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{ "a_id": [ "cfj9u9t" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Many of the relevant primary sources wont contain the those specific details in an aggregated way. There are a few great examples of diaries and reports coming from the Warsaw Ghetto. The statistics you are looking for would likely come from secondary sources.\n\nOne great example is the Stroop Report. This is written by a commander (Stroop) and it documents the suppression of the uprising. I've included a link to the National Archive where you can get the the full report [here](_URL_1_). This document was used in the Nuremberg Trials.\n\nI would recommend you check out the [Yad Vashem site](_URL_2_). That is the Holocaust Museum in Israel. They have spent a lot of time collecting primary sources, photos, personal accounts etc, about the Holocaust of the Jews (Shoah). I've linked to the overview of the Warsaw Ghetto, but check out the digital collection at the top.\n\nA last little tip is diaries of the time. I don't know where you're located, or which libraries you have access to but here are a few WorldCat records for some notable ones: [The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow](_URL_0_) and [Scroll of agony, the Warsaw diary of Chaim A. Kaplan](_URL_3_).\n\nHope this help.\n\nSource: I'm an academic reference librarian and Jewish history specialist" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/warsaw-diary-of-adam-czerniakow-prelude-to-doom/oclc/3913266&referer=brief_results", "http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ShowFullRecordLinked?%24searchId=2&%24showFullDescriptionTabs.selectedPaneId=digital&%24digiDetailPageModel.currentPage=1&%24digiViewModel.detailId=1&%24partitionIndex=0&%24digiSummaryPageModel.targetModel=true&%24submitId=1&%24digiViewModel.name=digiViewModel&%24resultsDetailPageModel.search=true&%24digiDetailPageModel.resultPageModel=true&%24resultsDetailPageModel.currentPage=0&%24resultsDetailPageModel.pageSize=1&%24sort=RELEVANCE_ASC&%24highlight=false&detail=digiViewModel", "http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/03/warsaw.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki", "http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Chaim+A.+Kaplan&qt=owc_search" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbc0e13", "cbc0gmv", "cbc2ka2" ], "score": [ 31, 58, 10 ], "text": [ "All across the South during the years following the civil war, a series of \"Black codes\" were passed into law. Their purpose was to effectively re-enslave the freed slaves by justifying their forced labor by labeling them vagrants, essentially making unemployment illegal and thereby allowing a state to force a former slave to work by arresting them and then using them as convict labor.\n\nSometimes, the black codes were simply pre-civil war slave laws with the word \"slave\" replaced with \"negro.\"", "It was less a few dark corners, and more a concerted effort by large swathes of society, who attempted to keep slavery alive in all but name. Here is the Fourth Circuit discussing some of this history:\n\n > The South was far from wholly reconciled to the abandonment of the system of forced labor that contributed significantly to the economic success of its agriculture. *See* [R. Fogel and S. Engerman, *Time on the Cross* (1974)](_URL_1_). Many planters felt strongly that they simply could not work their fields without compulsory service. *A Georgia Leader on Reconstruction and Conversation of Alabama Planters* in *R.N. Current, ed., Reconstruction [1865-1877]*, at 39, 46 (1969). Moreover, the war-torn South had large numbers of homeless uprooted people who today would probably be characterized as refugees but were then commonly seen as roaming, \"dangerous\" vagrants.\n\n > Some local authorities responded by permitting employers to engage laborers on a basis that essentially bound the worker for life. [C. V. Woodward, *The Strange Career of Jim Crow* 23 (3d Rev.Ed.1974)](_URL_6_). Many states enacted so-called \"Black Codes\" that severely restricted the freedom of the former slaves and provided tough criminal sanctions for those who violated their \"labor contracts\" with employers. [J. H. Franklin, *Reconstruction After the Civil War* 48-50 (1961)](_URL_4_); [J. L. Roark, *Masters Without Slaves* 139-40 (1977)](_URL_3_).\n\n > ...\n\n > In [*Bailey v. Alabama*, 219 U.S. 219 (1911)](_URL_7_), the Supreme Court held invalid an Alabama statute that prescribed criminal penalties for laborers who breached their employment contracts without satisfying debts owed their employer. The statute established a presumption of criminal intent to defraud the employer by the fact of the mere breach of the contract. The Court ruled that the statute effectively required compulsory service impermissible under the thirteenth amendment because the compulsion inherent in the threat of criminal sanctions was as strong as that inherent in the use of physical force.\n\n > In [*United States v. McClellan*, 127 F. 971 (_URL_0_.1904)](_URL_2_), the district court refused to quash an indictment that charged several defendants with the sale of a man into forced labor, holding that the [federal statutes] broadly regulated behavior of this type and were neither unconstitutional nor were to be confined to the narrow circumstances of the particular evils which they were intended to redress.\n\n[*United States v. Booker*, 655 F. 2d 562 (4th Cir. 1981)](_URL_5_) (some citations omitted and some spacing added).", "PBS produced a beautiful documentary on exactly this subject: [Slavery by another name](_URL_0_)\n > Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, the tpt National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.\n\n > Based on Blackmon’s research, Slavery by Another Name spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today. The program also features interviews with Douglas Blackmon and with leading scholars of this period.\n \n" ] }

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[ [], [ "S.D.Ga", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Time_on_the_Cross.html?id=ScpPBinpzwoC", "http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?about=9971973864508256549", "http://books.google.com/books?id=p7xmPwAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books?id=qKgTp4JKVMcC", "http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12006161793808123499", "http://books.google.com/books?id=vQHg5oBavmYC", "http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16688171331174227306" ], [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yHAEu2N024" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwi14dl" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Twenty years of peace is much better than no peace at all. Twenty years is enough time for a generation of young men to forgo military service, time to build infrastructure, time to consolidate power, and time grow a treasury.\n\nThere are also plenty of examples of peaces that last longer than twenty years, or even result in permanent peace and consolidation. The nation of Spain was formed from [the union of the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon](_URL_0_), a union that was set in motion when Isabella of Castile, the future queen, married Ferdinand the Catholic, a future king of Aragon. Their grandson Charles V and great grandson Phillip II would later become kings of a united Spain. James the VI of Scotland similarly oversaw the personal union of England and Scotland when he inherited the crown of England, becoming James I, in 1603. England and Scotland would later formally join together to become the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.\n\nYour question also implies that it is particularly unusual for a peace treaty to last less than twenty years. There are numerous examples of more modern treaties that did not maintain peace for much longer than twenty years. There were only twenty-one years between the World Wars (1918 to 1939) and only twelve years between the Gulf War (ended 1991) and the Iraq War (began 2003).\n\nI can try to include better sources if asked, but I don't think anything I've said here is controversial. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Castile#Union_of_the_Crowns_of_Castile_and_Aragon" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fmhopoa" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I gave a relatively brief answer to this [here](_URL_0_), focusing more on the Germans (for whom I had a relevant source handy). If I get the chance later today, I'll try and expand on it!" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ayxje4/what_happened_to_the_internationale_brigades/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cq3z8lb" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The desert people of the American Southwest generally understood the concept of oceans as not being fundamentally different from a large lake or stream. Among the [recorded] creation myths of the O'odham peoples, at least two contain gods or demigods turning small rivers into vast oceans, splitting apart the original peoples of the Earth, although the survival of remote peoples is left ambiguous. One of these stories later goes on to discuss the people who survived the flood on the other side of the ocean, who were conveniently white-skinned. Another passage from the same source states that another group of people over the ocean were in fact dark brown. Both of these groups were the result of mistakes in creation, after which the perfectly colored Hohokam groups were created. As prophetic as these may sound, our one source of these tales was recorded from a drunkard by a priest in the 1930s. Given that it is the only semi-complete history of the O'odham remaining today, we have no means to determine how far back the individual elements go. \n\nAmong the Hopi and other Puebloan peoples, we have an understanding that the oceans were not the complete end of land. At the very least they understood that people lived in the islands off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts from trade with groups living nearer to the sea. \n\nBoth groups had an accurate understanding of the geography of their continent between the oceans and an understanding that humans could live on the water as their neighbors did. It's not impossible that they conceived of other lands similar to their own across the water, which was understood to be similar to a large river or lake. The stories we have hint at this understanding, but the near-complete absence of historical records about the O'odham and Yuman people make that suggestion speculative at best. The situation among the Puebloans is little better. While they clearly understood the concept of sailing quite well, the myths make scarce mention of foreign lands that would not have been visible from shore.\n\nBahr, Donald M., et al. *The short, swift time of gods on earth: The Hohokam chronicles.* Univ of California Press, 1994.\n\nCourlander, Harold, ed. *The fourth world of the Hopis.* UNM Press, 1971.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cci6gdc" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I would see a distinct difference between \"peak of tensions\" and \"closest we came to a nuclear exchange.\" The Berlin crisis of 1948 was potentially a higher \"peak of tensions\" than Able Archer 83, but because the nuclear situation was only one-sided, it is not cited as a \"close call.\" I would not consider Able Archer 83 a \"peak of tensions,\" as it was primarily one-sided, though it was definitely one of the top \"close calls.\" (What made it so dangerous was that the USA/NATO was so utterly unaware of how tense the Soviets felt about it.) \n\nSimilarly, there were other \"close calls\" that were not marked by \"peaks of tensions\" — such as the numerous \"false alarm\" scares that the US and USSR both suffered from errors in their early warning systems. \n\nI would disentangle these two categories. What makes the Cuban Missile Crisis so remarkable and interesting is that it is the rare confluence of the two — a peak of tension _and_ a close call. There were many other very tense moments that were not close calls, and many close calls that were not actually peaks of tensions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgsm9mw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Awesome thank you. I checked the FAQ and totally missed it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9iuf07", "c9iufyn", "c9iv703", "c9ivc7g", "c9ivf4h", "c9ivo8k", "c9j0i5w", "c9j0rs4", "c9j7ovo" ], "score": [ 80, 29, 48, 4, 118, 13, 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Yes, there was definitely rape committed by the Wehrmacht/SS. This is from Timothy Snyder's *Bloodlands*: \n > [The Wehrmacht] would also rape Jewish women, casually, as though this were not an offense for which they could be punished. When they were caught, they were reminded of German laws against racial mixing. \n\nRape of 'sub humans' was fairly common on the Eastern Front. I can't answer the second part of your question unfortunately. I'm in no place to speculate on that. ", "There was far less documentation about rape under the Nazis, because Nazi race-defilement laws specifically forbid German men to have sex with Jewish women or even to kiss them. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, of course: [This page] (_URL_0_) addresses the subject in some detail.\n", "Rape as a weapon and/or collateral atrocity of war was all too common in WWII, including by [American servicemen](_URL_0_) stationed in occupied Japan after the end of the war.\n\nAs my old Social History of War professor emphasized over and over, wherever there's war, there's rape.", "A book that might interest you is: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. It's composed of transcripts of recordings made in British prisons, mostly Wehrmacht troops talking to each other. I've been meaning to get it for a while now but I haven't gotten around to it.", "This topic is very well covered in two Russian books: [this one](_URL_3_), called \"For What the Soviet People Were Fighting\" and [this one](_URL_2_), called \"Unknown Faces of War\". The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in WWII with the overall mindset of creating Lebensraum and the getting rid of most of the local population (keeping some for slave labour), since Russians, Belorussians, Ukranians and Jews alike were all considered Untermenschen. When the Soviet Army was pushing the Nazis back and liberating captured towns and villages it was very often the case that they were discovered entirely empty. Houses were burnt, wells were filled with bodies and trenches filled with bodies were all over the place. \n\nRape of the local populace by the advancing Nazis was as commonplace as the fighting itself and in addition to the \"unorganised\" rape carried out normally, organised brothels were set up to service the officers and soldiers. [Here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_) are fragments from the respective two books which summarise the extent of what was going on. The sources for the books are Nuremberg trial materials and eyewitness accounts from both sides. \n\nEDIT: The following is a particularly telling excerpt: \"We went to the village near the town of Gatchina Rozhdestvenno - told who served on the Seversky airport Private Peter Shuber. - We had a mission: to bring the girls the officers. We have successfully carried out the operation, all cordoned off the house. We collected a truckload of girls. All night the girls kept the officers, but in the morning they gave us - the soldiers. In large cities, organized stationary brothels. It was standard practice Wehrmacht. \"There were soldiers' brothels,\" puffs \"were called - remember shturmbannfyurera SS Avenir Bennigsen. - Almost all fronts. Girls from all over Europe, of all nationalities, from all camps collected. By the way, an indispensable accessory of a German soldier and an officer were two condoms, which are regularly issued in the army. \" But while in Europe the Wehrmacht brothels staffed with more or less voluntarily, on Soviet soil invaders such delicacy is not going to show. Girls and women for the German soldiers for the most part collected by force - a scene that will forever remember the people trapped under the occupation. In Smolensk, for example, women dragged by the arms and hair, dragged on the pavement - in the officer's brothel, organized in one of the hotels. In case of refusal to stay in a brothel followed the shooting. After the Red Army drove the Germans out of Kerch, views of Red terrible sight presented itself: \"In the prison yard was found mutilated shapeless pile of naked girls' bodies, wild and tortured by the Nazis cynically.\"\n\nThe way the advancing Nazi army treated the captured territories was known to the people fighting in the Soviet Army, and after the turning point occurred and the captured territories were liberated, the extent of the brutailty only served to increase the anger felt by the Soviets, resulting in the mass rape that occurred in East Germany when the war came there. The Soviet materials regarding the matter are still classified, but the German director, Helke Sander, states that a million women were raped by the Soviets in [this film](_URL_4_). However, reading the accounts of what the Germans did, it's really no wonder that the Soviets responded in kind, and helps explain why Victory Day (VE Day) is marked on a much larger scale in Russia today than in the Western Allied countries.", "Possibly because the Nazis killed so many soviets and burned their villages that it takes a lot of attention away from the rape. Soviet causalities were obscenely high for both civilians and military. ", "The German army raped, and that has been well documented. Maybe interesting to note because it's seldom talked about, is that (for example) a lot of women were raped in Normandy by the allied forces. It's not really talked about much because the allied forces were the liberators of France, and as the liberators and it was ... uncouth to talk about the bad/horrible things the allied forces did to the local populace, or seems to have been considered so by the French authorities/populace. \n\nThis continued on to road into Germany as well - where the allied transgressions are far less publicized as well.\n\n[BBC article](_URL_0_) based amongst others on Hitchcock's Bitter Road to Freedom.", "The answer to the second part of the question is quite obvious.\n\nCold war , the war that still exists partially today. One of the most common tactics of psychological conditioning of your own troops, was imprinting the fact : you represent order , morality , your men are best and showing that the enemy is worse trained ,equiped poorly and will inflict major attrocities on the people. In order to increase the effect you should remove the enemies reason to do so and display it as their nature.\n\nThis is the reason why we have these myths :\n\nRed army had 1 rifle per two men . (this was an isolated incident during defense of Moscow).\n\nRussians had no other tactics than frontal assaults.\n\nMillions raped on territory of Germany. (In the begging there were many incidets , but there was an order according to which any attrocities against the local population were punshable by death.) ", "I'm not surprised that a lot of Historians don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.. .particularly the ones on here that are knowledgeable about Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany or World War II.\n\nThere are misconceptions about the Soviet Army in World War II, particularly when it comes to their level of technical and Organisational sophistication. \n\nThey weren't some sort of Asiatic horde riding out from the Steppes, they were an Army with a high degree of discipline and professionalism. Which makes the mass rapes that took place all the more horrifying as they couldn't have taken place without the support of the chain of command.\n\nAs for the German military, a rape would have been punished because It violated the NAZI race laws, military discipline was unconcerned about whether it was rape, but having sex with someone that was classed as less than Aryan was something that was punished serverely.\n\nDuring the NAZI occupation of western Europe, rape by the Germans of local civilian women was actually far less common than by the Allied liberators... largely because German military discipline was far harsher." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.wunrn.com/news/2012/04_12/04_23/042312_holocaust.htm" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Japan#Reported_rapes_by_US_forces" ], [], [ "http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgirlsonwar.narod.ru%2Ftext%2FDukov%2Fzcssl.htm", "http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Flitrus.net%2Fbook%2Fread%2F2820%3Fp%3D52", "http://litrus.net/book/description/2820", "http://militera.lib.ru/research/dukov_ar/index.html", "http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.helke-sander.de%2Ffilme%2Fbefreier-und-befreite%2F" ], [], [ "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8084210.stm" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cej32vo", "cej8xab", "cej9rgf", "cejbk1m", "cejctqn", "ceje7en", "cejgxb0", "cejib6t", "cejncs9", "cejov1t" ], "score": [ 73, 178, 57, 7, 56, 4, 19, 32, 3, 7 ], "text": [ "I wrote a report on slave narratives. I read Frederick Douglas', Harriet Jacob's and W.E.B. DuBois (although DuBois was not a slave himself). Not every slave owner was cruel to their slaves. Although there was a stigma of a man that wasn't stern with his slaves, as the community would think that he was not doing his job as a slave owner. However, Douglas had an awful story about how he was nearly beaten to death. And Jacob's story was about how she lived in an attic for 7 years in order to avoid her master in the hopes of one day finding an escape. \nRegardless, the average slave was property, therefore given the bare essentials and often lacking that. The system was all about making money. If a slave owner thought that he'd make more productive slaves by beating them and occasionally making serious examples, then it was reasonable to do so. \nBut regardless of how they are currently depicted or whatever stories we hear from that time period, we need to be respectful of what happened and realize that it was despicable because of their status, not only their conditions. \n", " > but people don't beat their horses to within one inch of their life. \n\nOf course they do. \n\nIn the 1930s the WPA interviewed more than 2000 slaves, who describe their treatment in detail. These are available [online](_URL_1_). [Here](_URL_0_) is a selection with brief descriptions of their contents. The first link takes you to a master link of narratives. They're quite brutal. It is not pleasant reading in any sense. Of course, Solomon Northrup's own account can also be found online, [here](_URL_1_) for example. ", "There was a reason why masters beat slaves much more severely than they beat animals--slaves were a lot smarter. Tie an animal to a post and the animal won't and can't run away. Not so with people. If you read the book upon which 12 Years a Slave was based, you'll learn that 24/7 policing was necessary to prevent slaves from running away. You'll also note that in 12 Years a Slave, the cruelty and torture to which Northup was subjected, was not limited to just one person--it was a large number of different people in different circumstances and different states who committed it. As the WPA interviews, and other slave narratives, demonstrate, such cruelty was indeed widespread. Some slaves were lucky enough to avoid some of it. But most could not. White men could basically rape their enslaved women any time they felt like it, with no punishment or even acknowledgement that anything was wrong. In the delicate language of the 19th century, this is described in all the literature. Every slave was subject to being parted from their loved ones at any time, forever. In short, yes, things were as bad for the average slave as were depicted in the film. Not for every slave, but for a very large percentage of them. And actually, if you read the book, you'll see that things were quite a bit WORSE than were depicted in the movie. But if they had depicted it accurately, it would have become redundant and the audience would have been desensitized to the violence and degradation. What we today say is evil, was at that time considered to be normal, necessary, and GOOD. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Bible passages were quoted aplenty to show why it was important to make slaves obey and work. ", "I didn't want to make another thread about the movie, but I wanted to ask a side question: How often were black people kidnapped and forced into slavery. It always seemed like a very plausible thing to do as record-keeping was spotty.", "There was no average life for an average slave on an average plantation -- that's one of the reasons I really enjoyed the film *12 Years a Slave*. It shows the multiple ways that slaves existed, and the numerous strategies that slave owners adopted. One strategy was essentially a paternalist approach, epitomized in the film by Benedict Cumberbatch's character. The idea is that the slave owner won't face as much resistance from slaves if he treats them with some measure of decency, and develops a bond of some kind between slave and master. In case you're interested, this way of mediating between master and slave was famously charted by Eugene Genovese in his book *Roll, Jordan, Roll*. \n\nThe other major strategy was to inspire terror. I think that you err in assuming that these slave owners' infliction of violence on their slaves was irrational. Your comparison between them and \"Hitler/Satan\" and your example of people not beating their horses suggests this, at least to me. Rather, slave owners' violence was often quite calculated and strategic. As someone else noted in this thread, slaves were much smarter than horses. They saw that they could be beaten or killed for any act of defiance. In the antebellum South, many slave owners maintained a constant atmosphere of violence and fear, in order to keep slaves under control. Slave owners were not simply cruel for no reason. Admittedly, in the film, Epps seemed to be motivated by simple malice. Fassbender's portrayal didn't allow for much nuance. However, slave owners would have known precisely why they were attacking or beating their slaves. \n\nA final point I'll make tonight is that if we look beyond the antebellum South, prior to the abolition of the slave trade, it was not uncommon for slave owners to beat or work their \"property\" to death, knowing that they could cheaply replace them. Admittedly, this changed to an extent after the slave trade was abolished, but I would argue that the logic was not really that much different in the mid-nineteenth century United States. Slaves were replaceable, and a slave that resisted his/her master's tyranny in any way might seem to be more trouble than he or she was worth. This logic certainly holds for other kinds of property - horses, in your example.", "I'd respond to your question with a definitive yes. I'd suggest reading up on how Cecil Rhodes exploited black South Africans in the 1800's as a way to extract minerals that were plentiful in the area, or how black people were treated in King Leopold's Congo Free State. To imperialists like these, blacks were considered to be less than human beings,were seen as instruments for economic advancement, and were treated accordingly. ", "I find your question fascinating in that it proves that the post-war propaganda of former confederate leaders was really successful. They managed to make it sound, against all evidence, like the war was not about slavery, and that slavery was not that bad. Their declarations during or before the war attest to their dishonesty. \n\nAs for your comparison with Hitler, as far as I know he never got his hands dirty killing jews. In fact if I'm not mistaken he saved at least one, his childhood doctor and his family. At the same time, the actual perpetrators were, in their own words, \"just following orders.\" Even if the end result is similarly horrible as what you describe, nazism was thus actually much easier for the human psyche. \n\nThus it took extremely bad people, or a system powerful enough to turn normal ones into very bad ones. That's probably why racism is still so rampant in the Southern US, it had to be extreme so as to have cognitive dissonance resolve towards treating slaves like chattel.", "Note: strictly speaking this is not an answer to this question, it is more of a meta-answer, but it provides some points which I think are important so I'm posting it regardless.\n\nFirst off, realize that it is fundamentally impossible to truly understand the nature of slavery (anywhere) through any narrative, no matter how intimate. The fact is that without spending years and years of your life as a slave, without having the sure certain knowledge that you will live all the rest of your years and die as the property of another man burned into your consciousness you can only possibly understand the rudimentary outlines of slavery.\n\nSecond, the truth does not solve this problem. The truth is, was, that the day to day life of many slaves wasn't all that bad. In fact, compared to the average experience of the average \"free\" citizen of North America through the mid 19th century it really wasn't so bad at all, and some slaves lived lives that might seem preferable compared to many non-slaves in America, even up through, say, 1850. If you were an alien from a remote stellar system who had no knowledge of the history of slavery and through some high-tech device you were able to watch, say, an entire week's worth of footage of some random subset of American slaves circa 1850 you might not think it was such a bad deal.