seems that there's no definitive answer. You may be interested in these responses in previous threads:\n\n* [Would the average citizen in the USSR call themself a Soviet or a Russian?](_URL_1_) by /u/kieslowskifan \n\n* [Is there any connection between the term \"White Russian\" for anti communists and the translation of Belarus \"White Russia?\"](_URL_2_) by a now-deleted account\n\n* [\"Ukraine\" versus \"the Ukraine\": A mere difference of terminology, or a politically charged statement?](_URL_0_) by /u/watermark0n\n\nThese posts are all archived now, so if you have follow-up questions for any of the users, ask here and tag their username to notify them.", "1. Slavs used colours as attribute of cardinal directions. So you had for example tribes like White Croats or White Serbs,  areas like Red Rus, White Rus, Black Rus. So White Rus = Northern Rus.\n\n2. Rus =/= Russia. Rus was country of East Slaves, that was created in IX century by Vikings that traveled by rivers to the Black Sea and the Byzantine Empire, in X century it was christianized, next there was fragmentation of country to the many small principalities, and ceased to exist after mongolian invasion in XIII century. Most of Rus principalities were occupied by Mongols and had to pay tribute to them to the XIV century, until they were strong enough to reject the dependence to them. There was several centers of unification of country, one of them was Great Principality of Muscowy, that latter created Russia from areas that was conquered by them. The other was Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that conquered areas of modern Ukraine and Belarus, later merged with Kingdom of Poland in Commonwealth of Both Nations. So Rus is ancestor country to Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, this 3 countries have many common with each other, but because they weren't part of one country by several houndreds years the differences between them are so big, that they have separate cultures, languages, ethnicity.\n\n3. English language doesn't takes it into account. Maybe because in XVIII and XIX century Russia tried to justify the conquest of the areas of Belarus and Ukraine as reconstruction of Rus, and their propagand tried to claim that the Ukrainian and Belarussian are local dialects of Russian, and people from this area are Russians.", "* Nobody knows why it is exactly \"white\", even here in Belarus there are plenty of mostly romantic versions.\n\n* The most accepted theory now is the concept of a Belarusian historian Ales Bely, saying that \"Ruthenia Alba\" (White Rus) is a cabinet term used by Western medieval scholars and maybe originated in Arabian sources\n\n* The fact is that the name \"Ruthenia Alba\" was used mainly for a Novgorodian lands for centuries, and was moved to modern Belarusian lands just about 500 years ago. So it is a migrating name and therefore this \"White\" part cannot have any real meaning.\n\n* Belarusian nationalists in 19th century selected the name Belarus for their nationalism just because it was slightly more popular than other variants like Kryvia. Their initial idea was to use a name \"Litwa\" (Lithuania), but it was already taken by Lithuanian nationalists."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f4rct/ukraine_versus_the_ukraine_a_mere_difference_of/ca75ddg/?context=10000", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gcq3j/would_the_average_citizen_in_the_ussr_call/disrn5r/?context=10000", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3a6wqu/is_there_any_connection_between_the_term_white/csafo0e/?context=10000"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "8hyogk", "title": "When was the \"why did the chicken cross the road?\" joke first popularized, and by who?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8hyogk/when_was_the_why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dyo3sms"], "score": [14], "text": ["I wrote an answer [in reply to a similar question here](_URL_0_) - hope that helps!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6bqp6c/why_did_the_chicken_cross_the_road_how_did_the/dhpmwgw/"]]}
{"q_id": "2poly2", "title": "Were the British fooled by the Boston Tea Party participants' Mohawk costumes? Or did the authorities assume they were colonists right away?", "selftext": "Of course, we know it was colonists. But were the British authorities at the time fooled? Or was it pretty transparent?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2poly2/were_the_british_fooled_by_the_boston_tea_party/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cmyorh0"], "score": [126], "text": ["Think critically;  a bunch of white guys with turkey feathers and some buckskin shirts and hatchets hopped up onto a merchant vessel after marching through the streets with torches, and then didn't kill a single soul as they deliberately and carefully only dumped tea into the harbor, taking care not to destroy the ships or other cargo. \n\nThis page offers up a number of contemporary accounts, and none of them seem to peg \"Indians\" as the primary culprits.  It was pretty widely known at the time that this was a civic protest against the recent taxations levied. Contextualize it today, and imagine a bunch of guys disguised as Mexican luchadores marching into the LAX harbor and dropping brand new Lexus convertibles over the side, taking care not to disturb the medicine or Apple laptops in adjacent shipping containers. Would you be fooled?\n\n_URL_0_"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.boston-tea-party.org/account-boston-gazette.html"]]}
{"q_id": "21brli", "title": "The Romans knew that lead is harmful, yet we used it in paint, pipes and other places until very recently. Are there other materials the ancients knew were harmful that we still use today?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21brli/the_romans_knew_that_lead_is_harmful_yet_we_used/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgbso9y"], "score": [14], "text": ["The definition of \"harmful\" is incredibly broad here.  I think the old idion \"The poison is in the dose\" leaps to mind.  After all, ancient civilisations knew that water could drown you, fire could burn you, and steel could poke a hole in you.  We still use all of those things.\n\nSo, that gets us to the issue of how harmful the Romans considered lead, if we are going to use that as a harmfulness benchmark.  After a quick look, it seems that Vitruvius was one of the first to really talk about the dangers of lead pipes in the 1st century BC.  (There is a quote here _URL_0_ )\n\nHe talks about observed illness in lead workers, but as far as I can tell, his writing doesn't actually cite illness in the general population due to lead.  Obviously, population statistics and modern epidemiology weren't really available to him, so he really had more of a well informed hunch about how dangerous the lead pipes were, rather than a full understanding.  The real observed danger was in making the pipes.  Inhalation of lead fumes has a very obvious and immediate effect on a plumber, so it would have been quite reasonable to conclude that the only major danger of lead was in working with the molten form making pipes.  Virtruvius obviously figured out that wasn't true, but he's notions obviously weren't universal.  Besides, when you get right down to it, clean drinking water that somebody says might be unwholesome in the long term in some vague, abstract sense, is always going to seem better than a slowish death of thirst.  So, the safety focus for centuries would have been on \"don't stick your face in the boiling lead, or you'll go a bit stupid.\"\n\nSo, by that benchmark, what are the things that we use today that at some point in history, somebody had a hunch might be harmful?  Pretty much everything."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html"]]}
{"q_id": "4l5i7l", "title": "What were attitudes in the US towards WWII and Hilter in the USA when Captain America made his comic debut?", "selftext": "Today, it seems obvious for a superhero to be punching Hitler on the cover but what were attitudes of the US when Captain America debuted (in a comic with a  March 1941 cover date)? Was that cover seen a confrontational to Nazi sympathizers and isolationists who didn't want the US to get involved in WWII? Was that a big statement when it was published? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l5i7l/what_were_attitudes_in_the_us_towards_wwii_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d3kvhjk"], "score": [30], "text": ["Captain America Comics #1 was cover dated March 1941.  \n\nWhile the United States was not at war with the Axis at this time, the war was in full swing and Winston Churchill had recently given his famous \"Give us the tools\" speech, pleading for additional support from the US. (1)  \n\nOne national survey the year before (1940) had found that 67% of respondents believed that a German-Italian victory would endanger the United States, and that 71% supported \"the immediate adoption of compulsory military training for all young men\". (2)  \n\nIndividual Americans were volunteering (illegally) to fight against the Axis powers in other nations armed forces.  One example is the three \"Eagle Squadrons\", fighter squadrons of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) made up of volunteer pilots from the United States which were formed between September 1940 and July 1941 and which flew in the Battle of Britain. (3)\n\nSources:\n\n1. _URL_0_\n\n2. \"What the U.S.A. Thinks\". Life. 1940-07-29. p. 20.\n\n3. \"Eagles Switch to U. S. Army\". Life. 1942-11-02. p. 37."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/97-give-us-the-tools"]]}
{"q_id": "5gdg8c", "title": "There's a rich heritage of Arabic architecture in Spain and Portugal today. But after Reconquista, were there any efforts to get rid of Arabic art and architecture because it was made by \"heathens\" and to wipe the slate clean with a new Christian kingdom ?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gdg8c/theres_a_rich_heritage_of_arabic_architecture_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["das9rp1", "das9xxc"], "score": [2, 23], "text": ["On this note, a lot of traditional Spanish music seems to be in harmonic minor keys, a mode more readily associated with Islamic music. Any connection?", "Mosques were converted into churches and some minor buildings would be lost but there was no major effort to get rid of Andalusi art. On the contrary. During the Reconquista the Muslim South was artistically and culturally superior to the Christian North and that was something the Christian rulers recognised, adopting some Andalusi styles in things like clothing, boardgames, etc and having important scholarly works translated from Arabic into Romance vernacular. As more and more of Spain was (re)conquered, many Muslim remained under Christian rule. They were skilled builders and craftsmen and there's an important body of, uhm, Moorish-looking work that was built by these Spanish Muslims for Christian rulers and prelates. My favourite example is the funerary chapel for the Archbishop of Zaragoza, Lope Fern\u00e1ndez de Luna, at the cathedral of that city, said cathedral itself being a former mosque, by the way. [That's] (_URL_3_) what it looks like from the outside (and [here's] (_URL_1_) a closer look). Now, this was built - rebuilt, actually, as the Archbishop was not satisfied with the first wall that he thought was too plain - in 1378. That is, a full 260 years after the Christian conquest of Zaragoza (1118) and 130 years after the conquest of Seville (1248), the city that the two masters that did the wall came from. The [ceiling](_URL_2_) over the Archbishop's tomb inside contains a lot of Arabic calligraphy - some of it just vaguely Arabic-looking squiggles added for effect and some featuring actual verses from the Quran.\n\nChristian builders and artists in Spain were heavily influenced by Moorish art until, at least, well into the 16th century. Some Moorish designs like geometric patterns - most notably, the eight-pointed star - are very prominent in Christian Gothic art in Spain all the way to the so-called Isabelline Gothic, the latest form of that artistic style. This was the style in the Crown of Castile in the late 15th and early 16th century, with many of its major works being built by Flemish and Northern German masters (hence it is often called Hispano-Flemish Gothic). So you have accomplished masters who were not even Spaniards moving to work to Castile and adding Andalusi-influenced designs to their repertoire. In Burgos, the Castilian capital, you can see the Moorish eight-pointed star, for example, in the [Constables' chapel] (_URL_4_), designed in the early 1500s, in [the lantern tower] (_URL_5_), designed by Jean de Langres, a Frenchman, in 1539, both in the cathedral, and in the [double sepulchre] (_URL_0_) of King Juan II and Queen Isabella, built by Gil de Silo\u00e9, who was a Fleming or a German, in the late 1400s, in the Miraflores charterhouse just outside of the city. Even when Emperor Charles had a Mannerist palace built for himself inside the Moorish palace grounds of Alhambra in Granada, the architects merely demolished a minor pavilion, conserving the rest of the palace. The artistic merits of Alhambra were definitely very much valued and appreciated no matter how 'heathen' it may have been.\n\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://s3.amazonaws.com/classconnection/223/flashcards/9600223/png/sepulchre_of_juan_and_isabel-1532E3946B225B2A479.png", "http://gozarte.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/parroquieta-ventana.jpg", "http://www.fotoprisma.es/images/pf/parroquieta/05a.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Fachada_de_la_Parroquieta.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Cupula_de_la_capilla_de_los_Condestables.Catedral_de_Burgos_%284952356182%29.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Burgos_Cathedral_Intersection.jpg"]]}
{"q_id": "1t1j8z", "title": "What is the significance of the wise men bringing Gold, Frankincense  &  Myrrh?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1t1j8z/what_is_the_significance_of_the_wise_men_bringing/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce3k0rp", "ce3lgbe", "ce3lk2a", "ce3nmvt", "ce3rur6"], "score": [45, 7, 56, 47, 12], "text": ["Allegorically, these refer to different aspects of Christ:\n\nFrankincense - Used to perfume the Temple, it refers to Christ being the ultimate Prophet and Priest.\n\nGold - Symbolizes Christ the King of the Universe.\n\nMyrrh - Used in funeral proceedings.  Foreshadows His death.\n\nIn a more practical sense, these were all high-value, easily-liquidated items which would allow a carpenter and his new family to travel to Egypt and live there for a good while.", "Isn't that a myth?\n\nSerious question. ", "Frankincense, Gold, Myrrh \n\nAUGUSTINE.  **Gold,** as paid to a mighty King; **Frankincense**, as offered to God; **Myrrh**, as to one who is to die for the sins of all.\n\n-St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, A.D. 396.\n", "I recently gave a paper at ASOR about the frankincense trade in the Roman Empire. These gifts are meant to be HIGH status items, shown to contrast the low stature of Jesus's birth in the manger. Gold is obvious, but Frankincense and Myrrh were imported to the Mediterranean world overland from south Arabia (the area of modern Yemen) at considerable cost and risk. EDIT: And these aromatics were important cultic and luxury items (rituals (especially funerary ones) demanded incense burning, and the ancient world was a smelly place, so in the absence of soap elites would often burn aromatics to cover bad smells (similar to modern air fresheners but more pungent and effective). For more information on Frankincense and Myrrh check out: _URL_0_", "Since you asked for the significance, I'd like to refer you to the church fathers. My first place to go is usually the Catena Aurea (Golden Chain), a composition of quotes on the gospels, composed by Thomas Aquinas.\n\nYou can find the quotes on the 2nd chapter of Matthew [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThe text of the gospel regarding the gifts is verse 11b:\n >  they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. \n\nLet's go through the quotes:\n\n > Gloss, Anselm: in these offerings we observe their national customs, gold, frankincense, and various spices abounding among the Arabians; yet they intended thereby to signify something in mystery.\n\n > Greg., Hom. in Evan., 1, 106: Gold, as to a King; frankincense, as sacrifice to God; myrrh, as embalming the body of the dead.\n\n > Aug.: Gold, as paid to a mighty King; frankincense, as offered to God; myrrh, as to one who is to die for the sins of all.\n\n > Pseudo-Chrys.: And though it were not then understood what these several gifts mystically signified, that is no difficulty; the same grace that instigated them to the deed, ordained the whole.\n\n > Remig.: And it is to be known that each did not offer a different gift, but each one the three kings, each one thus proclaiming the King, the God, and the man.\n\nThis is a good example of medieval hermeneutics of the bible. First the literal sense is applied, then an allegorical sense, giving each literal element an specified meaning. \n\n > Chrys.: Let Marcion and Paul of Samosata then blush, who will not see what the Magi saw, those progenitors of the Church adoring God in the flesh. That He was truly in the flesh, the swaddling clothes and the stall prove; yet that they worshipped Him not as mere man, but as God, the gifts prove which it was becoming to offer to a God. Let the Jews also be ashamed, seeing the Magi coming before them, and themselves not even earnest to tread in their path.\n\nIn this quote, two heresies are rejected. Marcionists believed that the Jewish god was a different entity to the tri-une Christian god. The Jewish god created the universe, but was eventually replaced with the coming of Christ. According to these beliefs, matter and thus the physical presence of Jesus wasn't of importance. Paul of Samosata stands for Monarchianism, a concept where trinity is in fact a unity, meaning that there is no difference between the Christ and the Father. A polemic against Judaism follows.\n\n > Greg.: Something further may yet be meant here. Wisdom is typified by gold; as Solomon saith in the Proverbs, \u201cA treasure to be desired is in the mouth of the wise.\u201d\n\n > By frankincense, which is burnt before God, the power of prayer is intended, as in the Psalms, \u201cLet my speech come before thee as incense.\u201d [Ps 141:2] In myrrh is figured mortification of the flesh. To a king at his birth we offer gold, if we shine in his sight with the light of wisdom; we offer frankincense, if we have power before God by the sweet savour of our prayers; we offer myrrh, when we mortify by abstinence the lusts of the flesh.\n\nHere we have another allegorical interpretation of the gifts.\n\n > Gloss, Anselm: The three men who offer, signify the nations who come from the three quarters of the earth. They open their treasures, i.e. manifest the faith of their hearts by confession. Rightly \u201cin the house,\u201d teaching that we should not vaingloriously display the treasure of a good conscience. They bring \u201cthree\u201d gifts, i.e. the faith in the Holy Trinity. Or opening the stores of Scripture, they offer its threefold sense, historical, moral and allegorical; or Logic, Physic, and Ethics, making them all serve the faith. \n\nThis medieval quote (Anselm of Laon, 12th century) expands the allegorical sense of those gifts. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], [], [], ["http://www.worldcat.org/title/frankincense-and-myrrh-a-study-of-the-arabian-incense-trade/oclc/7677022&amp;referer=brief_results"], ["http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/catena1.ii.ii.html"]]}
{"q_id": "43b7ey", "title": "Why are ancient musical modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, etc.) named after certain Hellenic ethnicities?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43b7ey/why_are_ancient_musical_modes_dorian_phrygian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["czh6n37"], "score": [79], "text": ["First of all, it's very important to understand that in music theory the word \"mode\" has existed since antiquity and has been applied to a vast number of *different* concepts. Unfortunately, people aren't always clear about what they mean by \"mode\" and the names (\"Dorian,\" etc.) associated with it. The words have become something of a floating signifier: everybody knows that the terms exist, but nobody is convinced that they refer to one particular real musical phenomenon. (For instance, although people speak of \"the ancient Greek modes,\" they equally often speak of Dorian etc as the \"church modes\" and associate them with the medieval and Renaissance musical practices of the Roman Catholic Church. For informed skepticism about the value of those terms in that context, I'd encourage you to read Harold Power's essay \"Is mode real?\" in the Basler Jahrbuch f\u00fcr historische Musikpraxis, 1992; and Cristle Collins Judd's \"Modal Types and \"Ut, Re, Mi\" Tonalities\" in *JAMS* 45/3 (1992): 428-467.) \n\nAs for how the names themselves worked their way into Western cultural consciousness, we do have a pretty good picture of the process by which it happened. They first show up with their contemporary meanings in an anonymous 10th-century treatise referred to as *Alia musica.* This document attempts to retransmit musical knowledge contained in Boethius's 6th-century *De musica,* but it garbled certain key aspects of Boethius's description. Boethius does discuss the 7 species of the diatonic scale (which is what jazz musicians mean when they refer to \"modes\" of a scale), and Boethius does use the ancient Greek ethnic names (along with one extra one, \"hypermixoldyian,\" that nobody refers to any more). But in antiquity, the two weren't connected exactly as they are now: the ethnic names referred to certain aspects of musical style and performance, particularly how high or low your reference pitch was. (That is, imagine that \"Dorian\" means tuning to A440 whereas \"Phrygian\" means tuning to A315.) Even by Boethius's time, those ethnic names were probably purely arbitrary and without a great deal of significance. (Music terminology is, historically, full of concepts needing names that get supplied by more or less randomly borrowed sets of labels. Consider, for instance, the \"Neapolitan,\" \"German,\" \"French,\" and \"Italian\" chromatic chords studied by college sophomores.) But *Alia musica* misread Boethius, applying the ethnic names to the octave species (in the wrong order!), producing the system of modal names that is more or less still familiar today.\n\nFor a long time, these ethnic terms still didn't have great popularity: most medieval and Renaissance treatises prefer instead to refer to \"mode 1,\" \"mode 7,\" and so on, only occasionally mentioning \"By the way, mode 1 is also referred to by the ancient name of Dorian\" as a show of erudition. Two 16th-century treatises helped popularize this conception of modes (Glarean's *Dodecachordon* and Zarlino's *Istitutione harmoniche*), but even these still use numerical designations alongside the ethnic names. It's not really until modes themselves have fallen out of practice in favor of major  &  minor keys that, in retrospect, people start using the more colorful ethnic names as the usual designator of mode. (Thus, for example, Beethoven's Op. 132 refers to \"der lydischen Tonart\" -- the lydian mode -- though it's clear from Beethoven's composition that his conception of what that means is worlds removed from Palestrina.)\n\nWhere do the ethnic names originally come from? We probably will never know. They are attested in what is basically the oldest extant work of music theory, Aristoxenus's *Harmonic Elements,* which is probably from the mid 300s BC. Although Aristoxenus documents the use of the terms, he didn't invent them: \"The association of ethnic names with the octave species probably does not come from Aristoxenus himself, who criticizes their application to the *tonoi* by the Harmonicists.\" The Harmonicists, were, unfortunately, a school of musical thinkers who failed to leave behind written records  &  are remembered almost solely because Aristoxenus criticizes them.\n\nThat last quote is from Thomas Mathiesen, \"Greek Music Theory,\" in the *Cambridge History of Western Music Theory,* edited by Thomas Christensen (CUP, 2002), 125. Mathiesen's chapter on sources from antiquity, and David E. Cohen's chapter (\"Notes, scales, and modes in the earlier Middle Ages\") from *CHoWMuT*, are the main sources I'd point you to for the content of this post."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8ypjb3", "title": "Early Christian history is full of infighting over seemingly minor theological differences (such as whether Christ had two natures in one or one nature in two). Would ordinary laypeople actually have known or cared about these issues enough to cause the division it did?", "selftext": "Certainly your average modern Christian would not be able to distinguish a Chalcedonian from a Nestorian or Miaphysite, but would an average 4th-century Christian have?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8ypjb3/early_christian_history_is_full_of_infighting/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e2djhpu"], "score": [25], "text": ["As a general rule the average lay person in early Christianity knew less about theology than the bishops did.   However,  in regards to the various Christological and Trinitarian controversies of the 4th and 5th century, the average Christian probably had at least some basic understanding of what was going on,  and certainly cared, because these issues often had a personal impact on his/her religious life.  There is not a source from the ancient world that gives us any kind of poll of religious feelings of average Christians, but a few points of evidence support my conclusion. \n\nFirst,  the Arian controversy (318-381) frequently led to the removal of bishops.  These bishops were replaced with someone who supported a different theological idea.   Early Christians seemed to have a close relationship with their bishops.  They appointed them by acclimation.  They cared for them as the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch seem to demonstrate.   For a bishop to be removed this meant that the people's spiritual leader had been taken from them.  Riots broke out in 339 and 356 in Alexandria when Athanasius was desposed on the two occasions.\n\nThe removal of a bishop was would also bring with it a change in preaching that an average Christian would have been aware of.  In Ancyra, Marcellus was replaced by Basil, changing the theology of the city's leader from the idea that God was one person who morphed into another over time (modalism) to three separate, but unequal persons (homoiouisianism).  Certainly the bishops presented their theology to the people and did their best to do so in a way that they would understand.   For instance, Hilary of Poiters' Tractates on the Psalms, which are presumed to have begun as sermons, frequently refers to Christ as existing in the form of God and as the form of a slave. This is Hilary's technical language, based on Phil 2:6-7, to demonstrate the full divinity of Christ. It's clear to me that Hilary is instructing his congregation on proper Trinitarian theology. This certainly doesn't prove that his listeners understood all of the technical details, but it does show that this debate over the nature of God was actively being presented to the laity; it was not something they would have been ignorant of.\n\nThere does seem to be some indication that not only did this preaching increase awareness of the issues,  but that many people did come to care about the issues directly.   As u/Foojer points out, Gregory of Nyssa spoke to the interests of the people in the debates of the time:\n\n > \u201cEverywhere, in the public squares, at crossroads, on the streets and lanes, people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.\u201d (Oration on the Deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit)\n\n(I hope I have not broken a rule here by incorporating his/her very good point here as part of my answer, if so my apologies and I'll edit this.)\n\nSuch concerns over theological issues continued into the 5th century.  The Nestorian controversy was started over whether Theotokos or Christotokos was the appropriate title for Mary. The Christians in Constantinople had taken an affinity to calling Mary the Theotokos to which Nestorius objected. The ensuing controversy would have an impact on liturgy and prayers and as such would have an impact on the average lay person.\n\nTo be sure,  the interest of the laity would not have extended to the highest levels of technical expertise.  Getting to the specific example of OP, Chalcedonian Christianity versus miaphysitism, this is one of the most philosophically difficult issues of the early Church to illustrate.   Regarding the Arian controversy,  I am sure that the average Christian got the just of the debate, was Christ fully God or was he a subordinate deity?  I have my doubts,  even if the average Christian's cared, that they could articulate the issues at play when it comes to miaphysitism.  Even experts today on early Christianity will shy away from articulating the technical issues at play because the distinctions being made by each side were rather small."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "100o95", "title": "Towards the end of Rome, were Germanic barbarians still dressed in furs, or were they in fully roman clothing?", "selftext": "I was thinking about this as I watched a Capital One credit card ad, with barbarians giving advice to normal citizens dressed in classic barbarian garb.\n\nIn a lot of movies about Rome, even ones dealing with the end of the Roman Empire, the barbarians are still seen wearing furs and leather like they just came straight out of the forests.  \n\nI'm assuming this is inaccurate, but I don't have any particular proof.  I mean I know that early medieval kings wore royal garbs that were based off of Roman military tunics, but what about the rest of the  German warrior population?\n\nBasically, how Roman or how \"Germanic\" did the Germans look in the era close to the end of the western empire?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/100o95/towards_the_end_of_rome_were_germanic_barbarians/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c69dqui", "c69f1rq", "c69gtn0"], "score": [80, 16, 2], "text": ["The term barbarian is fairly misleading when you talk about the sacking of Rome. \n\nAn average person would be hard pressed to tell a Vandal, Visigoth, or what have you, apart from a Roman, simply due to the fact that they were so intertwined during this time period. Roman generals were often half-Vandal, or married to \"barbarian\" princesses, and so on. Roman soldiers often joined these invading armies via defection depending on how the wind blew, so they might appear completely Roman, because they were Roman. \n\nThe image of fur clad barbarians with horns on their helm is probably fiction, and makes for funny commercials. Invading barbarians probably looked more [like this](_URL_0_)", "Roman historians like Tacitus had recorded that in their time, the Northern European tribes, not exclusively the Germanic lot, were in-fact quite proficient smiths with some rather interesting techniques that allowed longer swords that didn't shatter as easily in addition to more malleable alloys for helmets and breastplates and such. They were by no means as heavily-clad as the Roman legions, but it would be unjust to broadly define all of the invading armies as being fur and cloth hairy beasts screaming \"bar bar bar!\".", "The current issue of National  Geographic has a fairly detailed piece about Rome's deep influence on the hoards beyond its \"Empire Limits\".  "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/Alaric_entering_Athens.jpg"], [], []]}