\n\nBut such conclusions would be erroneous, and hugely so. The problem here is that humans are great at coping, it's one of our most powerful features, and statistics can lead you to incorrect conclusions because outlier events can be so important that they define the nature of a thing. As a hypothetical, imagine a father who rapes his pre-teen daughter every year on her birthday. Statistically that incest/rape is an outlier, but that event is so important that the fact that it happens at all, let alone repeatedly, makes a huge qualitative and categorical difference.\n\nAnd that's the situation with oppression in general and slavery in particular. If the master only whips one of many slaves on a plantation once over a period of a decade the fact that such a thing ever happened and that it's possible for such a thing to happen utterly characterizes the master/slave relationship. You can look into someone's eyes, you can talk with them, you can spend hours and hours with them, you can think you know them but there is a good chance that you may never learn that for them every waking moment they are living in fear. There are thousands of abused spouses in this county who are living in fear and hiding their fear from even their closest friends. Imagine what it must have been like to live as a slave in 19th century America. To know the degree to which it is codified in the informal and formal rules of society and in the laws of the land that you are less. That any white man can say anything he wants to you or order you around. That your master controls your fate not you. That your master could force you to marry whoever he chose. That your master could sell your children or your wife and you could do nothing about it. That your master could rape your wife or your daughter and you could do nothing to stop it. Less. Powerless. Worthless. Hopeless.\n\nCould you imagine how that would affect your thinking, your personality, your capacity for happiness every single waking moment of your life? And imagine how it must feel to build up little mental rationalizations in your mind, to think that your master isn't so bad, that he doesn't seem likely to ever rape you or your friends or loved ones, or sell you or them off to some other plantation. And then one day something happens that's just slightly out of character for your master, maybe he gets angry and is verbally abusive when he's never been before, who knows. Or maybe he just takes ill for a little while and you're faced thinking about what will happen if you're forced to work for another master. Suddenly your little house of rationalizations is in doubt, suddenly there is nothing that you can depend on in your life. Suddenly the possibility of being whipped repeatedly, casually executed for sport, raped or see your loved ones raped, all of that becomes a lingering possibility at the back of your mind.\n\nThat's the true horror of slavery. And it's that sort of thing that is impossible to get across without dressing up slavery in \"stage makeup\" and focusing on abuses more than ordinary daily life, because those events are by and large more relevant.\n\nAbuses were not universally the norm, they were often the exception. But the fact that they did still happen and the fact that they could happen at any time is what characterized slavery in that setting and time period. As I said, there is absolutely no way to get across the entirety of the experience of slavery through the medium of film, television, or literature, so then it becomes necessary to provide a sketch, an impression of the nature of slavery. And any such sketch which does not include abuses as a fundamental aspect of the nature of slavery in America is one that is irredeemably flawed.", "It depends (as everything else) on *when* you are talking about. Before Slavery began to be restricted in terms of import/export, it was cheaper in French Caribbean and British West Indies sugar producing colonies to import slaves, and simply work them to death and purchase new ones, afterwards, it was not. \n\nIn that time before restriction, on sugar plantations, your idea of a slave as a performing asset held little weight and the death tolls were staggering, and are often overlooked. \n\nBut, post 1807 for the Brits, and 1808 for the US, the actual trade if not the condition of slavery ended. This made it harder to obtain slaves. The British on one track, having not had slavery in Britain itself, were on the way to freeing slaves in the imperial colonies by 1834. The US on the other hand, demurred from making a nationally binding decision and continued chattel slavery in their slave states until the American Civil War decided the question. \n\nThis makes the idea of a slave as a performing asset somewhat more valid, as simply buying up a load of new people became far more expensive, new slaves had to be bred, or bought instead of simply harvested. \n\nBut the literature and narratives often show us that far from being the kind of class that would treat a slave like one should a productive asset, and ensure full output, they instead opted for what is called the BPM in Poli/sci and economics, and that is do just enough to succeed and no more than necessary. So slaves were fed, and clothed, but not exceptionally well. They were disciplined, sometimes harshly, sometimes to death. And let us not be naïve, part and parcel of the condition of being a slave was the mental conditioning that kept them from rebelling or running away, which to the present mind, is cruel beyond comprehension. And the possibility of rape, the division of family, and of punishment unto death, hangs heavy on the present mind. These all existed, like Damocles’ sword above their heads, whether they were inflicted or not. \n\nAlthough, it also has to be said that not every slave tried to escape and some didn't see any hope in an attempt, the condition and conditioning thereof was designed to convince them of same, round the clock, their entire life. \n\nAnd furthermore, underneath that conditioning, that lay upon the human spirit like a blanket, the slave was still a thinking human being who without that conditioning, had a natural desire for freedom and a natural desire to use all of their powers to obtain that freedom, if they had not been broken. This made a strong motivation for the owning class to keep them alive and working, but not too much else, less they gain enough faculty or strength to overcome their condition by force. So treating them too well, was expressly against good management practice of the time period. \n\n\n", "I wrote an essay in my undergrad on the sexual lives of slaves in antebellum south. [The primary source I used were interviews with surviving slaves, most of whom were children during the war.](_URL_0_) The conclusions I drew were that masters controlled virtually every aspect of a slave's sexual life, except that which the slave could carve out for him/herself in private. \n\nMasters controlled who slaves had sex with, and would \"breed\" them. They would separate them from their spouses and chidlren, and *might* consider selling families together, but pretty much only if they were convinced that such a sale would increase their productivity. \n\nMasters would have sex with their female slaves, who had virtually no way of resisting. They would use rape as punishment, as well as just because they could." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/index.html", "http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnavshp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "For the same reason that they're used (or used to be used) at baseball games: volume. Even a small hockey stadium is a huge place, filled with screaming fans, and the pipe organ has the oomph to be heard in that environment.\n\nNowadays, most use \"electronic pipe organs.\" The one in Chicago's United Center, for example, uses recorded pipe organ sound, and cost something near $150,000.\n\nIt's not as fun as the one that was demolished with \"The Madhouse on Madison,\" but it still sounds good." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fc1vhiv", "fc3ho28" ], "score": [ 9, 3 ], "text": [ "I'm not well versed on their reaction to all of the Crusades, but their opinion of the First Crusade was initially very positive. Emperor Alexius had extracted oaths of loyalty from the prominent Crusader leaders, and promises to restore reconquered territory in Anatolia to the Romans, and this is what happened initially. Alexius gave the Crusader armies extensive supplies for their journey, as well as knowledgeable guides. He sent his navy along the coasts to help them whenever possible, and eventually sent armies in their wake to protect the conquests of the Crusaders (which, naturally, he wanted to see restored to his empire). Cooperation between the Romans and the Crusaders was effective and relation were relatively positive - both parties had the same objectives; to defeat the Seljuks and restore land to the Christians. However, things took a sharp turn when the Crusaders refused to hand over Antioch to the Romans following its capture in 1098. Alexius was understandably angry, since it was in direct violation of their previous agreements. \n\nThings took a further negative turn when the Crusaders revealed their intention of invading the Fatamid Caliphate and retaking the Holy Land. Alexius was on good terms with the Fatamids, since both of them viewed the Seljuks as a more serious threat than each other, and they agreed that it was in both of their best interests to focus their attention on defending against the Seljuks rather than fighting each other. Alexius warned the Crusaders not to start a war with the Fatamids, but they ignored him and marched down the Levant coast. The Emperor was furious and promptly cut off all aid he was giving them, including supplies and naval assistance. For the rest of the First Crusade (which at that point continued for only a few more months) there was no cooperation between the Romans and Crusaders. Alexius saw the invasion of the Holy Land as pointless from a strategic perspective and in nobody's best interests, and quickly distanced himself from the Crusaders and tried to maintain positive relations with the Fatamids, telling them he had nothing to do with it.\n\nThe only Crusader state that the Romans had somewhat positive (or at least not overtly negative) relations with was the Principality of Antioch, since its prince, Bohemund, swore fealty to Alexius as his overlord. This took some of the sting off the Crusaders' refusal to hand over the city, although Roman control of the principality was minimal and tensions were always high, since the princes simultaneously were influenced by the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well.\n\nSource: *God's War: A New History of the Crusades* by Christopher Tyreman", "u/Wonderfully_Mediocre’s not at all mediocre post already goes over the First Crusade, so I’ll just link to some previous answers of mine about that: [When the Crusaders left Anatolia, was the Levant still covered by their oath to return territory to the Byzantine Empire?](_URL_2_) and [Why did Bohemund declare himself the Prince of Antioch, not the King?](_URL_1_)\n\nAfter the First Crusade, the Byzantines were happy that Jerusalem and the other holy sites were in Christian hands again, but they wanted to make sure that the rights of Greek Christians were respected (which they were very often not, under crusader rule). Otherwise they didn’t really think anything of it from a political point of view, since Jerusalem was strategically unimportant to them. They did have a fairly good relationship with the crusader kingdom in Jerusalem; the royal families intermarried, and they tried to conduct military expeditions together (particularly against Egypt), but the Byzantines didn’t really want to rule anything except Antioch.\n\nFor the Second Crusade, both Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany travelled through Constantinople, as the First Crusade had done. In that case, the Byzantines were fairly worried: \n\n > “The appearance of a large crusading army was a cause for grave concern in Constantinople. Unlike in the background to the First Crusade, when Alexius I had requested a western force to come to his aid, there was no such invitation in 1146-7.” (Phillips, *The Second Crusade*, pg. 170)\n\nSicily had been attacking Byzantine territories around the same time, so the Byzantines worried that the crusaders were working with the Sicilians. They were also worried that the crusade would besiege Constantinople, but the crusaders had no intention of attacking the empire and they were eventually ferried across the Bosporus and made their way to Jerusalem. \n\nConrad wasn’t technically the Holy Roman Emperor, so there was no problem with two emperors both claiming to be the Roman Emperor, as there was on the Third Crusade. I answered [a previous question](_URL_0_) about that as well: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Byzantine Emperor Isaac II both claimed to be the legimitate Roman emperor so it was extremely difficult for them to agree to anything. The other problem for the Third Crusaders was that the crusaders believed the Byzantines were [secretly allying with Saladin](_URL_3_) to destroy them. The Byzantines were probably just exploring all their diplomatic options though, not conspiring against the crusade specifically. \n\nIn any case, the problems on the Third Crusade were also overcome and the German crusaders made their way to the Holy Land (although Emperor Frederick died along the way). The other contingents from England and France avoided the overland route and took the sea route, but the English managed to somewhat accidentally conquer the Byzantine province of Cyprus. The Byzantines were not particularly happy about that, but Cyprus was ruled by a rebellious lord, so it was really already outside of the authority of Constantinople.\n\nThe Fourth Crusade is of course an entirely different matter…the Byzantines, in hindsight, obviously felt that it was a huge disaster for them. Very briefly, the emperor at the time, Alexios III, had deposed the previous emperor, his brother, the aforementioned Isaac II. Isaac’s son Alexios IV came to an agreement with the leaders of the crusade to divert it from its original target (Egypt) to Constantinople to restore Isaac to the throne. So, there were at least some Byzantines who were in favour of that…but not many, since the people actually living in Constantinople were opposed. Alexios IV and the crusaders did manage to restore Isaac to the throne, with Alexios IV as co-emperor, but then Isaac died. Alexios IV was then overthrown and murdered by yet another Alexios, who became Alexios V. The crusaders were still there though so they attacked and conquered the entire city. The disastrous part of this in Byzantine eyes was not the rapid overthrow and murder of various emperors (which happened often enough), but the crusader sack of the city. The Byzantines were always paranoid that a crusader army showing up at their door would sack the city, and finally with the Fourth Crusade, it actually happened. \n\nThe other crusades then largely bypassed Constantinople, because it was already under Christian control - interestingly, the problems faced by the First, Second, and Third Crusades, arriving at a somewhat hostile Constantinople, would have no longer been problems for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Crusades, but the later crusades avoided it anyway and took the faster sea route.\n\nSources:\n\nCharles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West (Harvard University Press, 1968)\n\nJonathan Harris, *Byzantium and the Crusades* (Hambledon and London, 2003)\n\nJonathan Phillips, *The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople* (Pimlico, 2005)\n\nJonathan Phillips, *The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom* (Yale University Press, 2007)" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c32r3y/in_1185_holy_roman_emperor_frederick_barbarossa/eroprbo/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzjznq/why_did_bohemund_declare_himself_the_prince_of/f8a1qi0/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/diaqov/when_the_crusaders_left_anatolia_was_the_levant/f7lzlyr/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ddnhst/during_the_third_crusade_why_did_byzantine/f3axyo9/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dskkz1t", "dsl4wgj" ], "score": [ 69, 41 ], "text": [ "While there were a numerous way in which the English East India company were able to maintain control over their massive Indian territory , I will cover some important ways in which they exerted control :\n\n#**Part 1**\n\n#**Control over the rulers**\n\nOne of the important pillars of power of company support were a loyal class of local rulers . These rulers were helpful because \n\n1) They helped maintain an illusion of indigenous rule when in reality they were nothing more than company stooges .\n\n2) They helped in suppression of local rebellions and other minor disputes that were not big enough or important enough to warrant the use of the company army\n\n3) By getting support and loyalty of these indigenous rulers , They hoped to obtain a sense of legitimacy as they often touted themselves as the protector of mughal empire and in later years as successors of the mughal state\n\nBut how did the company develop this class of royal rulers?\n\nThe Company exerted control over the rules and various kingdoms via mainly the \n\n* Subsidiary Alliance system \n* Protection alliance and protective custody \n* Picking sides in succession disputes to install a puppet \n* Doctrine of Lapse and Adoption \n* Using wars between rival Indian kingdoms to their advantage\n\nLet us understand each of the above in a brief manner\n\n***Subsidiary alliance system***\n\nUnder the subsidiary alliance system , The ruler agreed to enter an alliance with the company . The terms of these alliance were as follows:\n\n > An Indian ruler entering into a subsidiary alliance with the British would accept British forces within his territory and to pay for their maintenance.\n\n > * The ruler would accept a British official (resident) in his state.\n\n > * The ruler who entered into a subsidiary alliance would not join any alliance with any other power or declare war against any \n power without the permission of the British.\n > * The ruler would dismiss any Europeans other than the British and avoid employing new ones.\n > * The ruler would let the British rule on any conflict any other state.\n > * The ruler would acknowledge the East India Company as the paramount power in India.\n > * The ruler would have his state be protected by the Company from external dangers and internal disorders.\n > * If the rulers failed to make the payments that were required by the alliance, part of their territory would be taken away as a penalty.\n > * Indian rulers have to maintain British troops in his state. \n\nAs you can see after reading the above terms , Any kingdom which entered / or was forced to enter into a subsidiary alliance was reduced to nothing but a kingdom with a rubber stamp ruler who were official puppets of the company on almost all matters of importance \n\n*Examples of kingdoms which entered the subsidiary alliance system : Awadh , Many maratha princely kingdoms ,Tanjore , Indore etc*\n\n***Protection alliance or protective custody***\n\nMany Indian rulers or royal families who were afraid of being attacked by their rivals or by members of their own house often entered British protective custody . These forms of agreements generally involved the Company defeating/killing/driving off the enemies of the person seeking protection . In return for these , The ruler would become predisposed to the company and do what the company advised them in case they needed the company protection in the future again \n\n***Picking sides in succession disputes to install a puppet***\n\nThe company often took advantage of succession disputes to further their own advantage . They would select one of the people involved in the disputes and offer their support , resources and help to get the throne . In return , the ruler would have to promise to be favor and have good relations with the Company when he becomes the ruler \n\nSuch actions were also often done when they felt that a ruler soon to come to power in a throne would be bad for the prospects of the company \n\nIn most of the cases , Getting the official support of company on your side generally meant that the game was over for the opposing side more or less\n\nThus , by helping these rulers ascend the throne , they got a loyal group of rulers who they could rely on in times of difficulty \n\n***Doctrine of lapse and adoption***\n\n > Under an ancient Hindu custom, to avoid a disputed succession to the throne, a ruler with no born-to heir could adopt a male of any age from another branch of the ruling family and appoint him heir apparent. This parallels similar customs in ancient Rome and during the Chinese Qing Dynasty.\n\n > When the British Empire came to India in 1757, among the land-grabbing stratagems devised was the Doctrine of Lapse, which abrogated the ancient custom. Under this doctrine the British arrogated to themselves the right to veto the succession of an adopted heir, and instead, to annex the territory concerned, although the adopted successor and his heirs were usually allowed to keep their titles and a substantial annual allowance. \n\nThus , this one more method to install a puppet regime in many kingdoms . Many big Indian princely thus fell to this policy \n\n~~**# Part 2 to follow soon**~~\n\n# ***Part 2*** \n\n# ***Military power of the company***\n\nThe army of the East India Company were one of the most feared and powerful in the subcontinent uptil its dissolution in 1857 \n\n* Company army had massive superiority over indigenous kingdoms in terms of artillery , firepower and firearms ,military discipline and military tactitcs\n\n* To help the company further , they had a exceptional and experienced class of military commanders and officers who had experience fighting in many terrains and countries in different parts of the world . In many wars , the company won not to due to superior quality of equipment , but rather due to the experienced officers and commanders leading the charge during the war .\n\n* The trademark red coat and bucket coat that the company is now famous for stuck fear in many Indian kingdoms. In order to increase troop morale , many Indian kingdoms introduced a similar looking uniform for their own army \n\n* The payment system of the company was **extremely punctual**. The company placed a great emphasis on ensuring that due salary payments were done to all troops . This ensured that the Company army became a lucrative job for many Indians . The best and smartest of various kingdoms often tried their hands to get a job in the company army \n\n* Any disturbance anywhere in the country that had the potential to weaken company hold over power invited a visit from the Company army . Many regiments in the company evoked special fear such as the Bengal regiment which were the backbone of company power in the country \n\n# Part 3 to follow soon\n\nMeanwhile you can read my answer regarding opinion of various sections of the Indian society towards East India company to understand the flames of discontentment that were rising in the Indian society\n\n[Answer](_URL_0_)\n\n\n# ***How much indigenous resistance was there?***\n\nLet me quote you a section which will directly answer this part of question\n\n > Among the myths which became current in the wake of the rebellion of\n1857-8 was the idea that it was a unique event, something that had to\nbe explained in terms of the peculiar folly of the revenue policy of the\n\n > With this in mind, several broad types of dissidence can be isolated\nfrom the great range of revolts between 1800 and i860. Most notable\nwere the periodic revolts of zamindars and other superior landholders\nfighting off demands for higher revenue or invasions of their status as\n'little kings' in the countryside. Then there were conflicts between\nlandlords and groups of tenants or under-tenants objecting to the\ntransformation of customary dues into landlord rights or to some violation of the obligations between agrarian lord and dependant.\nNext there was a range of conflicts arising from tension between wandering\nor tribal people and settled peasant farmers which usually\ncentred on the control of forests, grazing grounds or other communally\nexploited resources. Finally, there were frequent revolts in cities\nand towns. These had many causes: some were riots over market control\nand taxation. Some involved bloodshed between religious or caste\ngroups or the protests of embattled artisan communities. All these\ntypes of conflict were widespread but they surfaced in exaggerated\nform in the course of the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857.\n\nSource for the above quoted text :Indian society and makings of british empire", "[1/2]\n\nI would like to add a few points here, because u/HarshKarve's posts seems to me very strongly (if not to say solely) informed by a British perspective, leading to a rather positive overall assessment of the East India Company. Although they quote a short paragraph on resistance at the end, it basically seems in the post as if the British were in control due to their superior strategies and military. This is misleading, because in fact indigenous resistance to colonial rule was continuos from the beginning in the Raj in the late 18th c. roughly until the rebellion of 1857, which led to the British Crown taking over. Also and crucially it reinforces colonial stereotypes that don't ascribe agency to non-Europeans (here from South Asia), effectively writing them out of history. So it's important to keep in mind that British rule was far from secure even as late as 1857, where in the first months it was not clear at all that the British could regain control. \n\nHaving said that, I'll especially focus on two points below: 1) native resistance, and 2) (more briefly) changes under British rule. \n\nThe EIC increasingly formed a parallel state in India, with private armies and great administrative control. It had managed over decades to take over princely states and form an economic basis. To do so it had increasingly built on indigenous sources and networks of information gathering since the 1760s (cf Bayly, Empire and Information). However, all this came at a cost (C.A. Bayly, Indian Society making British Empire, 106):\n\n > The [EIC] rose to power because it had provided a secure financial base for its powerful mercenary army. The land revenues of Bengal, combined with the capital - Indian as much as European - generated in the coastal trading economy, allowed the Company's Indian operations to sustain the massive debts incurred in its fight to finish with the Indian kingdoms. However, political dominion did not solve the Company's financial problems. The ominous presence and constant pressure of this part-oriental, part-European state continued to tempt petty rulers within and outside its domains into revolt. Though aspects of the social and political conflict which had drawn the Company into expansion were suppressed under its ruler, so too was much of the economic dynamism which had given rise to that conflict. India's huge agricultural economy was not performing well enough to underwrite the costs of European dominion. The [EIC]'s rule widely came to be seen as a dismal failure long before the Great Rebellion of 1857 blew up its foundations. \n\nWe should note that this perception of the Company's failure was not just from Indian perspectives, but that there were important discussions in British parliament in the 19th c. over restricting the company's influence. One major criticism there was the perceived corruption of the EIC's leading administrators. Another point to add here is that the perceived \"low performance\" of the native economy is connected also to British tactics of importing British textiles to India which would over the long-term weaken this important branch of South Asian economies (among other influences). Adding to this was that the \"*needs of its financial and military machine had tended to snuff out that buoyant entrepreneurship of revenue farmers, merchants and soldiers which had kept the indigenous system functioning*\" (ibid). As mentioned such developments taken together led to resistance in various forms and for various reasons.\n\n.\n\n**Indigenous resistance to colonial rule**\n\nI'll begin by quoting [an earlier reply of mine](_URL_1_) on the time preceding the rebellion of 1857:\n\n > The rebellion took place 100 years after the beginning of the rule of the Easty India Company (EIC) in South Asia, and has to be understood as a continuation of a long tradition of local resistance to colonial rule (that continued up to independence). In this light, the rebellion was particular in its scope, but not in its goals and demands. There were many different kinds of and motivations for resistance: Among others religious insurrections, banditry, acts of revenge – but also peaceful opposition. Most of those insurrections were connected in some way to the very common economic exploitation and political marginalisation through the EIC, and thus to popular discontent. \n\n > It's also interesting to note that such discontent ran through all social classes. As a common ideology we can identify the central role of the community principle to the rural populace (including the caste system), and that of traditional land rights. Most (if not all) of these motivations for and forms of resistance played major roles during 1857. On the other hand, the lack of a coordinated, unified organisation meant that the British could count on parts of the local population, and was a major influence in the rebellion's failure.