{"q_id": "2cpivr", "title": "Did Ancient Greek Architecture implement factors of safety? Were there \"building codes\" to abide by?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cpivr/did_ancient_greek_architecture_implement_factors/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cji1seg"], "score": [10], "text": ["Follow up question: did the romans do this as well?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "6es9qa", "title": "Is it true that Roman slaves had more days off per year than the average US modern day worker?", "selftext": "A friend who is a historian said this is true through most of the Roman empire's history the other day. And it disturbed me.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6es9qa/is_it_true_that_roman_slaves_had_more_days_off/", "answers": {"a_id": ["did1vee"], "score": [14], "text": ["On a related note I once heard Dan Carlin talk about medieval peasants and he claimed that due to religious holidays they only worked 3-4 days out of the week. Is this true and can anyone give more information on this? Also what did peasant farmers do for work in the winter? "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1lmzov", "title": "Is there a history of soldiers writing messages or images on their armor or weapons, similar to how modern soldiers have done on helmets, bombs, etc.?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lmzov/is_there_a_history_of_soldiers_writing_messages/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cc0vo6n", "cc0zlxr", "cc12g6g", "cc19gan"], "score": [41, 31, 11, 2], "text": ["Lead sling bullets have been found with inscriptions. [Here are some from the British Museum.](_URL_0_)", "Louis the XIV, King of France, had \"Ultima Ratio Regum\" carved on to his cannons. It translates from latin as \"The Final Argument of Kings.\"", "For the Vikings the answer is yes.  Runic inscriptions could be used to mark an item as ones property such as [bone combs](_URL_0_) and [brooches](_URL_2_) that have inscriptions or possibly carved runes to enchant them or give them power such as in Sigrdr\u00edfum\u00e1l from the Poetic Edda where the mythic Brynhildr says:\n > Victory runes you must know\n > if you will have victory,\n > and carve the on the sword's hilt,\n > some on the grasp\n > and some on the inlay,\n > and name Tyr Twice.\n\nWhile the Poetic Edda is not the greatest source for an actual practice of carving runes into swords there are actually swords that have been found to have runes inscribed or inlaid.  One example is the [S\u00e6b\u00f8 sword](_URL_1_) which has what looks like inlaid runes and a swastika on the bottom of the blade.  Archaeologist George Stephens interpreted the sword to be Nordic runes but in a paper by Fedrir Androschuck he says that it has been misinterpreted as runic script naming \"one Norwegian sword datedto the 13\nth century has a runic inscription, inscribed on a ring around the handle\" (pg 2, Swords and Social Aspects of Weaponry in Viking Age societies.)\n\nWhile Androschuck stated that there was only one example of a sword with runic inscription, I believe the reason that there haven't been more found is that many of the Viking age swords that were found, many of them were from burials and many fine details if not inlaid could have corroded away.  The are still digging up Viking burials here and there and possibly in the future we will have more answers but I hope this still helps.", "An interesting example from literature is Shakespeare's 'Titus Andronicus' (4.2). Titus wraps verses from Horace around his arrows, as well as engraving them into his armour:\n\n- Demetrius, reading:\n\u201cInteger vitae, scelerisque purus,\nNon eget Mauri jaculis, nec arcu.\u201d\n\n- Chiron:\nO, \u2019tis a verse in Horace, I know it well,\nI read it in the grammar long ago.\n\nAlthough a fictional character, it demonstrates the idea that weapons could carry messages (as part of their violence) was recognisable to an audience in Elizabethan England."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?searchText=sling+bullet+inscription"], [], ["http://www.uib.no/imagearchive/produktbilde_Kamm_004.JPG", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Saebo_sword_Bergen_Museum.jpg", "http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/graphics/pagecontent/MelbrigdaOwnsThisBrooch.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "3wn71y", "title": "Rules Roundtable #1- Explaining the Rules about Sources", "selftext": "Hello everyone, and welcome to the first of an ongoing series of Rules Roundtables. Our tentative schedule is to have new posts ever 2 weeks, written by volunteers from the mod team. This project is an effort to demystify what the rules of the subreddit are, to explain the reasoning behind why each rule came into being, provide examples and explanation why a rule will be applicable in one case and not in another. Finally, this project is here to get your feedback, so that we can hear from the community what rules are working, what ones aren't, and what ones are unclear.\n\nTo start off our program, today's topic will be a discussion of our rules for comment sources. First off, let's consult [the rule](_URL_0_):\n\n > Sources are **highly encouraged** in all answers given in r/AskHistorians. A good answer will be supported by relevant and reliable sources. Primary sources are good. Secondary sources are also acceptable.\n\nI want to draw attention to the fact that we encourage sources for all answers, but strictly speaking sources are not required. Sometimes users, flairs or [even mods](_URL_1_) will dash off brief comments without bothering about sources.  However, a crucial caveat is that sources become required upon request, so people should always be prepared to provide sources, as stated here:\n\n > Even though sources are not mandatory, if someone asks you to provide sources in good faith, please provide them willingly and happily. If you are not prepared to substantiate your claims when asked, please think twice before answering in the first place. Please keep in mind that all posters who fail to substantiate their posts when asked in good faith run the risk of having their posts removed.\n\nMost people will not be able to respond to a source request instantly. They may be away from reddit, they may be sleeping. They might need to go to their bookshelf or the library and pull the book to find the exact page. In instances where sources have been requested but have not been provided yet, mods will exercise our discretion with the post. If the post is comprehensive, and the presiding mod knows it to be substantially correct in many points, the post might be left up. Similarly, if a source request is not challenging the main assertions of an answer, but asking for more information/reading recommendations about a minor point of the answer, such an answer will likely be left up.\n\nConversely, if an answer is making very bold and sweeping assertions and sources are requested, that answer may be removed by a mod. At a mod's discretion, they may choose to make a modcomment noting that said post has been removed, and offering to restore the post when sources have been provided. It is not possible to provide everyone with such notification, given the number of comments that the modteam reviews every day.\n\n**What about Anecdotes?**\n\n > It is also important to point out that you are not a source. \n\nThis part of the rule is pretty simple, and plainly stated. In addition to the points raised in that linked META post, which is well worth a read, I also want to mention that \u201csources\u201d like:\n\n > Source: I took a course with Professor Thompkins, and this was in lecture number 5\n\nor\n\n > 20 years of reading about Caesar\n\nis not acceptable. \n\nIn pretty much any academic or quasi-academic discussion of history, sources are used to establish a commonly agreed upon basis for argumentation. Sources allow you to speak from knowledge, so that an argument can have weight to it. At the same time, a person who is familiar with your sources and their arguments can also speak from knowledge. Take for example [this exchange](_URL_2_). Notice that since /u/shlin28 points out his source as Conant, but also that Conant in turn refers to [Richard Bulliets famous study about medieval conversions](_URL_3_). Because that was disclosed, /u/Yodatsracist can contribute a perspective about what questions Bulliet leaves unanswered.\n\nWhen you reference course notes for a class you took, it is very unlikely that a person reading your comments can look up those notes, and speak about those notes themselves. \n\nIn the same spirit, anecdotes are not acceptable as the basis for answers in this sub. The reasons for this are substantially the same. Because of the anonymous nature of the internet and Reddit specifically, it is possible for a person claim to have lived through a historical event, but it can be quite difficult to verify such claims. Additionally, anecdotes need to be treated with caution because of the nature of memory. [This comment explains it better than I could ever try to](_URL_5_)\n\n**What about Wikipedia?**\n > However, tertiary sources such as Wikipedia are not as good. They are often useful for checking dates and facts, but not as good for interpretation and analysis. Furthermore, Wikipedia articles are open to random vandalism and can contain factual errors; therefore, please double-check anything you cite from Wikipedia. As outlined here, Wikipedia, or any other single tertiary resource, used by itself not a suitable basis for a comment in this subreddit. \n\n Lectures and course notes are considered to be tertiary sources in the same vein as an encyclopedia or Wikipedia article, which are not considered acceptable sources in this subreddit. Incidentally, the mods do notice when an answer provides the exact same list of sources and page citations that the relevant wikipedia page contains, and treat such answers with suspicion. \n\nIn other cases, users will simply copy-paste text from a wikipedia article (or other source) and not mention where the words come from. **That is plagiarism, and will result in an immediate ban from this sub.** So don't do that.\n\nThere can be much more said about Wikipedia, but that will have to wait for a separate one of these posts specifically dedicated to discussing wikipedia as a source.\n\n**Why don't you just require sources for all comments? That seems simpler/better?**\n\nThis is an idea that the modteam has discussed more than once, and there are a few different reasons why we feel the current policy is better than simply requiring sources for all comments. Firstly, requiring sources does risk scaring off users who know something and are possible flair material. It shouldn't be a surprise that saying \u201cyou must provide a source for everything you say\u201d would become a barrier to entry, and turn people off from saying something at all. \n\nSecondly, not all sources are created equal. Users have and will write up whatever they want to write, and then go and use google or mine through wikipedia footnotes to add \u201csources\u201d to make their comment look respectable. Requiring sources on all comments won't slow that type of user down.\n\n**It says in the rules that only top-level replies really need sources, but follow-up answers will be more loosely moderated**\n\nNope. The rules used to say that there was a distinction between top-level responses and follow-ups. That rule was changed two and a half years ago^1, because we felt that the two-tier system allowed too much room for speculation and bad answers in the longer comment chains. All comments are now held to the same standard or moderation for quality and sourcing.\n\n**Why does the rule bother talking about 'good faith' when it says \u201c if someone asks you to provide sources in good faith\u201d**\n\nThat specific wording was chosen to tie-in to the [rule about civility](_URL_4_). There are kind ways of asking about sources, and there are unkind ways of asking for sources, and the kind way is always preferred. \n\nFrom a style point of view, a source request that looks like \n\n > Your conclusion about the influence of Jose Marti's writing in the 20th century emigre community runs counter to what I know of the topic. Can you point me to where you drew your conclusion from?\n\nIs a much more polite way to ask for a source than \n\n > got a source?\n\nAlso, the mods are well aware that people can have strong feelings about interpretations of history. We ask that source requests be made in \u201cgood faith\u201d because we really do not want a source request to become a bludgeon to win a history argument.\n\n**If I see an unsourced comment, should I report it or should I ask for sources?**\n\nIf you can politely ask for sources, please do. You may also report the comment, if you think that it is simply a bad answer.\n\nOf course, if you happen to be *Mrs Tenured Professor in Neo-Assyrian Archaeology*, and you know exactly what is wrong with that post about Nebuchadnezzar, we prefer for knowledgeable people to rebut bad answers with good ones, rather than simply deleting the post. We will sometimes leave up bad answers that get a very good response, so that it is clear exactly what points the response is referring to.\n\n----\nIf anyone has any further questions about [the sources rule](_URL_0_), please ask and one of the mods would be happy to answer your question.\n\n----\n1) This rule was changed in July of 2013. For some context, 17 out of the 30 current moderators of AskHistorians were not yet mods back then. In July of 2013, I was a freshly-minted flair in the 5th panel of historians. Two and a half years is *ages ago* in subreddit terms.\n\nEdit- changed footnote format so that it displays in mobile, hopefully.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wn71y/rules_roundtable_1_explaining_the_rules_about/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1ymqr9", "cxxs2do", "cxyjqae"], "score": [3, 24, 10], "text": ["From reading the bit about how lecture notes are (understandably) not considered valid sources, I wondered how videos from a university's open courses fit in. Would they be considered valid sources? At the very least, I could see the value in saying something along the lines of: \"for a good introduction to the topic, I recommend [video link] by Dr. Jane Doe of XYZ University, speaking in Lecture # for Course Title.\"", "I'd add that simply saying you're a grad student or author in a particular field is not acceptable sourcing, either. We have no way to verify that information \u2014 we don't know you are who you say you are, and there's no way to know what sources you're drawing on or if there might be any problems with those sources.", "I just stumbled in here by recommendation from [this post](_URL_0_), and I have to say that just reading your rules for sources has restored a very real little bit of my faith in the sanity and good faith of humanity.  I mean it, your honesty, transparency and sheer wisdom here are exemplary.  I  seldom see such a coherent statement of intent, purpose and honest method as you present here, you have created a rare degree of philosophical integrity.  Thank you."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uy4r7/why_was_medieval_europe_and_asia_so_advanced/cxiw9kc?context=3", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ur9fk/why_did_christians_disappear_from_the_magreb/cxhqpb5", "http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb00867", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_civility", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sxxhd/meta_why_is_a_personal_account_given_by_a/ce2cyv0"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/3wqud6/good_mainly_text_subreddits/cxyirt2"]]}
{"q_id": "7fy1hh", "title": "Why were women's, ah, undies noticeably more pointy in the 1940s-60s? Fashion? Body shape?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7fy1hh/why_were_womens_ah_undies_noticeably_more_pointy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dqfioax", "dqfnnta"], "score": [2, 136], "text": ["Can I ask a follow up to see when the modern, rounded design became popular and what made that change?", "The answer has a lot to do with the materials and methods of construction used in brassieres in the twentieth century.\n\nDuring the first decade of the century, the overall focus of the corset was moving lower, with the lower edge covering more of the hips and the top edge doing less and less to support, as the fashionable figure changed from [the upright Victorian hourglass](_URL_6_) to [the forward-tilted Edwardian S-bend](_URL_8_) with its full, low bust. While some women simply went with it, others required *something* supportive to replace the higher corset, and the brassiere was invented. At this time, [the brassiere](_URL_4_) was a fitted but unboned garment worn on top of the corset (and therefore also on top of the chemise under the corset) that typically went down to the waist, rather than just being for the upper torso. The support it provided was based on the tension of the fabric, which would mainly work to hold the bust in a \"natural\" position, rather than pushing it up in the way many now think of as the primary purpose of a bra.\n\nOver the course of the 1910s, the bottom half of the garment was abandoned, essentially, bringing it to something we recognize more easily as a brassiere, as in [this version](_URL_0_). (The use of heavy cotton lace or material covered with eyelet embroidery was very common by the end of the decade.) As you can see in the linked example, the idea of \"cups\" was simply not present, and the basic flat/gently rounded shape continued to be used into the 1920s.  Brassieres of the early 1920s tended to be heavier material intended to compress, while the [lightweight bandeaux](_URL_1_) made out of sheer silk and/or delicate lace date to the end of the decade - it's possible that this represents a shift, with bras coming to be conceived of as something all women would wear, and therefore lighter versions that wouldn't actually do much to support the bust started to be made.\n\nEarly in the 1930s, the flattened look left fashion, but the brassiere remained. (So did the corset/girdle, but it was strictly a below-the-bust garment by this time, except when girdle and brassiere were combined into one, as the \"corselet\".) The bra took on the responsibility of bust definition, which required shaping. A *lot* of experimentation went on in the interwar period as to construction techniques to achieve this, but the most common method was for each cup to be made out of an upper and a lower piece shaped in convex curves, with a horizontal seam across them, [like so](_URL_2_). Another common method, though a bit less common, was the use of [one or two darts to shape each cup](_URL_5_). Both of these methods, particularly if stiffened with quilting to support a larger bust, tend to produce a rather pointed shape - and it has to be said again that the desired shape was *still* not very \"pushed up\", with the volume instead pushed (or, perhaps it's more accurate to say allowed to flow) outward. In most cases, the effect was relatively subtle, but then there are the few with more extreme points - typically formed by the use of shaped padding worn on a smaller bust - that get posted all over the internet as normal examples, because the internet loves to take things out of context.\n\nThe more structured type of brassiere began to fall out of favor in the 1960s, as the concept of the \"natural\", unaided figure (unaided except by the proper genes that would give you the shape deemed fashionable) came back in. Rudi Gernreich's \"[no bra](_URL_3_)\" is often given a certain amount of credit here for capturing the anti-artificiality spirit of the time - as you can see, there's essentially nothing supportive about it, so only a slender and small-chested woman would be able to comfortably wear it. The [molded foam cup](_URL_7_) (now typically used in bra construction) came in in the late 1960s or early 1970s, helping women who couldn't just be \"natural\" leave behind the brassieres with cups shaped with seaming or darts."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/109121", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/83316", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84257", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/86537", "https://patents.google.com/patent/US933265A/en?q=brassiere&amp;before=priority:19091231&amp;after=priority:19000101", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84259", "http://kent.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/B447A10A-8732-45B6-ADD6-049454674700", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/108873", "http://kent.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/55DB65D9-D916-40BB-B1C0-419716969510"]]}
{"q_id": "cdwmq7", "title": "Tuesday Trivia: People Using Really Cool Technology! (This thread has relaxed standards\u2014we invite everyone to participate!)", "selftext": "Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!\n\nIf you are:\n\n* a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer\n* new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community\n* Looking for feedback on how well you answer\n* polishing up a flair application\n* one of our amazing flairs\n\nthis thread is for you ALL!\n\nCome share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don\u2019t just write a phrase or a sentence\u2014explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.\n\nAskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. **We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes.** All other rules also apply\u2014no bigotry, current events, and so forth.\n\n**For this round, let\u2019s look at:** Fifty years ago we went to the MOON! Let\u2019s celebrate by telling stories about people inventing and using really cool technology, from the wheel to, well, the moon!\n\n**Next time:** Heroes of the Battlefield\u2014When They\u2019re *Off* the Battlefield", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cdwmq7/tuesday_trivia_people_using_really_cool/", "answers": {"a_id": ["etwtn7o", "etwwcc4", "etwybtl", "etx23nj", "etx2o89", "etx4r9a", "etx65yr", "etx7qy5", "etxcju8"], "score": [36, 13, 23, 26, 11, 12, 25, 17, 25], "text": ["From a chapter I wrote as part of a book proposal that unfortunately never ended up going anywhere:\n\nThe patent for the first commercially produced electric guitar, the Ro-Pat-In \u2018Frying Pan\u201d, was filed in June 1934. But if we step back: the acoustic guitarist in the age before amplification has a major problem: volume. A well-made acoustic guitar, strummed hard, certainly can fill a room. However, in a club full of people, or in a theatre, the acoustic guitar just wouldn\u2019t be loud enough to compete with, say, a big band full of trumpets and saxophones and clarinets. This issue is amplified by the fact that a melodic part on an acoustic guitar is even more likely to get drowned out by noise than strummed chords; the carefully plucked single notes of a melody or a solo are considerably softer than six strings strummed rhythmically. Which is to say that, before consistent amplification, the best a guitarist in a big band could do was to provide a plunky-plunk rhythmic backing.\n\nIn 1926, George Beauchamp, a guitarist making Hawaiian music \u2013 a style very much in vogue in the 1920s, and a style based around acoustic guitars \u2013 visited the Los Angeles shop of a Slovakian-born instrument maker, John Dopyera, despairing of the lack of volume of his acoustic guitar. Together, they designed the resonator guitar, made of solid aluminium, and featuring a design that channelled sound to \u2018resonator cones\u2019, both of which helped to significantly increased the volume of the guitar. With backing from Beauchamp\u2019s rich cousin, and with Beauchamp\u2019s connections putting the guitar in the hands of some of the more prominent Hawaiian guitarists, the National guitar was a hit. However, Beauchamp and Dopyera butted heads and bickered over designs and copyrights, and Dopyera left the company in 1928, starting another resonator guitar company with his brothers called Dobro. Dobro eventually bought out National in 1932, by which time Beauchamp was thinking beyond National and resonator guitars.\n\nThe components that would go into the electric amplifier were essentially all assembled by 1921, when the modern speaker \u2013 the kind that uses electricity to convert electrical signals into vibrations of paper cone to create sound - had been created by a collaboration between General Electric\u2019s Chester Rice and AT & T\u2019s Edward Kellogg. The modern speaker solved a problem that had been created by Lee De Forest\u2019s invention in 1907 of the vacuum tube/valve tube. The vacuum tube used electricity to heat up metal plates inside a vacuum; this had the effect of increasing the voltage of the electrical signal, thus amplifying it. De Forest saw its potential, saying that it was \u201can Aladdin\u2019s lamp of our new world, a lamp by which one might hear instead of read.\u201d With the ability to amplify a signal thanks to De Forest, and the ability to then vibrate a material to turn that electrical signal into a reasonably accurate sonic representation of the signal, the amplifier was born. \nThe first way in which vacuum tubes and paper cone speakers changed the way that people heard the world was in radio. The clarity of the sound that could be heard on AM radio signals via vacuum tubes and paper cones was unprecedented, and in the swinging optimism of the 1920s before the Great Depression, vacuum tube-powered radios were an enormous commercial sensation, with a speed of take-up that rivalled the internet in the 1990s. Less than a decade after the technology arrived, in 1929, 35-40 percent of American homes had radio receivers. The rapid take up of radio meant that there was now a viable radio industry, with radio stations playing a world of different music suddenly available to people in the privacy of their own homes. This was a period of genre cross-pollination; on record, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong played on recordings by Jimmie Rodgers, the biggest star of a newly popular genre that would become known as \u2018country music\u2019. And why not?\n\nMusic was no longer regionally or ethnically limited. In Bob Dylan\u2019s (admittedly sometimes-unreliable) memoir, *Chronicles*, he discusses how, growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, he would sometimes be able to listen to signals from radio stations from stations in places like Memphis, 1500km to the South. Similarly, Elvis Presley, a white boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, grew up listening to the black radio stations of the South, exposing himself to music that his parents wouldn\u2019t have been able to teach him.\n\nThe principles of the vacuum tubes and speakers in radio would soon impact other sonic mediums. In 1924, technicians at Western Electric, essentially reversing the principles of vacuum-tube/paper-cone amplifiers, came up with the first viable electrical recording system, with electrical microphones that convert sound waves into electrical signals.  Before this point, recording was acoustic; musicians essentially played into a horn much like a gramophone horn, and the vibrations were channelled through the horn onto a medium that would record the disturbance of the vibrations. Acoustic recordings in this format sound almost unlistenable to most modern ears; they had a limited frequency range and sounds needed to be loud indeed to be heard. For example, in order for violin sounds to be heard on such acoustic recordings, instruments like the Stroh-violin were devised, which added a metal horn over the Violin\u2019s soundholes in order to amplify the sound. But after electrical recording became the norm, the Stroh-violins of the world got turfed into junk shops \u2013 once sound quality improved, it was obvious that they didn\u2019t sound as good as a proper violin.\n\nAdditionally, if amplifiers exist, and microphones exist, public address (PA) systems are possible. As PA systems in music venues came to be the norm, a singer no longer had to sing in full-bore operatic style to be heard over a loud band. This enabled singers like Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra to sing in front of a band in the style of a \u2018crooner\u2019. Such technology also enabled the move from silent films to \u2018talkies\u2019 like *The Jazz Singer* starring Al Jolson. Such technology also enabled the electric guitar.\n\nFresh from inventing the resonator guitar, but still wanting guitars to be louder, Beauchamp began experimenting with amplifying the guitar. Initially experimenting with early carbon button microphones, Beauchamp eventually pulled apart a Brunswick phonograph for its \u2018pickup\u2019, an electromagnet and a coil of wire which picked up the sounds made by the needle as it navigated the grooves of a 78rpm record spinning around. Beauchamp\u2019s crucial insight \u2013 perhaps born from a similar place to his insight with the resonator guitar that the body of the guitar need not be made of wood \u2013 was that if he put a pickup near the strings of the guitar, it didn\u2019t matter what the rest of the guitar was. The pickup would pick up the vibrations of the string, converting it to an electrical signal to be sent to an amplifier.\n \nBeauchamp devised pickups more optimised for the guitar than the phonograph pickup he started with, and he fashioned a prototype with the help of Adolph Rickenbacker, Paul Barth and Harry Watson, now nicknamed the \u2018Frying Pan\u2019. By 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Beauchamp\u2019s formerly rich cousin was rather poor, and so the funding to manufacture the \u2018Frying Pan\u2019 was put up by Adolph Rickenbacker and his wife Charlotte. Perhaps for this reason, the brand Ro-Pat-In faded, and the new electric guitar became known as the Rickenbacker Electro. The Rickenbacker Electro became accepted as an instrument useful for the \u2018lap steel\u2019 style common in Hawaiian music, where the guitar is placed on the lap of the musician. In this style, instead of pressing down on the strings with the fingers of one hand while strumming with the other, the strings are pressed down on with a \u2018slide\u2019 \u2013 a metal or glass cylinder that can be placed against the strings and slid around. However, the principle of the electric guitar could also be applied to other ways of playing the guitar.\n\nBeauchamp didn\u2019t successfully patent his pickup design until 1937, five years after the Rickenbacker Electro went on sale. In the intervening years, numerous competitors \u2013 Dobro, Gibson and Epiphone included - put their own versions of the electric guitar on the market. Many of these had considerably more graceful designs than the ugly Frying Pan, and some of them were designed to be played \u2018Spanish\u2019 style \u2013 i.e., with the guitar on a strap around the body, facing outwards from the standing musician (in other words, the normal position for a guitar in the second half of the 20th century that you\u2019ve seen in thousands of photos). One electric guitar designed to be played Spanish style was the Gibson ES-150, released in 1936. This was a semi-acoustic hollow-bodied guitar \u2013 meaning that it\u2019d still make a decent sound even if it wasn\u2019t plugged in \u2013 which cost $150USD, a sizeable amount in the Great Depression \u2013 thus the name of the guitar, code for it being an Electric Spanish guitar worth $150. One ES-150 fell into the hands of a jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian. \n\nChristian was perhaps the first guitarist to see the true potential of the electric guitar. Where other guitarists had seen it as a sort of Hawaiian guitar novelty, Christian had the dexterity and the imagination to see the electric guitar into an instrument that rivalled the saxophone and the trumpet for sheer power, versatility and solo within a big band context. Christian\u2019s licks and riffs were, of course, very widely imitated, though he only recorded a few \u2018sides\u2019 \u2013 songs or tracks that were on one of the sides of a record, in other words - before passing away in 1942.", "Somewhat related to yesterday's Age of Empires thread, [here is a guy firing a repeating crossbow](_URL_1_), also known as a Chu Ko Nu. It is named after a general from the Three Kingdoms Period in China, Zhuge Liang, where Chu Ko is Zhuge in an older Romanization and Nu means crossbow. He lived around 200 AD but didn't actually invent the repeating crossbow, it is older than that. It is the [Chinese unique unit in Age of Empires 2](_URL_0_).\n\nThe contemporary Greco-Roman world had ballistae, but the Chu Ko Nu was seeing use in China about 1000 years before the crossbow became common in European warfare. It was [used to defend Korea](_URL_2_) when the Japanese invaded in the late 1500s, squaring off against the Japanese firearms. \n\n Anyway that's all I got, I just thought it was cool to see it in action in that video, and that it's neat that there was a machine gun crossbow being used in China almost 2000 years before machine guns were invented.\n\nSome sources:\n\n*Prenderghast, Gerald. Repeating and Multi-Fire Weapons: A History from the Zhuge Crossbow Through the AK-47. McFarland, 2018.*\n\n*Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel. 1994.*", "Some of my favorite moments from history are how often the people of Belgium go out of their way to make a mockery of both themselves and everyone else. \n\nExamples include: \n\n\u2022 the Mannekin Pis, the mascot of Brussels which is just a little boy peeing. They purposely hype up the presence of this statue so that people come from all over to see the magnificent Mannekin Pis only to laugh at tourists when they see a disappointingly small statue of a little boy peeing. When I visited it I also got to watch the mechanic increase the water pressure so it peed all over a crowd of tourists.\n\n\u2022 Lions Mound Park which commemorates the Battle of Waterloo. It\u2019s an amazing feat of landscape architecture and engineering but the designer also made the enormous lion statue to be roaring toward France and simultaneously show its hind to England.\n\n\u2022 the 2016 Brussels Bombings were a tragic terrorist attack on an otherwise peaceful nation and while conducting a search for the terrorists, the federal government asked that Brussels citizens stay off social media to keep themselves and the officers safe. Instead of staying quiet, the citizens spammed websites like Twitter with cat pictures and bad puns to make any useful information that had been leaked to terrorists impossible to find under a mountain of cats. \n\nAll of these moments plus the overall attitude of the country\u2019s people is hilarious to me, where some people are proud of their country\u2019s tenacity in war or devotion to faith I am proud of my country\u2019s lack of f***s to give to anyone.", "Technology in Greater Iran is almost synonymous with two things: icemaking and irrigation.\n\nPerhaps the most iconic among these is the [Yakhdan or Yakhchal](_URL_2_) (literally, \"Ice container\", \"Ice pit\"). These were used in the form of simpler pits from ancient times (1st milennium BC), evolving into the domed towers (with ice stored below ground) widely used well into the mid-20th century; a few dozen remain today. It isn't exactly clear how this evolution occurred; rudimentary ice storage is first documented in Assyria in the 2nd milennium BC, but there seems to have been an expansion in advanced irrigation systems and consequently probably ice-making structures during the Achaemenid era; Pierre Briant suggests that it was the result of a tax relief for irrigation granted by Artaxerxes II. The structure encourages hot air to rise and escape, while colder breezes can enter through the holes in the structure, making for a surprisingly effective refrigeration system. These could also be combined with [Badgirs](_URL_3_), wind-catchers, for even better ventilation. In its most extravagant form, water is continuously allowed to flow around the dome to cool by evaporation.\n\nThe most impressive feature is perhaps the shallow pools ([yakhband](_URL_4_)) used to make ice in the winter, exploiting the cooling achieved by evaporation and radiative cooling toward the clear night sky. When a nearby mountain top was not available for harvesting ice, these were capable of enough ice production to keep the yakhchal stocked. \n\nThis brings us to discuss the irrigation channels, _karez_ or _qanat_ (the latter is an Arabic loanword more common in the Western regions), the ingenuity of which are illustrated by [this diagram](_URL_1_) courtesy of Encyclopaedia Iranica. Essentially, in the highlands, you extract water from the saturated aquifier. Then you allow this water to flow through a canal into lower field lands where it will end up above the aquifier, seep into the ground, and thereby irrigate the field land. This essentially increases the elevation of the aquifier.\n\nThe major advantage of this system is that it is _continuously discharging_, which is to say, unlike surface level channels which depend on the river level, it cannot dry out in the summer (though the rate of discharge will vary). The major disadvantage is the labour and know-how needed to maintain the underground tunnels (often cited as a reason for population declines following e.g. the Mongol invasion, when these systems were disrupted). The systems required significant investment to be constructed, and according to [this interesting Iranica article on the socio-economic context](_URL_0_) it is unlikely that small communities of farmers could get together to build one. Rather, wealthy landowners or perhaps royal stipends would be necessary to construct them. However, the process of inheritance meant that they could end up in communal hands.\n\nThe combination of simplicity of construction (however laborious!) and conceptual ingenuity inherent to these technologies never ceases to amaze me.", " >  Saw a demonstration of television last Saturday. Very vague  &  flickering.\n\n- H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 25 Oct 1933, A Means to Freedom 2.654\n\n >  Saw a demonstration of television the other day at a local department store. Rather like the blurred, flickering biograph films of 1898.\n\n- H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, October 1933, Essential Solitude 2.612\n\nWhat Lovecraft saw was a demonstration of the [Sanabria Mechanical Television System](_URL_0_). This was well before television was a household appliance - it was basically a novelty, dragged out at sideshows and demonstrated to crowds that still primarily went to theaters, nickelodeons, and silent films.", "This comes from a lecture I gave last year at the Catholic University of Chile.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLet's travel to one of the most popular time travel destinations in many people's minds: renaissance Florence. We'll take a look at the invention of one of the most important and famous instruments in the history of music, both in the West and in the whole world: the piano.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn *The early pianoforte* (1995), Stewart Pollens, a luthier and musical instruments expert, quite renowned in the musicological sphere, describes the process by which a 33 year old man from Padua came to be in the service of Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany. From the beginning of his principate, Ferdinando dedicated time and resources to the preservation and promotion of the arts in all its forms. He was also very interested in engines and machines in general, fascinated by their complexity. This two interests may have led him to recruit Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Venetian musician an luthier, to work for the court. While there is no concrete evidence of Cristofori being appointed as an inventor, it seems likely due to the nature of his work.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nDuring the later years of the XVII century, Cristofori worked on the invention of several variants of the harpsichord, and, according to Pollens, he may have started a new project in 1698, but evidence of this date is inconclusive. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nFor the next years he worked on an idea: to create a harpsichord that was able to produce less metallic, more harmonious sounds. Making some fascinating changes to the traditional structure of the harpsichord, most notably the use of larger, softer, leather covered hammers that, according to Denzil Wright caused the sounds to be less metallic by affecting the vibration of the strings. The strings were also modified; Pollens notes that the surviving instruments that Cristofori created had iron and brass strings. He named his instrument the arpicembalo, which translates as harp-harpsichord, because of the harmonious characteristics of its sounds.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWe don't know what those instruments sounded like, because the only surviving ones are simply unplayable, but we know this much: according to *The Piano: a history* by prof. Cyril Ehrlich, the first instrument was recorded in one of Ferdinando's inventories of instruments, dating from 1700, as \"*Un Arpicembalo di Bartolomeo Cristofori di nuova inventione,* ***che fa' il piano, e il forte****, a due registri principali unisoni, con fondo di cipresso senza rosa(...)\"* , which translates to \"*An \"Arpicembalo\" by Bartolomeo Cristofori, of new invention that produces soft and loud, with two sets of strings at unison pitch, with soundboard of cypress without rose(...)\".* \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe invention, later known as forte-piano or pianoforte, became the preferred keyboard instrument in Florence and, gradually, became popular in the rest of Europe, eventually becoming the XVIII century piano model that we know today.", "In early 1896, a young medical student in the *Mekteb-i T\u0131bbiye-i \u015eahane* (Ottoman Military Medical School) named Esad Feyzi read an article in a French medical journal on a certain Roentgen\u2019s photography through opaque objects. Inspired,the young doctor acquired a Ruhmkoff coil, a Crookes tube and a powerful battery, installed the Roentgen apparatus and immediately replicated the experiments in the military hospital in Istanbul, using a younger medical student\u2019s hand. Though this probably wasn't the first usage of Roentgen's photography technique in the Ottoman Empire, this was the one that's most influential. Esad, alongside with his collaborator Rifat Osman and helped by physicians and lecturers in the school created their x-ray machine that year.\n\nBy the time the Greco-Turkish war broke out a year later in 1897, the medical students were eager to put this invention to use. A temporary hospital had been set up on the Sultan\u2019s Yildiz palace grounds to treat the wounded, and Esad Feyzi and his collaborator wrote to its medical director, Cemil Pasha. In their letter they spoke of their patriotic gratitude upon reading the news of the wounded being treated in the palace\u2019s hospital, and offered the services of their x-ray technology to help determine the exact locations of bullets or shrapnel. They went on to suggest that the application of this new technology would lead to the rightful recognition of Ottoman medicine in the civilized world as the first to use x-rays in military surgery, and could also save the wounded from long suffering. Permission was granted in 1 May and Mehmet of Boyabat was the first wounded soldier x-rayed to determine the precise location of shrapnel in his right wrist. The head surgeon of the hospital removed the shrapnel, and the radiographic film of the arm was presented to the Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid by Divisional General Cemil Pasha. The team then was awarded by the Sultan with medals.  When a team of German Red Cross doctors and surgeons arrived in Istanbul in 22 May with an x-ray machine from Berlin, they were surprised and amused to find a Esad's cobbled-together version of the machine already in use at the temporary hospital for the wounded on the palace grounds, and expressed their admiration at this early application of radiography which was then, an emerging branch of medicine all over the world. The German team then installed their x-ray machine, and both the German and Turkish doctors at Temporary Yildiz Military Hospital continued working on the radiographic captures\n\nAfter the war, Esad Feyzi, by now officially a doctor, published his knowledge about x-rays in a book aptly titled \"Roentgen Rays, its Medical and Surgical Application\" issued as a manuscript in 1898. The book comprises the author\u2019s experiences on X-rays in a 2-year period. Esad Feyzi gives information on electricity, introduces tubes, explains the X-ray photography technique and film development. He also excerpts various medical and surgical applications of Roentgen rays, ending with a list of possible uses for this new technology. In addition to military surgery, forensics and prenatal diagnosis he suggested that x-rays would help identify fake diamonds and investigate packages sent through the newly reorganized postal system. The book includes many sketches of upper and lower extremities drawn by Esad Feyzi himself, and supplemented with 12 X-ray films in original dimensions. The third X-ray machine was imported from Germany and installed in 1899 at that Military Medical School Clinic under direction of Cemil Pasha.\n\nAfter Esad Feyzi\u2019s sudden death of sepsis due to erysipelas in 1902, Sufyan Bey worked and led the Roentgen laboratory alongside Cemil Pasha from 20 June 1903. Protection from the harmful effects of X-rays was unknown at those early years, and many doctors died because of it. For instance, Ibrahim Vasif, Sufyan Bey's successor who worked as assistant at the same laboratory, died of cancer due to the severe damage of X rays. The fourth X-ray machine was brought from Germany to Gulhane postdoctoral clinic attached to the Medical Faculty at the disposal of Dr. Deycke, the chief of staff and Rifat Osman who was charged in the Roentgen department. The fifth machine was installed at Haydarpasha Military Hospital in Istanbul, the sixth at Hamidiye Children\u2019s Hospital under the direction of Rasih Emin, who was raised by Esad Feyzi and died due to radiodermatitis. The seventh machine was the first to be installed in the provinces, that is Selanik Civilian Hospital in 1902 operated Kamil Mazhar Bey. The eighth machine was also installed in the province, that is in Izmir in a clinic operated by a Greek doctor George Illiadhes who was offered the civilian title of Pasha in recognition of his services to the public after the devastating earthquake that hit the area around Aydin in 1900. In the following years oculist Albert Englaender started his career as radiologist by opening a private laboratory in Istanbul in 1905 and published his first radiological findings on cancer therapy by X-rays in 1906. In 1908, the Greek Hospital in Istanbul installed an X-ray machine that was operated by Dr. Vassilios Savvaides. Dimitrios Chilaiditi, another Greek national opened his practice at Istanbul in 1910 and soon acquired international recognition due to his observations of the syndrome that bears his name.", "When we think of some technological inventions and the eventual success they become, we oftentimes forget about how most inventions failed or how some of these *eventually* successful inventions had a more than dubious start to them, as the *vroedschap* (city council) of Doornik (Tournai) in Flanders would experience in 1346.\n\nThe members of the *vroedschap* had invited master Pieter van Brugge - an engineer and an expert on gunpowder weaponry - to their city in order to witness a demonstration of a primitive form of cannon. The field outside the city was considered to be a suitable location for this demonstration, and as such master Pieter van Brugge did the honours, primed the cannon, and fired it. It worked! It did not blow up in the faces of the master engineer or the *vroedschap* members. However, it was not a success either. The lead covered wooden ball, for reasons unknown, veered off course, over the city walls, and struck a man in the street, killing him instantly. This man had the dubious honour of being the first recorded casualty of gunpowder weaponry in the low countries.\n\nSadly, the sources do not record how the demonstration influenced any further decisions on the matter by the *vroedschap* but one could imagine they were not immediately impressed by the device's accuracy.\n\nSources:\n\n*Ronald de Graaf, Oorlog om Holland 1000-1375 p. 51, in turn using quotations from Gaier, L'Industrie des Armes, p. 120.*", "Checksums are useful for various programming purposes.  What a checksum is, is that you add up something to check for errors.  For example, a human checksum would be checking that you entered your credit card number correctly by adding the digits and making sure it matches a known value.  This allows a computer to check for corrupted data much more quickly and easily than actually checking the data.\n\nBut, contrary to what big computer science would tell you, this wasn\u2019t invented by programmers\u2014it was invented by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages (well, they used it anyway).  Before spellcheck, scribes faced a problem\u2014it\u2019s very hard to copy a text by hand with perfect accuracy, even if you\u2019re really trying hard.  This became a big problem for Jewish scribes, who wanted to copy the biblical text perfectly.  Hebrew has somewhat flexible spelling rules and there are many words that are sometimes spelled in different ways, so even just reading through a text won\u2019t make errors obvious.  Even checking side-by-side can make it tough to spot minor spelling differences.\n\nFor scrolls in ritual use, there wasn\u2019t much of a solution.  But when books started being used, which Jewish tradition didn\u2019t mind having annotations in, a solution was developed\u2014the checksum.  Basically, scribes would add up letters and sentences in a portion and note the proper value.  Scribes would know the correct value (using a convenient mnemonic) and could count up letters or words, and know the text was correct.  This was aided by the system in Hebrew for assigning values to letters, which meant that the values could be summed, in addition to the quantity of letters which makes two errors that cancel each other out somewhat less likely.  This also makes it easy to come up with mnemonics\u2014you just figure out a word or phrase whose numerological value is the checksum.  This way scribes can check not just that everything says what it ought to, but that every word is intact.\n\nBut they went even further.  This method still is susceptible to errors cancelling each other out, as I noted, and makes it tough to find errors\u2014you know there\u2019s an error, but you won\u2019t know exactly where because the checksum covers a potentially lengthy portion.  Here the checksum methods go further.  The scribes began to note unusual spellings of words, and made marginal notes (in an opaque system of Aramaic abbreviations) to note the spelling and occurrences of a particular word.  By comparing notes a scribe could check for the most likely errors in spelling of a text.  These marginal notes also noted when a word in an existing text might look like a scribal error, but isn\u2019t, and the scribe should be attentive not to \u201ccorrect\u201d the text, either accidentally by copying from memory or intentionally.  Of course in a complex and old manuscript tradition what version really is \u201ccorrect\u201d is not always discernable, but these scribes were attempting to maintain a standard.  They also noted traditional unsual letters, such as letters that are traditionally extra-large or extra-small or have some other unusual appearance.\n\nBy and large they succeeded\u2014within the Jewish tradition there\u2019s a great deal of uniformity in the consonantal text, which is what the checksums cover.  Unfortunately nowadays these features are not printed generally, because computers allow much faster and more reliable checking, and printed Hebrew bibles do not all have the features for scribal writing.  But some still have the checksum for portions, and either way it\u2019s a cool historical innovation to maintain an accurate text."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/7gvcgv/unique_unit_discussion_chu_ko_nu/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4reL9No73s", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Navalzhugenu.jpg"], [], ["http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kariz_3", "http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads/files/Kariz/kariz-fig01.jpg", "http://iranontrip.ir/public/user_data/images/The-Ice-Chamber-of-Meybod-1.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher", "https://i2.wp.com/www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/DSC07977.jpg?ssl=1"], ["http://www.earlytelevision.org/sanabria_theater_tv.html"], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "1sq2q9", "title": "Women in Iran and Afghanistan in the 70s", "selftext": "Following a post in /r/atheism , and my despair at seing such generalizations built upon a few pictures, would you be able to explain what were the legal status, rights, and living conditions, of women in these countries during the seventies?  \nfor reference : _URL_0_", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sq2q9/women_in_iran_and_afghanistan_in_the_70s/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ce0arhv", "ce0g59h", "ce0q1rs"], "score": [21, 27, 3], "text": ["I have removed all personal anecdotes as per [our rules](_URL_0_). No offense intended to those who contributed these, but it is not what our subreddit is about. People looking for personal experiences should turn to /r/AskReddit. Again, no offense intended to that sub, as it sometimes features interesting stories. The intent of /r/AskHistorians, however, is to provide in-depth, source-based answers from people who have studied the area or topic under discussion.\n\nThis is not meant as a reprimand, as I am sure of everybody's good intentions.", "I can speak for Iran to an extent, less so for Afghanistan. The trouble with posting images like those without any context is that you assume that the women before and after the Islamic revolution were either being forced to dress a certain way or are dressing in the manner they please. The fact is, both are true. Many women of religious persuasions couldn't wear veils, even if they wanted to, under the Shah. Many women of the Islamic Republic would dress with a veil if they had the choice. The sad fact is, the sartorial choices that women had at their disposal in Iran was limited by law -- veiling was outlawed under the Pahlavis, it was made mandatory by the Islamic Republic.\n\nFurthermore, this image of western-looking women in miniskirts is itself one that was subtly imposed on the women of Iran by its male leadership. By adopting a western-looking vision of a national modernity the Pahlavi regime was active in supporting the importation of western culture, holding up a very specific (and acutely sexualized) image of what a modern woman looks like. As one of my mentors says, \"When they held up western women to us, it was never Mme. Curie or Eleanor Roosevelt, it was Twiggy and Farah Fawcett.\" When it came time to revolt against the Shah, which was a wildly heterogenous revolution united mostly by anti-imperialist feeling, certain groups revolted not only against the imposition created by American and British political power, but against these images as well.\n\nI think that's the most important thing to consider with that image, but rights and social status is important too. Women got the vote in Iran rather late, in the 1960s I believe (don't have the date handy), and even under the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, familial laws were awfully paternalistic. One example being the heavily pro-natalist programs of the late 60s and 70s -- including a government sponsored campaign against the Pill (a policy the Islamic Republic would adopt at times too).\n\nAnd furthermore, taking women-specific issues aside, resisting any of the Shah's policies later in his reign was an incredibly dicey move as SAVAK became a more prevalent force, instituting a regime of torture, fear and exile against ideological opponents. In more ways than one, Iran of the 70s and Iran of the 80s was the same sort of place for women. Of course there are some pretty fundamental differences -- the ideologies are wildly different, and that has a huge effect on what limits are placed on women's agency -- but the point is that it is very unhelpful to assume that women are somehow worse off (or better off) just because they dress a certain way.\n\nSome sources for further reading: \n\nFiroozeh Kashani-Sabet, [Conceiving Citizens](_URL_0_)\n\nAfsaneh Najmabadi, [Women with Mustaches, Men without Beards](_URL_2_)\n\nM. Camron Amin, [The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman](_URL_1_)", "This my first stab at answering an Askhistorian question. The history of Women in Afghanistan during the 1970\u2019s is, alas, a mostly ignored area of Modern Afghan history. You would not think so, but compare how much literature there is for the Mujahedeen of 1970\u2019s (well 80\u2019s really, but most of the main player\u2019s were active in 1970\u2019s as well). \n\nI don\u2019t know about Iran, but the pictures of those Afghan women in Miniskirts and western dress is highly misleading.  It could said that, yes, some women in Afghanistan wore Miniskirts and western dress; most Afghan women did not. However, this was mostly confined to small group of liberal elite in Kabul, who were mostly out of touch with the impoverished rural majority who were much more conservative then the Kabul elite (although it should be noted that the majority were not as conservative as the Taliban at the time).  \n\nIt should be noted that Photos, like those presented in the Reddit thread, could be propaganda by either the Royalists or Communists in an attempt to put out a good image of its sometimes brutal attempts at modernization (for example, King Amanullah\u2019s attempt to turn Afghanistan into a Central Asian Turkey by following policies of Ataturk led to his violent overthrow). \n\nSources\n\nBrodsky, With all our strength. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, New York\n2003.\n\nMehta and Mamoor, Women for Afghan women. Shattering myths and claiming the future, New\nYork 2002.\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://fr.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1sotpt/women_in_iran_and_afghanistan_in_the_1970s_before/"], "answers_urls": [["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_speculate"], ["http://www.amazon.com/Conceiving-Citizens-Women-Politics-Motherhood/dp/0195308875/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896619&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=conceiving+citizens", "http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Modern-Iranian-Woman/dp/0813029163/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896718&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=camron+amin", "http://www.amazon.com/Women-Mustaches-Men-without-Beards/dp/0520242637/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1386896649&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=afsaneh+najmabadi"], []]}
{"q_id": "2cfrvb", "title": "What happened to Roman Emperor Valerian after he was captured by the Persians in 260 AD? Was there a precedent for how to treat leaders in this situation?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cfrvb/what_happened_to_roman_emperor_valerian_after_he/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjffho6"], "score": [58], "text": ["Keeping in mind that Valerian's troops were hit hard by plague in 260, and despite his recent victory near Edessa, Valerian I decided to try his hand at some good old fashion negotiation. It didn't work out that well for him.\n\nValerian I, along with his top men, were captured by the Sassanian King Shapur I, somewhere between April and July of 260. Shapur had no intention of negotiating, and took Valerian I captive. \n\nNow, on to what happened to him after he was captured. Things get a little sketchy as far as when he died, but we do have some accounts as to what happened to him while in captivity, and it isn't pretty.\n\nValerian I was used by Shapur, basically, as a living trophy. He is said to have used the aging emperor as a stepping stool when mounting his horse. When not being tortured and humiliated, it is said that he was kept in a small cage.\n\nThe history then goes; after his death his skin was removed, dyed, stuffed and preserved and was kept on display at the Royal Palace for a very long time. It would make for an interesting archeological find!\n\nBriefly, regarding your question as to how emperors or ranking officials were treated when captured, this story is a good example of how it was done during the 3rd century. Valerian I had fought some of the toughest warriors around, and for the most part was very successful. He got a bad rap from later Christian writers, but he deserves much more credit than he has gotten over the centuries. \n\nSource: Coinage and History of the Roman Empire, volume one, David Vagi.    "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2x103h", "title": "How accurate is the HBO series Deadwood, about a gold-mining camp in South Dakota in the 1870s?", "selftext": "I'm just starting to watch Deadwood, and I'm really enjoying it.  I'd be interested to hear informed opinions about the realism of the show.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2x103h/how_accurate_is_the_hbo_series_deadwood_about_a/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cowfovn"], "score": [43], "text": ["As to language, there is a great little article [here](_URL_0_) that analyzes the use of languages (and profanity in particular). And the summation is that he's at least some people in a town like Deadwood would have sworn like that. The article does however highlight that the language has been modernized. There would have been a lot more blasphemy related profanity in a real 1890s town. And it would have been considered more serious. Today we view sex related words like cunt and fuck as the higher end of profanity... back then apparently goddamned and the like would have replaced these. We just don't take blasphemy as serious today."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2428&amp;context=greatplainsquarterly"]]}
{"q_id": "25moge", "title": "When did the corporate ladder structure we're familiar with today (For example: C level executives - >  Junior executives - >  Vice Presidents - >  Directors - >  Managers - >  Staff) become standard in Western businesses?", "selftext": "Some additional thoughts:   \n- >  Would it be possible for someone in the early 1800's to climb the corporate ladder?    \n- >  Was it possible for a person with humble beginnings to work their way up to the top without starting their own business?   \n\nEdited the format\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25moge/when_did_the_corporate_ladder_structure_were/", "answers": {"a_id": ["chj04id"], "score": [25], "text": ["Henri Fayol was the first person to create a comprehensive theory about management. In his book, General and Industrial Management, he describes a pyramid hierarchy for management, similarly to what we see in the corporate world today. About the same time, Frederick Taylor published his book The Principles of Scientific Management. These two books laid out the foundation for management of modern corporations and industries."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "8w361l", "title": "My understanding is that there's no evidence that Ben Franklin wanted the national bird of the United States to be the turkey. Where did this myth come from and how did it get to be so widespread?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8w361l/my_understanding_is_that_theres_no_evidence_that/", "answers": {"a_id": ["e1sjulq"], "score": [112], "text": ["There is evidence. It's in letters to his daughter. \n\n\"I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk; and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice he is never in good case; but, like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the kingbirds from our country; though exactly fit for that order of knights, which the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie.\n\nI am, on this account, not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours; the first of the species seen in Europe, being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is, besides (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards, who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.\"\n\n\\-- Ben Franklin, letter to his daughter Sarah, January, 1784\n\nHere's the full letter, if you're interested: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0327"]]}
{"q_id": "15ry4x", "title": "How accurate is this \"eye witness\" account of pre-WWII Austria? It's being passed around facebook and contains no sources.", "selftext": "Here is a link to the story: _URL_0_\n\nI first saw the story on Facebook.  I googled it to try to find more info, but it mostly just leads to seemingly biased conservative websites.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15ry4x/how_accurate_is_this_eye_witness_account_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c7p9whm", "c7pajue", "c7pavza", "c7pbd69", "c7pcj38", "c7pdtgt", "c7pe7b4", "c7pet2j", "c7phwm7"], "score": [26, 96, 19, 50, 15, 16, 25, 5, 3], "text": ["That's a very long, crunchy article that makes a lot of quantifiable claims I can't confirm or deny, but in general yes, the German annexation or \"Anschluss\" of Austria was military bloodless.  However, the \"98% vote\" the article refers to took place nearly a month after German troops entered the country, which they did in response to the Austrian chancellor's announcement of a public referendum on the subject of unification with Germany (they arrived in time to help Austrian Nazis oust the elected government and prevent it).  I probably do not need to tell you that referenda held before a foreign power's troops are in your country come out differently than referenda held once they are there watching you vote!", "I have to admit that I skipped a bit reading through it. A lot of the stuff rings true, especially about the annexation of Austria and public support for Hitler. It should be noted, however, that it took a major protracted terror campaign by Austrian Nazis to force the democratically elected Austrian Government to finally agree to hand the country to them. The Austrian Nazis, much like the German Nazis, never won a democratic election (in the sense that they never managed to get more than 50% of the vote).\n\nHowever, other parts are somewhat more problematic. At one point, she talks about Hitler socializing medicine, which ends medical research and forces doctors to leave the country. It also drives up waiting times. That statement is very, very problematic. I have no doubt that this woman (assuming she exists) did see doctors leave the country - but medicine was one of the fields that had a good number of Jewish practitioners. Now why would a Jewish doctor leave Germany in 1938? The war also meant that waiting times for elective surgeries increased - hospital beds were needed for injured soldiers, and doctors were taken into army service. Furthermore, medicine had been socialized under Bismarck in Germany, in the 1890s, well before Hitler. Yet somehow, Germany had managed to become a beacon of medical research during the early twentieth century.\n\nAt another point, she talks about how the Nazis were trying to abolish religion, leading to women having children out of wedlock and (godbewithus!) working men's jobs. This is also not the entire truth. The Nazi ideology also decreed that women should marry good aryan men and bear many health aryan children, preferably sons who could serve as soldiers. It took a long while and some major setbacks in the war before the Nazis even considered using women in the workforce. \n\nThere is probably a lot more that I have missed. The entire article reeks of trying to paint Obama as the new Hitler and progressives as Nazis, which is somewhat shaky to say the least.", "The Nazis being anti-religious or atheist seems to be a common trope in these narratives that attempt to paint the Nazis as progressives. There is of course some truth to it. The Nazis and the various religious institutions had there share of conflicts and Hitler and some of the other leaders privately expressed distaste for religion multiple times. However, it's ridiculous to say the regime was anti-religious on any wide scale. Rather, they sought to make Christianity work for them. It was quite common for Hitler to say that God was on their side in speeches, and of course there was the old phrase \"Gott mit uns\" (God is with us) inscribed on the military uniforms. The regime also actively promoted [Positive Christianity](_URL_0_). ", "The thing which baffles me the most on this ridiculously biased article is the implication that Austria was somehow a country full of freedom before 1938, when in fact [they had a fascist government since 1934.](_URL_0_) This \"Austrofacist\" government was heavily tied with the Catholic Church, partially to distinguish Austria from the mainly Protestant Germany, so it's no wonder the church lost lots of influence after the Anschluss.\n", "Germany in 1938 is **not** America in 2013.  It's an easy comparison to make and gives a lot of people ammunition for a variety of agendas, but it's ultimately a flawed and lazy comparison.\n\nTo be fair, she didn't say that, however you don't exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the subtext and conclusion the average reader is likely to draw.", "A pre-emptive reminder to all potential commenters: \n\nEven though the person being interviewed in the article is making connections between 1938 Austria and modern-day USA, the OP's question is focussed on **the accuracy of the description of Austria under German occupation**.\n\nPlease keep all discussions focussed on this historical question, not the modern-day comparisons.", "Two statements here do not compute:\n\n >  She wasn\u2019t old enough to vote in 1938 \u2013 approaching her 11th birthday\n\nand\n\n >  \u201cThree months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.\n\nThe annexation plebiscite was held on 10 April 1938, ww2 did end in April 1945 (Vienna fell on 13 April).\n\nAs she was approaching her 11th birthday on 10 April 1938, she would be approaching her 18th on 10 April 1945. The air raid would have been inconsequential to her \"having to go to labor corps and military service\", when she would have been eligible the Reich was nearing collapse.\n\n", "If you are interested in a more neutral and scientific research about Nazi welfare politics, I would highly recommend the book [Hitler's Beneficiaries:\nPlunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State](_URL_2_) by the German historian [G\u00f6tz Aly](_URL_1_). The author analyzes how \"social\" the Nation Socialists really were, which programs they established and how they were financed. [NYT review here.](_URL_0_)", "This is largely inaccurate.  The election she refers to was not a free one, but held under a military occupation.  \n\nTo be sure, *Anschluss* was a popular idea--Austrians (including Hitler) thought of themselves as Germans and largely resented being denied a place in Germany after the war.  They had a point, to be honest: self-determination was one of the announced hallmarks of the postwar settlement, but not for ethnic Germans.  \n\nThe posted article is profoundly polemic, part of a grievous trend that insists on describing National Socialism as a leftist ideology.  For a better sense of the nature of the Nazi welfare state, try Aly's book, as recommended below, or David Crew's *Germans on Welfare*, or the work of the late Detlev Peukert.\n\nThe assertion that Nazism insisted on equality for women is especially ridiculous. For an accurate and nuanced sense of Nazi attitudes toward gender, see *Mothers in the Fatherland* by Klaudia Koonz, or much of the work of Atina Grossman."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://blog.beliefnet.com/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars/2011/04/she-survived-hitler-and-wants-to-warn-america.html"], "answers_urls": [[], [], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrofascism"], [], [], [], ["http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/review/Herzog.t.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G\u00f6tz_Aly", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Hitler_s_Beneficiaries.html?id=hOIpGubiiZYC"], []]}
{"q_id": "cbmoyp", "title": "Why Were Ruthless Battles and Mass Killing of Civilians considered Justified in the Classical Era/Antiquity?", "selftext": "I've read a fair bit on Julius Caesar, and Roman mid-late republic and early Empire, and I'm amazed by how comfortable people are with extremely harsh conquest and war. For example, it is said that Julius Caesar killed one million Gauls and enslaved another million, ( by his own account, I admit ) when the total population  of the region was only \\~8-16 million. He cut the hands off of all of those people in Uxellodunum and routinely burned entire cities to the ground, killing everyone he could just as an example. Even his most bitter foes in Rome had not one bad word to say about it. They exploded whenever *Romans* died however. To them, it was just the way things were. Yet more fascinating, Adrian's Goldsworthy's has a theory he discusses *Pax Romana* , the romans didn't need to justify brutal wars of conquest. considering Julius Caesar's specific actions in Gaul I can't help but agree. I am aware of the idea of roman 'pacification' and that breaking treaties with foreigners was heavily condemned, so they're not absolute. In the Middle ages, people used religion as a way of \"othering\" people, thus allowing brutal action against them, but even then this doesn't mean they can do whatever they want. Later on it became more focused on race. When the Europeans colonized Africa, most of them though they were helping them by 'civilizing' them and 'teaching them so they can one day be independent'.  The Romans understood race and nations and religion, but they never stressed it enough to justify war, it was just a minor detail. The Romans, including Julius Caesar, seem to believe that 'history is written by the victors', 'we have a right to serve ourselves' and 'woe to the vanquished'. They don't go out of their way to be cruel, they are simply pragmatic and Machiavellian. If it benefits them they can treat the Gauls very well, enslave them, or kill them. There were no hard and fast rules of war, no moral obligation to the rest of the world, no absolute human rights, very few customs that foreign civilians as being a less appropriate target to kill than pedophiles and serial killers in Rome. What changed from then, and why doesn't that fly anymore? When did this mentality start and end? I'm sorry if I sound moralizing or critical of the Romans, I don't mean to. And of course, feel free to tell me if I've been misinformed.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cbmoyp/why_were_ruthless_battles_and_mass_killing_of/", "answers": {"a_id": ["eti9cxi"], "score": [26], "text": ["I would disagree with strongly with Goldsworthy there, in fact Caesar's conquest of Gaul is one of the better examples of how the Romans *did* feel the need to construct justifications, both because we have the first have account of the person who led the conquest, and because of the historical circumstances around it. The second point first, the circumstance being that Caesar actually faced a credible threat of prosecution for the illegality of actions in his war in Gaul (in particular, the invasion into Germany) and this among other things was the inciting spark for his crossing the Rubicon. And we actually have evidence of debate in Rome itself at the time of his wars as to their justification in the form of Cicero's speech \"De Provinciis Consularibus\" which, among other things, is an extended justification for Caesar's actions in command. As for Caesar's words, On the War in Gaul *constantly* provides justification for each of his actions. Caesar never argues for his conquest from a purely utilitarian position either (ie, simply saying he thinks it would be *useful* to conquer this or that) rather he tends to argue he was defending either himself or his allies. This accords with what Cicero wrote in \"De officiis\", that Rome had gained its empire only fighting defensive, justified wars.\n\nNow this is not to say that we need to take this claim seriously, or that the justification for conquest had to be particularly robust in modern terms, but they absolutely did require a justification of some sort."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2wkegl", "title": "Why are ancient seers and oracles portrayed as being deformed in historical fiction?", "selftext": "I've noticed in that seers and oracles are often portrayed having some kind of deformity, like in Vikings, The 300, even Greek mythology with the Stygian witches.  Is there any historical evidence to back this up or reason why they are portrayed this way?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wkegl/why_are_ancient_seers_and_oracles_portrayed_as/", "answers": {"a_id": ["corxg2t"], "score": [39], "text": ["This is more a question of literature than history. Blindness is the most common deformity among seers and oracles, and it's a metaphor that works on multiple levels. The first is that wisdom has a price -- nothing comes free, especially not the gift of prophecy. The second is that only those who shut out the immediate can see what lies beyond. \n\nLet's take Sophocles' Theban plays, *Antigone*, *Oedipus the King* and *Oedipus at Colonus* for an example. \n\nIn these, Oedipus is praised for his \"clear sight,\" but in reality he's blind to what's going on around him. Tiresias, who is physically blind but a prophet, forecasts what will happen to Oedipus. Only when the aging Oedipus blinds himself does he gain limited prophetic vision.\n\n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2h5ki9", "title": "What did Washington think of the French Revolution? More specifically, did he ever have correspondence with Robespierre or the King?", "selftext": "I've always been interested in the Washington administration, but I can't really find anything about his response to the French Revolution. What were his thoughts/actions relating to it, and did they change as the revolution went on? Specifically, did he ever have any correspondence with Robespierre or Louis XVI? I imagine he'd be concerned about the execution of the king, but that's pure speculation. Also any recommended texts would be amazing, as I like to learn about how these major world leaders/events all tie in together.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2h5ki9/what_did_washington_think_of_the_french/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckpmqgt"], "score": [98], "text": ["Washington did believe that the French Revolution was an extension of the ideals of the American Revolution, and he did have a good deal of gratitude towards the French (and affection for the Marquis de Lafayette), but Washington was careful to preserve America's neutrality in world affairs.  America's position on France later ended up being a politically divisive issue.\n\nThere was a strong push from the Republican camp, led by Jefferson, to push Washington into adopting an explicitly pro-France position.  Jefferson was much more in favor of a permanent French alliance, seeing the French Revolution as a natural extension of \"The Spirit of '76\".  In fact, this later caused a rift between them as Jefferson tried to paint Washington as anti-French in their newspaper the *Aurora*.  Washington thought they were hypocrites: he wrote to Lafayette that \"they had no more regard for that Nation [France] than for the Grand Turk, farther than their own views were promoted by it.\"^1  Basically, he thought that Jefferson saw only validation of American ideals in France, not what was best for America as a nation.\n\nWashington's policy on France was that America should stay out of European affairs.  In his Farewell Address he urged America to stay out of \"foreign alliances\", and the alliance he was undoubtedly referring to was one with France:\n\n > It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.\n\nEffectively, he sympathized with Revolutionary France, but unlike his Republican colleagues, he still felt that France was a different nation with its own self-interests that we ought to stay out of.\n\n1: Letter, Washington to Lafayette, 25 December 1798"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3uaby6", "title": "What does it mean to be a French Grenadier in the 1840s? How is this different than a tirailleur (infantryman)?", "selftext": "Military history is definitely not my thing!\n\nWorking through different combat logs and accounts from the 1840s and while I know the difference between a matelot (sailor) from a grenadier, tirailleur, or voltigeur; I am not sure exactly what differentiates that last group?  In this case all four are serving together.\n\nObviously the difference is important enough for the sources to usually be clear about what type of soldier/unit to which they refer (though not all the time).  \n\nWas the training different?  Command structure?  Responsibilities?  Armaments?\n\nThanks in advance for any and all input.\n\n*edited to add voltigeur to the list; forgot it the first time!", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uaby6/what_does_it_mean_to_be_a_french_grenadier_in_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cxdb487"], "score": [36], "text": ["Partially it's historical tradition--if a soldier is assigned to a unit with \"grenadier\" in the name, he's called a Grenadier. Similar to how modern tank units are still officially called \"cavalry,\" despite no longer riding into battle on horseback.