\n\nLet's look a bit closer at those earlier revolts: At almost any moment during colonial times a rebellion or revolt took place somewhere in SOuth Asia. There are reports of hundreds of revolts already in the 17th century, and according to Kathleen Gough there were at least 77 agrarian revotls from the 18th c., drawing tens to hundreds of thousands of peasants. While they were officially called 'localized', they actually took place on larger territories than those of the well-known European agrarian revolts when considerian South Asia's huge size. Certain areas had more frequent revolts taking place, esp. Bengal, but also tribal areas of modern-day Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad) und Kerala (in the South West).\n\nAs a larger ideology behind such resistance we can see the central role of the *community* principle for the rural populace, especially the spiritual foundation of the caste system and traditional land rights: \"*Community as 'the characterisitc unifying feature of peasant consciousness*\" (Chatterjee). This served to seperate friends from traditional foes during revolts - between, but also within religious groups. Another feature of the community was the major role of politico-social justice. Justice could take the form of rights to complaint, peaceful forms of protest such as migration. An important result of this was that even people of the lower classes could reclaim their rights before local authorities -- which was not possible anymore in this way under the _URL_0_ many revolts can be connected to a pre-colonial sense of justice not compatible with British conceptions, which because of this were often not succesful. Then again, revolts often led to adaptions of the colonial system, e.g. throiugh agreements with local leaders and groups from which they could profit. \n\nI'll now look in a bit more detail at forms of resistant other than those agrarian revolts, and then turn to consequences of the revotl of 1857 (1857 itself falls sort of outside of the scope of this):\n\n- Revolts of land owners/ *zamindars*: These went against larger tributes and the lowering of their status. E.g. when the British tried to move one of their candidates onto the throne of a realm (as mentioned in the above post), contrary to the political alliances of a given region. Especially frequent was resistance in regions that had never been under Mughal control, but were now supposed to be controlled by the EIC (or its rulers). Examples include Awadh and Bundelkhand. Privileges were accorded by the British to local leaders in order to thwart further rebellions.\n\n- *Resistance of village leaders:* Here often the sole possibility was moving away or deserting, but also revolts took place (Dekkan 1850s/'60s, Konkan 1857-'59). In addition there were conflicts within rural societies, between landowners and tenants, which only increased with the stronger influence of cash cropping. Tenants often reisted the transformaton of their land rights; and conlficts between non-sedentary tribes and sedentary farmers were also quite frequent.\n\n\n\n- *Religious unrest*: Oftentimes agrarian conflicts took on religious character through the influence of reformist Islam. This was the case with the Faraizi movement in Eastern Bengal (1820s to '50s), which revolted in favor of weavers and their taxation, and attacked Hindu money-lenders as well as European indio-estates. Moreoever there was an increase in revolutionary messianism taking place, esp. in Muslim (but also in Hindu) communities reeling from theri increasing social deracination. These were collective movements looking towards a sacred realm on earth, and for an imminent huge change through supernatural means. Apocalyptical preachers (like Tipu Sahib in East Bengal) prophetised the end of British rule and mobilized mountain tribes in this way.\n\n\n\n- *Urban revolts*: Were connected to economic and religous difficulties. Once more the decrease of urban weavers and artisans led to revolts of these groups. In their own organisations muslim faith would often strengthen communal ties, and strikes against local officials and traders happened often. The most frequent resistance in cities came from the elites -- they were against colonial taxations and taxation of houses. The replacement of traditional guardians of the law through colonial officials further led to agitation.\n\n.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7n3vom/at_the_height_of_its_power_how_was_the_east_india/ds9y00a/" ], [ "British.So", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hvayl/india_1858_congo_1908/d2sxz7e/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cr3qv9g", "cr3qzed", "cr3x9z8", "cr41eml" ], "score": [ 11, 2, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Probably not. Many of the indigenous languages at that point were only spoken languages and were not written, which is why you aren't finding many, if any, sources in an indigenous language. You should be fine if you focus on one of the European languages (French or Spanish if you are studying an area colonized by the Spanish). In the unlikely event that you need an indigenous language for your area of research, your future advisor will tell you and help you find a way to learn it.", "To move through graduate school you would not *need* to be fluent in Native American languages. It sounds like it could not hurt, given what you would like to study, but the fact is, most historians of colonial America do not know any Native American languages, much less have fluency. The major reason for this is not necessary euro-centrism, though that doesn't help, but rather that most historians gather their data and evidence from written sources, which, almost by default, are filtered through Europeans and European languages before being recorded (or as they are recorded). This means that there are few truly Native American sources available in that form, so many historians, even of those who look at European-Native American interactions, are not what you would call fluent in any Native American language. Of course, if that will be your main focus, it cannot hurt to learn as much as you can, and also to investigate the Native American cultures you'll study such as they exist today. Generally, a historian of such interactions tries to get as much perspective as possible, by approaching the subject from as many angles as possible. I highly recommend \"Facing East From Indian Country\" by Daniel Richter for you, as his introduction discusses exactly this issue of recovering Native American perspectives and opinions when the overwhelming majority of information about them and their interactions has been filtered through Europeans and Colonists first. The rest of the book attempts to engage in just such recoveries in a number of instances.", "A lot of this depends on your particular subject. For example, if you're doing work that connects to extant groups and potentially their oral histories (a methodology that requires mastery in itself!) you may. However, often the acquisition of those languages happens in the field, precisely because they are not normally taught in an instructional setting. In learning certain southern African languages, that was my only choice--even going to teachers who work in the language wouldn't help, because they were already dealing with native speakers, not second-language speakers. So you may well not be able to acquire a relevant one to you until the need is apparent.\n\nI will say that having such a language, and more importantly a demonstrated ability to work in that language, is a helpful differentiator on the market. But for the era you're discussing, it's not an absolute requirement for the general field. When we did our colonial US search, none of the finalists had a Native American language. Constrast that, if you're curious, to our most recent US West/18th-19th search, where two of the four finalists had research ability in a Native American language. As /u/Mictlantecuhtli points out below, the need is very subject- and geography-dependent.", "Even if you don't need it for translating primary sources, I think that it would be a sign of respect and thoughtfulness to learn the language that is or was most prevalent in the main location of your research. It might give you insight into the structure, interests, and investments of the culture you're studying\\*. Studying the protocols that go along with language in conversational settings with peers and with elders may help you to develop relationships, and thereby gain appropriate, respectful access to oral histories directly from the source in an ethical, non-exploitative manner. \n\nCould you do some research without this knowledge? Absolutely. Could you do more, more interesting, and maybe more groundbreaking research with it? I think so. But you'd probably have to seek out a graduate institution with the programs, training opportunities, and community links to help you on your way. \n\n\\*For example, as far as I understand it, the Cree language uses different grammatical structures for animate vs. inanimate nouns, but the dividing line does not line up with a Western scientific/biological understanding of what constitutes an animate object. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cup7lw5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "By the time period in question, the pike blocks [(*not* phalanxes)](_URL_0_) have taken further and further secondary roles to shot/firearm troops. \n\nIn the early 16th century, the shot troops are there to support friendly pike blocks and harass enemy pike blocks when contact is made. By the 17th century the proportions have changed drastically. A figure from *\"Fighting Techniques of the Early Modern World\"* shows:\n\n* 1622: 10 deep formation, 3 pikes for every 2 muskets.\n* 1630: 8 deep formation, 1 pike vs. 1 muskets.\n* 1650: 6 deep, 1 pike vs. 2 muskets. \n\nYou can guess where the trend was heading. Swedish infantry in the 30YW deployed about 1-1 pikes-muskets, and this isn't much different from what the Imperial and Spanish troops deployed, even if the Swedish ran smaller squadrons than their adversaries. \n\nBy the 1650s period, the pike block was a smaller contingent with muskets on both sides. Or rather, perhaps it is more accurate to say that an infantry squadron was a 6-deep line of muskets with a few pikes concentrated in the center. If that squadron is threatened by horse, the pikes then move forward and muskets back behind them to get protection. \n\nYou may want to read through [previous answers](_URL_1_) on pike and shot formations in battle. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3iuthl/how_did_late_medievalearly_renaissance_pike/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/330x89/how_were_the_corners_of_musket_protected_from/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cojfldz", "cojfw8g", "cojgcqy" ], "score": [ 22, 27, 115 ], "text": [ "Since I would imagine fighting never stopped and only slowed , I would like to ask an additional question. Did either the Russians or German troops have any tools to aid in thier night vision? I always hear about the Japanese Navy having great night optics but did generals or armies have access to night optics? ", "Please keep in mind that answers in this subreddit need to follow our rules. An answer consisting of four sentences is not an acceptable answer. We value answers that are **in-depth** and comprehensive.\n\nTo quote our rules:\n\n > Answers in this subreddit are expected to be of a level that historians would provide: comprehensive and informative. As such, all answers will be assessed against the standards of Historiography and Historical Method. You should cite or quote sources where possible. A good answer will go further than a simple short sentence. As described here, \"good answers aren't good just because they are right – they are good because they explain. In your answers, you should seek not just to be right, but to explain.\"\n\nIf you are not completely certain about what you're writing, then refrain from writing. Also refrain from writing if all that you can contribute is a quote from a website, a link to a website or if you do not have the time to contribute more than a couple of sentences. This applies to **all** answers, not only the top level comments.", "In reading just now excerts from \"Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 By Antony Beevor\", Its talks of how Chuikov had ordered an emphasis on night raids because the Luftwaffe could not respond and that he was convinced it struck fear into the Germans. It talks about the use of flares to constantly trick soldiers into a belief of an imminent attack. \n\nIn addition a comment from a corporal about the \"eerie change in sound\" of the U-2 bi-planes used for night time bombing as the pilot would turn off the engine on assault until the bomb hit. \n\nSo a constant psychological onslaught from the Russians, the author comments as well that the Germans were exhausting ammo as they would fire at anything during the night. \n\nedit: type in: \"Stalingrad night raid\" the piece i read should be in Google books.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cauob5v", "caup3xl" ], "score": [ 3, 10 ], "text": [ "Just to clarify, in the TV show Deadwood, the profanity was anachronistic (in other words, no \"cocksucka\"). The show creator chose to go this route because he felt using period-appropriate slang would have sounded silly rather than profane.\n\n_URL_0_", "*Sodomite* and its variants were certainly in use at that time in Britain. The Marquis of Queensberry left a calling card at Oscar Wilde's London club in February of 1895 that was addressed \"To Mr. Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomist\" (sic). His handwriting was so poor that some have suggested that the card was actually intended to read \"ponce and sodomist.\" Either way, Wilde sued for libel, lost, then was tried and convicted of indecency.\n\nEnglish sexologist Havelock Ellis, in his *Studies on the Psychology of Sex* from 1897, used the word *pervert* to refer to a homosexual; the word definitely had negative connotations at the time, but lacks the level of disdain that you're probably looking for.\n\n*Punk* has evolved through several meanings, but it was at the turn of the century that it took on the meaning of the less dominant of two men that are having sexual relations. It was used most frequently in all-male societies such as hoboes, sailors, and prison inmates. A similar term from the time was *prushun*, referring to a young man who served as traveling companion, beggar, and bedmate for an older hobo (who was known as a jocker in such a relationship). In both cases, there is the inference that the less dominant of the two had been coerced into it.\n\nThe word *queen* can be traced back to 1924 in the *OED*, but the use of the word to mean a homosexual man (rather than being a disparaging term for a bold woman) can be traced back to the 1880s, in testimony from London's Cleveland Street Scandal. That testimony also shows us that the word *gay* was used at the time to refer to both homosexual men and female prostitutes. It is believed that because those two groups lived in close association in big cities during the nineteenth century, they used many of the same slang terms, and that was one of the reasons that the use of so many slurs evolved, in that they first referred to one gender, then the other.\n\n*Mary* dates back to the 1890's, and *Nancy*, *nancy-boy*, and *Miss Nancy* to the 1800's. [Andrew Jackson](_URL_1_) even referred to William King, the 13th American Vice President, as \"Miss Nancy.\"\n\nSince you mentioned *cocksucker*, it was included in Farmer & Henley's 1891 dictionary *Slang and Its Analogue*, published in London, with the one-word definition \"feliatrix.\" It was in use there at the time, but was not gender-specific.\n\nAs far as the written record goes, *faggot* as a gay slur dates back to 1914; it is generally regarded as an Americanism, and in fact *to faggot* meant 'to have sex with loose women' in nineteenth century Britain, according to Farmer & Henley.\n\nInfo from Hugh Rawson's *Wicked Words*, 1989, and [The Straight Dope](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadwood_(TV_series)#Use_of_profanity" ], [ "http://www.straightdope.com/", "http://vicepresidents.com/blog/2010/12/21/miss-nancy-aunt-fancy/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbhz58j", "cbi2li9", "cbi6gfs" ], "score": [ 7, 10, 2 ], "text": [ "I don't know about 2000 years ago but the size of vegetables sold to consumers has certainly increased significantly over the last century. One reason for this is crop breeding for increasing fruit weight, and this has been successful for pretty much everything you'll find in a supermarket. The other important factor are growing methods like fertilizer, greenhouses, and hydroponics that all result in larger crops. Not only that a U of T study comparing fruit sold in a 50 year period found significant decreases in nutrient levels per weight in almost all crops, including 38% decreases in riboflavin. \n\nDo you have a specific plant in mind? 2000 years ago you wouldn't be able to recognize bananas or corn. I'm speculating now but it seems unlikely that crop breeding for size didn't occur in ancient times. All it would take is a farmer planting seeds from the biggest plants every season and we know they were breeding animals. And there was some absolutely prime agricultural soil back then compared to what the soil in many of those farmlands is now.\n\nHowever neither would touch the maximum sizes way back in the days when CO2 and global temperatures were much higher than they are now.", "I can give only one example and that is of corn and the domestication was much earlier then 2000 years ago. It was first domesticated in Southern mexico by 4000 to 3000 B.C.E.. The ancestor of corn was a mountain grass called teosinte. It does not look like modern corn. Thousands of years of selective adaptation were required to develop a large cob. Teosinte was about the length of two quarters long.", "While we're on the topic, does anyone know how big Diocletian's cabbages would have been?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxcqapt" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "There were many periods of anti-communist sentiment in the United States, each having its own set of domestic and international issues. Many consider the 1930s to be the \"heyday\" of American Communism (see [Harvey Klehr's book](_URL_0_)) because that's when the US was closest to revolution (due to the 1929 stock market crash and millions of unemployed workers- i.e., Communists' ideas seemed pretty good to the downtrodden). So, in the 1930s, the anti-communist sentiment was very much a fear of a domestic revolution- it seemed that Marx was right (in some regards), and that capitalism couldn't support itself. In 1935, the Party entered the Popular Front era, meaning it was more acceptable for communists to associate with liberals, democrats, moderates, union organizers, etc. to push for rights for the working class. So Party influence was at an all-time high. Many historians note that if the US was ever to have a communist revolution, it would've been then due to the Party's influence on politics and culture (and would have been very different from Maoist China or the Bolshevik revolution). This all fell apart when Stalin signed the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, essentially making nice with the Popular Front's greatest enemy: fascism.\n\nIn 1938, the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC established the Dies committee to hunt for Nazi's in the country, which led to suppression of other political groups, like the communists and socialists. From there, there was no real turning back. After the US entered WWII, the threat of attacks on the US gained credence, and political suppression was seen as a legitimate way to preserve domestic and international peace. I have less expertise in the post-war era and communism, so if someone wants to step in on that, that would be great. But in general, after the communist witch-hunt of the 1950s, most Americans no longer feared the communist revolution, but instead feared espionage and Soviet attacks." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/The-Heyday-American-Communism-Depression/dp/0465029450" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cidlqe9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "hi! feedback on street naming in medieval Europe is welcome, but meanwhile, you might be interested in a couple of posts that discuss other times/places without street names, to get an idea of how it works:\n\n[Did streets in Rome use street numbers during the Republic and/or Empire period?](_URL_1_)\n\n[Why does Tokyo have such unusual street address designations?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25yj2w/why_does_tokyo_have_such_unusual_street_address/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yxmba/did_streets_in_rome_use_street_numbers_during_the/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6udapg" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The flaw in your premise is asking about Europe, when your question is about Judea.\n\nPretty much west of the Balkans, Latin was the dominant language of the Roman empire, though Greek was very prevalent among educated Romans and among the upper classes diglossia (switching between two languages to talk about different fields/areas of life) appears common. It's extremely likely that Pontius spoke Greek well.\n\nEast of the Balkans , Greek was the dominant lingua franca. Even in areas where another local language was spoken, e.g. Aramaic, Greek was in widespread usage. It was not rven necessarily about formal education, widespread usage of Greek meant that many people were bi or trilingual. For this reason it is not at all unlikely that Jesus knew Greek and could speak in it, even though he was probably not educated in it nor spoke it as well, say, as Pilate.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cezf6gt" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The image which you attach is of the battle between the USS Wasp and HMS Reindeer in the War of 1812.\n\nLike most naval battles, this was fought near land (in the approaches to the English Channel) rather than in the middle of the sea. It is hard to find enemy ships (or fleets) in the vast reaches of the open sea, so most battles occurred near ports or other strategic locations close to land.\n\nIn this case, the Wasp's mission was to raid English commerce in the English Channel (a very strategic location, as a vast number of merchant ships trading in or out of England would have to pass through the Channel). The Reindeer was sent out to attack the Wasp once the British learned that she was there, raiding their commerce.\n\nThough it was risky (and not always strategically wise) for a captain to engage in ship on ship battle, sea captains in this era rarely refused battle. It seems to have been a point of honor.\n\nIt could be argued that continuing to destroy British merchant shipping in the Channel approaches was more valuable to the American War effort than destroying one small British warship. (Though the morale and propaganda value of ship to ship victories in the War of 1812 was high). Even though victorious, the Wasp had to put into a French port for repairs, and was out of action as a commerce raider for seven weeks as a result of the battle.\n\nThe Wasp and the Reindeer do not seem to have engaged in much of a tactical duel. The two ships sailed towards each other in very light winds. When they were close, they went broadside to broadside and began firing the cannon. After twenty minutes of cannon fire, the two ships were alongside of each other, and the British tried to board the Wasp but were repulsed. The Americans follwed up by boarding the Reindeer (this is the moment shown in your picture).\n\nThe Wasp had heavier cannon (22 32 pounder carronades vs 18 24 pounder carronades) and more crew (178 vs 118), so had the advantage in both phases of the battle. The Reindeer was too damaged to sail back to port, so she was burned. Reindeer had 25 men killed and 42 wounded when she surrendered. Wasp had 11 killed and 15 wounded.\n\nThere often would be more strategy and maneuvering in a ship on ship battle than there was in this one. \n\nIn the Napoleonic wars, the British liked to try to achieve the \"weather gauge\" (that is to get their ship to windward of the enemy). The ship that had the weather gauge could better control the action and prevent the enemy from escaping. The French often preferred the lee gauge, from which they would try to keep the distance open from the enemy and shoot at sails and rigging, hoping to disable the British ship and gain a maneuverability advantage that might allow them to achieve a raking broadside.\n\nTo be able to \"rake\" the enemy was often a decisive blow. Raking meant to cut across the bow or stern of the enemy ship, so that you could send a broadside down the entire length of the enemy gun deck, while the opponent could not shoot back (having very few guns pointed fore or aft).\n\nMostly, it was hard to out maneuver the opponent well enough to achieve a raking broadside. The USS Constitution, however, seems to have been able to do this in several of her victorious engagements in the War of 1812. Perhaps because she was unexpectedly faster or more maneuverable than her opponents expected.\n\nCannon were very effective in naval combat. They rarely sunk wooden ships, but they crippled them and killed the crew until the ship would no longer function as a fighting force. Ships could be defeated by cannon fire alone (and most often were) but it was also not uncommon for the final action of a battle to be boarding the enemy and hand to hand fighting on the decks (as in the battle between the Wasp and the Reindeer).\n\nSources:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n" ] }

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[ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Marines_Aboard_USS_Wasp_Engage_HMS_Reindeer._June_1814._Copy_of_painting_by_Sergeant_John_Clymer.%2C_1927_-_1981_-_NARA_-_532579.tif" ]