\n\nInitially, Grenadiers carried grenades--hence the name. By the 1840s, though, designated grenade-throwers had been phased out. Militaries are anything if not big fans of tradition, so units that had originally been grenade-throwers retained the name. Often, Grenadier units--even late in their history--selected or recruited the biggest, toughest guys they could get a hold of. By 1840, the \"grenadier\" epithet was frequently used for elite line infantry units.\n\nTirailleurs and Voltigeurs were both light-infantry skirmishers. Skirmishers were trained to range out ahead of the main body of the army to harass, scout, and disrupt the enemy--and prevent the enemy from doing the same in return. While the heavy line infantry were armed with muskets, light infantry skirmishers were most frequently armed with rifles or rifled carbines. \n\nThe Voltigeurs were so named due to their original intended mode of deployment--to \"vault\" onto cavalry horses behind the rider, and be carried forward by their cavalry comrades. This didn't work out so well, so they reformatted into skirmishers like the Tirailleur. Being tradition-bound, they kept the name. They were a peculiarity of the Napoleonic area, and by 1840, the Voltigeurs had long since been disbanded.\n\nTo get at part of your unasked question about deployment, yes, grenadiers, line infantry, and skirmishers would all be serving together, but in separate companies. Generally, an army would be made up of divisions, which were made of brigades, which consisted of regiments or battalions (depending on who's army we're talking about). Battalions would be made up of companies. In an infantry battalion, most of these companies would be line infantry, at least one would be a skirmisher company, and one or two could be grenadier companies (the elites of the battalion). "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "24ca63", "title": "What were the warships used by the Chinese Navy in World War 2, and who were some of the captains of these ships? What are some famous battles?", "selftext": "I'm curious because my grandpa is one of these captains, but with my currently 5th grade level Chinese, I'm bad at understanding all the things he talks about. I'd like to know some more background about the things that happened during this time, and especially objective history about the battles that the Chinese Navy fought in world war 2.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24ca63/what_were_the_warships_used_by_the_chinese_navy/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ch5vg4b"], "score": [24], "text": ["The Chinese navy consisted of a motley collection of vessels in 1937.\n\n\n\nForemost of these were 6 light cruisers, all small and several aging.\n\n\n\nSupporting these were a motley collection of 53 gunboats, motor torpedo boats, riverine vessels, converted trawlers, minelayers and patrol boats. \n\nAll the cruisers and almost all the other vessels were sunk in operations trying to prevent the Japanese from moving upriver from Shanghai, Tsingtao and Canton. \n\nSome were scuttled to create a barrier against Japanese shipping, some were sunk and a few were captured.\n\n\n\nThe Chinese navy faced problems of being controlled both by the nationalists and by various warlord cliques nominally allied to the nationalists, but essentially independent in operation of their vessels.\n\n\n\nThe fate of the cruisers:\n\n\n\n**Ning Hai**\n\n\n\nComissioned: 1932.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 526 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x2x140mm, 6x1x76mm, 2x2x533mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 22 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 361.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-23 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga* in shallow waters in the Yangtse river. Raised and repaired by the Japanse and taken into Japanese servce in 1944 as the *Ioshima*. Sunk again 1944-10-10 by the US submarine *USS Shad*.\n\nNotes: Very small and very slow compared to other light cruisers.\n\n\n\n**Ping Hai**\n\n\n\nComissioned: 1932.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 448 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x2x140mm, 3x1x76mm, 2x2x533mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 21 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 340.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-25 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga* in shallow waters in the Yangtse river. Raised and repaired by the Japanse and taken into Japanese servce in 1944 as the *Yasoshima*. Sunk again 1944-11-25 by US carrier based aircrafts.\n\n\n\nNotes: Very small and very slow compared to other light cruisers.\n\n\n\n**Chao Ho**\n\nComissioned: 1912.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 725 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 2x1x152mm, 4x1x102mm, 4x1 76mm, 6x1x47mm, 2x1x37mm, 2x1x450mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 20 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 283.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-30 by Japanese aircraft from the carriers *Hosho* and *Ryujo*.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Hai Yung**\n\nComissioned: 1898.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 680 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 3x1x150mm, 8x1x105mm, 6x1x47mm, 3x1x356mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 19,5 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 244.\n\n\n\nFate: Scuttled in the Yangtse river 1937-08-11 to block Japanese advance up the river.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Ying Swei**\n\nComissioned: 1911.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 2 460 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 2x1x152mm, 1x1x102mm, 4x1x76mm, 6x1x47mm, 2x1x37mm, 2x1x450mm TT.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 20 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 270.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-10-24 by Japanese aircraft from the carrier *Kaga*.\n\nNotes: Old protected cruiser.\n\n**Yat Sen**\n\nComissioned: 1931.\n\n\n\nDisplacement: 1 650 tons.\n\n\n\nArmament: 1x1x152mm, 1x1x140mm, 4x1x75mm, 1x1x47mm.\n\n\n\nSpeed: 19 knots.\n\n\n\nCrew: 182.\n\n\n\nFate: Sunk 1937-09-25 by Japanese aircraft. Raised by the Japanese and renamed Atada, returned to to the Chinese 1946 and served the nationalist government until decommissioned 1958.\n\nNotes: Probably more aptly described as a moden gunboat or sloop."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "1j3p9a", "title": "I'm a pretty standard Southern Vietnamese citizen in 1975. How much trouble am I in when the North win the war?", "selftext": "I realised recently that while I know a lot about the Vietnam War, I know precious little about it's aftermath. So in short, what could I expect after defeat as an average Southern Vietnamese citizen? I know there were re-education camps and many left the country but how brutal/wide-ranging was the repression when the North finally won?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j3p9a/im_a_pretty_standard_southern_vietnamese_citizen/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbaxe7b", "cbb8qh1"], "score": [67, 4], "text": ["The average South Vietnamese citizen during this period was a peasant living on the South Vietnamese countryside. In the history of Vietnam, the peasant as an individual had a very complex relationship to the government which can perhaps be neatly summed up as *indifferent*. Traditionally, the South Vietnamese peasant would only have contact with the government when the tax collector came along or when it was time to send the age appropriate men for the traditional draft. However, most of the time, everything outside of the immediate hamlet or village was seen as foreign, and it was not uncommon to be suspicious of individuals from other villages. \n\nWhen people think of the fall of South Vietnam, they see images of the chaotic evacuation from the port cities and the frenzied evacuation from the American embassy in Saigon. However, this is not representative of the majority of South Vietnamese who lived in the countryside. I feel like it's appropriate at this time to examine the reasons as to why some South Vietnamese civilians chose to leave their homes and join the large lines of refugees trying to find safety. \n\nThe number one reason for which many chose to flee was for the simple fear of reprisals. Many had cooperated with the South Vietnamese government, and it was these people who feared the coming onslaught the most. There was a strong belief that they would all be killed, and considering the large amount of individuals with direct ties to the government payroll (2.5 million people out of an entire population of 19 million), that fear was widespread. Most families had at least one family member with a direct tie to the government in some way. Much of this fear of North Vietnamese reprisal came from atrocities committed in Hue 1968 during the T\u00e9t offensive where several hundreds of individuals with ties to the South Vietnamese government were executed. The second major reason was one that is very common for all wartime refugees: To escape the fighting. The possibility of getting killed was definitely very present for those who got stuck in the middle of the battles between the North and South and most chose to abandon their homes when they began to see how everyone else were fleeing the oncoming storm.\n\nAll in all, we can see that the refugee population was not at all in accordance with the general South Vietnamese population. Far more Catholics and merchants became refugees than farmers, and those living in urban environments had a far better opportunity to flee than those living more inland (which were the places who fell first to the North Vietnamese). Another very interesting note is that there was a very large amount of North Vietnamese amongst the refugees. These had been families and individuals who had fled from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, only to have to flee once more when the North Vietnamese Army were behind their backs. These were amongst those who feared the North Vietnamese the most.\n\nSo, what happened with the people who were unable to flee, were captured or ended up in refugee camps within the borders of South Vietnam in 1975?\n\nThis came as a surprise to anyone involved, but the newly unified Vietnamese government chose to focus on re-education rather than executions. However, this is not to say that executions or revenge killings didn't actually happen. It was not part of the official North Vietnamese policy, however, and there are no proper numbers for the amount of men executed. Those that were, however, were soldiers or police. Most chose to fight until the end or to commit suicide in these cases. All former personnel belonging to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN - South Vietnamese Army) had to attend these re-education camps in which they would be politically indoctrinated and \"cleansed\" from any imperialistic tendencies. This also applied to members belonging to the former South Vietnamese government, political organizations as well as those deemed to be \"corrupted\" under the former regime: doctors, lawyers and other professionals. The ordinary citizens had it far easier and had for the most part only deal with political courses in which they, in most cases, only had to send one member of their family to attend to get past it. If you belonged to the more decadent elements in society, you would be sent to a camp though.\n\nThese camps were of varied conditions. Some of them were straight forward re-education camps, but some were labour camps which resembled the Soviet Gulags. Hard labour was most definitely on the schedule and some men, in particular from the armed forces, were not released until 1987. \n\nSo to answer your original question: If you were a South Vietnamese prostitute, you'd be out of luck. Otherwise, you'd be alright.\n\nSources:\n\n *South Vietnam in 1975: The Year of Communist Victory* by John C. Donnell, *Asian Survey*, Vol. 16, No. 1, A Survey of Asia in 1975: Part I (Jan., 1976), pp. 1-13.\n\n*The \"Boat People\": Are They Refugees?* by B. Martin Tsamenyi, *Human Rights Quarterly*, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1983), pp. 348-373.\n\n*Why They Fled: Refugee Movement during the Spring 1975 Communist Offensive in South Vietnam* by Le-Thi-Que, A. Terry Rambo and Gary D. Murfin, *Asian Survey*, Vol. 16, No. 9 (Sep., 1976), pp. 855-863.\n\n*Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75* by George J. Veith. Encounter Books, 2012.\n\n*ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army* by Robert K. Brigham. University Press Of Kansas, 2006.", "I would love to post; unfortunately all I have is anecdotal evidence from my father's family who were upper class South Viets living in Saigon who escaped after the war.\n\nIf the moderators allow it, I could ask my dad any questions you'd like to know about what happened and what they did!"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "1l6pz5", "title": "Tuesday Trivia | It\u2019s Simply Not Done: Historical Etiquette", "selftext": "[Previous weeks\u2019 Tuesday Trivias](_URL_0_) \n\nWelcome to the AskHistorians Finishing School! Let\u2019s get prim and proper in Tuesday Trivia this week. **Tell us about some interesting examples of what was \u201ccorrect\u201d and \u201cincorrect\u201d behavior through history.** Any time, any place, any social standing. \n\n**Next Week on Tuesday Trivia:** Rags to Riches, Riches to Rags! We\u2019ll be talking about interesting examples of historical people who experienced significant changes in wealth (for better or for worse) during their lifetime. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l6pz5/tuesday_trivia_its_simply_not_done_historical/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cbw9ds3", "cbwajqn", "cbwaok6", "cbwbw4i", "cbwbzpc", "cbwc261", "cbwc45s", "cbwc5fr", "cbwdmsu", "cbwn0ey", "cbwyzg8"], "score": [106, 78, 45, 39, 18, 26, 52, 17, 32, 7, 7], "text": ["I've been reading James Howards [Shawnee](_URL_0_) this week, which has a section on hunting and trapping etiquette in the 18th Century. \n\nWhile a man is out hunting, he'll take whatever small animals he can find along the way and hang them in a tree out of reach of wolves and bears. If another man came upon them, it was incredibly bad form to take them. Likewise, if a man came upon a animal in another man's trap, it was expected that he'd deal with the animal, hang it in a nearby tree, and reset the trap, so that the original trapper could come and collect the animal later.\n\nIf two men came upon each other while hunting or trapping, they might accompany each other and work together. The first animal taken by either (or the best part of a large animal like a deer) was offered to the other and refusing was unacceptable. This hospitality was offered even to captives. The exception to this rule was if an otter was caught. A hunter or trapper was not obligated to offer the otter, but if he did so, etiquette demanded that the would-be recipient decline the offer. EDIT: Howard does not go into why otters received special treatment, but the high value of otterskin likely played a role.", "According to a biography I read on the Duke of Wellington a few years ago, on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was reviewing the troops in the front of his lines. Wellington just so happened to be reviewing his artillery positions at the same time and could see his opponent through his telescope. An artilleryman apparently suggested that he could shuffle *l'empereur* off this mortal coil with a single well-placed cannonball. Wellington treated that man to the most scornful look he could muster, then declared that \"Commanders of armies have better things to do than fire at each other.\" The line is immortalized in Sergei Bondarchuk's fantastic movie *Waterloo*. ", "My main lady Amy Vanderbilt on how to handle teenagers smoking... cornsilk:\n\n\u201cThe first signs of ersatz smoking should be treated in a relaxed manner and with some words such as these: \u201cI see you\u2019ve been smoking corn silk. It doesn\u2019t taste very good as I recall!\u201d (surprise on the child\u2019s part.) \u201cWhen you feel you must try your first real cigarette, tell me and I\u2019ll let you do it here at the home. No, I wouldn\u2019t like you to smoke regularly yet, for a great many reasons you\u2019re hearing in school. I would like you to wait until you\u2019re 18 or even 21.\u201d\n\nAlso, the very complicated way a businesswoman can pay a dinner check when taking a client out:\n\n\u201cYes you may, saying something such as \u2018This is business\u2014you\u2019re the firm\u2019s guest.\u2019 If the bill is to be paid at the desk, quietly put money to cover it on the check and ask your customer to take care of it. Either leave the tip yourself or ask him to take care of it out of the change. Try to avoid passing any money yourself, for other diners in the restaurant would not necessarily understand the circumstances.\u201d\u2018", "During the sway of Nelson's Navy, dining was a big deal aboard ships. Captains were expected to entertain nightly, and officers were formally invited at least weekly to the Captain's quarters for meals. If ships were traveling together (ships of the line) there were remarkably rigid rules for who ate where/invitations/dress, etc. \n\nThe thing that gets me is that the Captain was in charge of the conversation. If he did not speak to you, you sat in silence. Tremendous pressure to sit in 100+ degree weather, in a room often without windows, a ceiling no more than 5 feet high, wearing a wig, going through course after course (when supplies were in plenty), all while having to obey rigid rules of conversation, eating, and dealing with a myriad of social rules. \n\nAnd all of this was considered mannerly at the time for a gentleman. \n\nThere were times through a meal that everyone would converse with their partner, but the entire experience makes me thankful for sweatpants and a pb & amp;j on my couch. ", "How much of etiquette is involved in enforcing social class structures?  In other words, would the antibellum south have had such a focus on manners if it hadn't had the wide disparity of the destitute slaves and wealthy (but out numbered) plantation owners?", "For me, the incident that skicks out to me about WWI is the dogfight between Udet and Guynemer.  My fascination with arial warfare leads me to commit certain things to memory, but this one sticks out to me for its continuation of the ideals of chivalry in a most unchivalrous war.  \n\n[This video describes the fight](_URL_0_), but the moment for me is Udet realizing that he is doomed.  He is disarmed by a malfunction.  He knows that his enemy knows his situation, and that his opponent is a feared french ace who just killed Udet's friend.  Udet knows he has moments to live...and Guynemer spares him because it would not be fair to kill an unarmed opponent.  It just wasn't done.  \n\nThese rules were unwritten and applied inconsistently.  It was also ungentlemanly to follow a stricken plane down, but this taboo was broken when pilots faked being crippled to get away.  When the conflicts grew from one on one two tens of planes swirling in the sky, the opportunities for etiquette and the motivations to observe it became more scarce.  \n\nMany argue that chivalry in the air died during WWII, but that doesnt account for WWII pilots refraining from strafing an enemy in his parachute.  Of course, this taboo was also broken repeatedly and was applied differently in each theater, and possibly from pilot to pilot.  There are other examples, possibly most famously a [German pilot refusing to destroy a stricken Allied bomber](_URL_1_).  But for as divorced from their opponent as pilots were--confined to their own machine, often mentally approaching combat as a contest between machines and not men--it is remarkable how human they could sometimes choose to act. ", "In the early 1900's it was improper for a man to ask a lady to relinquish her seat.\n\nWhen the RMS Titanic sank in 1912. Carlos Hurd, a writer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and his wife Katherine were on their way to Europe aboard the RMS Carpathia. After the Carpathia picked up the survivors form the Titanic wreck, the Captain tried everything he could to prevent Carlos from interviewing the survivors and writing a story while they headed back to the United States, even confiscating all the stationary on the ship so that he had to write the story on toilet paper. He and his wife interviewed the survivors of the Titanic, but the Captain was determined to maintain a news blackout and he would keep searching the Hurd's cabin to find their material.\n\nEvery time the captain would come search the cabin, Katherine would place the interviews beneath her seat cushion and stay seated until they were finished, thereby preventing the seizure of their interviews.\n\nEdit: 1912 ( I wrote this at work sorry)", "I've been meaning to ask a question on this subreddit lately that seems suitable here. What as the etiquette for duels in 18th-19th century Europe? Duels are made out to be common in popular fiction, but I can't imagine that people were willing to die over every insult. So I would suppose that challenging a person to a duel either was a very big deal or an event with a number of opportunities to back out, if not both.\n\nI've seen an *awful* lot of myths about that - some of them even here on /r/AskHistorians! - so I would appreciate reliable sources.", "Northern Indo-European tribes had a taboo against mentioning the bear's name as it was a jinx on the hunt. The result is that Balto-Slavic and Germanic tribes do not preserve the IE word for a bear (preserved in Latin as *ursus*, Greek *arktos*, etc...). All that survives are the euphemisms they had in its place: English *bear* \"the brown one\", Russian *medved* \"honey-licker\", etc...", "Jewish ritual has *tons* of things that, while they're religious laws, are essentially rules of etiquette for religious communities.  The etiquette surrounding mourning is particularly interesting to me because there are so many of them, and they're still fairly commonly practiced and assumed as etiquette even among relatively integrated Jewish communities.\n\nFor the funeral and such, Jewish ritual places a massive value on treating the dead well, because it's the only time you can do something for another person where you can't think they'll pay you back.  As a consequence, it is customary to have people guarding the body around the clock until the funeral.  At the funeral itself, the body is to be buried by the mourners--burial shouldn't be left to strangers.  Even outside traditional communities, it's still near universal to have mourners at least bury the casket until it is covered, and bury it completely if there a large number of mourners.  Everyone begins their turn burying with the shovel upside-down, using the underside to hold dirt at the beginning.\n\nFor the seven-day mourning period, people are to visit the mourners and bring them food.  Some Jewish communities (ones from Yemen) don't pass food hand-to-hand, reserving that action for mourners, so they're feeding them in a physical way.  Bringing people food is still an assumed default thing for people to do for mourners (there's an amusing anecdote I could tell from last week involving Jews trying to figure out what they're supposed to do for people in mourning besides bring them food), with chicken, brisket, and brownies as the most common foods.  There are anecdotes I have of people *breaking in to mourners houses while they're out of town at the funeral* to leave food in their fridge, which is regarded as uncommon, but certainly not outside the bounds of courtesy towards mourners.  It's actually *more* courteous than bringing them food later, not less.\n\nThe religious rules of actually visiting mourners are again a complex set of etiquette rules.  Visitors visiting mourners are supposed to never speak to the mourner unless spoken to, and never introduce a topic to the mourners (this isn't so universal nowadays, and is practically rather challenging with large numbers of people).  The mourners are supposed to always sit lower than visitors, which is usually done by having mourners sit on a low stool or short chair.  Visitors also are to abstain from practices forbidden of mourners, such as singing or looking in mirrors (which are traditionally covered or taken down in houses of mourning).\n\nAgain, what's so interesting about these is that they're still assumed etiquette even outside traditional communities.  Bringing over food to someone who's just had a family member die is simply an assumed act, as is visiting them, rather than simply dropping food off.  There are, of course, very interesting rules of etiquette surrounding other Jewish rituals, but they're not nearly so formalized, and tend to not be so deeply ingrained in Jewish culture.", "From Desiderius Erasmus' *De civilitate morum puerilium* (*A Handbook on Good Manners for Children*, 1530):\n\n >  It is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating... (qui urinam reddit aut alvum exonerat)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Tuesday+Trivia%22&amp;restrict_sr=on&amp;sort=new&amp;t=all"], "answers_urls": [["http://books.google.com/books?id=qJY0AAAAMAAJ"], [], [], [], [], ["http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylgMb2km3s", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident"], [], [], [], [], []]}