[ [ "http://www.history.navy.mil/ussconstitution/history.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_HMS_Reindeer" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f6mc0ob" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Interestingly enough, this question coincides with “How was the cow domesticated?”\n\nA little bit of context, the cow (aurochs) before domestication was an absolute brute. They were violent beasts much larger than humans and much larger than the modern cow. So how the heck did it get domesticated???\n\nWell humans didn’t choose to domesticate the cow. It was a symbiotic relationship that developed because both sides learned about the benefits of keeping each other around which develops a tolerance between each other and eventual direct interaction. But that still doesn’t go all the way. Why the heck would humans tolerate such a beast??? (Some surviving documents from Rome/Greece reference the aurochs as an untamable beast. I can track those down if you’re interested. But the aurochs survived until the 1600s while cows were already domesticated.)\n\nSo! If we need them to hang around each other for long enough to realize that they benefit from each other, then what could bring them together in the same place?? WHEAT!\n\nIn Ancient Rome it was punishable by death to let your cows eat from the wheat fields of another farmer... except for certain months of the year. The months of the year where the wheat’s seeds haven’t sprouted yet and we’re just leaves.\n\nWhy? Because the cows would eat the leaves, allowing the wheat to reserve their energy for growing seeds (the substance humans were interested in). This was a practice that was developed well before the cows were domesticated (aurochs at the time), and continued through Rome (recorded in agricultural guides which I can also track down if interested) and the medieval world. \n\nSo to sum it up/tl;dr: A practice of ancient civilizations through the Middle Ages to optimize wheat yields were to have cows eat the leaves off of wheat before the seeds sprouted. This meant the wheat plant would have energy exclusively for growing the seeds which made more larger yields. \n\nSorry for grammar mistakes, I’m at work typing frantically." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce9zcv5" ], "score": [ 42 ], "text": [ "This is a pretty broad question and there is no hard and fast rule for every aspect of your question. One of the chief concerns for a Roman soldier was booty, particularly during the Republican when such booty would make up the majority of their pay during their soldierly career. The types of deprivations inflicted upon a city were going to be based on highly complex factors. Sometimes a city was not sacked, other times it was. Sometimes that sack was orderly, often times it was not. In general, if a city was to be sacked, a commander would grant his men leave to basically be scoundrels, and sometimes this played out with horror. \n\nSo, let's begin:\n\n > What happened to people inside the city\nA quote from Polybius:\n\n > The incidents of the capture of Corinth were melancholy. The soldiers cared nothing for the works of art and the consecrated statues. I saw with my own eyes pictures thrown on the ground and soldiers playing dice on them; among them was a picture of Dionysus by Aristeides---in reference to which they say that the proverbial saying arose, \"Nothing to the Dionysus,\"---and the Hercules tortured by the shirt of Deianeira. . .\n\nThe holy places of even your enemy had power and deserved respect in the ancient world, so to treat them with such disrespect was as sacrilege and brutish as it gets. The fate of the Corinthians was not particularly pleasant either of course. According to Diodorus Siculus\n\n > This was the city that, to the dismay of later ages, was now wiped out by her conquerors. Nor was it only at the time of her downfall that Corinth evoked great compassion from those that saw her; even in later times, when they saw the city leveled to the ground, all who looked upon her were moved to pity. p443No traveller passing by but wept, though he beheld but a few scant relics of her past prosperity and glory. Wherefore in ancient times, nearly a hundred years later, Gaius Iulius Caesar (who for his great deeds was entitled divus), after viewing the site restored the city.\n\nSo this city lay in ruins for a century before being rebuilt. For the record, Corinth was basically sacked to the ground, with all women and children carried off into slavery. Those that were not enslaved were slaughtered. The Romans could be quite brutal. You'll note from the writings here that even they were quite shocked by what occurred in Corinth, and it could be called a bit of an over-reaction. It did serve a purpose though, which was to put the Greek (and Mediterranean world) on notice that to challenge Rome wouldn't mean you would be conquered, it meant you would be annihilated. Twenty years earlier during the Third Macedonian War, Epirus had seen a reported 150,000 people enslaved, and was devastated to such a point that centuries later it was noted that what had once been a highly populated state was still barren and empty.\n\n > what happened to soldiers and officers still alive\n\nGenerally, common soldiers were slaughtered at worst and enslaved at best. Leaders would be spared for a triumph, which would see them paraded in Rome in chains before being strangled. This is assuming they didn't commit suicide to avoid such shame.\n\n > what happened to commerce, trade and daily routine in the city\n\nWe can assume that if a city was destroyed, such commerce would end. However, in many cases, as with Corinth, the city itself occupied a position that was valuable (thus explaining the existence of the city in the first place). Both Corinth and Carthage would be rebuilt and occupied near or on top of their former sites as Roman colonies. If the city remained unsacked and simply surrendered, we can assume trade would continue (as it did for Carthage after the second Punic War).\n\n > How long would the Romans stay in a city, is there a reason to raise the city, or keep the city?\n\nThis depended entirely on the period and the situation within the city. During the Republican Period, particularly prior to the integration of the provinces after the sacks of Corinth and Carthage, permanent Roman garrisons were not a common thing. Roman policy was designed not around direct occupation and control during these years, but around force projection and client states/tribes. Tribes were expected to police themselves, and when they didn't, incidents like Corinth would occur to set the rest straight. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. \n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5smxeh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I didn't know that happened. I do know that Standard Oil took a huge advantage in economies of scale and scope, that allowed it to drastically lower its cost compared to potential competitors. If Standard Oil did drop prices as you claim, then they valued market share over pricing in order to maximize revenue. If they continued to lower their prices, then competitors, who would have naturally higher costs, wouldn't be able to compete and would have to leave the market, allowing Standard Oil to occupy even larger market share. If the amount of petroleum they sold increased faster than the price drop (through increasing market share and generally increasing demand as the market for petroleum grew very quickly as Standard Oil developed), then Standard Oil would see its profits balloon, while competitors would face intractable barriers to entry.\n\nIn all, with a naturally growing market in petroleum and lower relative costs compared to competitors, Standard Oil preferred to maximize market share over optimal price setting in order to erect more barriers to entry for potential competitors by setting artificially low prices." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccb115k" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Some mail would have been in use. Much would have already shifted to plate harnesses. Since you didn't specify, I'm going to cover basics, using manuscript illustrations for reference, [sourced from here](_URL_1_)\n\n[BL Yates Thompson 35 La chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin, dated 1380-1392](_URL_0_)\n\nLooking at this particular illustration, we see multiple figures, from various social classes. On the side of the defenders, we see first a crossbowman, with a simple kettle hat and what may be mail on his arms and torso. Note that he has no gauntlets nor any indication of plate armor defenses. \n\nNext we see members of a higher class, one holding a shield and spear, the other a boulder. They're wearing more extensive defenses. They have houndskull bascinets, plate arm harnesses, breast plates and mail defenses around the neck. They are also equipped with gauntlets on their hands.\n\nOn the side of the attackers, the higher class members are wearing defenses almost identical to that of their class counterparts on the defending side. Take note of their weaponry. The carry weapons such as two handed axes and spears, with swords in reserve. \n\nNext on the attacking side, we see three bowmen. One is wearing a kettle helm, the second an open face bacsinet (with mail defenses at the neck) and the third a closed face bascinet (which is very unusual for this time, it may be a mistake in drawing or in my interpretation). They may be wearing some sort of torso protection underneath an arming garment, but they are certainly not wearing an defenses (past possibly an aketon or gamebson) on their arms. \n\nBehind them, there are foot soldiers, equipped with spears, most likely swords as well, and leg harnesses (and no doubt arm harnesses as well). Though we cannot see to be certain, their helms may have visors. They certainly do have mail protection at the neck. " ] }

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[ [ "http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?manuscript=4186", "http://manuscriptminiatures.com/search/?year=1380&year_end=1399&country=8&country=9&tags=&manuscript=" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6z1c5x", "c6z2b62", "c6z3nom" ], "score": [ 101, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "A very curious bit of Viking morals: it's wrong to steal, but it's right to take by force. One of the Icelandic sagas tells of a Viking raid in the Baltic, where the Viking party manages to steal stuff from a farm under the cover of darkness without the occupants realizing what's going on. Halfway back to the boats, the Vikings feel ashamed and return to murder the men and burn the farm down with the women inside, so that they're not thieves, but raiders. This was not done to hide their act, but to legitimize it. Generally, victims of raids were expected to take revenge by counter-raiding, or be entitled to financial compensation; inability to properly respond to a raid was seen as a loss of honor of the victim, not of the raider.\n\nThis culture of 'might makes right' also included the practice of Holmgang; to settle disputes through single combat. Occasionally, this got so much out of hand that some berserkers just went around Iceland making fights with everyone so they could challenge (or get challenged) into a Holmgang and take the loser's stuff. This possibility for abuse led to complex rules and restrictions, and eventual abolition. Normally disputes were settled peacefully at councils.", "Pirate ships would have their own moral code agreed on by the sailors (or enforced by the captain) so it would vary from ship to ship. Some were extremely brutal in their treatment of hostages, some quite gentlemanly.\n\n\nThe pirates themselves have been frequently documented repenting for their sins upon being sentenced to death, so while European pirates could commit some atrocious acts when at sea they very quickly changed their tune about morals when death was a certainty.\n\n\nThere is at least one instance of a privateer captain being stripped of his licence after his crew reported his abuse of them to the British authorities, however I can't for the life of me find the reference in \"The Pirates Pocket Book\". A great little read with some good source material, but poorly organised for finding the quotes you want...", "Pirates, surprisingly enough, did have moral codes, but they did not generally deal with treatment of victims. Bartholomew Roberts prohibited gambling and women on board his ship, though his [flag](_URL_0_) specifically indicates the exact opposite of leniency for citizens of Barbadoes and Martinique.\n\nMarcus Rediker (and subsequent scholars of piracy) talks at length in Villains of All Nations and Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea about the implicit camaraderie between pirates which extended to the sailors of the ships they captured - since most of them had been recruited from merchant vessels themselves. As Wibbles mentions, it varies from vessel to vessel, but in general, pirates were lenient toward merchant vessels (especially if they yielded) and less so toward sailors and marines from royal navies.\n\nPirate captains were fond of decrees, but as far as MORAL ones go, they were few and far between (except in rare cases like Bartholomew Roberts).\n\nEdit: looks like I've been downvoted to zero. Anyone want to enlighten me?" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Bartholomew_Roberts_Flag1.svg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ey4sogu" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "The 1907 trial of Big Bill Haywood in Idaho for the murder of former Governor Frank Steunenburg was a first ordeal for the upstart union, and also the most amazing event in US labor history. Read *Big Trouble* by J Anthony Lucas for the incredible story, a tapestry of American society of the time. Haywood's lawyer was Clarence Darrow. Pinkerton James McParland managed the prosecution's efforts. He had been instrumental in defeating the Molly McGuires, and was the go-to guy for anti-labor dirty work.\n\nAstounding shenanigans abound, with jury tampering the mildest of the cheating and skullduggery. The trial was a near-perfect reflection of the struggle between capital and labor at the time. While the trial brought attention to the IWW, it also depleted its meager resources, which might have been better used fending off trade unionism, which was already stronger and easier to sell to American workers. \n\nBy 1917, the Espionage Act allowed the government to characterize the Wobblies as enemies of the state. Haywood was convicted in 1918, and fled to the USSR in 1921. His energy and personality were lost to the Wobblies.\n\nThe emergence of the Bolsehvik regime in Russia, and the Red Scare in the US, marginalized the IWW. Its leadership had been convicted under the Espionage Act, and supportive voices like Emma Goldman's were also lost to Attorney General Palmer's continual suppression of radicals, especially foreign nationals. Also, the US entered the war in 1917, and the resultant nativism pulled workers away from the more radical, and European, approaches to the struggle. \n\nOverall, considering the reliance on Haywood as a leader, the direct efforts of capitalists to destroy the IWW, the legal attacks by the AG, the effects of the war on labor and the attitudes of workers, and the comparative attractiveness of trade unionism to American workers, it shouldn't be too surprising that the IWW lost its appeal and its power. Had the war not intervened, the Wobblies might have continued to grow after its success in Lawrence. \n\nAgain, read *Big Trouble.* It's an amazing telling of the intertwined social forces in play at the time." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cu9asds", "cua85oq" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The Japanese used *nengo* (年号), eras declared by the imperial court. They didn't have a set length and a new era could be declared for any of a number of reasons: a new Emperor taking the throne, a natural disaster, astrology, etc. The longest *nengo* lasted for thirty-five years, but the majority were less than a decade long.\n\nTo give some a few specific examples, the Genroku era began in 1688, but when a massive earthquake struck in Genroku 16 (1703), the court declared the beginning of the Hoei era. That lasted until Emperor Nakamikado took the throne in Hoei 8 (1711), at which point it became the Shotoku era. Then when Shogun Tokugawa Ietsugu died in Shotoku 6 (1716) the Kyoho era was declared. If this sounds like a mess, you're not wrong.\n\nI should also mention that these continue to be used in Japanese-language history books. They'll usually define an era once, telling you that Genroku 1 began in 1688, for example, and then just use the *nengo*.", "/u/cckerberos has already mentioned era names, or 年號, but it should always be mentioned that they were originally a Chinese tradition. The era name, or *nianhao* in modern Mandarin, was an essential component of the imperial register in East Asian languages. For a Vietnamese or Korean monarch to take an era name independent of the Chinese one(s) was tantamount to declaring autonomy or independence from the authority of the Son of Heaven, and for a tributary state to use a certain state's era name represented subservience to that state. This was why, in the 1630s, the [Manchus](_URL_0_) who had recently conquered Korea forced the Korean court to use the Manchu era name instead of the Chinese era names the Koreans had used for centuries. Era names were all meaningful and represented the circumstances of the period. For example, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty used the era name *Hongwu* for the rest of his life, which means something akin to \"vastly martial.\" Like other era names this was an intentional decision, highlighting the emperor's military origins and prowess.\n\nThe era name began to be used under Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, who reigned from 140 to 87 BC and first took the era name *jianyuan*, roughly meaning \"establishing origins.\" He would take nearly a dozen era names during his long reign - as in Japan, era names were flexible and changed regularly according to the circumstances for most of Chinese history. Emperor Gaozong of the Tang dynasty used *fourteen* era names during his rule of 34 years!\n\nThe frequency with which era names changed was reduced greatly by the Ming dynasty, where the tradition of the emperor having only one era name for the entirety of his reign was established. Hence we generally refer to Ming and Qing emperors with their era names: the Hongwu Emperor (\"the emperor of vast martiality\"), the Yongle Emperor (\"the emperor of perpetual happiness\"), the Qianlong Emperor (\"the emperor of lasting eminence\").\n\nKorea, being a weak power and often with a strong Neo-Confucian overtone, used Chinese era names. An interesting quirk: even when Beijing was captured by the Manchus, many of the Korean intelligentsia did not consider the \"barbarians\" to be a legitimate Chinese dynasty. This meant that there were some Koreans who used the last Ming era name, *Chongzhen* (\"honor and auspiciousness\") which began in 1627 and ended in 1644, for centuries after the Chongzhen Emperor died. In fact, there were Koreans who wrote the year 1861 as \"the 234th year of Chongzhen\"! Vietnam is a bit more complicated case, but the monarchs there typically used the title *Hoàng Đế*, or emperor, and thus independent era names.\n\n**Sources:** I don't know of any good book on East Asian imperial language as a whole, and era names will generally be mentioned as a side fact in a book discussing other topics, so you might just want to check [our wiki.](_URL_1_) For Korea perhaps try the article *Contesting Chinese Time, Nationalizing Temporal Space: Temporal Inscription in Late Chosǒn Korea* in the anthology \"Time, Temporality, and Imperial Transition.\"" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/eastasia#wiki_china" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czd944z", "czd9905" ], "score": [ 6, 7 ], "text": [ "Not to be a pedant, but I believe you mean the 16th century (1500-1600) as the two rulers in question ruled then.\n\nIt's a little tricky to answer but my interpretation, is that the only army in continental Europe at the time which could truly be considered an 'imperial army' or an army directly linked to the state would be the Ottoman Army, with its large contingent of Janissary corps always ready for active military service.\n\nWars in the 16th Century, as Geoffrey Parker demonstrated, were fought with foreign mercenaries for the most part, but usually with some leadership and high command from the native country. For example, at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, the whole empire of Charles V was used to draw in soldiers and commanders, with the army led by a man from modern-day Belgium and the Garrison of Pavia led by a Spaniard. Henry Kamen states that the army itself had no clear national origin. Some 50% were German, 30% Spanish and the rest from all over Europe.\n\nFurthermore, land and vassals in the Empire of the 16th century would have provided the emperor with little troops, but probably some money via taxation and loans. This was spent, along with all the new world gold, on mercenaries.\n\nAt no point in the history of the Holy Roman Emperor was their a standing army of the kind which would be familiar today. Until the 15th century, it would have been drawn as you say, from vassals and the king's lands, but fairly early on in that century, such troops were entirely ineffective against professional mercenary types which rich emperors could make use of.", "One of the big issues when it comes to English speakers and the Holy Roman Empire is that we translate two words as 'Imperial' that have different meanings in German. We tend to translate both *Reichs-* and *Kaiserliche-* as 'Imperial', when--in German--the former refers more to the institutions and idea of the realm/empire, whereas the latter focuses more on the personhood of the Emperor. So, when something is called 'the Imperial Army', it can either mean 'the Army of the Empire' or 'the Army of the Emperor'. This can lead to confusion in the Early Modern period, espescially when we're dealing with politicking in the Holy Roman Empire. However, as I understand it, convention is to call the army fighting for the Emperor--whoever that may be--gets to be called 'the Imperial Army', regardless of where it came from. Hopefully, this should answer your question. Simply being called 'the Imperial'--or as I often see it, the Imperialist Army--does not imply it was an army of the Holy Roman Empire, but rather could just be saying that it was the army fighting for the Emperor. \n\nHowever, to go into more depth, another concern is that armies did not tend to draw exclusively on one group. A Scotsman might very well find himself fighting for the Emperor against the French, even though his King is supporting the French against the Emperor.^1 So, almost all armies would consist of troops drawn from around Europe, even though they might pre-dominantly consist of recruits from one area or another. We tend to call these 'the Spanish Army' or the 'French Army' based off who they're fighting for, rather than where the troops came from. Charles V's army no doubt includes Germans, but also likely consisted of a great deal of Spaniards, Flemish, Italians, and other peoples from across his realm. \n\nA better question to ask if we're wondering whether the army is the army of the Empire or the Emperor is: \"Who is paying for the war?\" Is the army being paid for out of the Emperor's treasury, through his own incomes, or is it an army voted for and paid for by the *Reichstag* and Imperial Estates? Unfortunately, I don't know that information about the army Charles V brought with him to Italy, so I can't answer you there, but hopefully I would have helped you out somewhat with this issue. \n\n1: This is a hypotheticaal situation, not a statement about the Scottish king's position vis a vis the Italian Wars. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddvlyrn" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It really depends on what you mean by national identity. National identity definitely did exist to a degree but was not expressed in exactly the same ways as we do in the modern era. Pre modern national identity is not the same as modern nationalism and the reason why this is the case but I recommend the 'Invention of Tradition' edited by Hobsbawm and Ranger for a good series of discussions on this (especially the final chapter by Hobsbawm). Anyway I can give you an overview of some pre modern examples of what might be described as national identity. \n\nFirstly the term nation comes from the Latin 'natio' which, unsurprisingly, is not a modern invention but goes back to ancient Rome - so the term is pre-modern. From the Roman period and through the Middle Ages nation was only one word used to describe a group of people along with others such as gens (people although translated as race in a lot of earlier published texts) or lingua (tongue, language or people) and all of these mean more or less specific things depending on context. Nevertheless the idea that you can identify and demarcate discrete groups, including your own, goes back a long way. Herodotus in his histories gives an account of different cultural groups who are defined by their customs, political organisation and language and he even provides many of them, like the Scythians, with a mythical ancestral origin - so shared customs and origin of peoples this is very much like a picture of a nation. Various Greek thinkers also offered theories as to why different cultures existed including the idea that climate or location affected the temperament of peoples (which was advanced by Hippocrates but significantly developed by Galen) or notoriously Aristotle's assertion that some people are natural slaves. As might be expected this differentiation of other cultures or peoples solidified Greek self identification - they were in the temperate zone, they were not natural slaves. Likewise in Rome you can see a form of national mythmaking in the Aeneid and Tacitus' Germania is a very developed ethnography of different German tribes. Moreover Romans stressed a form of cultural self identity of 'Romanitas' (Romanness) which differentiated Romans from barbarians. This belief in Roman cultural superiority persisted even as the barbarians were at the gates - one letter writer Sidonius Apollinaris writes mockingly in private about how slurred and bad a Germanic king's Latin is all while writing Roman panegyrics for him (in an irony of history the Loeb edition of Sidonius' writing has an introduction from the translator moaning about how bad *Sidonius* is at Latin).\n\nAnyway so now Rome has fallen but in the middle ages we have a lot of evidence for national identities of one sort or another. Early Anglo-Saxon lawcodes have differences in wergild based on rank which seems to include a reduced amount for a free non Saxon. The Exeter Book riddles includes disparaging comments on the Welsh including differentiating them as physically distinct (\"dark Welshmen\"). Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English people makes sure to show the differences between nations and makes sure to stress the unity of the English in spite of political division. Nationality was, therefore, noted in the early middle ages even if there was not really a notion that the nation had to have a political entity to represent it - in fact for a king to have the allegiance of many peoples is prestigious (Asser proudly talks about how Alfred the Great had the allegiance of the different peoples of Britain). During the Viking age there are also explicit references to Englishmen and Danes in decrees - even when they are under the same ruler. The English and Danes also had recognised differences in grooming habits - as can be seen when an Anglo-Saxon monk (Alcuin) writes a letter saying that the English were basically asking to be invaded by Vikings as they had started trimming their beards like them! All throughout this period different peoples associate themselves genealogically as a group and trace descent - the Trojans are especially popular for this. \n\nLater on we see even more evidence of nations being identified with. After the Norman conquest Englishmen sometimes kept their beards as a sign of defiance. Histories of nations appear in which nations have a set character and sins (such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain). Ethnographies start to be written again by writers such as Gerald of Wales (who argues that different nations inherited traits from the climates of their ancestral lands). The importance of nation can also be inferred from the fact that having no nation is not viewed positively - one particularly furious pilgrim to Spain says that the Navarese were no true people (ne veres) and could not trace their ancestry back to a single nation and that this explained their nefarious behaviour (such as poisoning his horse). All of this, however, occurs in a context where a single all encompassing nation (to the exclusion of all others) is hard to find - Lowlanders and Highlanders in Scotland, for example, are sometimes presented as different peoples (gens) but other times as members of the Scottish people - by the same author! The easiest place to find strict national character defined, moreover, is where it is falling apart such as in the Statutes of Kilkenny in the 14^th century. These identify Irish characteristics and forbids English colonists to engage in Irish practises for fear of being tainted by Irishness - this was evidently not working. Nevertheless notions of national identity do exist in Pre-Modern Europe and they could include many ideas we see today - shared genealogy, language, culture, dress, methods of fighting etc. - and existed alongside other forms of identity such as religious.\n\nIf you want to read more I recommend you read the article by Robert Bartlett 'Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity' as it especially gets into the problems of language when addressing nation/ethnicity/race in the pre modern period. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnvfuy2" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "The USSR went through an extensive demobilisation process following the war. This was part of the vast, and generally quite successful, programme of reconstruction that retooled and rebuilt the economy. By 1950 the Soviet economic production had surpassed its pre-war levels. But on to the soldiers.\n\nFrom a starting point of 11m Soviet soldiers in 1945, at least 8.5m were demobilised in batches over the period 1945-48. As was typical in the USSR, the process was 'difficult' (to quote Harrison) with the state simply unable to manage the transportation and promised material support of returning veterans. (That 1946-47 were also famine years didn't help.) Many soldiers were simply handed their papers and told to make their own way home.\n\nBut if these were years of hardship then at least employment was not a problem. If the veterans did not return home as a privileged cohort (and the degree to which they did is still debated) they had the advantage of a strong labour market. Labour shortages had emerged as a chronic feature of the Soviet economy in the pre-war years and the immense loss of life during the war had only sharpened this. The returning veterans did not come close to filling this gap, hence migration of peasant labour continued to be a feature of the post-war economy.\n\nCrucially, demobilisation furthered this shift towards an urban economy. Approximately half of all veterans found their way into the cities, as part of the industrial workforce. Given that most soldiers had been recruited from the peasantry, this itself represented a significant demographic shift. Flitzer has some detailed figures on industry recruitment (see below, I unfortunately don't have the source to hand) but by and large they would have followed the patterns of pre-war industrial growth - eg metallurgy, mining, construction, etc.\n\nI can't say how many career soldiers emerged from the war. From a macro perspective however, the Soviet economy never entirely demobilised. Many of the war industries, and formations obviously, were maintained into the Cold War. Despite a brief respite under Khrushchev (with a further round of demobilisations in 1953-60) the USSR emerged from the war with an economic 'defence burden' as high, or higher, than that of 1940.\n\n**Sources**\n\nObviously my background is largely the economic and social impact of the war and demobilisation. In this I'm primarily drawing on Donald Filtzer (*Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism*), Mark Harrison (*The Soviet Union After 1945*, *The Soviet Industrial Defence Complex in WWII*) and Michael Ellman (*Socialist Planning*).\n\nI've not read it myself but I've heard good things about Mark Edele's *Soviet Veterans of the Second World War*. I suspect that that work would answer most of your questions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dsp1b9z" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "We think women controlled the material wealth of Viking-Age households because many wealthy women were buried with a [key](_URL_1_). We assume that within the longhouse, there would have been a locked pantry, and only the matriarch of the household had access to it. Presumably this included food, possibly alcohol, and I would guess textiles as well. [Silk](_URL_2_) or [sails](_URL_3_) were both extremely valuable. It would make sense for a matriarch to control the household food distribution and textile production/consumption, and this seems like a pretty solid interpretation of the archaeological evidence. In contrast, textile production became a male industry in the later middle ages.\n\n[Coins](_URL_4_) might also have been kept in these cupboards, although some hoards seem to have been buried in farmhouse floors. I suspect this would have been the safer option, since anyone with an axe could break through the pantry door, but you'd need to convince someone to tell you where the family purse was buried before you could get at the money. If a household were attacked, you could abandon the house, and even if it were burnt down, you'd still be able to dig any buried coins back up.\n\nSo women were probably in charge of managing food and textiles—which were the major material wealth of a Viking-Age farm—but there's less evidence that they were responsible for coins. Of course, much of the stuff that got moved around during the Viking Age was probably traded or gifted, rather than bought for cash. So although there was no such thing as a household 'budget' and even 'finances' seems like an ill-fitting word for Viking-Age households, women seem to have been in charge of the bulk of a farm or family's wealth.\n\nThe rest of the statement you're interested in seems much more dubious. Witchcraft or [seiðr](_URL_6_) wasn't solely associated with women, although some sorts of things that we would consider 'magic' were considered feminine. (Admittedly, 'magic' isn't quite the right word since 'magic' often suggests superstition or illusion.) I've seen no reason to assume that math was considered magic or a particularly feminine form of magic. Instead, [scales](_URL_5_) and [weights](_URL_0_) for measuring silver are often found in apparently male graves. So the reason you can't find proof that women and witchcraft and math and finances all went together as a regular thing ... is probably because there's no proof to find." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=viking+age+weight", "http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=viking+age+keys", "https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=oseberg+silk", "https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Havhingsten", "https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=viking+age+dirham", "http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=viking+age+scale", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Viking_Way_(book\\)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdme3em" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I had a professor by the name of Peter Lacovara who explained this theory in class and why it is wrong. The body of the sphinx is made up of limestone from a former quarry. Everything around it was cut up and taken away to build the nearby pyramids. Not wanting to leave this hunk of rock sticking above the ground they turned it into a statue by importing some other nearby rock to do the head, legs, and arms. It isn't erosion from water, it is quarry marks. It doesn't help that the limestone that makes up the body of the sphinx is of a poor quality and can more easily erode." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czb6jxg" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "South Germany being the richer half of the country is actually a very recent phenomenon. Over the course of history, the distribution of wealth has changed a lot, depending on political factors as well as the importance of various technologies and industries. The north used to be very rich due to trading etc. and Hamburg remains a rich city, while the south was very rural and agriculture-focussed up until the 20th century.\n\nFor post-war Germany, a good indicator is the \"Länderfinanzausgleich\". This is a fund into which the richer states (Bundesländer) pay money while the poorer states receive money in the form of subsidies. How much every state gets/pays is determined yearly.\n\nIf you look at the timeline of subsidies on the [Wikipedia page](_URL_0_) (section \"Finanzvolumen\"), then you can see for example for Bavaria (\"BY- Bayern\") that up until the mid-eighties, they were considered poorer than the national average and therefore got money from the fund. At this point, the manufacturing and high tech industry took off, propelling Bavaria into todays top position.\n\nNorthrhine-Westphalia (\"NW - Nordrhein-Westfalen), on the other hand, used to be \"in the green\" after the war on account of their massive coal and steel industry. But here we see a decline in the 80's due to rising competition of foreign steel and coal and the closing of mines and steel mills.\n\nAlso, the statistics are a bit skewed due to the fact, that the poorer, former East German states are all in the north, or at least in middle Germany.\n\nBut at the moment, it is basically the powerful automobile industry, their suppliers as well as high tech firms (optics, medical technology, manufacturing, etc.) that cement southern Germany's economical lead.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nderfinanzausgleich" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqr4c0u", "cqr7dki" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "I recently read a great overview of US riots-- Paul gilje's \"rioting in America\". He identifies many, many riots that achieved their goals, from the 17th c to the present.\n\nAmerican rioting, he argues, has strong roots in the medieval English system of collective violence by the plebeians, which was generally considered an acceptable form of expressing grievances because the patricians were understood as playing a paternalistic role, and therefore allowed their \"children\" to act out, and then made economic or political adjustments to make the people happy. Other successful riots regulated moral behavior in communities. All of these practices were continued in colonial America, frequently with success.\n\nI think it should be pointed out here that Gilje, like many others who've written on the topic, emphasizes the fact that the term \"riot\" is usually a very loaded word that is often only applied to people the speaker does not feel have legitimate justification for their actions, and frequently incorrectly assumes that it does not have a strong organized element. He defines riot as \"extralegal collective violence\" and does not draw a sharp distinction between riots and rebellions or mob-based vigilante violence. So, for Gilje, other examples of \"successful\" riots in American history are the hundreds of mob lynchings of blacks in the American South, whose ultimate purpose was to terrorize and oppress African Americans.\n\nEDIT I think it's also important to highlight gilje's argument that in the 20th c rioting, especially in urban ghettos, became MUCH LESS violent towards people, but more diffuse and destructive of property--being more of a venting of frustrations with a social and economic system that is far more depersonalized than that which existed previously, and this has led to a lesser ability to create change in the way many 17th and 18th century riots--which were often very unorganized themselves--were able to.", "Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cajccqo" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "Rodric Braithwaite points out in Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, that the 'liberalness' of Afghanistan was only ever really confined the urban middle and upper classes, who were very much a minority, the majority of the rural population were pretty conservative add the ruthless brutality of the Taliban into the mix and the 'fascism' of the 90's becomes possible." ] }

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[ "http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/100527_19-Afghanistan-148.jpg" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ctuk6pu", "ctule96", "ctupdkz", "ctuuspd" ], "score": [ 3, 6, 4, 2 ], "text": [ "Swords are designed for specific styles of fencing and combat. Also, while a crossguard protects your hand, it also hinders your movements, determining how you attack and defend. ", "While there were some (elaborately decorated) cross-guards invented in the Edo period called *katanatsuba* (刀鍔) and another type called *mamorokobushi* (護拳) katanas generally lacked cross guards and hand protections for the simple reason that they were quick withdraw* (not primarily for thrusting however, as I've been corrected) weapons, whereas European swords with the exception of rapiers (which usually have hilts like 刀鍔) were usually broad weapons.\n\nJapan had a different style of combat with the sword--Katanas were quick withdraw weapons, meant to be compatible with a Japanese concept called *Ieaidou* (居合道). The Japanese have developed a whole artform around this concept of swordplay, and it has developed into the sword tradition that Japan has today, with a focus on quick movements as opposed to slower, heavier striking.", "They had no need to - the tsuba was more than enough function as a guard to protect the wielder's hand, as the various other functions of larger crossguards (e.g. to lock swords) were not seen in most styles. A small, round disc to simply ensure you didn't accidentally slip was all that was needed. Swordsmiths were (relatively) more focused on the design of the blade itself, such as the curvature of blades (which you can definitely see the progression of in naginata and katana), were of a larger concern. You could mention too that the katana, being a primarily slashing weapon (note - primarily), combined with how it was used against its contemporary armour counterparts, meant that a larger crossguard had no specific function or significant advantage over a smaller one, such as the tsuba. Not even to mention that the katana was rarely used anyway.", "A related question - why would Japanese swordsmen just attack the hands of someone wielding a Japanese sword?\n\nI come from a fencing background, and in Sabre and Epee (weapons where the hand is target), the hand could be considered one of the main targets to go for (cus it's closer). These sport weapons have much more complete guards that protect the entire hand much more than the Japanese tsuba - yet hands still get hit all the time, with both a cut in sabre and a thrust in epee.\n\nIt seems to me like it would be strangely easy to strike the hands (namely the part holding the sword, not the wrists) of someone holding a japanese sword. What prevents this? Is it cultural? Or is there a technique or something that makes it a poor strategy?\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chz3b9x", "chz3iam", "chz3omh", "chz70qa", "chz8xjm", "chz9ork", "chzfic7" ], "score": [ 370, 69, 168, 15, 13, 40, 6 ], "text": [ "I am not knowledgeable enough on historical oral hygiene practices to answer the first part of your question.\n\nHowever, I can answer your second question:\n\n > Has kissing always been a part of people's love lives?\n\nWell, prior to written history, we have a hard time concluding whether or not people kissed. There are various hypotheses for how kissing developed, ranging from \"feeding\" hypotheses, akin to canines and birds who pass food to juveniles through their mouths, to hypotheses which imply that kissing is a way of exchanging olfactory information. It's a very interesting anthropological discussion.\n\nBut from a HISTORICAL perspective, kissing is mentioned in writing about 5,000 years ago, in Sumerian poetry: (Kramer, Samuel Noah (1981). History Begins at Sumer (3rd revised. ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press., _URL_1_)\n\nLater examples from Egypt also mention kissing, and are fairly specific: _URL_0_, _URL_2_\n\nSo I can't tell you about how people felt about kissing due to oral hygiene, but people were definitely kissing in a romantic context since almost the beginning of recorded history.", "I'd like to try to answer this, but the way you've worded this questions makes it difficult. \n\nKissing has been around quite a while - some early evidence we have for kissing dates back to around 1500 B.C.E. from The Four Vedic Sanskrit Texts (The Vedas). There's no mention of the word “kiss,” (or the Sanskrit version of it, rather) but there are references to “licking,” and “drinking moisture of the lips.” By the third century C.E. we have the Vatsyayana Kamasutra (better known as the Kama Sutra), which includes a chapter describing how to kiss.\n\nIndia wasn't the only part of the world kissing that far back (e.g. kissing is mentioned in Homer's epics), but it's a convenient example.\n\nSome experts - I'm citing Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A & M - have speculated that kissing came from sniffing. Basically, that there was a lot of sniffing / sniffing greetings going on, and \"at some point, they slipped and ended up on the lips, and they thought that was a lot better.\" (Bryant). Another good source for this kissing / sniffing theory is *The Science of Kissing*, by Sheril Kirshenbaum. \n\nWhen you say \"oral hygiene\" and \"contemporary methods\" is where I lose you. I'm not sure what you mean by these terms - people have been cleaning our teeth as far back as written history goes. Assyrian cuneiform medical texts from 3000 B.C.E. mention teeth-cleaning procedures and toothpicks from roughly the same time have been found in Iraq (Mesopotamia). Greek writings note that Aesculapius - the Greek god of medicine - advocated for oral hygiene. \n\nSo I suppose my problem is that, without knowing what you consider \"oral hygiene\" or \"contemporary methods\", your question can't be answered. Based on what I remember and what I've read, at least, there's no record that a lack of oral hygiene was a deterrent to kissing. \n\nSo I guess, no?\n\nEdit: Poorly researched sidenote - I remember reading that body odor being considered unpleasant is a relatively recent phenomenon, associated with a lack of cleanliness, and that for a long time people liked the smell of BO. Perhaps hand in hand with that is not minding bad breath quite as much. \n\nAnyway, this isn't really my area but I hate to see this thread look so raggedy. Best answer I've got for you, sorry I cant' do better.", "The \"Jests of Hierocles\" has a whole section related to bad breath and it references the issues it caused for romance. I know \"AskHistorians\" isn't normally a venue for jokes, but it seems apropos given the context...\n\n#234:\n\"A person with offensive breath asked his wife, 'Why do you hate me?' She replied saying, 'Because you love me.' \"\n\n\nAvailable on Google Books:\n_URL_0_", "Isn't it worth mentioning that before the advent of processed foods, oral hygiene was not as necessary as it is today? For example, tribal people still have very healthy teeth. Or is this a misconception?", "I can't answer for kissing on the mouth, but I do know that, *tragically*, oral sex was considered taboo in Ancient Greece and Rome due to a fear of \"pollution\" - and not just limited to worries of hygiene. In Greco-Roman society, where there was so much interaction by way of conversation, kisses on the cheeks and mouth, and communal eating and drinking, there was a fear that oral sex could cause some sort of moral pollution, with a physical manifestation comparable to a curse. Additionally, it was thought that oral sex was a form of penetration, so a man who gave head would probably be treated rather similarly to a man who enjoyed getting pegged in the modern day (sort of).\n\nAs a result, there's a lot of poetry by more salacious Roman poets on the subject - Martial has over sixty poems that mention it, and one of the Latin schoolboy's favourite poems, Catullus 16, is bookended by the phrase, \"I'm going to bum you both and make you blow me.\" Also, there's a graffito from Pompeii which rather succinctly sums up Roman attitudes to cunnilingus:\n\n > III.5.3 (on the wall in the street); 8898: Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog\n\nThink on that next time you watch that scene with Jon Snow and Ygritte in the cave.", "It's important to remember that oral hygiene wasn't always lacking in the ancient world. It depends very much on which population and which time period you're talking about.\n\nFor example, Indians have been using twigs from the *neem* tree to brush their teeth for thousands of years (and still do today). The way it works is that they take a twig and chew on it for a few seconds until the fibers separate, and then it becomes a toothbrush. They then use this to brush their teeth.\n\nThe mechanical action of brushing, as well as antimicrobials present in the *neem* tree, are very effective at combating tooth decay. In fact, studies have [found no statistically significant difference](_URL_0_) between the incidence of plaque, cavities and gingivitis using this method, compared to a modern toothbrush and toothpaste.\n\nSimilarly, in many Arab countries the twig of the *Arak* tree (called a miswak) is used as a toothbrush. [Studies have also shown](_URL_3_) that [using a miswak](_URL_1_) is just as effective as using a modern toothbrush/paste.\n\nIt's also good to remember that the incidence of tooth and gum diseases is very related to one's diet. Specifically, diets that are high in sugars and simple starches, or carbonated drinks, predispose to tooth decay and gum disease. Such diets were not widely available in the distant past, so the incidence of these diseases was also low. There are [studies on populations living thousands of years ago](_URL_2_) that show many ancient populations had exceptionally healthy teeth.", "If I remember correctly, in Chaucer's \"Miller's Tale,\" Absalon sweetens his breath with cardamon and licorice in hopes of stealing a kiss from the adulterous Alison. I think this could possibly suggest some awareness of bad breath in the 1300s when the *Canterbury Tales* are thought to have been written." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.love-poetry-of-the-world.com/Egyptian-Love-Poetry-Poem2.html", "http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.08.04#", "http://themagentahornet.com/ancient-poetry1.html" ], [], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=OtMb_pzRnOoC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=jests+of+hierocles&source=bl&ots=jCnIp0LSmP&sig=MmNtKc_OVkvrlzjJbL7EWkMqNr4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W1-PU6-AGo_6oASJs4LoBQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=breath&f=false" ], [], [], [ "http://www.ispcd.org/~cmsdev/userfiles/rishabh/09%20ajay%20bhambal.pdf", "http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/14973564", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3227510/?report=reader", "http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/15224592" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chqea47" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "You may be interested in my answers in these previous threads:\n\n* [At what point did Australians and New Zealanders begin to consider themselves as distinct from the British?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Why did Great Britain grant independence/autonomy to Australia and Canada? Was it political necessity or were there economic concerns?](_URL_0_)\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ob29o/why_did_great_britain_grant_independenceautonomy/ccqi7fx?context=3", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sp0tr/at_what_point_did_australians_and_new_zealanders/cdzw49h" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cs7jnpw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Here's the start of an answer: \"Anarchism\" was not a widely used keyword until 1880 or so, around the time of the establishment of the The International Working People's Association or \"Black International.\" Prior to that, anarchist ideas played a role in organizations like the International Association of the 1850s and the First International, and informed some elements in uprisings like the June Days of 1848 and the Paris Commune. In North America, they were also part of the movement for \"equitable commerce,\" informed the radical wing of the abolitionist movement and inspired the organizers of the various New England reform leagues. But they were, in this early period, generally expressed in the context of larger socialist and/or internationalist movements. Those movements were marked by all sorts of internal struggles, including significant disagreements between anarchistic factions. It was arguably not until after the splits in the International that the various elements, anarchists among them, would emerge as movements in their own right, with the new divisions drawing anarchists together as socialism and the international labor movement split apart. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "df2t96a" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It's something like 4000 miles from there to Moscow, and 2000 miles to California. In both cases most of the trip would be across wilderness terrain with no major roads or infrastructure to speak of. In the age of nuclear weapons, the war would be over long before an army crossing the Bering Strait reached anything remotely important. Even if nuclear war did not break out, a large ground force making such a long and difficult journey would have little hope of survival. They would be hit by air strikes for weeks or months, and then would face a prepared defense if they ever made it to their goal." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fnp4i3m" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There have been a few previous answers that might be helpful here:\n\n[How easy was it for fugitives to evade capture in the Roman Empire?](_URL_3_) by [u/mpixieg](_URL_2_)\n\n[How were crimes investigated in Roman times?](_URL_1_) by [u/AwesomeDog59](_URL_4_)\n\nAnd a couple by me:\n\n[Prior to DNA evidence, finger prints, etc. how did they solve murders and actually know if they convicted the right person?](_URL_0_)\n\n[I'm living in Ancient Rome and I just murdered someone. What chances do I have of getting caught?](_URL_5_)\n\nIn short - no one! If someone got murdered, that was a problem for the murdered person's family. If they could bring the murderer to court, then the government would deal with it. If not, then there was nothing to investigate. In Rome, the praetor was in charge of investigating, if someone was brought to him. But the government did not investigate crimes on its own." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cu1eet/prior_to_dna_evidence_finger_prints_etc_how_did/exw5x58/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avdbto/how_were_crimes_investigated_in_roman_times/", "https://www.reddit.com/u/mpixieg/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f3sttl/how_easy_was_it_for_fugitives_to_evade_capture_in/", "https://www.reddit.com/u/AwesomeDog59/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c0nyec/im_living_in_ancient_rome_and_i_just_murdered/er8s1v9/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6y2jzb" ], "score": [ 48 ], "text": [ "Great question!\n\nIn the twelfth century Latin Christian attitudes to this question were rather conflicted. On the one hand you have categorical prohibitions against miscegenation and on the other you have early depictions in chronicles and popular literature where such relationships are romantic and quite beautiful. \n\nWith respect to the former, two decades after the establishment of the Crusader states and Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem the religious and secular elite of these nascent communities met at the Council of Nablus in 1120 to pass sweeping new legislation aimed at policing the sexual ethics and morals of Latin Christians and multi-confessional neighbours. According to canons 12 and 15 Christian men and women who voluntarily had sexual intercourse with Muslims would suffer mutilation; men would be castrated and women would have their noses cut of (rhinotomy). \n\nThis was motivated in part due to a recent history of military defeat, exemplified most dramatically in the annihilation of the Antiochene field army in 1119 at the *Ager Sanguinis* or Field of Blood. The death of Roger of Salerno on the field with the majority of his men signalled to some Latin Christian observers within the Levant that God was punishing the faithful for their moral depravity and lasciviousness with non-Christians. \n\nHowever I should note that there is little evidence of the canons of the Council of Nablus being enforced, so it is uncertain whether or not local administrations had the capacity or will to enforce such laws.\n\nFinally on the other hand we have popular literary depictions of twelfth century knighthood. One of the most famous is the *Cycle of William of Orange,* a collection of tales involving the eponymous protagonist who fights valiantly in a fictionalized and deeply fantastical ninth century context against the enemies of Louis the Pious (the son of Charlemagne). \n\nIn the *Prise D'Orange* the tale recounts how William of Orange seduces Orable, the Muslim wife of the similarly \"pagan\" ruler of Orange, Thiebault. This romance is made licit in the tale through her conversion to Christianity, which obviously complicates the interfaith element of your question. However the point I am making is that Muslim individuals were not necessarily seen as being a maligned *other* and could themselves have great internal virtue making them worthy of Christian affection. Her confessional identity does not complicate William's desire and love, and her conversion is therefore a culmination of her joining him, his house and his faith. Also the emphasis upon a dazzling and beautiful foreign princess who would willingly submit to the sexual prowess of a Christian hero should not be terribly surprising given our enduring tendency towards eroticization and orientalism. \n\nThe earliest chronicles of the First Crusade also discuss how quickly Latin Christian settlers adapted to their new cultural and religious surroundings. Fulcher of Chartres explicitly records in Book III how Catholics took non-Catholic wives and came to embrace some of the local customs and dress. Although once again even Fulcher is careful to state that those saracens who were taken as wives had nevertheless been received into the church through baptism. Whether this is true or not is another matter, although given his clerical perspective it is easy to see why such a detail would be worth emphasizing. The First Crusade: Edward Peters, *The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres\" and Other Source Materials* (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 281. \n\nPerhaps the canonists of Nablus were troubled by the scale of the issue but simply had no means of confronting it despite the notional authority granted by these new legislative prohibitions. \n\n\n\n \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "de28lf4" ], "score": [ 31 ], "text": [ "**Part 1**\n\nI have previously wrote answers to similar questions [here](_URL_0_), [here](_URL_2_), and [here](_URL_3_) and it is not really possible to gauge the number of how many members of the Wehrmacht were directly involved in war crimes, not at least because the difficulty of establishing what \"directly\" means in this context: E.g. was a group of soldiers guarding an Einsatzgruppen mass shooting directly involved or not?\n\nThe question of how many knew of war crimes and what they knew of them is easier to answer, especially in light of the newer research by Felix Römer as well as Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer. They worked extensively with Allied protocols of conversations between German POWs recorded in Allied camps when they didn't think anybody was listening. Their research uncovered that knowledge of war crimes was ubiquitous among members of the Wehrmacht. Every soldier knew of atrocities that had been committed against Jews and other civilians because they had either been present, had participated or had been told about them by their comrades. During their time as POWs, they quite freely discussed these crimes. To exemplify this, Römer cites among others the following exchange between the Viennese Artillerie-Gefreitem Franz Ctorecka and the Panzer-Gefreiten Willi Eckenbach in August 1944 in Fort Hunt (translation my own):\n\n > C: And then Lublin. There is a crematoria, a death camp. Sepp Dietrich is involved there. He was somehow caught up in this in Lublin.\n > \n > E: Near Berlin, they burned the corpses in one of these thingies [\"einem Dings], the people were forced into this hall. This hall was wired with high-voltage power-lines and in the moment they switched on these lines, the people in the hall turned to ashes. But while still alive! The guy who was in charge of the burning told 'em: \"Don't be afraid, I will fire you up!