{"q_id": "3201q3", "title": "Why was Plato able to build the Academy in Athens and write dialogues featuring Socrates without fear of also being executed?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3201q3/why_was_plato_able_to_build_the_academy_in_athens/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq6nlfs"], "score": [106], "text": ["It is easy to view Socrates' execution through the lens of totalitarian control of free speech or the stamping out of heresy, but in most respects these don't really fit the situation. Socrates' execution was not part of a broad campaign to stamp out dangerous ideology, it was very specifically targeted on Socrates and specifically happening at that particular time. As is pointed out in both Plato and Xenophon's *Apologies* the actual contents of Socrates' thought was in most respects rather incidental to his execution, if not outright contradictory of the charges. It is, for example, very difficult to view his thought as actually atheistic (which is something that could get you in trouble) or as a rejection of morality. Conventional morality had already been challenged by the sophists, and it is somewhat difficult to imagine Socrates as being more threatening than, say, Gorgias. And to top it all off, Socrates himself was seventy at his time of his trial and had been doing his thing for decades before.\n\nNow unfortunately it is very difficult to actually know why Socrates was executed despite its popularity as a story because we don't have a single speech, or even an example of a theoretical speech, against him. All we have are the presentations of the opposing arguments within the two Apologies: Xenophon had little interest in portraying the opposing side sympathetically, and Plato had clearly not yet developed his talent for presenting strong opposing arguments, as the accuser Meletus is quite possibly the worst interlocutor to appear in any dialogue. Most people today therefore focus on the rather damning association that Socrates had built up in his life. Critias, one of leaders of the brutal Thirty Tyrants, was an old associate of Socrates. Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens (twice!), was another old friend (despite Plato's dialogues making clear a pretty significant amount of mutual lust they seemingly never consummated an eramenous/erastes relationship). Perhaps more importantly however, the sorts of people Socrates kept in his circle were the sorts of rich and well born idle young men who were thought of, with justification, as sympathetic to the Thirty Tyrants--a good example would be Xenophon himself, who was both pretty nakedly oligarchic (although also somewhat liberal in a modern sense--he is an interesting guy) and had joined a Persian army as a mercenary a few years before. In short, Socrates *as a person* was viewed as a threat to the democracy.\n\nSo it wasn't really about thought control or stamping out dangerous ideologies. It was about Socrates *as an individual*."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "23l0bu", "title": "How did German military doctrine differ from Allied and Soviet doctrine during WW2, and what happened to German doctrine afterwards", "selftext": "Many militaries today use doctrines that have evolved from either allied/NATO doctrine or from Soviet/Russian doctine, depending on whose sphere of influence they were in. I guess I have two questions regarding German doctrine here:\n\n* Did German doctrine differ much from the others, and in what ways?\n* If it did differ, were there any strong points from German doctrine that were picked up by others after WW2 was over, or was this knowledge lost?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23l0bu/how_did_german_military_doctrine_differ_from/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cgy43fw", "cgy67d6", "cgymf9m"], "score": [222, 31, 2], "text": ["Yes, German doctrine did differ a lot from both the Allies and the Soviets.\n\nAll of course changed throughout the war, as what was available to commanders changed and the strategic possibilities and constraints changed.\n\n**The Germans**\n\nThe Germans entered ww2 with one of the absolute best armies the world have ever seen. Building on their experience in ww1, where they had developed both operational and tactic doctrines that were well-adopted for both trench and more open fighting. Flexible defence, where you deployed small groups of troops to the front to hold the line and reserves to the back allowed them to delay and then counter-attack an enemy attack both tactically and operationally (note - tactics involves small units, operations divisions and corps and strategy large armies and logistics). A quick counter-attack to retake lost territory while the enemy was still trying to organise his defence, bring his heavy weapons up, entrench and re-align his artillery to provide defensive fire was often devastatingly effective.\n\nOn the offence, the Germans had developed infiltration tactics, meaning that small heavily armed groups of men would attack and bypass strongpoints and heavy resistance to allow following troops to neutralise them, and continue deep into the enemy line to attack support weapons, artillery and logistics and other rear area troops to cause the most destruction.\n\nBuilding on these two doctrines, the Germans added a concentration of force - especially tanks - and the idea of punching even deeper to completely disrupt the enemy force. This is what Anglo-Saxon sources love to call *'Blitzkrieg'* (the Germans themselves never gave it a name other than *'Schwerpunkt'* - conctration point). Combined with a strong air force and close co-operation between tactical bombers (German infantry would often have Luftwaffe liason officers attached for communition and requests of air support), the Germans brought a revolutionising co-ordination and focus on air support to the battlefield in ww2.\n\nGerman NCOs were extremely well trained - the Reichswehr, the 100 000 man army the Weimar Republic was allowed was trained so that every soldier could be an NCO, every NCO an officer and so on, to allow for a rapid expansion. German NCOs led from the front, died at a higher rate than regular soldiers, trained with their soldiers, ate with their soldiers and brought a very strong unit cohesion to German units, especially early war. It can probably be said that German NCOs led and kept the German army together throughout the war.\n\nGerman officers and NCOs were not only very well trained - they were also allowed an extreme level of independence of action in what the Germans called *auftragstaktik*, or mission tactics. The unit was given a mission to solve and allowed a high degree of freedom to solve the mission how they saw most fit (as they were on the ground close to the objective). NCOs and lower officers were also encouraged to take opportunities without waiting for orders as the time to get a confirmation from higher command could mean that the opportunity was lost.\n\nThe Germans excelled in tactics and operations, but were not as good in artillery tactics, logistics and strategy as their opponents, especially the British and Americans.\n\n*Auftragstaktik* was picked up by the Western Allies after the war, and is more or less standard for any western army today. Combined arms warfare, adapted to the armies of the time, is also standard in all armies today, as is concentration of armoured assets in specialised divisions.\n\nSoviets, British and Americans will follow below.", "*Have to go. Will be back to expand on points and add sources.\n\n**Air power**\n\nThe German's focused on developing very fast, highly offensive shock tactics in the post-WW1 era (specifically in 1936+). Ernst Udet was in charge of shaping the Luftwaffe in the iner-war years, and a focus was placed on fast planes used to support offensive operations, instead of long range, high volume bombers.\n\nAgain, the favor of medium planes and the lack of long range bombers was an intentional choice to support the \"blitzkrieg\" concept. Hitler, and his various top planners abhorred the idea of static warfare.\n\nThis lead to dive bombing planes such as the \"Stucka\" Ju 87s making up a large portion of the bombing forces.\n\nThis concept worked very well in the opening stages of the war, such as the offensive against Poland and France. However, it lead to strategic weaknesses as the war dragged on. German planes were short range, requiring airstrips closer to the targets, and the carried relatively few bombs compared to something like an allied B-17 (Stuka carries 990lbs of bombs compared to a B-17 load of 8000lbs). The Germans could not really conduct effective long range, strategic bombing of logistical facilities the same way the allies could. \n\n***\n\n**German machinegun tactics.**\n\nThe Germans integrated real machineguns into their squads in the form of putting 4 MG42/MG34 machineguns into a platoon, which meant 12 machineguns in a company. Their tactics used the machinegun facilitating a lot of the movement. What the Germans did in WW2 with machineguns became the blueprint that the US and other western countries have since copied and expanded on. \n\nIn contrast, the US issued Browning 1919 machineguns as company or battalion level assets. They supported the troops but were not as integrated into lower levels. A US rifle squad did use Browning Automatic rifles [(TO & E diagram)](_URL_0_), but those were more like oversized battle rifles and not true machineguns.\n\n(As a semi-related sidenote, after the war the US combined the designs of the MG-42 and FG-42 to create the T44 machinegun. That design was continually evolved upon and eventually created the M-60 machinegun.)\n\n***\n\n**Airborne**\n\nThe German command was enthralled with the idea of airborne operations. During the Battle of the Netherlands in 1940, the Germans dropped two divisions of airborne troops. It was the first large airborne operation in history (although the Italians beat them to the punch for the first ever airborne drop.)\n\n***\n\n**Tanks.**\n\nGermans built impressive tanks, although the aspects of their abilities have become somewhat mythically inflated.\n\nThe Russians first integrated sloped armor in their tanks with the T-34. (Sloped armor effectively makes the armor thicker without adding weight when an AT round is first head on.) The Germans were impressed, and copied the sloped armor concept for their Panther and Tiger II tanks.\n\nThe German tanks had notoriously hard to crack armor. This reputation is especially heightened because the allied tanks were still using IFV type designs instead of tanks with main guns designed to defeat other tanks. The Sherman tanks main gun was not powerful enough to consistently defeat the more heavily armored German tanks. This lead to the creation of \"Firefly\" Shermans which used enhanced main guns.\n\nGerman tanks were built with a much more \"hands on\" process. In popular culture this has been spun into a positive which supposedly reflects superior German craftsmanship and respect for detail. The reality though, is that without identical parts, this made the tanks more difficult to repair and more time consuming to build. The Germans had to make their tanks by hand because they didn't have the powerhouse logistics the way the US did. (The US used retooled car factories to pump out large amounts of identical vehicles very quickly.)  \n\n***\n\n**Helmets**\n\nThe German helmet design was hands down the best of all the countries involved in the war. After the war, everyone recognized this, although it took many years for the shape to be widely adopted because of the Nazi stigma attached to the shape. \n", "The germans developed their offensive doctrine from the works of liddel hart and other soviet strategists in the 20s and 30s. Through literature from people like heinz guderian and the small scale exercises by the germans in the mid 30s and the condor legions experience in the spanish civil war, the result of these was Blitzkrieg, literally lightning war. The essence of Blitzkrieg starts with the organization of the main heavy hitting components of the german army together into light, mobile formations with a premium put on communication. Tanks (panzer I  &  IIs), armoured troop carrying half tracks, Self propelled Artillery (SIGs), Light and Medium bombers (JU87 Stuka and He111s) would concentrate their forces at a percieved vulnerable point and blast open a hole in the front line while the light mobile armored units would drive into the enemy rear hitting vulnerable points and cutting off retreating troops while less mobile infantry units followed and consolidated the ground. See the Battle of Sedan for a perfect blitzkrieg scenario. \n\nThe way blitzkrieg differed from allied doctrine was that other than the soviets nobody had come close to using the tank to its full potential. The french for example had alot more tanks and alot heavier tanks like the Char B but they dispersed them and used them as infantry support. The way the allies eventually beat the germans in europe was by copying blitzkrieg and putting their own spin on it. The soviets learned the hard way by losing millions of troops to german encirclements brought on by blitzkrieg. But the soviets learned them well and went on to create the operational art of maneuver warfare. The counter-attack after Stalingrad,  Operation Bagration and the encirclement of berlin are all good examples of soviet ability to learn. Im sure ill be hacked apart by my fellow WW2 enthusiasts but im typing this on my phone with my kids jumping all over me. The reason I mentioned only the german and russian armies is that the eastern front was a titanic struggle that developed the future army doctrines of the great powers and showcased the beauty and potential of armoured maneuver warfare. The soviet operational maneuver groups that threatened western europe during the cold war and the american armoured cavalry regiments using AirLand Battle doctrine were all born of the beast of the eastern front."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/images/ww2/handbook/rifle_squad.gif"], []]}
{"q_id": "65v49n", "title": "On April 17th, 1907, Ellis Island processed 11,747 immigrants...more than twice as many as an average day. What led to this?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/65v49n/on_april_17th_1907_ellis_island_processed_11747/", "answers": {"a_id": ["dgf4gn2"], "score": [13], "text": ["According to [this dataset](_URL_0_) on April 16th, 1907, there were 3702 immigrants processed. On April 18th of that same year, just 1314 immigrants were processed. So what happened on the 17th?\n\nHere are all the ships that came in on the 17th of April, 1907:\n\nCount  |  Date  | Port | Ship\n\n2409\t04/17/1907\tNaples\tRepublic\n\n2299\t04/17/1907\tLiverpool\tCarmania\n\n2222\t04/17/1907\tRotterdam, Holland\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n1600\t04/17/1907\tTrieste\tGerty\n\n1317\t04/17/1907\tLiverpool\tOceanic\n\n521\t04/17/1907\tCopenhagen\tUnited States\n\n491\t04/17/1907\tQueenstown\tOceanic\n\n401\t04/17/1907\tChristiansand\tUnited States\n\n396\t04/17/1907\tQueenstown\tCarmania\n\n375\t04/17/1907\tChristiania\tUnited States\n\n232\t04/17/1907\tSt. Michaels\tRepublic\n\n65\t04/17/1907\tKr. Ania\tUnited States\n\n22\t04/17/1907\tKingston\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n18\t04/17/1907\tColon\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n11\t04/17/1907\tPort Limon, Costa Rica\tLiberia\n\n8\t04/17/1907\tSt. Michaels, Azores\tRepublic\n\n8\t04/17/1907\tSavanilla\tPrinz Eitel Friedrich\n\n5\t04/17/1907\tJamaica\tJoseph J. Cuneo\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tCartagena, Colombia\tLiberia\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tSavanilla\tLiberia\n\n2\t04/17/1907\tLa Guaira, Venezuela\tMaracaibo\n\n1\t04/17/1907\tSt. Lucia\tPydna\n\n\nNow compare that to the 16th:\n\n\n1509\t04/16/1907\tAntwerp\tFinland\n\n1480\t04/16/1907\tHavre\tLa Gascogne\n\n387\t04/16/1907\tRotterdam, Holland\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n163\t04/16/1907\tHavana\tMorro Castle\n\n115\t04/16/1907\tBoulogne\tNieuw Amsterdam\n\n49\t04/16/1907\tAntwerp via Dover\tFinland\n\nor the 18th:\n\n1068\t04/18/1907\tBremen\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n127\t04/18/1907\tCherbourg, France\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n81\t04/18/1907\tSouthampton\tKronprinz Wilhelm\n\n37\t04/18/1907\tColon\tAllianca\n\n1\t04/18/1907\tBaracoa, Cuba\tFagertun\n\nAs is clearly evident, a *lot* of ships came in on the 17th. But not just any ships, in fact several of the largest ships of their particular fleets all arrived at Ellis Island that day. The Carmania (on the liverpool line) alone holds more passengers than the entirety that arrived on the following day on all ships. If you look further in the dataset, you can see that whenever the Carmania on the liverpool line pulls into Ellis Island, *lots* of passengers are discharged. Here's some [more info](_URL_1_) on that ship in particular.\n\nSo I think on that particular 17th of April, a bunch of huge ships all arrived at the same time. "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hopperrr/ellis-immigration-by-ship/gh-pages/data/trips.tsv", "http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2011/03/liverpool-ellis-island-aboard-carmania/"]]}
{"q_id": "1q1ogr", "title": "What is the story behind President Andrew Jackson's adopted Creek Indian son, Lyncoya?", "selftext": "I haven't really been able to read a lot about Lyncoya but I'm very interested in what his life was like living with the Jacksons and how he was treated. From what I could gather online, I know he died from tuberculosis at around the age of 17 in either 1828 or 1829. Another thing that I'd be very interested in knowing is the role Lyncoya played in his father's second Presidential campaign throughout 1828 before his death. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1q1ogr/what_is_the_story_behind_president_andrew/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cd8o5fg"], "score": [6], "text": ["While there is not a great amount of information available on Lyncoya Jackson it is thought he was born sometime around 1811 and was found found as an infant after the Battle of Talladega in November of 1813 near his deceased mother.  Jackson decided to adopted this child and provided him educational opportunities similar to Jackson's biological son.  Apparently Jackson was grooming Lyncoya to enter West Point, but did not pursue that idea based on political considerations.  Lyncoya became a saddle maker and as mentioned died around 17 years of age.  Although there is no known direct information it is unlikely Lyncoya sired any children. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2kvv38", "title": "What was the reaction to the rise of Unitarianism and Universalism in New England?", "selftext": "Unitarian and Universalist beliefs are quite different from some more traditional Christian beliefs. How did the more traditional people in New England react to these movements during their introduction and rise? I've never heard anything about this topic, really, but I imagine there must have been some tension, at least.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kvv38/what_was_the_reaction_to_the_rise_of_unitarianism/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clptqgz"], "score": [3], "text": ["I can speak to the conflict between Congregationalists and Unitarians, at least. I'm aware of a substantial amount of tension between Methodist missionaries like Peter Cartwright and Universalist groups on the early 19th century \"frontier\" (Ohio at the time), but doesn't quite get to your question. The Unitarians and Universalists didn't merge until 1961, but perhaps there were some other Congregational-Universalist conflicts that I'm not aware of.\n\nIf you go to Cambridge, Massachusetts you'll see a pattern that's repeated in many other New England towns. First Parish in Cambridge is just across the street from Harvard Yard, and First Church in Cambridge is a few blocks away from the town center. Obviously the question is which is the real first church. \n\nThe answer goes back to a court case in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1818. But some background first: according to its members, the first Unitarian church in the United States was King's Chapel in Boston. That was a bit of an outlier in the Unitarian movement, however, as the Unitarian leanings of the church were more closely connected to one pastor's personal revelation than a broader movement. The real Unitarian moment in New England didn't come until the early 19th century. Charismatic Unitarian preachers claimed that an academic reading of scripture led to the inevitable conclusion that God was a unity rather than a trinity (in addition to a collection of other conclusions), and the message spread rapidly. You can take a look at William Ellery Channing's [Baltimore Sermon](_URL_1_) if you're interested in what sort of message these ministers were spreading at the time.\n\nUnitarian converts started to take over Congregationalist institutions. Traditionalists panicked as a Unitarian was appointed to Harvard's Hollis professorship in 1805 -- which led directly to the founding of Harvard Divinity School. HDS became Harvard's first independent graduate school specifically because university leaders wanted to reassure traditional Congregationalists that their sons could still receive an undergraduate education untainted by Unitarian ideas -- which would be confined to the Divinity School slightly off campus. Still, many parents opted to send their children to Yale instead, which retained its status as a bastion of old-style New England Congregationalism.\n\nThat institutional takeover went down to the church level as well, which brings us back to the churches by Harvard Yard. Congregational churches were largely independent from one another without any larger governing hierarchy. Ministers were chosen by parishes (everyone who lived in town). Therefore, when a sufficient number of a townspeople turned Unitarian they then had the power to elect a Unitarian minister -- regardless of the wishes of the church's actual members. Obviously, that led to some conflict. \n\nIn 1818, when the people of Dedham elected a Unitarian minister for the town's church, its Orthodox members protested by taking up all of the church's documents and valuables elsewhere. They insisted that they alone had the right to decide the leadership of their church, despite the fact that the church was supported with public funds. There were further arguments and trials, which there's a bit more on [here](_URL_0_). But the upshot is that the Unitarians won and the traditionalists had to leave and start their own church.\n\nSo First Parish in Cambridge is Unitarian -- the original church taken over by the Unitarian townspeople in the early 19th century. First Church is Congregationalist -- the traditionalists who split away and moved down the road. Of course, there were impassioned theological debates taking place alongside all this, but that's a subject for another post."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop9/workshopplan/stories/178594.shtml", "http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN212/unitarian.html"]]}
{"q_id": "3i1jxi", "title": "Why did France sink the Rainbow Warrior?", "selftext": "I've read several books about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, and seen a documentary about it, but none of the above said WHY France did it.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i1jxi/why_did_france_sink_the_rainbow_warrior/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cucjoig", "cucnsh5"], "score": [77, 4], "text": ["The goal was simply to stop the vessel from completing its planned 1985 trip to Moruroa to protest/stop the testing of French nuclear weapons.  The tests were seen as vital to French national security and the only way to remain independent of US or USSR influence.\n\nThe bombing of the Rainbow Warrior only sounds shocking if we do not take into account the full history of French interference of groups who might oppose their nuclear testing pattern. France was very concerned about the activities of Greenpeace- they had agents infiltrate the group.  They had worked hard to mute any opposition to testing from within French Polynesia, manufacturing a case to exile autonomy/independence minded leader Pouvanaa a Oopa until he accepted nuclear testing.\n\nThe whole thing was bizarre; so I can see why you are still asking why even after reading/learning about it.  The affair, which landed several French agents in a New Zealand jail for some time, ended up far more embarrassing for France than if they had just allowed Greenpeace to attempt to interfere with the testing.  More protesters ended up coming than might have otherwise been inclined and Greenpeace sent a greater part of their own resources attempting to disrupt the French testing after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in harbor.\n\nFyi, for those who don't know about this event: Metaphorically, one of the biggest bombs France detonated in the Pacific was the bomb secretly attached to the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior.  French agents set several explosives on the ship in an effort to keep it from interfering with upcoming French nuclear tests at Moruroa.  The bombing was scandalous, and immediately suspicious.  While terrorism is not new, nor new to the Pacific; the bombing of a peace ship in neutral and nuclear-free New Zealand was startling.  French agents were sent on a bizarrely complex mission, posing as tourist divers and swiss holiday seekers in order to penetrate New Zealand.  Their French accents and spending habits gave them away when locals searched for culprits after the bombing.  The agents were careless, not hiding their activities very well and leaving behind a trail of evidence afterwards that made the whole venture painfully obvious; though hard to believe that France would bomb a peace ship in the harbor of an ally.\n\nThis was not the only crazy political move France made in the 80's- so like I said, we shouldn't see it in a vacuum.  Between 1975-80, France was responsible for instigating secessionist movements against the new government in Vanuatu.  In 1986-87 France was condemned by the South Pacific Forum and the UN for its actions in New Caledonia hostage crisis- hostages had been taken by Kanak independence activists, French special forces stormed the cave on Ouv\u00e9a where they were being held resulting in 20 deaths- the whole thing was pretty brutal with serious allegations that France had executed some of the hostage takers on the spot (the whole affair is part of a longer cycle of government violence in New Caledonia).  In 1987 France offered aid to Fiji immediately after a coup when New Zealand and Australia had withdrawn foreign aid- French support for a military coup was not seen very favorable by other Pacific powers.  The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was just one in a long line of political missteps that damaged French influence in the region in the ensuing decades.", "In addition to the other posts, the Rainbow Worrier would have acted as a \"Mother ship\" to many of the smaller yachts so allowing them to stay on site for longer."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "4ishwm", "title": "Suppose you're an English Lord living around 1110 to 1120, how often would you actually eat one of those giant lavish multi-course feasts that people tend to dwell on when they talk about medieval dinning?", "selftext": "Was it everyday or just for special events, or was it like the equivalent of Sunday diner, regular but not every meal?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ishwm/suppose_youre_an_english_lord_living_around_1110/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d315ywm"], "score": [54], "text": ["I'd just like to say, you give a tiny timeframe. Any reason for this?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2crtvu", "title": "What was the colour of the hair of Ramses II? And the race of the egyptians? Were they black, or semitic or what?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2crtvu/what_was_the_colour_of_the_hair_of_ramses_ii_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjieb93", "cjije5g", "cjj69jp"], "score": [50, 29, 3], "text": ["\"Semitic\" is not a race, it's a linguistic group. A blonde haired, blue eyed Syrian is a Semite just like a tan Egyptian or a jet black Sudanese woman (provided they all speak Arabic or a more obscure Semitic language). Ancient Egyptian wasn't a Semitic language but it was in the same family (Afroasiatic) and it certainly influenced modern Semitic languages, at least in the Nile region.\n\nRace generally is a problematic concept to use when talking about pre-modern history because many people have had no concept of race, or a much different one than ours. Luckily, with the Egyptians we have [a lot of art made by Egyptians which seems to depict them very realistically](_URL_0_)\n\nAs you can see, ancient Egyptians broadly resembled modern Egyptians and most other Arabs. While you can find depictions of white and black people, most people depicted are neither strictly speaking black or white, but tan.", "Later Pharaohs are definitely white because of the Ptolemaic dynasty from Macedonian extract.\n\nHowever, genetic testing on native Egyptian pharaohs has shown diverse results: For example, Ramesses III is part of [Haplotype E1b1a](_URL_3_) which today is most common amongst the ethnic groups of Ethiopia and East Africa, yet Tutankhamun (aka Tut) is [R1b](_URL_0_ which is a very European group.\n\nEDIT: Also, they were not [Semitic](_URL_2_) who were a distantly related group within the same [family](_URL_1_).  \n", "hi! this question is oddly common here. You may find additional info in these posts:\n\n[What race were the ancient egyptians? In the media the portrayal of their skin colour and facial features often differs.](_URL_4_)\n\n\n[Would the people of ancient Egypt be considered proto-Greek or are does that time period pre-date any sort of Greek race?](_URL_5_)\n\n[Were black people the ruling class in ancient Egypt?](_URL_2_)\n\n[Was Cleopatra VII black?](_URL_10_)\n\n[How are ancient peoples different from their modern successors? Modern Egyptians-Ancient Egyptians, Italians-Romans, Persians-Iranians ect.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Racism in the ancient world?](_URL_6_)\n\n[What skin color did Ancient Egyptians have?](_URL_3_)\n\n[Did Ancient Egyptians have black skin?](_URL_7_)\n\n[What was the racial composition of Ancient Egypt?](_URL_9_)\n\n[What was the primary ethnic or racial group in Ancient Egypt?](_URL_8_)\n\n[what race/ethnicity were the ancient egyptians?](_URL_1_)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["https://www.google.com.eg/search?q=ancient+egyptian+art&amp;es_sm=93&amp;tbm=isch&amp;imgil=5WOMWIUZ5k8LbM%253A%253BijBiPPVWYBJ8SM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com%25252F2011%25252F03%25252Fancient-egypt.html&amp;source=iu&amp;usg=__RLeTRuJvqxoTXD3n5oNCyegvkxc%3D&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=8ATiU62aOYO57AbsyYDQCw&amp;ved=0CB4Q9QEwAA&amp;biw=1242&amp;bih=606#facrc=_&amp;imgdii=_&amp;imgrc=5WOMWIUZ5k8LbM%253A%3BijBiPPVWYBJ8SM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F4.bp.blogspot.com%252F-YvTnKULH_GI%252FTWjJdCNgQJI%252FAAAAAAAADgE%252FYKCK6HI-cAg%252Fs640%252FAncient%252BEgypt%252B-%252B%2525252854%25252529.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com%252F2011%252F03%252Fancient-egypt.html%3B450%3B300"], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages", "http://ethiohelix.blogspot.com/2012/12/ramesses-iii-belonged-to-ydna.html"], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19f8cm/how_are_ancient_peoples_different_from_their/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ax5ph/what_raceethnicity_were_the_ancient_egyptians/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/udq1z/were_black_people_the_ruling_class_in_ancient/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dclp1/what_skin_color_did_ancient_egyptians_have/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1uc8n6/what_race_were_the_ancient_egyptians_in_the_media/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ua2dg/would_the_people_of_ancient_egypt_be_considered/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17r3o2/racism_in_the_ancient_world/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1px0og/did_ancient_egyptians_have_black_skin/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f9sxa/what_was_the_primary_ethnic_or_racial_group_in/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n1p0q/what_was_the_racial_composition_of_ancient_egypt/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u28mh/was_cleopatra_vii_black/"]]}