\" He always made such quips. And then they found out that the guy who was in charge of burning the people also stole their gold teeth. Also other stuff like rings, jewellery etc.\n\n[Römer, p. 435f.]\n\nWhat this passage shows is that these Wehrmacht soldiers, who after all were both on the lower side of the ladder, being only Gefreite (lance corporals) were uncannily well informed even if the story about using electricity for executions wasn't true. But knowing not only of the Majdanek death camp near Lublin but also knowing about Sepp Dietirch's involvement proves them to be very well informed.\n\nOr take this exchange between two Wehrmacht soldiers, Obergefreiter Karl Huber and Pioniersoldat Walter Gumlich, in Fort Hunt:\n\n > H: One day, one guy just came and stole this Russian's cow and so the Russian defended himself. And then we had to hang fifty or a hundred men and women and let them hang there for three or four days. Or they had to dig a trench, line themselves up at the edge and were shot so they fell backwards into it. Fifty to a hundred people and more. That were the so-called \"retributions\". But that didn't help anything. Or when we set the village son fire [...] Partisans were naturally dangerous, we had to defend ourselves against them but this was something different [...]\n > \n > G: Ach, that were war operations. They [the people who did the above] are not really criminals.\n > \n > H: Exterminating whole families, shooting their kids etc., literally killing whole families? We are guilty if the military without any right or any order steals the last bread of some farmer.\n > \n > G: Oh, come on.\n > \n > H: Ach, don't defend them.\n\nThese and so many more conversations of this kind between Wehrmacht soldiers show that virtually every soldiers had either heard or seen these crimes if he had not participated in them himself. And given how numerous the crimes of the Nazis and the Wehrmacht were in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, this is hardly surprising. You already mentioned it in your expanded text above and I go into this in the linked answers but it is imperative to realize that the war against the Soviet Union was planned, conceptualized and fought as a war of annihilation, being in itself basically a huge war crime. Nobody is this fact more obvious than in the OKW's Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit Erlass, which actually forbid Wehrmacht soldiers from being persecuted for war crimes in the Soviet Union. That this was seen as necessary, tells you not just how deeply the Wehrmacht was involved but just what kind of war they planned to fight: One where combat operations and war crimes bled into each other seamlessly.\n\nThe background of this is touched upon in my linked answers as well as by Dr. Waitman Beorn in the linked AMA [here](_URL_1_).\n\nNow when it comes to the question of rationalization, the protocols reviewed by Römer et. al. are also rather enlightening. As you might have noticed in the converstaion between Huber and Gumlich above, these crimes were sometimes regarded as controversial. Römer in his analysis proposes based on the protocols that Wehrmacht soldiers did indeed distinguish between what they viewed as legitimate and illegitimate violence.\n\nTake this exchange Römer cites between soldier Friedrich Held and Obergefreiter Walter Langfeld about the topic of anti-Partisan warfare:\n\n > H: Against Partisans, it is different. There, you look front and get shot in the back and then you turn around and get shot from the side. There simply is no Front.\n > \n > L: Yes, that's terrible. [...] But we did give them hell [\"Wir haben sie ganz schön zur Sau gemacht\"],\n > \n > H: Yeah, but we didn't get any. At most, we got their collaborators, the real Partisans, they shot themselves before they were captures. The collaborators, those we interrogated.\n > \n > L: But they too didn't get away alive.\n > \n > H: Naturally. And when they captured one of ours, they killed him too.\n > \n > L: You can't expect anything different. It's the usual [Wurscht ist Wurscht]\n > \n > H: But they were no soldiers but civilians.\n > \n > L: They fought for their homeland.\n > \n > H: But they were so deceitful...\n\n[Römer, p. 424]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qhz7o/ama_the_german_armys_role_in_the_holocaust/dczdhhm/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r8pzp/how_often_did_the_regular_german_army_werhmacht/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4skjkq/is_the_depiction_of_nazi_or_german_soldiers_in/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7oys8q" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Under a \"classical\" gold standard, money is not convertible into gold; money IS gold. The monetary unit is defined in terms of a weight of gold, and the law defines a right of any individual to go to a mint and turn that weight of gold into an official coin.\n\nThe circulating media of exchange consisted of both these coins, bank notes issued upon those coins, and checking. In many places these bank notes were central bank notes; but many countries lacked central banks, and privately-issued notes traded instead.\n\nThese banks notes were roughly analogous to banking deposits in a checking account. They are a promise to pay backed by a specific banking institution. So just as you usually spend most of your checking account balance without taking cash, but do withdraw some physical currency, people mostly used bank notes, but did redeem some for metallic currency. The metallic stuff was also used between banks.\n\nSo the answer is: yes, during the \"classical\" gold standard period, individuals could turn to the banking system and exchange their dollar-denominated assets for physical gold; and when the financial system was underdeveloped or malfunctioning, they would.\n\nLater, after WWI in Europe, and after the Gold Seizures in the U.S. there existed various gold-exchange regimes. These were not \"classical\" gold standards, and under them, only certain people and foreign governments could exchange paper tender for physical gold. Under these systems it would be more accurate to say that money was \"backed by\" gold (often imperfectly) than to say that money \"consisted of\" gold.\n\nThe answer I have just given is substantially drawn from the following excellent article, which discusses your question in greater depth, and which demonstrates the limited historical scope of a true gold standard:\n\nSelgin, George, The Rise and Fall of the Gold Standard in the United States (August 27, 2012). Available at SSRN: _URL_1_ or _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2139115", "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2139115" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "femrmdg" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "This is such a very broad topic that there are no scholarly works that deal with the whole thing. On the one hand, you can try Phyllis Tortora's *Survey of Historic Costume*, which is a textbook that can give a broad overview; like all textbooks, though, you lose the nuances and sometimes it's incorrect on the details. On the other, I list more specific works [in my profile](_URL_0_), which won't give you the complete history of high fashion/everyday dress/military uniforms/etc. but are helpful for more specific periods." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/mimicofmodes" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0qda1g" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "You don't really specify an era, so I'm just gonna talk about the 19th century and the Perry expedition as an example.\n\nWhile planning for the expedition, the US understood Japan as having two emperors, a religious emperor and a military emperor. They addressed the letter it was the mission of the expedition to deliver to the \"Japanese Emperor\", with the intent of giving it to the Shogun in Edo. This lead to some confusion at first. They would become more familiar with the situation given some time after the opening of the country." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4rkqzf", "c4rlio6", "c4rm2yw", "c4rndrn", "c4roebb", "c4roehf", "c4roxfp", "c4rpmsi", "c4rqeac", "c4rrzur", "c4rudg5" ], "score": [ 17, 42, 9, 44, 2, 29, 12, 3, 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "There were attempts. In some ways that's what the proprietary colonies were, and their owners were the Lords Proprietors \n\n*spelling", "William Penn's father lent the King of England so much money during the three Anglo Dutch wars in the mid-1600's. There was no way the King of England could pay these loans back, so he granted William Penn, a large tract of land that became the colony of Pennsylvania. ", "I've got a literal answer to your question of an \"indigenous aristocracy\", but it was long before secession or independence. Walter Ralegh created a Croatan Indian man named Manteo as the first peer of American land. \n\nHe was styled Baron Manteo, Lord of Roanoke and Dasamongueponke, and I can't help but find the whole thing hilarious. Something about the English making a peer of a Native man - as if they were conferring a huge honour - and then depending solely on Native assistance to survive really does it for me. ", "For one they didn't want to create any titles that would have been eligible for representation in the House of Lords which was quite powerful back then.", "I have wondered about this as well, and have asked a number of people and never gotten a straight answer. For example, William Penn was given Pennsylvania, but he just got the land, he wasn't created the Earl of Pennsylvania. The only answer I can come up with is carters, that the lords were against it because they didn't want to dilute their power, and the king didn't want to piss them off.", "Some guesses. I am sure some of all of these are contributing factors.\n\n1) Despite being a corrupt system (ie buying titles) most people within the english aristocracy saw the nobility as being connected to their land and the lineage. Creating a new aristocracy structure at of whole cloth would undermine that illusion that the aristocracy was \"natural\"\n\n2) Many of the folks that setled the north openly rejected the aristocracy. They moved to boston explicitly to get away from it.\n\n3) granting noble titles to colonists would mean that they would have to give those people a position in parlement and thus equal status within the government.\n\n4) colonists were sent to america not to extend the realm, but to extract natural resources and value from the land. there is a built in impermanence to colonization. ", "Titles and the like aren't just something that can be created. the Crown is technically able to enfeoff anyone, but the nature of monarchies is that they are heavily bound by custom and the social order.\n\nIf you wonder why one never developed, there is nothing \"natural\" about the creation of a feudal society. Some societies are feudal, some aren't.", "Not to mention that the sort of Americans who had amassed the lands and wealth to qualify to be ennobled were all slaveholders, like George Washington, who was among the richest men in North America. The Whig aristocrats who advised 18th Century British Monarchs, who while not doing anything to stop slavery and often profiting to varying extents from, did find it somewhat 'icky' ", "The original rules for South Carolina drawn up by John Locke, though never implemented, included hereditary peerage, though different in name from Englands.", "Feudal societies existed in Europe because land was limited. In America, there was no way to keep peasants working on manors when there was plenty of land for them to take for themselves.\n\nNinja edit: I'm not a professional historian ,but I believe this is what Carl Degler argued.", "There was some landed aristocracy earlier on. In its 1663 charter, the Province of Carolina was distributed to eight Lords Proprietors for helping Charles II reclaim the throne. However, after Cary's Rebellion and conflicts with Native Americans in the early 1700's, the colony split into North and South Carolina, and the Proprietors sold their their interests back to the Crown, making NC and SC royal colonies." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "erzk9l8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Apologies, but we have had to remove your submission. We ask that questions in this subreddit be limited to those asking about history, or for historical answers. This is not a judgement of your question, but to receive the answer you are looking for, it would be better suited to /r/AskScience.\n\nIf you are interested in an historical answer, however, you are welcome to rework your question to fit the theme of this subreddit and resubmit it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvzdjau", "cvzdl55", "cvze8to", "cvze8wq", "cvzeczz", "cvzenzz", "cvzf00r", "cvzf5vu", "cvzff45", "cvzfgp3", "cvzg0ie", "cvzga49", "cvzh1tc", "cvzhq14", "cvzhrt1", "cvzjdy5", "cvzjksr", "cvzku9g", "cvzl77p", "cvzmthg", "cvzmv5l", "cvzn0eb", "cvznl25", "cvznxcx", "cvzo0xe", "cvzoa3g", "cvzos5p", "cvzov7i", "cvzq9ta", "cvzqc8g", "cvzqm2a", "cvzr4qc", "cvzr57j", "cvzsdt4", "cvzso3d", "cvzsqll", "cvzsuhz", "cvzthkz", "cvzu2pl", "cvzu9n4", "cvzv1dp", "cvzv5cs", "cvzw489", "cvzz01w", "cw0023y", "cw005pl", "cw010ed", "cw012c5", "cw0221x", "cw02cea", "cw02h9h", "cw03855", "cw03us7", "cw049tx", "cw04jvj", "cw04nzp", "cw056bi", "cw0bwxt", "cw0ctdm", "cw0d2u1", "cw0dhvj", "cw0g4x9", "cw0viak", "cw0zw9n", "cw148xu", "cw172c0", "cw1xg4g" ], "score": [ 460, 150, 39, 187, 321, 60, 233, 69, 335, 228, 59, 48, 81, 63, 167, 528, 40, 167, 28, 20, 58, 15, 55, 61, 140, 25, 20, 38, 55, 7, 34, 20, 14, 18, 98, 16, 8, 14, 9, 14, 17, 47, 8, 26, 12, 18, 7, 28, 15, 4, 4, 5, 40, 7, 5, 7, 10, 10, 6, 12, 6, 5, 4, 8, 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "That textiles before mass production were all rough and chunky.\n\nHeck no! Our modern textiles are what medieval and early modern folks would call \"coarse.\" \n\nThere's this chemise/smock/camicia documented in Patterns of Fashion 4. In the nice zoomed in photo, you can see that there are 8 threads running horizontally in the 1/8\" binding strip. In modern \"handkerchief weight\" linen (3.5oz, the finest you can usually find, though I now have a source for 2.5oz that has a proper thread count rather than being like cheesecloth), you typically have 8-10 strands in 1/4\". The 16th century stuff has threads twice as fine as the modern. (Ok, really, there are several of this article of clothing in that book where the fineness of the fabric is obvious. This is not a one-off.)\n\nWhat the Industrial Revolution did was it made thread and fabric faster, not better.\n\nFor a different textile example, knitting. In this case, machine knitting can nearly rival 16th century knitting (though it was a long hard road to get to that point). Modern hand knitting, though? It's common to knit socks today at 8-10 stitches per inch. The \"coarse knit\" socks found on the Gunnister man were in that range. To knit at a gauge similar to silk reliquary pouches or Eleonora di Toledo's stockings, you'd want to use two strands of 60/2 silk (about the thickness of sewing thread) held together--hardly the modern knitter's idea of yarn at all.", "That Columbus uniquely knew the earth was round, and everybody else from his time thought it was flat. \n\nThis has been discussed many times, such as [here](_URL_0_) and [here](_URL_1_), which discusses the origins of this myth. Quoting /u/Enrico_dandolo \n\n > Nobody in Europe thought the earth was flat. That was an anti-Catholic myth from much later. The Greeks knew it was a sphere based on the shadow cast on the Moon and later people continued to understand this. The globular Earth is referenced in the first book of Ovid (widely read in the Middle Ages). Adelard of Bath's (1080-1152) Questions on Nature even questions the nature of gravity (although he didn't know of the force itself, but rather the nature of the power holding us to this earth) by questioning what would happen if the spherical earth had holes in it like cheese?\n\nAll that plays into an even bigger and maybe even more common misconception that the Middle Ages was an especially Dark set of Ages, when humanity appears to regress back to pre-civilization levels of comprehension. And that is another topic in and by itself. ", "That Rasputin was \"evil\" or crazy.\n\nHe was just a gifted con-man sort of guy, think of modern televangelists, who got a raw deal historically-wise just because he appeared so \"creepy\"", "In short, basically everything to do with [this](_URL_0_) and the garbage it tends to inspire. The Finns were all superhuman snowy death snipers. The Finns were literally Gallia from Valkyrie Chronicles. Simo Häyhä was some kind of unbelievable killing machine who scythed down battalions of Soviet troops. \n\nUnfortunately, outside of /r/Askhistorians, the above sorts of snippets and claims comprise most of Reddit's exposure to the Winter War, and represent the extent of its understanding. Pictures like the above, or of [this](_URL_1_) *truly* appalling piece of garbage about Simo Häyhä, are easily consumable and sound exciting, while understanding the realities of the Winter War and contextualizing it actually require a modicum of time and effort. Reddit loves tasty little morsels of information, and as the age old saying first quipped by Charlemagne himself goes, \"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.\" \n\nOf course, the curious distortions of the Winter War, and the appalling perceptions we see of it date back further than false numbers on Wikipedia and made-up tales about Finnish troops. Indeed, the story of the English language historiography of the Winter War is a truly fascinating topic which I take a lot of interest in. From western journalists producing glowing - and often woefully embellished - accounts of the conflict while it was still raging (for consumption in the English speaking world) and their pro-communist contemporaries like London's A.S Hooper, through to exhaustive and professional studies like Allen F Chew's 'The White Death,' the Winter War has undergone a historiographical transformation over time.\n\nTragically, a by-product of this transformation, due in large part to the far-from-exhaustive academic English-language coverage of the conflict, is that there remains an abundance of truly appalling English-language sources. Many of these would ultimately give rise to some of the absurd online distortions we see today.\n\nI'm hoping to work alongside /u/Holokyn-kolokyn to create a /r/badhistory write-up concerning the above-linked article on Simo Häyhä, which is astoundingly wrong, and also extremely heavily upvoted. I've also been sitting on a small write-up on Winter War historiography for a little while, which I might trot out some time!", "\"Native Americans were just nomadic hunter-gatherers.\"\n\nBothers me for a multiple reason. Here are the highlights:\n\n1. It's factually wrong for the majority of Native societies.\n2. It demeans those societies that were nomadic and / or hunter-gatherers as inferior those that aren't.\n3. More often than not it's used to justify imperialism, because John Jocke says so.\n", "That--unlike the way we usually talk about every other subject in school--having a bad history teacher doesn't mean you had a bad teacher, it means history is boring.", "that the American War of Independence was won by a plucky band of guerrillas, and the insidious influence of The Patriot.\nI see the allure of this image but don't understand why Americans wouldn't rather propagate how hard Washington fought to create a competent army and beat the British at their own game", "That MLK Jr. and Malcolm X were the end all, be all of the American Civil Rights Movement. ", "[So many to choose from](_URL_1_), but in the end, probably the argument that slavery wasn't the cause of the American Civil War, or at best, merely an incidental one. Plenty of other stuff I get annoyed about, but this one is particularly common, and indicative of the travesty that is Civil War \"Conventional Wisdom\", being so infected with \"Lost Cause\" historiography. [I once wrote a little thing about it,](_URL_2_), but it can be summed up with this [macro](_URL_0_).", "There are a few that come from my field: \n\n1) Pirates were cool. \n\nNo, no they were not; they were criminals who stole from mostly poor merchants, raped people to death, burned and tortured people for no particular reason, and burned towns and churches. \n\n2) Sailors were drunk all the time, because rum! And water aboard ship wasn't safe to drink. \n\nNot at all; the daily ration of rum in the British navy was a half pint a day, served at a quarter pint twice daily; there was certainly an illicit spirits trade and men could get quite drunk if they wanted to, but it's horrendously dangerous to be drunk and working aloft. The rum ration was mixed 1:3 with water (1 part rum to 3 water) and in the latter part of the Napoleonic period, with lime juice. So if all sailors drank was their spirits ration, they'd be drinking two pints of grog a day, which is not nearly enough for hard, active labor. A scuttlebutt of fresh water was provided for sailors. (Also, rum was initially only served on overseas service in the Americas; in home waters, sailors got beer, and in the Mediterranean wine.) [I wrote about beer, wine and rum here.](_URL_0_)\n\n3) All sailors were sulky men impressed from gaols who only worked out of fear of corporal punishment. \n\nAlthough impressment was a major way of filling the Navy's manning needs during major wars, an efficient ship's company would have a core of professional sailors that had enlisted voluntarily. Also, impressment was technically only meant to apply to sailors (or at least men who had had \"use of the sea\"); it wasn't impossible for a hot press to sweep up anyone found near the shore, but the common image of insane asylums being emptied straight into ships is overblown. [I wrote some stuff about impressment here](_URL_1_).", "The use of the descriptor \"tribe\" or \"tribal\" for any non-western European society lacking some kind of central hierarchy. I commonly hear medieval Ireland described as \"tribal\" (even by non-medievalist academics!) which I find unsatisfactory for several reasons: firstly, the term has an inherently derogatory connotation outside of a specific anthropological context, and more importantly; it's often used in such a vague and meaningless way that when employed, it either provides no actual interpretive insight or worse, it actually conflates distinct social and political groupings like the *tuath* (a small political unit) and *fine* (extended family group). \n\nAs well, describing medieval Ireland as \"tribal\" imposes a set of assumptions that hinders our ability to understand that society in its own terms. For example, I've often seen and heard people describe the rulers of Irish polities in the early medieval period as \"chieftains\" or \"clan leaders\" or something else along those lines. Again, this conflates social and political groupings together as \"tribal\" and has a sort of gross colonialist streak to it. The rulers of Irish polities, big and small, called themselves *rí* - king, and thought of themselves as kings equal to their neighbours in Britain and the continent. By imposing a \"tribal\" framework on medieval Irish society and politics we denigrate that very society by implication, after all, tribes don't have kings do they? This kind of thinking leads us to colonialist logic like this: \"tribes have chieftains and chieftains are a less sophisticated kind of ruler than kings. Therefore Irish society was less sophisticated than contemporary societies in England and the continent.\"", "That you can simply cut through chain mail with a arming sword. If you could cut right through it no one would wear it.", "Learning history is just remembering when certain events happens, and who were those important people that were involved in such events. Or that historians are just trivia spurting machines, ready to bore your mind with random historic tidbits of the day.", "That the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 did not happen and was a \"false flag\". Me and /u/ThinMountainAir [discuss this in this thread.](_URL_0_)\n\nAnother one is the idea that the \"United States won every engagement in the Vietnam War\" and were thus superior in warfare over the Vietnamese (and should have won, had it not been for those backstabbers back home!). This is what I like to call the Lost Cause myth of the Vietnam War. [I discuss these particular claims in length in this post.](_URL_1_)", "Oh God, there are a couple:\n\n\n1.) Clean Wehrmacht\n\nThis one is not as common as it used to be but it does come up. The Wehrmacht leadership was complicit in some of the most heinous crimes of the Nazi state. From the treatment of Soviet POWs to killing scores of civilians during Partisan warfare to the Holocaust. And while a differentiated discussion of the role that ordinary soldiers played in all of this, in general, a lot of the rank and file were complicit in many a sense in these crimes.\n\n\n2.) Civ Tech Tree Progress of modernity.\n\nThe idea of the historical process steaming towards the Western ideal of \"progress\" like a big choo-choo train with the supposed \"Dark Ages\" leaving a whole so big that if it hadn't happened we'd be on the moon right now is just the Internet's version of Whig History.\n\n\n3.) Auschwitz as the iconic symbol for the Holocaust\n\nWhile a lot of people were killed in Auschwitz, the majority of murders during the Holocaust either took place in one of the Reinhard camps and in Soviet Russia with the Einsatzgruppen. Choosing Auschwitz excludes a lot of Eastern European Jewry and also paints the Holocaust as this rational killing machinery which it wasn't. It was messy, horrible, bloody and many things more but not a smooth machine.\n\n\n4.) The Library of Alexandria\n\nAs anybody in BH will tell you, there is far too much importance placed on the Library of Alexandria and it getting burnt down by pretty much everyone but especially by New Atheists^TM\n\n\n5.) Jesus didn't exist\n\nNo serious academic refutes the existence of historical Jesus and most perpetrators of this misconception tend to not understand how Historians work. ", "One of my biggest peeves, which will set me spinning off in a rage even at its mention, is the anti-Stratfordian conspiracy theory. This so-called \"theory\" is that Shakespeare either didn't exist, or was merely a front for some other \"real\" author.\n\nThis load of tripe was conceived in the 19th century by a bunch of classists and intellectual elitists who insisted that works of quality like Shakespeare's couldn't possibly be produced by somebody from the lower classes and of humble background, so therefore they clearly must have been written by a noble or an aristocratic person who was simply too modest to take credit. \n\nIt demonstrates complete ignorance of how theatres, playwrights, and actors operated in the period, makes up absurd tests of validity that would be failed by 99% of all people ever born, and is rooted firmly in the belief that there was somehow a nationwide conspiracy by all levels of society up to and including the royal court to invent, adore, criticize, eulogize, pay, and grant arms to, a fake author that there is not one ounce of evidence to support.", "Vikings are completely misunderstood. They did not have horned helmets and they did not spend the entirety of their period looting and pillaging. Many Vikings were traders and developed great trade routes which spread from Iceland (and potentially North America) to parts of Asia. Their ships, I grant you, were awesome.", "Armour myths are like some ugly, obnoxious children of mine. I can't pick between the unsightly buggers to pick out which snot-nosed false factoid is my favorite.\n\nBut if you're making me pick one, I would go with:\n\nArmour was made by village blacksmiths. No, it wasn't. Armour was made by armourers, and they were specialized. The mail-makers had their own guild, the plate armourers had another. Armourers didn't operate in villages, they operated in cities like Liege and London and Milan and Augsburg and Nurnberg and Koln and Innsbruck. Armourers were extremely skilled and highly valued craftsman - the best of them were on par with the artists of their day, even marrying their daughters to the sons of famous etchers. In several cases armourers bought or were granted titles of nobility! Certainly many armourers were journeymen making ends meet, or masters of small shops, but they were still highly skilled and specialized.\n\nThere was a massive, Europe-spanning trade in arms and armour from the high middle ages onwards. Also, Armourers often didn't make their own steel - sometimes they didn't even flatten it into sheets, instead buying flat sheet steel from a hammer mill. Sometimes when they did it was because they had a massive, vertically integrated operation, like the Missaglias of Milan. Other times they imported foreign steel to make better armour, as when the English Royal armour workshop at Greenwich imported steel from Styria in southern Austria.\n\nRunners up:\n\n-Swords could penetrate armour\n\n-Longbow arrows could easily penetrate plate armour\n\n-armour was impossibly heavy\n\n-armoured knights were obsolete from the 14th century onwards", "My pet peeve is hearing that people were shorter in the past. The height of people at any period and local throughout time is entirely dependent upon 1) genetics and 2) overall nutrition and disease. The more agrarian a society was, the greater the potential for the people to reach their full genetic potentials. So for instance, in the period of the early American Republic, most Caucasian Americans, had a pretty good shot of reaching or approaching their full genetic potential. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were 6'2\"/6.4\" (depending upon the source and their age at the time). And based upon a number of stories about Henry Knox's relationship with George Washington, we suspect he was even taller. At the time of the American Revolution, the average American was about 3 inches taller than their British contemporaries. I think it is because people want to feel superior to our ancestors. ", "That Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines. It's literally nerve wrecking jaw clenching bullshit. ", "Oh, I have a couple. The biggest is, of course, the related ideas that corsets deformed women and pushed their organs into weird places and that satirical or moralistic complaints about women tightlacing reflected reality. Tightlacing is incredibly overestimated in general. Yes, the waist measurements on extant clothing are tiny. So are the bust measurements. Most extant clothing is pretty small. A 21\" waist sounds very small because the average woman today has a waist of around 30\"-35\", and so we imagine lacing down 10+ inches ... when the dresses that have these 21\" waists also have ~25\" busts. Dresses with larger bust, shoulder, arm, etc. measurements also have larger waists.\n\nThe roots can be traced to a few different places - those historical satires that are so popular, doctors trying to figure out why certain ailments were more common in women than men, moral standards that praised women for being beautiful but put them down for trying to be beautiful (not one we've totally gotten away from), and the post-Edwardian culture that looked down on the Victorian era as an unenlightened and quaint time.\n\nThe misconception that there was some huge revolution in women's clothing after or during WWI is something I like to bore people with as well. I don't even know where to start. The hourglass figure stopped being a big deal around 1909-1911. Simpler styles were being worn at that time, and fussier ones were still worn in the early 1920s. Foundation garments were still very often worn for stability and for looks all the way through the 1950s and early 1960s. Were there changes? Yeah, but they came at the same rate as earlier and later ones. Nothing very dramatic happened at the time, and Chanel didn't have much to do with it either. (You don't want to start me off about Chanel.)", "I am irritated that so many believe the Confederate battle flag, at the center of so many controversies lately, was *the* flag of the CSA. Often, the same ones that spout the history and heritage arguments are not even aware of the true \"Stars and Bars\" flag of the Confederacy.", "That the Treaty of Versailles was so terrible and so punitive that it almost singlehandedly caused WW2.", "That Rome fell in 476 and that the Byzantines were a bunch of Greeks pretending to be Romans.", "The Galileo affair:\n\nOther people had already had heliocentric theories, such as Copernicus. And indeed, his theories were used when reforming the calendar in the 1500s. But science hadn't advanced enough to prove it, so it was nothing more than a mathematical convenience. Eventually, we had proof that Venus orbited the Sun, so Brahe suggested a geo-heliocentric model. The other planets orbit the Sun, but the Sun orbits the Earth. The objection to the Earth orbiting the Sun was both religious and because Aristotelian physics didn't allow for such a massive body as the Earth to actually be moving. Then came Galileo who had decent mathematical arguments. But because they weren't the best, he decided to turn to theology as well. He argued that just as we already acknowledged that not everything in the Bible is absolutely literal, that it didn't mean the Earth had to be stationary. It could just be stationary from the reference point of the authors. This latter part is what irritated the Cardinals. Cardinal Bellarmine agreed that Galileo had argued quite well for the heliocentric universe as a mathematical convenience, but merely objected to its teaching as fact, because he didn't agree with Galileo's theological arguments. The Inquisition let him off with a warning, but forbade him from teaching it as fact and to only teach it as a convenience. He didn't, and eventually wound up under house arrest. Books on heliocentrism were banned, but certain ones were still allowed as reference for the models. Eventually, in the mid 1700s, this decision was recanted when science had advanced enough to say \"No, seriously, this is more than a theory\".\n\nFunnily enough, the inquisition actually accused Galileo of not being scientific enough, as his theory was unable to account for stellar parallax.\n\nAs for where? The heroic theory of science and science teachers trying to be history teachers. \n\nalso not a professional yet but im a semester away from my degree.", "Not sure how much this is talked about in the rest of the world but pretty much everything about Scottish history and the Jacobite rebellion particularly irks me. \n\nNasty imperialist English vs freedom loving noble savage Scots. Brave and clever but outgunned and outnumbered. Etc etc etc... (There's some similarity to the narrative around the Confederacy) \n\nAlso lumping everyone into Scottish and English even when it's totally ahistorical. \nA story of a bunch of protestant and Catholic noble families fueding isn't as romantic i guess. \n\nAlso a special fuck you to Braveheart. ", "The stephensons are not the father of the modern railway and didn't invent the locomotive as teachers always insisted in school and even at university. \n\nIn 1803 Trevithick built and showed his pen-y-darren locomotive and it performed excellently in trials against a horse. It truly is the father of the railway. ", "That the Conferderacy in the American Civil War was fighting for \"states rights\" and not for slavery. This myth was created over the course of the decades following the Civil War by the Lost Cause Movement. All you have to do is look at the Southern supported Fugitive Slave Act to see they were all for subverting states rights in favor of slavery and to look at the Declaration of Independence of really any state that joined the CSA (if you'd like to read one I'd recommend Mississippi's because it's the shortest and most blunt about it).\n\nIf anybody would like me to present sources or go into more detail, let me know. I'd be more than happy to explain in more depth.", "The general concept of \"Island Hopping.\"\n\nAt its core, island hopping is a relatively sound tactic-the essence of \"hit 'em where they ain't.\" However, it was a very complicated strategy that required a very precise strategic situation in order for the Allies to be able to execute. Typically, most people tend to brush off the Pacific War ground combat campaigns as just \"island hopping,\" in a sort of congratulatory gesture of sound strategy. However, the main reason that is given for why it was useful-namely, to avoid having to invade the heavier defended islands-is... questionable. If that were the only reason, it would surely be logical to simply invade Japan proper (perhaps through the Kuriles, or Hokkaido), thus bypassing the entire Southern Area Army.\n\nThe entire reason for the island campaign was all about air superiority. Each island could be turned into an airbase, and the Japanese had in fact turned many of their strongest points into a ring of mutually supporting air bases. In order for any potential sustained Allied campaign against Japan to be successful, the Allies must maintain naval and air superiority. The problem was that in order to capture islands that would be within range to support a US campaign against the Home Islands, they would need to neutralize the other Japanese air bases in the area. And the only way they were going to be able to reliably do that was with the presence of a sustained land-based aircraft capacity. Which in turn would require the capture of islands further down the island chain... until one got to the point where Allied air bases already existed.\n\nAfter the hard fighting at Guadalcanal to capture a Japanese airbase, the Allies were wary of having to risk similar losses attacking even more strongly held Japanese positions. Indeed, it would be easier for Allied engineers to construct their own airfield than it would be to capture one of the large Japanese ones. Because of Allied naval superiority, they were able to send in bombardment forces to shell the Japanese airfields at night, in combination with high-altitude, long-range heavy bombers shutting down Japanese air operations. Because of these unique tactical advantages, the US was able to completely nullify the threat of each of these airbases to the nascent unguarded ones being constructed. Once finished, the Allied air campaigns could continue, making any Japanese attempt at logistics extremely difficult. The Japanese certainly tried-the so-called \"Tokyo Express\" supply runs being an example-but it got to the point where supplying these forward bases was proving too taxing to the Japanese Navy (as in the Battle of Vella Gulf). \n\nHad the Japanese fleet not been shattered at Midway and the attritional battles in the Solomon Islands, and had the Japanese maintained their air strength, island hopping would simply be playing into the Japanese strategy, as it would require substantial, sustained commitment of US naval assets to shut down an island air base, during which they would be vulnerable to a Japanese counterattack. This would not have prevented an Allied victory to be sure-American industry was simply that much stronger than the Japanese war machine-but it would have made \"island hopping\" extremely unattractive. ", "Whenever I'm watching a documentary on WWI, if they cover Jutland they'll typically also say that the German High Seas Fleet never set sail afterwards. \n\nThis is false. While they never directly engaged the Royal Navy, they did leave port a few times. It's a piece of trivia that obliterates credibility when I see it wrongly addressed. ", "That soldiers and generals of the linear warfare era were somehow 'idiots' for marching in their dense lines, and bright uniforms, or--more generally--people in the past were 'dumb' because they didn't use a method/idea we have developed with hindsight, and may not have been entirely applicable or useful in the actual historical situation. ", "I don't claim to be a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but ...\n\n* The popular version of WW1. \n British soldiers would live in the same front-line trench 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year until either the war ended or - more likely - the bungling generals sent them \"over the top\" to walk slowly into machine-gun bullets for no good reason. The British occupied literally the same trenches with the same soldiers from 1914 to 1918. The Germans never attacked, just waited for the poor gallant British Tommies to come to them, led by their upper-class twit officers. At the end of the war, every surviving soldier thought the whole thing was pointless and became a pacifist. And anyone who attempts to point out that this isn't really true is a jingoistic right-wing apologist for Butcher Haig and all his cronies, who thinks the trenches were like a holiday camp and the whole thing was a bally good lark.\n\n* Articles like [this one](_URL_0_) which give the idea that historians consider the wrong type of stethoscope or a tank being 6 months out of date for when a film is grounds for dismissing a film as \"inaccurate\".\n\n\n\n", "For one of my main areas: WWII aviation. The myths that ball turret gunners would get squished regularly in damaged bombers.\n\nThere are actually no documented cases of this ever happening. Andy Rooney is the only person known of who ever described this happening, and his account does not correspond to any official records that could confirm it, either directly or indirectly. \n\nIn order for a ball turret gunner to be squished, a lot of things have to go wrong. \n\nFirst off, the electrics must be shot out. The turret runs on electric power. \n\nSecond, the manual controls outside of the turret that external crewmembers could use had to be non-functioning.\n\nThird, the internal cranks that could be operated in lieu of electronic controls had to be destroyed so that the actual gunner could not rotate it in any direction.\n\nFourth, the toothed rail frame the turret spins on must be damaged so that the turret cannot spin left-to-right (or right-to-left). \n\nFifth, the turret must be damaged so that it cannot be rotated vertically (so that it would be pointed up or down). The turret had a hatch on the back of it that the gunner would use to get in and out of.\n\nSixth, The hydraulics had to be destroyed on the plane. While the turret ran on electric power, the landing gear was lowered and raised using hydraulic power.\n\nSeventh, the hand cranks to manually lower the landing gear had to be destroyed. Even without hydraulic power, the crew could still manually lower the landing gear using a crank. The internal components linking the crank to the landing gear assembly would have to be completely destroyed.\n\nSimply put, there was so much that had to go wrong that if it all had gone wrong, the crew would either have bailed out already, or they would have been able to figure out some sort of work around to get him out.\n\nAlso, as an aside, probably 90% of the stories you hear about WWII aviation that are told to you secondhand (a family member relating the story that the actual veteran told them) are woefully false.", "That samurai were honorable gentlemen who only fought classy 1vs1 duels while a battle developed around them", "1. \"People didn't smile in old photos because it took 5/10/20/60 minutes to take a photo\" and other related old photo ones. \n\n *[This guy explained it better than I ever could](_URL_2_).*\n\n2. \"Boys wore pink and girls wore blue 50/100/150 years ago\". \n\n *In the western world children were dressed in mostly white for a very long time. For example for the 1700's [here's Marie Antoinette's youngest daughter Sophie Beatrice](_URL_3_) and youngest son [Louis XVII](_URL_1_). [Here are two girls in white in the early 1800's](_URL_0_). Whatever appropriate colors for each gender any books proclaimed were in no way universal. There is no consensus on the appropriate color for each gender until around and after WWII. In 1948 the then Princess Elizabeth set up the nursery with blue ribbons for the future Prince Charles. Supposedly at this time people began to buy more and more ready-made baby products and manufacturers began to push for gender-specify merchandise to boost sale.*\n\n\n3. On reddit, \"diamond engagement rings were not common until the 20th century\" somehow became \"literally no one wore diamonds because they were literally worthless before the evil DeBeer made it mandatory (often accompanied by some rant about gold diggers)\". \n\n *Then why did Madame DuBarry's diamond necklace became such a big deal?*", "That the pre-WWII Japanese were uniquely obsessed with \"honor,\" and that a single, orientalist concept of \"honor\" (or \"losing face\") can conveniently explain any cultural dynamic we don't intuitively understand (seppuku, kamikaze, suicide weapons, emperor worship, etc.)\n\nIt bothers me how some people tend to use \"honor\" to describe the concept of social standing in Japanese (and other) societies as if it's some bizarre, inscrutable concept. Yes, the concept of social standing was and is very important, but that's also true of other societies (including our own) and saying \"because honor\" doesn't usually tell you anything useful or interesting about the actual cause of the thing you're trying to explain.\n\nWhat it does do is promote a bizarre essentialist view of Japanese society, and gloss over a lot of important nuance. Seppuku wasn't done for just one reason, and it wasn't monolithic through all geography and history. You're much better off studying specific instances of it, or its repeated, standardized forms (like its use as a form of the death penalty), than viewing it as a single exotic phenomenon that can be explained away with a single exotic word.", "The Black Book of Communism, and that the Holodomor was a purposefully engineered famine and a genocide. This is one of the most disturbing cases of historical revisionism and has more to do with anti-communist propaganda than truth. You will have people on the one hand completely ignore every attempt by the Soviet government to alleviate the situation in Ukraine and put an end to the famines which had been endemic since well before the revolution, and on the other those same people will ignore willfully engineered famines in India and Ireland that are the result of deliberate choices to export foods and destroy agricultural traditions for cash crops instead of use them to save the people that grew them.", "My students constantly refer to the Soviet Union (I'm a teaching assistant for a WWII course this semester) as Russia. We've explained the differences. They don't care. ", "Anything dealing with public knowledge of armored warfare, especially WW2 era. Ronsons, 5 Shermans for 1 Tiger, McNair the Traitor, or anything any slapwit let drool out of their mouth about the Eastern Front. People blame Belton Cooper's 2-ply memoir for a lot of the misinformation, but it all goes back to at least the early '80s when guys like George Fourty were just willing to take all veterans on their word in order to increase page counts and drama.\n\nAlso, just for effect, the Garand \"helmet ping\" myth is one that makes me want to stop giving a museum tour and just start braining the smarmy twit who decides to share it. It's damned near weekly at this point.", "The whole short Napoleon bit. It's not a big deal or anything, but I find it more irritating than anything else. The dude was 5' 7\", above average for the time. ", "I am not an expert historian, I'm not even on the same plane of knoweldge as most posters in this sub, but it annoys me greatly when people say that \"only a few hundred Spaniards\" took down the \"Aztec empire\" when there were more then hundreds and the Spanish had a great deal of help from other native groups. ", "That late antiquity has yet to become the 'default' way of thinking about the 'dark ages' amongst the public. I mean, Peter Brown kickstarted this whole late-antique thing in 1971 and parts of it go back much further, yet people still go around citing Edward Gibbon's *Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* from the **eighteenth century** as the authority on this period. Instead of using the heavily loaded term of 'decline' to describe events from the fourth century onwards, we should instead think about how culture was instead transformed. Even the apparently less 'developed' west produced brilliant authors such as Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and the Venerable Bede, the architecturally impressive churches and mausoleum of Theodoric the Great in Italy, the Romanesque monasteries of St Wilfrid in Northumbria, and the illustrated manuscripts from Ireland. By all means take into account economic fragmentation and political instability, but culture obviously still existed, albeit in a different form. So what if it was different to what came before? Instead we should look at them independently and see them as evidence for the vibrancy of a new age, when what being Roman meant transformed into something different. Some might see it also as a time of war and misery, but we should not forget that 'classical civilisation' was equally violent and morally reprehensible from modern perspectives.\n\nI also don't have a high opinion of those who argue that civilisation continued in 'Byzantium'/the Arab world/China, since to do so seems to devalue the lives of those who lived in less centralised and less wealthy regions. I would much prefer to acknowledge their experiences and discard the idea that we have to quantify their utility by measuring their 'achievements'. I know plenty of historians who will disagree with this, but those who interpret this period as a 'catastrophe' miss out on how crises often led to opportunities. In the wake of a collapsing empire, many people found a new place for themselves in an unstable but equally interesting world. Their stories need to be told as well, which contributes to the picture of a diverse and stimulating world of late antiquity, rather than a 'dark age' of intellectual decline.", "Medieval Weapons and Armor being heavy and clumsy, being only used back in the day because \"people were stronger.\"", "Privacy is a inalienable and a common human right. \n\nNo, in fact it is not, and our ideas of privacy are very historically constructed. In a city such as London or Paris in the 1500s or even the 1600s you could see sex on the street or what we'd call nonpenatrative sex in the equivalent of a singles bar, a Cock and Hen tavern. You would have grown up sharing one bed for the entire family and you would have been aware how your parents or your siblings and their spouses made babies.", "Hmm sooo many.\n\nI think the most annoying one is the Khazarian Hypothesis. It's a theory that's gotten a lot of press over the past few years. Ham-fisted journalism often results in presenting it as one of a few competing hypotheses on the origin of Eastern European Jews. In reality, while there are real academics do support it, it is very much a peripheral theory, and not something most academics spend a lot of time thinking about.\n\nTo sum it up, the Khazars were a Turkic group who (may have, to some extent) converted to Judaism. It's been theorized that Eastern European Jews are their descendants. There really isn't any evidence for it, but there are still people who believe it. It's definitely not as widely believed or as solidly backed as normal historical accounts (that Eastern European Jews were once in Central Europe and migrated east).", "Mine: \"Why is X type of music so complicated?\" Or \"Why weren't they writing (specific modern style of music) back in (time period 100+ years ago)?\" \n\nIt's like asking why there weren't helicopters in the Crimean war, or why the Romans were reading off tablets instead of Kindles. There's this misconception that music is somehow divorced completely from the evolution of technology, and that if just some musician in 18th century Vienna would have come up with Blues, we would have hundreds of years of Blues music. \n\nNever mind the centuries of cultural influence, the slow evolution of musical tradition, the total lack of that style of harmony in Western music, Blues should have just sprang up from the ground, because the notes already existed. Yes, they did, but all the materials existed for the Mohawk to make Machine guns, so why didn't they just figure it out?!", "The Tiger tank was the main tank used by Germany during WWII\n\nGerman tanks ran on diesel. \n\nIt took 5 Sherman's to destroy a single German tank.\n\n\nBasically all those stupid WWII tank myths", "That \"Duck and Cover\" was a hoax designed to lull children into thinking nuclear war was survivable as long as you hid under your desk.\n\nObviously, it wouldn't save you if you were close to the blast. But if you were a bit further away, your immediate concern would be the shockwave that could collapse your building. In *that* case, ducking and covering could save your life. \n\nThis one is especially annoying because it comes up in *The Iron Giant*, otherwise one of my favorite movies. ", "EASY, that America was founded in any way to be religious. This is obviously not true, yet so many people believe it.", "There is literally not a shred of evidence to suggest that Mozart ever transcribed the Allegri *Miserere Mei*. There is a letter from Leopold to Anna Maria saying that young John-Chris-Wolfie-Theo *heard* the Allegri and liked it very much and went back to hear it a second time the following day, and then there is a letter from Anna Maria to a brother (whose name escapes me) saying that young JCWT transcribed it. Anna Maria is obviously talking young JCWT up in order to impress someone. Anna Maria's letter is the *only* mention made of such a transcription.\n\nIn any case, the transcription of such a repetitive piece, wherein fully half of the piece is a single line of chant traditionally associated with the text, and the other half is a pair of alternation harmonisations (faux-bourdons) which repeat a grand total of 5 times is not impressive for anyone with a high level of musical training, especially if he had heard it twice. ", "That mustard gas was a leading cause of death in WWI. Yes, the affects of it were horrific, but most of the time it just took soldiers off of the battlefield for treatment. It wasn't even the most widely used gas either. That (dis)honor goes to phosgene (which was much more deadly anyway).", "The common perception of the '53 Iranian coup seems very oversimplified and very Anglocentric (or whatever it is where, as kohmeini likes to tell it, the CIA runs everything). It's not that, after the CIA failed and called in a favor from the pentagon that got some general advising Iranian officers to bribe a ton of them to buy some military support, the troops bought by the pentagon with CIA cash didn't lay siege to Mosaddeggh's house providing a good deal of the pressure that led to Mosaddeggh's surrender.\n\nIt's just that that narrative discounts everything except the american influence. It almost couldn't be more myopic.\n\nI think it's fairly undeniable that Mosaddeggh was a marked man. He had alienated himself from everyone. He took dictatorial power right before he dismissed parliament when he was about to lose control of it (as all true democrats do) after holding iirc 12 months of \"emergency powers\".\n\nIf the Ayatollahs had known he was secular they never would have supported him in the first place, but by '53 they definitely didn't support him, in fact, Ayatollah Kashani, supported by some bloke named ayatollah kohmeini (no relation? /s) were leading the largest protest when mosaddeggh fled, and later turned himself in.\n\nMosaddeggh had finally alienated the marxists, who, again, I guess supported him in an 'the enemy of my enemy' sort of way. Mosaddeggh was a fairweather communist, the way he was a fairweather islamist, and a fairweather supporter of representative democracy. In fact, almost the only achievement the CIA can call it's own, apparently (not too sure about this) is that the cia apparently hired people (maybe through their friends in the bazaar?) to pretend to be marxists and to start protesting, which, apparently successfully got the real marxists to start protesting in earnest.\n\nHe had lost the support of parliament. He had lost support of his own party, and he had even lost support of his heir apparent. The man who was physically at the largest oil refinery in the world when it was nationalized by mosaddeggh when he nationalized the oil industry.\n\nMosaddeggh had taken the military from the weak shah, but the Shah could never rely on the military, and, apparently, neither could Mosaddeggh, as some general was able to buy their services.\n\nMosaddeggh came to power when Iran was under rule by assassination, after the previous PM had negotiated a 50/50 split with aioc, but was assassinated by a follower of the teachings of kohmeini.\n\nIt's simply too arrogant and myopic to simply discount it to \"cia coup\". Mosaddeggh had burnt all of his bridges, lost all his support, lost parliament.\n\nIf Mosaddeggh hadn't put himself on the marxist's death list he'd put him on the ayatollahs. And even if none of them assassinated him he still was in a politically unviable situation. He had no political support to speak of.\n\nIt's a little like in the importance of being earnest, how one character had a fictitious friend called bumbry, who he used to create excuses, like, 'my friend bumbry is sick, and called on me', but in the end, the fictitious bumbry is said to meet his death when, consulting his doctors, finds out that there is nothing keeping him alive, and so, consequent to his doctors making this discovery, he simply perishes.\n\nThe myth of this powerful CIA that steers the history of nations with coups flatters the CIA, and kohmeini has been using it to scapegoat the CIA for almost half a century, but it's just that. A braggart's lie.\n\nMosaddeggh had, what's the expression? Tied his own noose?\n\nYea the CIA played it's own little part, but the reality of it is that the CIA's man in the Iranian military was wanted for murder and had not a single man supporting him. The CIA was more spectator than anything else. Heck, they even needed the ayatollahs to lead their own protests.\n\nSo how can anyone argue that the driving factor behind mosaddeggh's fall from grace was the CIA, and not mosaddeggh himself, or the ayatollahs that led one of the protests against mosaddeggh, the marxists that led the other protest against mosaddeggh (after mosaddeggh had turned both factions against himself), or the fact that mosaddeggh had alienated himself from everyone and lost all support.\n\nSources: Legacy of ashes, stansfield turner's book, and some books that pop up when you search on google.", "Mostly the idea that the Middle Ages were a pile of dung that only halted the \"advancement\" of Europe, and everything that goes with that idea:\n\n-Peasants and even some nobles were constantly filthy with mud and presumably fouler stuff.