{"q_id": "4ck9r6", "title": "On Roman Centurion Galea helmets, did the direction of the plume signify anything?", "selftext": "Some are [vertical](_URL_1_) , others are [horizontal](_URL_0_), and I was just wondering if there was a symbolic difference between the two, or if it was purely aesthetic?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ck9r6/on_roman_centurion_galea_helmets_did_the/", "answers": {"a_id": ["d1jjkqi"], "score": [5], "text": ["Follow up questions:\n\nDid the colour of the plume (red, blue, yellow, black...) meant something?\n\nWhat was the penalty if it were dirtied/damaged outside of combat?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://i.imgur.com/u5hvFY7.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/ggOftyO.jpg"], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "3qba9h", "title": "What were the religious practices in pre-Christian Scotland?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qba9h/what_were_the_religious_practices_in_prechristian/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cweg9ck"], "score": [3], "text": ["Can't attest to Scotland, though Iron Age burial custom in the north of Ireland - which was culturally very similar to Scotland, with migration and religious ideologies moving in a two-way process - was for cremation, and there was probably some excarnation as well.\n\nDruidism was popular in Ireland, if the early Christian monk's writing is anything to go by. Votive offerings were made, possibly to propitiate the gods and ensure the continued fertility of the soil. Druids would have worked as intermediaries between the spirit world and reality, and peasants would have been terrified of offending the gods.\n\nThere was certainly a belief in life after death, and if the stone circles and henges are anything to go, sun worship was a part of the cultural package.\n\nIrish culture became more ingrained in Scotland as time went on, and we really don't know much about the Picts, but if you believe that they were a Celtic society - which is prevailing theory - then they would have had gods similar to Dagda, Morrigan, and the 'Dis Pater' that the Romans claimed the Gauls worshipped.\n\nAs the Iron Age progressed, and the influence of Roman and Romano-British settlement was felt, inhumation became more popular.\n\nGood sources on this would incude Colin Renfrew and Barry Raftery, whose *Pagan Celtic Ireland* I've drawn on."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[]]}
{"q_id": "2hz7e5", "title": "\"Alexander conquered the known world\". I've heard that or variations on it said many times and it always makes me wonder why China, North Africa and Europe don't count as the \"known world\"?", "selftext": "The Greeks did know about all three places", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2hz7e5/alexander_conquered_the_known_world_ive_heard/", "answers": {"a_id": ["ckxffwm", "ckxr7zo"], "score": [29, 4], "text": ["Yeah, Alexander was made to turn around when attempting to invade India, and was planning on attacking the coastal kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula when he died. He might have considered the Greek colonies in the Mediterrenean his allies in spirit if not in arms (we're talking Greek colonies in Spain, France, Sicily and Italy now), but the fledgling Roman alliance and above all Carthage was out of his grasp (although Rome was mostly irrelevant at this time).\n\nThe Greeks considered the Carthaganians offshoots of the Phoenicians of the Levant, and fighting between Syracusae (a Greek colony) and Carthage in Sicily during the time of the Persian invasion of Greece that would culminate in the Battle of Salamis was interpreted as an alliance between Carthage and Persia by the Greeks (there's little to no evidence of such an alliance outside Greek sources, and the general consensus among scholars today is that there were no such alliance).\n\nWhat Alexander did was to conquer the greatest Empire of the known world. India was largely unknown at the time, the proto-Arab states were small fish on the international scene, Rome was nowhere near its later size and power.\n\nOnce could say that Alexander had conquered all relevant parts of the known world (except Carthage) and had allegiance from all Greeks (except the Spartans).\n\nEurope beyond the Greek, Aechemenid and Carthaganian world was filled with barbarian tribes that offered little but potential slaves to a would-be conqueror. China and India was mostly unknown then.", "That statement is a bit of a fallacy and it has fallen out of favour in recent years. It stems from the heavily eurocentric idea that the classical world was an isolated font of civilization surrounded by savage barbarians.\n\n/u/vonadler already covered it very well but I just want to reiterate certain parts of what he said. Instead of the 'known world' it is more accurate to say the 'rich and relevant parts of the world'. This is a bit of a generalisation, but the Greeks were aware of the fact that there were many unexplored places and cultures in the world, but most simply didn't care. Why bother with conquering a small nomadic tribe in an empty steppe when an empire with the richest cities known to you could be yours?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "321e1a", "title": "Did the Union consider charging, trying, and executing Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis after the former's surrender at Appomattox? Relatedly, how did Lee hope the South would reintegrate?", "selftext": "In honor of the 150th anniversary of Lee's surrender, I was thinking about the intended and unintended consequences of Appomattox. Apparently some of Lincoln's councilors [did recommend](_URL_0_) charging Davis, but ultimately decided it would cause more unrest than it would avoid.\n\nIs that accurate? How exactly did Union leadership react to the surrender? \n\nAnd simultaneously, what was Lee's life like after Appomattox? An entry in the Times's blog, \"Disunion,\" suggests Lee wanted a [quiet reintegration](_URL_1_) with the Union, but his lieutenants, instead, fostered the \"Lost Cause\" myth that gave/continues to give us so much trouble today. Is there any merit to that claim? ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/321e1a/did_the_union_consider_charging_trying_and/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cq7255u", "cq7ec88"], "score": [68, 7], "text": ["Lee had a relatively quite life after the war, doing his most to ease tensions and not draw attention to himself. After living in Richmond for a while he moved to Lexington Virginia to become President of Washington College (Now Washington and Lee) a small college sharing a campus with VMI, and spent the rest of his life there, and is buried in the chapel. \n\nHe most notably did not engage in any writing or letter campaign to defend his conduct of the war, and was critical of personalities like Jubal Early and Davis who were very vocal about their opinions and attempts by Radical Republicans who supported a harsh Reconstruction. However the Lost Cause movement didnt really get going until a few years after Lee's death in 1870. \n\n\nAnother side note. The surrender at Appomattox was not, and was never intended to be a general surrender of CSA forces. It was only the capitulation of those forces immediately under Lee's command excluding even those cavalry forces away from Lee's main body. Grant however was very conscious of the war drawing down, and of Lincoln's wish for reconciliation, expressed both in speech at his 2nd Inaugural, and in his recent meeting with Grant and Sherman at City Point. \n\nIt was a few days later when General Joe Johnston surrendered his commands(The Carolina's, Tenn, Georgia, and his field army) to Sherman outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Sherman was told only to accept a local capitulation as well, but exceeded his authority and agreed to a surrender of all remaining CSA field forces. The deal was later rejected in DC but by that time most remaining Southern forces had already surrendered. \n\n_URL_0_ focuses on C but speaks to the general experience of most Southern soldiers after the war. \n\n\n\nAs for their legal standing, once most men had signed their amnesty and loyalty statements they were free to go and vote. President Johnson did sign legislation excluding several classes, mostly field officers and politicians, but by 1868 even these were withdrawn and by applying for it virtually all Confederates had all their rights restored. ", "Broadside texts gleefully calling for the execution of Jefferson Davis were fairly common over the course of the war. Some examples: [[1](_URL_1_)] [[2](_URL_3_)] [[3](_URL_2_)] [[4](_URL_5_)] [[5](_URL_4_)] [[6](_URL_0_)].\n\nI'll quote liberally from the best of these:\n\n > That herb well deserves cultivation,  \nOh scatter its seed all around,\u2014  \nLet it flourish in every plantation,    \nWhile Rebels and Traitors abound.  \nDown, down with the tyrant \u201cKing Cotton,\u201d  \nKing Hemp holds the rascal in check,  \nIf you cant cure the heart that\u2019s all rotten,  \nTry a bandage of Hemp on the neck.  \n  \n > . . .  \n  \n > Come, spin a strong rope for Jeff. Davis,  \nAnd a couple for Yancey and Rhett,  \n(For each a detestable knave is,)  \nNor Pickens nor Stephens forget.  \nHave a cord for old false-hearted Pillow,  \nHave another for Letcher supplied,  \nHang old Toombs, (gloomy rogue!) on a willow  \nAnd let Twiggs to an oak twig be tied.  \n  \n > Let Chestnut be quickly suspended  \nFrom a branch of his own name-sake tree;  \nThus let every scoundrel be ended  \nWho shoots at the Flag of he Free.  \nThus deal with the foul instigators    \nOf treason and treachery base,  \nFor Hemp is the Physic for Traitors  \nAnd the Gallows is their proper place.  \n\nObviously, these aren't serious political treatises, but perhaps they're indicative of a certain mood. \n"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/12/should-we-have-executed-jefferson_26.html", "http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/lee-surrendered-but-his-lieutenants-kept-fighting/"], "answers_urls": [["http://civilwarexperience.ncdcr.gov/narrative/narrative-4.htm"], ["http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg301263/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg301354/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100154/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100105/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100108/", "http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/songsheets_bsvg100392/"]]}
{"q_id": "2blxl9", "title": "How close was Israel to defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War before the US resupplied them?", "selftext": "", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2blxl9/how_close_was_israel_to_defeat_in_the_1973_yom/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cj6sd73", "cj6vy6a"], "score": [173, 6], "text": ["Well, the resupply was not something that happened when Israel was close to defeat, at least not in the Sinai. It was *ordered* when the Israelis were facing a defeat, without a doubt. The airlift, which began on 14 October, had been ordered to begin on the 9th, and came after a decisive battle in the Sinai on the 14th, which may have made it superfluous in terms of \"saving\" the Israelis in the Sinai.\n\nOn 12 October, under increasing pressure from Egyptian General Ahmed Ismail Ali, Lieutenant General Sa'ad Al Shazly was given orders by General Ismail (over all objections) to make for the Gidi and Mitla passes. A \"political decision\" had been made, to relieve the pressure on Syria, and Shazly had his hands tied. He reminded General Ismail of what had happened last time a brigade was caught without air cover, as they would be (they were advancing past air defense ranges), but to no avail. An attack would be launched from the bridgehead. Shazly got it postponed 'til the 14th.\n\nThe IDF had been debating ending the war with a ceasefire, or undertaking a hazardous canal crossing, right around the 11th or 12th of October. It didn't think it would be able to continue this war, especially if it turned into a war of attrition. Then word came on the 12th that Egyptian armor was moving and crossing the Suez Canal, appearing to be preparing for an attack on the 13th or 14th. Israel decided to wait, instead of taking initiative or making peace, and to fortify positions.\n\nShazly put it this way: \"The enemy had 900 tanks in his operational zone. We were attacking with 400. We were doing so, against well-prepared positions, in precisely the 'penny packets' that had cost the enemy so dear over October 8-9. And we were condemning our tank crews to attack over open terrain dominated by enemy air power.\" The Israelis had estimated some 1,000 tanks would be in the attack, so the fact that only 400 showed up was undoubtedly a relief.\n\nThe Israelis prepared for an armor battle, which some said they expected to be large and \"savage\" beyond belief. On the night of the 13 October, the Egyptians heli-lifted multiple commandos behind Israeli lines in the hopes of creating chaos in the Israeli rear. They were almost all captured and killed, quickly. The Israeli fortifications and preparations paid off, when the Egyptians launched the strike at dawn on the 14th. In the northern sector, the Egyptians were repelled with ease, and 50 tanks of theirs were destroyed. In the center, similar losses were had by the Egyptians. The Israelis had fortified on high ground, and fired on the charging Egyptian armor. Egypt's 1st Mechanized Brigade lost 93 tanks, effectively destroying the entire unit, and only 3 Israeli tanks in that area were destroyed: none by enemy tanks, all by rocket fire. In the south, near the Gidi and Mitla passes, the Egyptian attack was contained and the Israelis counterattacked, destroying some 60 Egyptian tanks. Egyptian forces tried to flank through Mitla pass to the south, and were stopped by the tanks they encountered as well as paratroopers. The battle ended with around 20 Israeli tanks destroyed. Egypt had lost around 260. The Egyptians had attacked superior gunnery, faced IAF superiority and bombing, hit fortified positions, and all with the sun in their eyes. In one swoop, Israeli forces watched the Egyptians retreat back to their bridgeheads on the East Bank of the Suez Canal, and an Egyptian general suffered a heart attack (Sa'ad Maamon) and had to be replaced by General Abd El Al Mona'am Wasel. All told, the Egyptians had taken such heavy losses that Israeli forces felt they could finally attempt a counterthrust, a genuine one that would cross the Suez. On 14 October, Israeli general Elazar gave orders for the crossing of the Suez the following night.\n\nWith regards to the Egyptian front, Israeli leaders were not only heartened by the sudden success, the airlift made them much more fluid and willing to fight. However, the Israelis were still fearful of a loss, and only in retrospect was the 14 October guaranteed as the turning point of the war in the Sinai. Israelis did not begin to have a confident assessment of their prospects until the 16 October, as the American resupply effort was already underway and helping replace equipment lost in the previous fighting. The airlift was not *fully* intended to \"save\" the Israelis, but to ensure they could continue their momentum. It was helpful that as soon as it began, Israel had begun to win on both fronts. Thus it was not so much that the airlift came when Israel was \"close to defeat\" and \"saved\", but rather it came when the Israelis thought they'd be defeated (it was ordered October 9, begun October 14, Kissinger blamed it on the Pentagon), and gave them more flexibility when they began a counterattack that might've failed because of the Israeli inability to win a war of attrition without getting crucial ammunition and resupply help.\n\nOn the Syrian front, the tide had begun to turn earlier, prompting the Syrian pleas to the Egyptians for relief. See, the Egyptians had promised the Syrians they would advance far further than they actually planned to into the Sinai. When the Syrians began to falter, they pointed the finger at the Egyptians, who had stopped advancing. The Egyptians decided to advance as a result, with the results I detailed above.\n\nThe Syrians had begun to falter by October 10. The IAF had begun to overcome the Syrian air defenses, partially due to a lack of more defense rockets. The Israelis had been relentless, launching airstrikes in almost suicidal fashion over the 7-8, and the Syrians lost their determination and began to move back. By that point the Israeli counterattack began to drive back the Syrians, and by October 9 the Syrian thrusting forces were effectively surrounded in the \"Hushniye pocket\". Both sides took severe losses as Hushniye turned into an \"armor graveyard\", but the Syrians came out worse. Israel began bombing military airfields belonging to the Syrians by October 8, and almost all of them were useless by the 14th. 8 Phantom F-4s, on October 9, managed to get to Damascus and bomb the General Staff and Air Force Headquarters buildings, catching the Syrians by surprise. Only one Phantom was shot down, and the morale blow was crushing. The second wave, another 8 Phantom F-4s, had been slated to hit the same buildings but couldn't get through thick butts safely, so they dropped their bombs on Hushniye's large tank concentrations, contributing greatly to the fight there. The Israelis got slightly overconfident, and on the 10th mounted an insufficiently manned and prepared attack: based on 1967 they had expected the Syrian army to be on the brink of collapse. The attack took serious losses and was called off. On October 11 the Israelis launched an attack aimed to get to Damascus, all the way to the Syrian capital, but they encountered heavy resistance. While the Syrians could not attack, their fortifications and defensive posturing was still very strong, and both sides were taking heavy losses as a result, especially since once again the Israelis sent an undersized force, not expecting such heavy resistance of two strong lines. The Syrians now had higher morale (knowing their capital was under threat), and their SAMs had begun to be effective again (more missiles gotten, closer ranges), curtailing Israeli effectiveness in launching the attack. Eventually these became less effective as Israeli pilots got better at handling the SAMs, and by October 14 when the airlift began they were running many sorties on the Syrian rear, and Israeli forces had managed to fight a difficult campaign that got them within 20 miles of Damascus. There, the ground offensive stopped, and Israeli forces managed to (with the help of the resupply) hold off counterattacks, and make one last achievement on the ground: the capture of Mount Hermon on October 21-22. Because of the huge alarm the Syrians faced with the mounting attempts on their capital, around October 11 Assad appealed to Sadat to advance as he had promised, hence the Sadat response conveyed to Shazly on October 12. The airlift helped the Israelis take Hermon at best, and hold off counterattacks on the 16th and 19th, but also did not \"save\" Israel: it permitted them greater freedom and kept them afloat during a war that might've turned against them if they hadn't gotten more ammunition and equipment.\n\nEdit: Adding a portion on \"Why the airlift, then?\"\n\nWell, the airlift came with a few motivations. One was to match, and surpass, the Soviet airlift that had begun on October 10 for the Egyptians and Syrians. It succeeded, in that regard. The Israelis had implicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons by some reports, and gone to a nuclear alert they were sure the US would notice, threatening nuclear war especially if they ran out of conventional weapons and could not sustain their losses (which, at the time, were quite massive). The US also hoped to gain from it, and Kissinger egged the Israelis on, telling them to advance against Syria. He said to the Israeli ambassador: \"The IDF must attack [Syria] with all its strength, as if it had another 40 aircraft in hand, and not stint on ammunition or aircraft, because the United States will supply everything.\" On October 13 he told them to continue their attack, apparently because he knew the airlift was about to begin. The airlift undoubtedly helped Israelis feel secure in advancing.", "As a another question about the war,why does the arab world considers it a victory?is their claim correct?"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], []]}
{"q_id": "2dmk8k", "title": "Were there proposals for a two-state solution in South Africa?", "selftext": "During the apartheid era, of course.", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2dmk8k/were_there_proposals_for_a_twostate_solution_in/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cjr1chw"], "score": [29], "text": ["Apartheid was theoretically a [multi-state solution](_URL_0_). An obvious problem is that the vast majority of the black population lived outside of the states that were set up. In reality, the purpose was to deprive them of South African citizenship and rights, by instead claiming that they were really citizens of some other country. So, no other nation besides South Africa ever recognized these \"countries\".\n\nAs for a two-state solution, that was never seriously discussed. The white population is [a majority in few areas](_URL_1_), any white state would have to be a multitude of non-contiguous tiny splotches utterly surrounded by the other state. A white/coloured state would have a much more substantial eastern base, but there would still be a multitude of non-contiguous tiny enclaves in the east. And coloured people where never accorded full civil rights by the whites anyway, so there's really not much basis for a union of them.\n\nA comparison between the policies of Israel since 1967 and apartheid is sometimes made - the accusation, I suppose, being that a west bank that has seemingly been under permanent Israeli occupation puts the people of the west bank under an apartheid like situation, citizens of a theoretical state that actually has no sovereignty. But there is a long standing basis for a division of the area between arab and Jewish states, this didn't exist in the South African situation, so no two state solution would've made sense there. The situation is further differentiated by the fact that Israeli Arabs actually living in Israel have full civil rights."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [["http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Bantustans_in_South_Africa.svg/640px-Bantustans_in_South_Africa.svg.png", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#Racial_groups"]]}
{"q_id": "3brkm2", "title": "Is there a \"narrative history\" and a \"social history\"?", "selftext": "(x-post from /r/badhistory)\n\nAbout a month ago I submitted a thread asking, \"[Am I a bad historian if my personal interests align with the great man theory?](_URL_0_)\" This engendered a really great discussion about the accuracy of various modes of historiography, and made me question many convictions I had previously held about the field of history and my interest in it. In this thread, I tried to verbalize my personal conflict with history by explaining that my personal tastes tended to hover toward more methodologically conservative works of literature, but I realize now that this isn't fully correct. I don't exactly prefer studying about \"great people\"; I prefer studying a narrative. I tend to think of history as \"things that happen\", and am most interested in learning history this way. I recognize the incredible importance of anthropological social history, and find it to be oftentimes very fascinating, but I prefer to learn what *happened*, not what *was*. Quite a long time ago, I insisted on another forum that \"history is about studying changes to the status quo\". While I'm now very aware that this is an immature and ignorant view of history, I'm still most interested in individual events, people, or movements that changed society. More broadly, I want to understand the narrative. \n\nMuch of my opening post dealt with a recent course by [Guido Ruggiero](_URL_2_), a rather illustrious Renaissance historian who recently published (and taught) a lengthy [overview of the Renaissance and Italy](_URL_1_), which I found incredibly enlightening but also very disappointing. While I took the class mostly hoping to learn what happened in the Renaissance, the textbook was primarily a work of \"social and cultural history\". This meant that the course was almost entirely non-chronological, and was in many ways an ethnography of 14th-16th century Florentines. Every chapter was centered around a lofty concept like \"Self\", \"Discovery\", or \"Violence\" and how they ideals of the Rinascimento (the terminology that Professor Ruggiero preferred). This book covered a very wide range of topics, from attitudes toward premarital sex to the baronial organization of Rome, but never delved into the events that specifically piqued my interest.\n\nAs I mentioned in the last thread, there was very little attention given to the motivations or effects of any individual or event. The late-fifteenth century French invasion of Italy, which I might consider to be possibly the most important single event of the Italian Renaissance, was not covered. We never learned why the war was fought or how it ran its course, and Dr. Ruggiero didn't mention its implications on the politics of Italy. Instead, we learned how it reduced efficacy in the strength of the Italian states and promoted resentment against the French and the Church. Similarly, the rapid and mind-numbingly massive conquests of Gian Galeazzo Visconti were not described. Despite its 650 pages, the textbook only mentioned the Count of Milan in reference to his \"virtu\" and how he was idolized by certain Italian intellectuals for his shrewdness. Personally, I would be thrilled to read an account of Gian Galeazzo's campaigns and how they transformed the governments and erased the borders of Northern Italy. It may not be as consequential to the scope of European history in the long-term, but learning about the specifics of these wars is far more interesting to me than studying Boccaccio's views on sexual morality and whether or not they represented popular opinion (a topic that Dr. Ruggiero was especially fond of). \n\nCould there be a \"narrative history\" that contrasts with mainstream social history? Do there exist any noteworthy recent works that cover events as they happened? It seems that nearly all pre-modern works of history follow the mold I prefer, and because about 90% of the historical literature I've been assigned has been a primary source, that might explain my tastes. In an earlier semester I read the *Diary of Margaery Kemp* and *The Murder, Betrayal, and Slaughter of Charles, Count of Flanders*, two very different but equally engrossing medieval texts that described in very real terms the Middle Ages as experienced by its people. Another book assigned that semester, concerning the \"True Levellers\" of early modern England, was much more of a drag. Although it was written centuries later, it was less engrossing due to its non-narrative structure, as it carried an assumption that a student could understand the English Civil War without needing to know the events as they occurred. With some slight reservation I'll concede that I'm a pretty big fan of certain Dan Carlin podcasts. I take his material with a grain of salt, given his spotty reputation among academic historians, but the way he presents history -- a storytelling approach, emphasizing certain influential figures and particularly important or exciting events -- is really exciting and a little bit inspirational. One traditional work of \"narrative history\" that I've often seen mentioned is Robert Carlyle's *The French Revolution*, and while it sounds somewhat appealing I'm very hesitant to read it. Carlyle is obviously infamous for his reductionist outlook of history, and is essentially the mascot of the kind of intellectual childishness that I worry I may be associated with, for not preferring modern social history. Moreover, Carlyle's theories are very popular with current white supremacists, making me even more wary.\n\nCan a proper historian (or at least a proper student of history) justify a preference for narrative history, or is it deterministic and immature to perceive history as a \"collection of stories\"? Is there an ongoing struggle between social historians and narrative historians, or am I rambling about an imaginary distinction?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3brkm2/is_there_a_narrative_history_and_a_social_history/", "answers": {"a_id": ["csoyxmv", "csp2a1z"], "score": [22, 23], "text": ["It appears that you are asking a question about the status of these methodologies in historiography, i.e. the study of how the writing of history has changed over the years. Hopefully this attempts to answer your question.\n\nTraditional history, i.e. history written before the 1920s, was focused on politics, economics, military, and a \"Great White Man's history,\" all of which contained more or less a chronological depictions of events. These works did not deeply delve into too much analysis of sources the way that modern historians do. That is to say, \"reading against the grain\" of a source or attempting to find divergent sources (sources from the poor and etc) was not their goal. The goal of such works was to merely lay out how things happened and at times postulated theories about causation and conduct. Now while traditional history is focused on the narrative, I would not necessarily call it narrative history. I'll explain more below.\n\nFrom traditional history we get the Beards, basically economic causation. From there we get Progressives (Schlesinger Jr.), i.e. class conflict. Then Consensus historians (Hofstadter), i.e. change vs. continuity. After that, depending on the country, you see a move towards social history (Marwick), i.e. the little people, women's history, i.e what women did (This can also be broken into four trends within women's history called Compensatory or Women Worthies, Golden Age, Feminist History, Gender History) (Joan Scott), and cultural history that looks at material culture and its influence on history.\n\nSo in terms of historiography, those are the big hitters. I am of course leaving out the earlier historiography, like Hellenic history and Christian centered history, as it isn't in the modern trends. So why does this matter? Because within these broad methods, exist diverging writing styles, which is what you appear to be mostly interested in. Books have various writing styles, monographs (a focused analysis), surveys (textbooks), academic synthesis (blended), and popular history. I'm kind of making these categories up, but this is the way I see things anyway. Narrative history as you describe I typically find in synthesis and popular history.\n\nPopular histories (which is my synonym for narrative) are most common in works by journalists or historians near the end of their career. Part of the reason for this is academia, publishing, and public taste. In academia, you are encouraged to write on very specific topics (monographs) that go into a great deal of analysis on the source material itself. The idea behind this torture test is that your dissertation is you proving you can do history on a truly academic (read obtuse) level. Simplistic language is replaced with ostentatious erudition. Topics are narrowly focused and really designed for specialized readers. etc. These books rarely make it into Barnes and Nobles. Thus, journalists and older academics with the leeway from publishers can take on more popular historical topics. This is where publishing comes into play.\n\nAcademic presses love the academic books I described above, it makes them look professional. But they also have to pay the bills. Thus, all publishers also produce popular histories designed for the lay public, which by and large, are narrative styles of history. These books leverage the leg work done by all the aforementioned research and academic writing and turn it into something the public can engage. Great examples of these works are David McCullum's 1776, Shelby Foote's The Civil War, etc.\n\nAs I said above, you can actually engage social, cultural, political, military, economic histories in synthesis, which also has a narrative style. The difference is that they spend a good deal of space on footnotes for sources, lengthy historiographic essays, and are meant for student and professional alike. While these too can be approached by the broader public, they are lengthier and beefier. Good examples of these are the Oxford Series on American History, like Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.\n\nCan I justify your preference? Not really as a professional, but yes as a reader. Is your distinction rather imaginary, yes and no. As to your question about is there a struggle between social historians and \"narrative\" ones, yes and no. We call this the academic hedge, heh. People like what they like, don't worry about whether its what professionals say you should like. As I described above, while your terms may be off, you get to the heart of the matter for the fight between professional and popular histories. \n\nIn terms of academia, professional histories that use, social, cultural, gender, etc. reign supreme. You want to do a thesis or dissertation, you will be doing that. In terms of publishing, the money makers are popular histories, synthesis, and textbooks. \n\nProfessional historians lament that history gets dumbed down, yet they do not do much to make their topics or works more approachable. Most people enjoy a good story, a narrative, something linear that they can understand and see progression. But by and large professionals don't write these until much later. Popular histories are useful and well written, but lack nuance and proof. I don't see either type of history changing much in the next few years. But with technology, professional histories are getting more digital time, like The Valley of the Shadow Project online that brings very complex historiographic arguments about the Civil War into a more approachable and visual method.\n\nSo that is my spiel. Hope it helped.", " >  am I rambling about an imaginary distinction?\n\nWhile I certainly don't think you are rambling (you make some great observations), I do think you have assumed a distinction between social history and narrative history that doesn't inherently exist.\n\nIf I'm reading your post correctly, you're perhaps muddling the definition of social history. Social history is, at the most basic level, the study of \"ordinary people\"--groups like ethnic and racial minorities, the lower economic classes, women, and many others that were for a long time marginalized and discounted by historians. There is nothing inherently contradictory between a social history and a narrative history, which you and many others define as the history of events. I am woefully unfamiliar with historical works on the pre-modern era like the ones you brought up, but one book that I can think of that combines social history and narrative history is Steven Ozment's [*The Burgermeister's Daughter*](_URL_2_).\n\nFrom what I gathered from your post, I don't think your problem is necessarily with social history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it may be that your grievance is more with history books structured thematically (like the Ruggiero book you cite) rather than chronologically (a la, narrative histories that focus on \"events\"). There are benefits to both the chronological and thematic ways of writing history, and those benefits boil down to what historical forces the historian is wanting to emphasize. \n\nAt the most basic level, there are only two historical forces: structures and human agency. Ideally, historians should recognize that these two forces are interrelated, but I get the impression that most historians today emphasize one at the expense of the other. \n\nFirst, what are structures? They are impersonal forces--whether ideological, social, or economic--that simultaneously compel and constrain human action. Moreover, structures constitute social systems and make the world in which historical actors operate intelligible. In other words, structures provide the boundaries in which human action occurs; it is very difficult for individuals to take actions outside the boundaries of contemporary historical structures. Economic class relations is one example of a structure (think Marxist historiography). For another example, I'll pull one from the Ruggiero book you mentioned: \"the self\". Conceptions of the self have throughout history been tied to large-scale symbolic structures. Arguably the most dominant of these in recent history is nationalism. Throughout the modern era, an individual's identity has always been inextricably tied to the nation that he claims (and the nation that claims him). Getting back to your comment and question, history books that are structured by themes, like Ruggiero's, are excellent at clarifying the dominant structures that existed within a particular historical era and provide the context for why and how the major events within the era took place. (A good, if dense, discussion on the role of structures in history is William Sewell Jr., [*The Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation*](_URL_1_)).\n\nThe other historical force is human agency. Agency is in many ways the opposite of structures. If structures constrain human action, agency is the ability of historical actors to sometimes break free of those dominant structures. In my opinion, narrative histories are much better at tracing agency, particularly during periods in which  structures become unstable. (A good example of this type of history is Mary Sarotte's [*The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall*](_URL_0_)). By honing in on specific events and individuals instead of broad themes, narrative histories are able to effectively show how old structures fall and new ones arise.  \n\nSo, in response to your question as to whether a proper historian can justify a preference for narrative history, I think he certainly can. But I also think that he needs to be aware of the limitations of narrative history, particularly its propensity to focus exclusively on agency at the expense of structures.   "]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/36mqk7/am_i_a_bad_historian_if_my_personal_interests/", "http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/renaissance-italy-social-and-cultural-history-rinascimento", "http://www.as.miami.edu/history/people/faculty/guido-ruggiero/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["https://books.google.com/books?id=OaAVBQAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=mary+sarotte+the+collapse&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=EkKUVYaJGcftsAWi17uADg&amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=mary%20sarotte%20the%20collapse&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=EY0yuWBBkWYC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=william+sewell+jr+the+logics+of+history&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=CESUVfeQOMTQtQX7goDIBw&amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=william%20sewell%20jr%20the%20logics%20of%20history&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=oRNkS42m1h8C&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=the+burgermeister%27s+daughter&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=6iWUVYy1E4LssAWvrIbgAQ&amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=the%20burgermeister%27s%20daughter&amp;f=false"]]}
{"q_id": "1aix2o", "title": "Anyone able to shed some more light on the 'Baader Meinhof Gang' aka The RAF  &  the militarised left wing of Europe during the 70's? ", "selftext": "I caught ['The Baader Meinhof Complex'](_URL_0_) on at about 3am the other night.  As I'd never even heard of such brutal left wing 'terrorists' in cold war Europe it really struck a cord and I found the whole movie compelling.  I understand within Germany the film did ok, but a lot of people thought the film was too vague on a lot of points, but for me it was a great intro to an unknown subject.\n\n\nHowever any more detailed info about them, the time they spent in prison, acts of terror, motives and ideology etc would be really interesting.\n\n\nThanks!\n\n", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1aix2o/anyone_able_to_shed_some_more_light_on_the_baader/", "answers": {"a_id": ["c8xut1s", "c8y3mpa"], "score": [37, 5], "text": ["'Revolutionary' groups, so to speak, were relatively common during that time. Germany had the Baader Meinhof gang (Red Army Faction), Italy had the 'Red Brigade' (who were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro). The student protests in France in 1968 nearly brought (or actually did) bring the country to a standstill for a period of time, though weren't radicalized or violent in the way that the RAF or RB were. \n\nAlthough the RAF had its roots in the student protests and for a long time were no different from what tens of thousands of other students were doing across different countries. The RAF however, unlike similar groups, soon radicalized with a pledge to match action with words. The common characteristic between the groups was a feeling of disassociation from the mainstream political ideologies as well as disenfranchisement from mainstream politics in general. \n\nAbove all, the RAF felt that they were in a fight against imperialism. They identified very strongly with Mao Tse Dung and his resistance to capitalist pressures and many students in Germany even went so far as to identify with the rebels (Viet Cong) in South Vietnam.  German activists, for example, organized a 'Vietnam Summer' in 1965. The common trend was that these groups saw Capitalism as both imperialist in nature and as a system of oppression and that it was their duty to oppose such a system. Many Germans felt that their government was nothing but a 'puppet' regime for the United States - since the US did have a relatively strong amount of influence in their country -  thus they found it easy to compare their situation to that in Southern Vietnam (hence the German support for the South Vietnamese rebels). Many German activists actually declared the Vietnam war to be a genocide and given their recent past with the Nazism, many student groups felt it was uniquely their moral duty to oppose the conflict. \n\nI could elaborate on the ideology, but I don't really think it's necessary because in this case you can get it straight from the horse's mouth. Have a look at \"The Urban Guerilla Concept\" by Ulrike Meinhof, published in 1971. \n\nA brief excerpt:\n\n\"The Urban Guerilla is not waiting for the Prussian-type marching orders that some so-called revolutionaries are holding out for in order to lead the people\u2019s struggle. When the time comes, the Urban Guerilla is completely ready for the armed struggle. He assumes that in a country like the Federal Republic, with a weak revolutionary tradition and massive potential for State violence, that revolutionary intervention is a necessity. The Urban Guerilla assumes that the conditions for revolution have never been better than at present \u2013 due to the economic and political circumstances prevalent in late-capitalism.\"\n\nHopefully that helps!\n\nP.S. I don't like grouping different countries/groups together since every country has its own history and each group has its own roots/motives/ideology etc. If you want me to specifically discuss the French student protests or the Red Brigade in Italy, I will do so :-)", "Speaking on extreme left wing terrorism in general;\n\nHere in Belgium we had the [CCC](_URL_3_) in the mid-80's. They specifically targeted international organisations; but often announced their attacks well in advance. \n\nIn Italy, you had the [Red Brigades](_URL_1_). I couldn't find how many victims are \"attributed\" to them, but unlike the CCC their method focused on kidnapping and assassinationg people.  It wasn't just left-wing terrorism though, a lot is still being uncovered regarding [Operation Gladio](_URL_2_). This was a stay-behind network in Europe sponsored by the CIA, to organise an uprising in case of a Soviet invasion. For this, they created paramilitary organisations and provided training. Some people now **speculate** that parts of the people involved with Operation Gladio carried out terrorist attacks in Europe; as part of the [strategy of tension](_URL_0_).\n\nAgain, this is all incredibly recent reseach. The first academic research into the topic of Operation Gladio was published exactly 8 years ago. The author (Daniele Ganser) speculates part of the attacks that are attributed to left-wing terrorist cells, could've been the work of Operation Gladio in order to damage communism in the public opinion.\n\nIt's certain that Operation Gladio did indeed exist, but there's no consensus (yet) on what their operations were.\n\n*Mods: I know the piece about Operation Gladio is largely speculation; so feel free to remove it.*"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": ["http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765432/"], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Combatant_Cells"]]}
{"q_id": "2luzve", "title": "Why were the 1918 Germany spring offensives (\"Michael,\" \"Georgette,\" \"Blucher-Yorck,\" \"Gneisenau\") so much more effective than comparable allied offensives from previous years?", "selftext": "The spring offensive launched by the Germans in 1918 was ultimately a failure that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Germany's best troops and the squandering of significant material resources. The Germany army found itself overstretched and was soon back on the defensive as the allies launched their own \"100 Days offensive\" that would end in armistice.\n\nThat said, in comparison to the major allied offensives of 1916 and 1917 which failed to capture significant amounts of territory, the Germany spring offensives captured vast tracts of albeit strategically useless country side and threw the British and French armies back 50 miles in some places.\n\nWhat explains the near successes of these massive German offensives while similar allied offensives never achieved similar \"breakthroughs\" into open country?", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2luzve/why_were_the_1918_germany_spring_offensives/", "answers": {"a_id": ["clyhpp4", "clyj6lo", "clyopqv"], "score": [29, 37, 16], "text": ["You're not comparing like with like. The perception of the allied offensives of 1916 and 1917 is of them failing to seize territory, as if the ground itself  was the prize. Like the failed German offensives of 1918, they were aimed at knocking their enemy out, not at seizing ground. One could argue that the British offensive on the Somme in 1916 was at least a partial success; the German Army leadership clearly thought so, and believed that the battle had destroyed the cream of their Army. Despite the Brits being pushed back so far in the Spring Offensives, the necessary breakthrough was never achieved, and the Allied counter-attacks ultimately led to Germany's defeat in the Autumn. So, not much more effective at all. ", "Right I just lost an enormous post which handled this question directly and I'm not even going to bother; I'm sorry. I wrote a post on a similar topic here titled [\"In 1918, why was the Allies' 100 Days Offensive so successful, while the Germans' Spring Offensive failed?\"](_URL_0_) which I hope will answer some of your questions but is mostly, as you can tell, about the offensives themselves and not comparing them to the likes of the Somme.  \n\nThe **TL;DR:** of it all for your question though is that the allied offensives were not necessarily trying to achieve breakthrough like the Germans were. The offensives were in no way comparable because their objectives were different. The Germans were making a mad dash for Paris, the British were trying to seize this one little railway center or take out a ridge or just generally kill Germans. \n\nWe must also remember that on the basis of *Hutier Tactics* the Germans were using the absolute best of the best soldiers and striking the most lightly defended areas of the front. *Of course* they would break through. The issue came with, though, once they broke through *then what*? They weren't capturing major supply depots, rail centers, or HQ's because obviously there was nothing there if the allies weren't defending it very much. However once the stormtroopers broke through all that remained on the front were the least experienced troops on the front and now the stormtroopers were out of range of their own artillery and were basically on their own to be cut down by allied strategic reserves, heavy guns, and cavalry. ", "As /u/splitbrain says, the Germans were able to transfer a lot of soldiers from the eastern front to the western front.\n\nNow by a lot, we are talking about A LOT. British estimates put German strength in March 1918 on the western from at 177 divisions. To put that in perspective, at 2nd Alamein, the British Empire would field a total of only 11 Divisions!\n\nThe German blow for Op Michael would fall on British Fifth Army with approximately 14 divisions. Ranged against them were some 74 German divisions. Again for perspective, that's more divisions than the Germans had in the whole of western Europe in 1944.\n\nThe superiority of artillery was even more pronounced. The German bombardment on 21/03/1918 lasted for 5 hours during which an *absolutely staggering 3,500,000 shells* were fired. \n\nOf course, Fifth Army had to fall back. \n\nBut they were falling back on strategically worthless ground. In fact, fifth army was to be so denuded of troops that for the battle of Bapaume, they only had 3 infantry and 1 cavalry divisions.  \n\nWhen the Germans attempted to attack the well defended and strategically valuable ground in and around the Ypres salient, Arras and Amiens, they were stopped dead. They made almost no progress at all, despite huge expenditure of blood and treasure.\n\nSo what does this mean? Yes infantry tactics, improved communication, logistics etc. helped, the fact is that artillery and overwhelming weight of numbers must be counted as the main ingredient of German success (such as it was) in spring of 1918.\n\nIt was a single shot weapon though. And once the Germans had shot their bolt and missed the target, they could not possible hope to win the war."]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eetst/in_1918_why_was_the_allies_100_days_offensive_so/"], []]}
{"q_id": "2wvbgk", "title": "Was it possible for an individual to become exceptionally rich in a purely communist country like the Soviet Union? If so how? Are there any historical examples?", "selftext": "I have a Bachelors in Economics, although they never taught me much about Communism at all, except in vague historical courses where communism was briefly taught and mostly shunned, hated and laughed at. I have some knowledge of the theories of Communism, although I have very little idea of how communism actually works in practice. \n\nI was wondering: Was it possible for an individual living in a *purely communist* country like the Soviet Union, Cuba or other Eastern Bloc countries to become *exceptionally rich compared to the rest of the population*? If so how? Are there any historical examples? An example of any of the communist countries, especially Soviet Union would be great. \n\nIt seems almost impossible for an individual to gain massive wealth, if the state provides all the jobs, food, money and all that. ", "document": "", "subreddit": "AskHistorians", "url": "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wvbgk/was_it_possible_for_an_individual_to_become/", "answers": {"a_id": ["cougkiz", "couig8z", "couij9b"], "score": [57, 6, 39], "text": ["I'm no expert but I did study Marx, history and comparative political science at university.  First off there has never been a truly communist country as Marx defined it.  He lists stages of development towards communism, which itself is really a benign for of anarchy.  Basically it goes: Revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, then eventually communism.  The classic example of the USSR is the dictatorship phase.  Nobody ever got past that.\n\nNow in terms of wealth the idea was the everyone would be paid the same wage, regardless of your job.  However it was more complicated then that.  There was a sort of class system where the upper classes such as party members, important skilled people (doctors, scientists, etc), and high ranking military officers enjoyed perks that a factory worker did not.  At the elite level people lived like kings compared to most other citizens.  Even though they notionally were paid the same, all of these \"extras\" were off the books.  However, even for these elites, they were still stuck in the closed off economy of the USSR; meaning that there was little travel, consumer goods, or entertainment options to enjoy compared to the west.  It would have been much better to be rich in the West then rich in the USSR.", "This reply may be below the standarts of this sub, since the book I'm about to mention is a fictional one, albeit immensely influencial in the Russian culture. You may want to read a satirical novel [*The Golden Calf (1931)*](_URL_0_) by Ilf and Petrov. From the summary:\n >  Ostap Bender hears a story about a \"clandestine millionaire\" named Alexandr Koreiko, who has made millions through various illegal enterprises by taking advantage of the widespread corruption in the New Economic Policy (NEP) period while pretending to live on an office clerk's salary of 46 rubles a month. Koreiko keeps his large stash of ill-gotten money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet government, so that he can make use of it. Bender finds out about Koreiko and starts to collect all the information he can get on his business activities.  < ... >   \nSuddenly rich, Bender faces the problem of how to spend his money in a Communist country where there are no legal millionaires. Nothing of the life of the rich that Bender dreamt of seems possible in the Soviet Union.", " > I was wondering: Was it possible for an individual living in a purely communist country like the Soviet Union, Cuba or other Eastern Bloc countries to become exceptionally rich compared to the rest of the population?\n\nThere have been questions of that sort before. Problem with wealth in the Soviet Economy was you couldn't buy a lot of stuff with money. You couldn't own more than one flat and one dacha. You couldn't have several cars. When there was a shortage on, say, toilet paper, you received a set amount per head regardless of how much you were willing to pay.\n\nEven if you had a lot of money you still had to work since unemployment was a crime. Your holiday destinations, your ability to have your daughter attend an important concert, to study in a prestigious university or to travel to prestigious holiday destinations was a matter of goodwill from bureaucrats independent of your bank account. And the bureaucrats have mostly shown goodwill to other influential people, like the other bureaucrats, to teachers, or, say, to medics treating their relatives. (See Alena Lebedeva's \"Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange\". )\n\nHowever: Khrushchev introduced some luxury goods (cars, cameras, fur coats) to work as a money sink (to make f.e. higher wages incentives to go to Northern Siberia work). Aside from that there were \"Beryozka\" stores for foreigners only and there were special luxery goods provided to, f.e., the scientists willing to live and to work in Akademgorodok or, say, to officer families living in similarly hazard regions. (see \"An Economic History of the USSR from 1945\" by Philip Hanson)"]}, "title_urls": [], "selftext_urls": [], "answers_urls": [[], ["http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Golden_Calf"], []]}