\n\n-There were no martial arts at all. Combat was about bashing eachother brutally.\n\n-All lords were evil bastards who exerted themselves on exploiting everyone for the sake of it.\n\n-Everyone was dirt poor, there were no cities, no commerce, no nothing but mud.\n\n-The church halted all advancement of knowledge and destroyed every last bit of the legacy of the ancients.\n\n-The very few remnants of civilisation were limited to the Byzantine Empire and Southern Spain, where only the greatness and enlightenment of the \"sarracens\" managed to instill some sophistication and knowledge.\n\n-That nothing ever changed in the Middle Ages in the roughly 1000 years that it lasted.\n\nI think that all in all, the Middle Ages are probably the most misunderstood and misjudged period of European history.", "My father in law repeatedly claims that an ignored and suppressed piece of history is that slaves had labor unions and came to the US voluntarily. I have no F'ing clue what he's talking about, but it is quite irritating. ", "Space Aliens building everything in Ancient Egypt", "**1- That Japanese steel was/is the best in the world.** Japan has pretty limited iron and they were able to make it into passable steel through a complicated process of refinement and selective forging. The strength we attribute to Japanese blades has more to do with their carefully laminated structure and physical shape than the quality of the steel. Here is a [great video](_URL_0_) showing the process of refining iron sand into Japanese steel (tamahagane)\n\n**2- Damascus steel only comes from Damascus.** This is more a semantic argument, but it is still important. What people (and many commercial metal manufacturers and suppliers) commonly refer to as \"Damascus Steel\" is actually a process called \"pattern welding\" and it can be done anywhere. It is only called Damascus steel if it was forged in Damascus (similar to how Champagne is only Champagne if it is grown/bottled in the French region) and as /u/Hergrim pointed out below, true Damascus steel is a special type of wootz crucible steel. \n\n**3- That Indian/Persian steel was quenched in \"saline\" by stabbing hot blades into prisoners or slaves.** Thats not how blade heat treating works. At all.\n\n*Edited for format, clarity, and added a proper source for the tamahagane*", "When someone says \"dark ages\" my skin crawls. I also can't stand how people talk about the Renaissance and the Late Middle Ages as if they were two completely unrelated time periods. You can't just throw all the bad shit in the LMA pile and all the pretty happy things into the Renaissance pile. Much of it happened at the same bloody time and was highly influenced by eachother.", "Spices do not disguise the taste of rotten meat, and they were far too expensive to use for such a purpose in the medieval period. Spices were bought as a status symbol and luxury good, much like caviar is today. I actually had to correct a professor on this point several weeks ago. I think this idea comes from the fact that spices are often lumped together with salt, which does work as a preservative. Furthermore, fresh meat was far cheaper than any spice until well into the modern period. So next time a schoolteacher tries to tell you that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotten meat, slap them. \r\rPaul Freedman's book Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination provides a good overview of the reasons medieval people loved spices, and why they paid so much for them.", "My biggest pet peeve is about how historians are thought of. I have a BA in history but work in IT. I've had multiple people ask me why I went to school for it, implying its not a \"useful\" degree. Forget that it teaches us to think logically and examine issues from multiple angles. Or that it teaches us to express ourselves clearly and concisely. It clearly isn't as \"good\" a degree as business management or some other nonsense that exists solely to move money from the bank accounts of others to yourself. Just as annoying though is when I meet people and they find out I have a history degree and they assume that makes me an expert on whatever historical topic they want to ask questions about. It doesn't give actual historians any credit. I would never call myself a historian, I'm a dabbler. You would never compare a garage band to a symphony why would you compare me to a historian?", "The whole \"We're smarter than the Romans/Ancient Greeks/Egyptians/insert historical peoples of your choice and that's why we don't sacrifice humans/send troops across No Man's Land/insert event in the past where hindsight makes it clear it wasn't a great idea\"\n\nI seriously have had several discussions with people who think humans in Imperial Rome were intellectually on par with children or pets of our current era", "Recently, I had a co-worker that argued that slavery in the American south wasn't as bad as most other places. I didn't even know where to begin to unpack that statement.", "Oh, let's see. \n\n- That the Sex Pistols were a 'boy band' and that the members were brainless mannequins.\n\n- That there was a cohesive Transatlantic punk rock scene between 1975 and 1976 (before the so-called \"Punk Explosion\"), with New York bands directly influencing the early London bands. That was really only true of the Ramones, if we're talking that CBGB's/Max's Kansas City scene. (You also had the MC5 and the Stooges.) It was more the case that New York and London were lumped together by the music press after the two scenes got going independently of one another.\n\n- That 'true punk' was about left wing political activism. Some bands and scene participants were way political, others could give a shit (such as, let's see, the Ramones), or were deliberately apolitical. And then there were the far right elements.\n\n- That British punk grew organically into what it was to become, at the grassroots level, from the ground up. It did when it was a marginal bohemian scene in London that most British youth wouldn't have been exposed to, save for those who read the edgier music periodicals. It became a national phenomenon, and cause for moral panic, after the Grundy Incident, which occurred on national television and caused the British public to froth at the mouth. It was the mass media furor that caused the Punk Explosion of '77 more than anything. In fact, a lot of the original participants who were involved before that point went on to complain bitterly about all the dumb, eager-for-havoc teenagers that flooded and overwhelmed their little scene as a result.\n\nI could go on, but then it'd be getting too obscure for most readers.", "That history is about events, and whether they really happened or not.\n\nThe quest for the \"real\", often popping up in this forum under the question format of \"Did this REALLY...\" is unfortunate because it presumes a scientific-ness to history that is laid bare by the fact that in its wild form (the way people functionally talk about history), it is quite malleable and is more akin to literature than science.\n\nHistory is the art of the allusion to the real, and should not be confused with the real, which is something we will never \"really\" grasp. \n\nThe sooner people understand that, the sooner their horizons for understanding the past, the present, and the future, will broaden. ", "I'd have to put in the \"Canadian history is *soooo* boring and clean\" trope. Canada's history is pocked with brutality - the coast-to-coast railway was built on massive corruption and horribly-treated Chinese labor. The removal of Inuit names and their replacement with disc numbers, the sexual slavery found in residential schools, the slaughter of the Inuit sledding dog, the massive operations behind suppressing the Winnipeg General Strike and the enactment of Section 98 of the Criminal Code (which basically made assembly illegal in Canada until 1936)...there's a *shit-ton* of history here. \n\nAlso, the idea that the indigenous were largely passive and living away from the rest of Canada irks me. 33 (maybe 35 - we don't know) Mohawk welders working on the first Pont du Quebec died when that bridge collapsed. Pitikwahanapiwiyin, Anglicized to Poundmaker, was instrumental at the Battle of Cut Knife. Tecumseh was an essential part of the Southern Ontario theater during the War of 1812. In each of these cases, other people - generic workers, Louis Riel, and \"Canadians\" (a concept which if extant meant nothing like what it does today) are credited with these pivotal moments in Canadian history.\n\nJohn Ralston Saul is right - Canada's is a Metis (here meaning \"both white and indigenous\") history.", "The myths against the Polish Forces in WW2 are pretty heinous. The most specific one I can think of is the famous myth of Polish cavalry charging against German machine guns/tanks with their swords out. \n\nThis seems to stem from the action at Krojanty, where a Polish cavalry, the 18th Uhlars, successfully captured a position, and even got German units to consider a withdrawal from the line. The unit was unfortunately later caught in the open by some form of armored vehicle, and suffered approximately 30% casualties.\n\nAxis journalists only reached the scene much later where they saw recently-arrived tanks next to the bodies of the Uhlan cavalry, and assumed that it had been a cavalry charge against a German armored line. The Germans picked up the story and ran with it. It became another instance of German propaganda becoming a widely-cited source during and after the war.\n\nIn reality, the Poles held out surprisingly well against the German invasion and may have had some more successes were it not for the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland. Poland seemed to stand no real chance of winning the conflict, and the minor assistance England had en-route likely would not have made a difference in outcome. It did however lead to victory later on in The Battle of Britain, as Polish air units scored quite a few kills, and later became an incredibly important part of the RAF. There were also the contributions of causing heavy early losses for the Germans in terms of vehicles, which snowballed in the Battle of France, and ultimately doomed them on the Eastern Front.", "At the risk of asking a 'meta' follow-up question, reading though this thread made me wonder: how many of these historical myths exist (or were popularised) by a movie? Is the dumbing down of history in popular culture responsible for our ills?", "Super late but someone in /r/history just brought up the whole \"they shit in the corridors at Versailles\" thing. Yeah, hygiene wasn't the greatest compared to today, but trust me, no one just dropped trou in the halls of Versailles and took a dump, let alone EVERYONE. And if they did, it was the exception to the rule. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3469g6/when_and_how_we_discovered_that_earth_is_round/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gq8un/how_did_the_flatearthers_of_the_day_react_when/" ], [], [ "https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/94/2f/08/942f0884f6c06b3a0b061d1e0aff3009.jpg", "http://i.imgur.com/x5cLi3p.jpg" ], [], [], [], [], [ "https://i.imgur.com/yyOyJHO.png", "http://utbblogs.com/home/bradu25/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/grinds-my-gears.png", "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3boun3/the_lost_cause_the_american_civil_war_and_the/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aos9q/how_large_were_the_daily_rations_of_alcohol_in/cixbm5y", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29f3s7/how_does_the_royal_navys_organisation_command/" ], [], [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24nbkc/whats_the_real_story_of_the_gulf_of_tonkin/ch8u8u6", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3b2kja/usa_won_every_single_battle_in_vietnam_i_often/csi8cia" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-many-movie-mistakes-of-enemy-at-the-gates.html" ], [], [], [ "http://www.fashion-era.com/images/Children/ch.jpg", "http://www.linternaute.com/histoire/magazine/dossier/06/louis-xvii/images/yoy.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/30i858/on_19th_century_photography_misconceptions_cost/", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Sophie_Beatrice_of_France.jpg" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://youtu.be/VE_4zHNcieM?t=194" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "chs4oev", "chs6ixr" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "On the Reformation: Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Reformation: Europe's house divided, 1490-1700', London 2004. \nEDIT: This is an excellent read, very informative and entertaining\n\nOn the Thirty years war (and naturally with some information on the HRE): R.G. Asch, 'The thirty years war: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-1648', New York 1997.\n\nSadly I don't know any good books which only cover the HRE. ", "A. G. Dickens The Counter Reformation does great job at explaining the difference between counter reformation and catholic reform. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d53k17x" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The usual disclaimer is along these lines: These listings just indicate previous articles that may be applicable. This is not to discourage new questions.\n\nA search for\n\n > jim crow asian\n\n(merely as likely terms to have been in an article) includes a reply, [When interracial marriages were illegal in some states in the U.S., what did biracial people do? Could they simply not marry anyone in those states?](_URL_0_). They say they \"assume\" it was true in other states but provides no data, but they correctly note that Loving v. Virginia's Supreme Court decision says \"While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference.\" ([here](_URL_2_), in note 11).\n\nI found a few more general posts, but they don't talk about marriage in particular, so I don't know whether they apply to marriage too.\n\n[How were non-black minorities treated in the Jim Crow South](_URL_1_). /u/Dubstripsquads's reply says that different categories were variously treated as white or as non-white, depending on location or time.\n\nThere was also [What was Jim Crow/segregation era America like for non-black minorities?](_URL_5_) It cites and approves of the book [What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America](_URL_4_).\n\n[What was the status of Jews and Asians in America during racial segregation?](_URL_3_) is older and doesn't cite sources.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3biwdx/when_interracial_marriages_were_illegal_in_some/csngk55", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ix499/how_were_nonblack_minorities_treated_in_the_jim/", "https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b9at4/what_was_the_status_of_jews_and_asians_in_america/", "https://www.amazon.com/What-Comes-Naturally-Miscegenation-America/dp/0199772355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467934342&sr=1-1&keywords=What+Comes+Naturally%3A+Miscegenation+Law+and+the+Making+of+Race+in+America", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ufqv0/what_was_jim_crowsegregation_era_america_like_for/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e46o9rk", "e46z759", "e47wprl" ], "score": [ 24, 31, 24 ], "text": [ "Relevant question, why did the air instruments (trumpets, saxophones, etc) didn't pass on to later music genres while the percussion and stringed instruments did?", "Hi, not discouraging further contributions here, but do check out these earlier answers\n\n* /u/hillsonghoods on the hugely entertaining [AskHistorians Podcast 067 - 20th Century Popular Music and the Rise of Guitar Groups](_URL_1_); as well as in [How did the default set of instruments for modern bands come to be 2 guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and vocals? Why is it so rare to hear instruments other than these in popular music since the 1950s?](_URL_2_) and [When did the modern concept of the 'band' begin? I.e. The four piece guitar, bass, drums, singer set up. Was it popularized by a single group?](_URL_0_)\n\n* /u/Kai_Daigoji in [Why is the guitar the standard instrument for modern music?](_URL_3_)", "[An extended 12\" remix of a previous answer](_URL_0_):\n\nFirstly, one thing to remember about 'most popular music bands ranging from as far back as the forties' is that popular music generally reflects the times, in various ways, not least because it thrives on what is perceived as novelty, but also because the people buying popular music are young, and have grown up in a society that values particular things over others. And Charlie Gillett makes the argument quite strongly in the book *The Sound Of The City* that rock'n'roll - the dominant music of the second half of the 20th century - is, well, the sound of the city - a place full of mechanisation, loud vehicles, a place hooked up to the electricity grid, a bustling place crammed full of people. The city is a place where you have to fight to be heard, where you have to be loud to stand out. \n\nAnd so, unsurprisingly, one defining feature of the majority of typical rock instrumentation was that the instruments were just *loud*, and that they were relatively new technology.\n\nTake the modern drum kit. Drums have obviously been around since time immemorial, but the idea that one person might sit at a *kit* of drums and play them in combination was relatively new in 1940. The kit was derived originally from the need for sound effects to accompany silent films played in theatres. These early drum kits were modified and eventually crafted into something that looks like a modern drum kit in the 1930s by jazz drummers like Gene Krupa. The British rock'n'roll drummers of the 1960s very commonly had a background in jazz; Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones famously prefers jazz to rock'n'roll - and their drumming techniques and ways of playing are very much based on the styles of drummers like Krupa, who singlehandedly (or, more accurately, doublehandedly and doublefootedly) provided the rhythm that propelled the dance music that was swing jazz. \n\nWhere the drum kit is still loud enough to be put in a room of 200 people dancing and not really need much amplification to be heard, the same can't quite be said for the guitar - acoustic guitars just aren't that loud. The rise of the electric guitar was based upon the desire of guitarists to be heard in larger rooms (George Beauchamp, who played a role in inventing the resonator guitar and the electric guitar, was a guitarist making Hawaiian music who very much wanted his instrument to be louder). While electricity was common *in cities* decades before, amplification technology was still relatively new in 1940; speaker technology - e.g., what's used in a guitar amplifier - effectively dates from 1921, while the first commercially produced electric guitar that was designed to be amplified, the Ro-Pat-In 'Frying Pan' was patented in June 1934.\n\nAdditionally, the 1930s saw a revolution in singing styles, where singers like Bing Crosby no longer had to project their voices like opera singers to be heard in a large room; they now had microphones conveying their voices over amplifiers. This radically increased the kind of singing styles that you could use in a large room, and Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and others exploited this to the max with their 'crooning' style, which was notable for its softness (and which was criticised as unmasculine compared to more operatic styles at the time), and which was possible entirely because of amplification. So in the 1930s, you have a situation where a singer who hasn't been trained in opera (and how to sing with singer's formants) can actually be *heard* over a large, loud live band.\n\nPrevious to the 'Frying Pan' guitar, guitars were often a part of swing jazz bands, but the relatively quiet volume of an acoustic guitar (in a largely unamplified band revolving around a large horn section) meant that the acoustic guitar was largely a rhythm instrument. However, an electrified guitar allowed jazz guitarists like Charlie Christian towards the end of the 1930s to actually play solos on the guitar *which could be heard by the audience*. Electric guitars thus spread through genres like jazz and rhythm & blues in the 1940s and 1950s because of their versatility - you could use them to play rhythm parts or lead parts (or in the case of Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s, both at the same time). This, perhaps paradoxically, also increased the popularity of the acoustic guitar in comparison to other acoustic instruments, as it was a direct comparison, semiotically, with the electricity of the guitar; it thus became the big instrument of the folk music boom of the 1950s and early 1960s.\n\nThe electric bass *guitar* (i.e., the one that looks like a slightly bigger electric guitar, held like a guitar), as opposed to the acoustic upright bass (the one that looks like a big violin that's often taller than the person playing it, held upright), first went into production in 1951 (the Fender precision bass). Bill Black in Elvis Presley's band, for example, switched to electric bass in 1957.\n\nFinally, electrified keyboard instruments gained prominence in the 1950s as well and have been more than a niche part of popular music, I would say, if not having quite the same kind of prominence as the guitar or the drums. The Fender Rhodes electric piano and Wurlitzer electric piano functioned on similar principles to an electric guitar, except with hammers hitting metal tines rather than plectrums hitting metal strings. The Wurlitzer went into production in the mid-1950s, and Leo Fender of Fender Guitars partnered with Harold Rhodes to mass-produce Fender Rhodes keyboards from 1959. Ray Charles prominently used the Wurlitzer electric piano on his 1957 hit 'What'd I Say'. On early Beatles recordings, a Hohner Pianet - a similar instrument made by the German company Hohner - was often played by George Martin to subtly supplement the rest of the band. I [discuss the use of the electric organ in 1960s pop music in much more detail here](_URL_1_) but in general, electric organs are also similar to electric pianos and electric bass guitar in that they came to prominence in the late 1950s.\n\nThis line-up of instruments - guitar, bass, drums, maybe piano or electric keyboards - developed in R & B in the 1940s and 1950s, often in bands attempting to emulate swing line-ups of various sorts. Bill Haley & The Comets had originally been a western swing band, while Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm was an offshoot of a more straight-ahead swing big band; these musicians were attempting to emulate a big band with a smaller line-up using louder instruments. This line-up became codified as the standard in the 1960s, in particular because of the sheer success of groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. All of these line-ups basically used line-ups comprised of these instruments, perhaps supplemented by others (e.g., the Beatles using a symphony orchestra on 'The Day In The Life', the Rolling Stones using a children's choir on 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', and The Beach Boys using bass harmonicas and French horns amongst other things on *Pet Sounds*). \n\nGuitars and electric keyboards are both versatile instruments with a reasonably large range of available pitches, where one musician is capable of both rhythm and lead parts which can both be heard by the audience. In comparison, a single saxophone (also a very common instrument in popular music since the 1950s) only allows for a single melody line rather than chords doing rhythm parts. Swing bands do show the full capability of saxophones and trumpets to do rhythm parts, of course, but this requires a relatively large horn section. \n\nOf course, finally, I'd take issue with your contention that the guitar is currently the de-facto popular music instrument. Because it's not. Synthesisers and drum machines really become a dominant part of popular music in the late 1970s and 1980s, the period when the computer started to become part of everyday life, the way that electrical goods had become part of everyday life earlier in the century. Much modern popular music very often doesn't include electric guitars, electric bass, acoustic drums, or acoustic/electric keyboards *at all*. The current #1 single as you read this is all electronic and computerised, made on digital audio workstation programs on computers (e.g., Ableton, Logic, or ProTools) using digital samples and keyboards that - like the computer keyboards I typed this on - essentially input data to be processed by computer algorithms. \n\nHowever, such music also very often uses the *logic* of the modern band instrumentation, with a rhythm part usually conceptualised in similar ways to a drummer playing a drum kit, a bass part that's a single melody line, instruments playing chords in a rhythmic way, and lead lines (and vocals). But then this logic isn't dramatically different to the logic of the swing band, either - it just requires less people to carry it out thanks to advances in electricity and then in electronic music. So where Duke Ellington's big band used fourteen members, a modern electronic act can just be one person." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jj12c/when_did_the_modern_concept_of_the_band_begin_ie/djet13l/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4v8ggm/askhistorians_podcast_067_20th_century_popular/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ovuj7/how_did_the_default_set_of_instruments_for_modern/dkl5ljt/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2g8hbz/why_is_the_guitar_the_standard_instrument_for/ckgtvhu/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ovuj7/how_did_the_default_set_of_instruments_for_modern/dkl5ljt/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/666bbl/what_factors_lead_to_the_general_abandonment_of/dgjxwpr/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1f90zv" ], "score": [ 42 ], "text": [ "Most people living in Normandy were not descended from Vikings. Following Rollo's appointment as Duke there was no mass-migration of Scandinavians. It was primarily the elite that were descendants of the original Viking invaders, and they very often intermarried with French nobility to form alliances and entrench their power.\n\nArguably however, these elite retained some aspects of Scandinavian culture, and their ventures abroad can be seen in the wider context of later Viking activity. Sarah Davis-Secord (*Sicily and the Medieval Mediterranean*) refers to a \"lure of profit and adventure\" which drove the Normans to Sicily for instance. Like the Vikings, they were prominent as seafarers and mercenaries. Graham Loud in *The Age of Robert Guiscard* argues that the Normans were present in Italy as mercenaries before the events described in either the Salerno or Gargano traditional accounts of the Norman arrival. From minor military positions in the armies of Salerno, the Normans rose to power, possibly with the help of Papal intervention, and established the Kingdom of Sicily. This mirrors contemporary Scandinavian activities - The Byzantine Varangian Guard for example established for themselves a strong position within Byzantine society. Harald Hardrada served with them before becoming King of Norway. This \"lure\" could even be applied to Norman ventures in the British Isles, the most obvious example being the adventures of Richard de Clare (Strongbow) in Ireland. So it could be said that Norman warriors and elites continued some parts of Viking culture." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6rmbhf" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "They often did, but marble is cheaper than bronze, so *most* replicas were marble. The Roman use of Greek statues was very often a change in context from public to private--many of the most famous statues were originally set up in either official or religious spaces, while the Romans would often place these in private contexts. So a wealthy Roman would have a copy of a famous temple statue commissioned for his garden--or, increasingly likely, would simply buy a premade statue. Marble is a much cheaper material than bronze, so these would generally be marble.\n\nAnother factor deals with material survival. Almost every classical bronze statue you see was recovered from a shipwreck, because bronze statues could be melted down and recast, either into other works of art (Bernini's altar in St. Peter's is a rather famous example of this) or, more commonly, cannons. Therefore, almost all of the classical bronze that survives is that which was taken out of circulation, so to speak." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4kbx21" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You seem to have a bunch of different questions here. For the questions in the last paragraph you might consider /r/HistoryWhatIf ." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdjqohi", "cdjvbyl", "cdkhlsv" ], "score": [ 17, 10, 2 ], "text": [ "You are forgetting about [tallow](_URL_0_) candles, which have also been around for a long time. They are made from rendered animal fat. Candles would not have been very expensive, though the very poor would not have been able to afford them.", "Well, this is a bit of a non-answer, but I can tell you how much James Gib, Master of Household to Prince Charles Edward Stuart during the 1745 Jacobite Rising paid for candles at various points during the campaign and provide a few points of comparison to put the numbers in context. Remember that accounting is in pounds, shillings and pence (pence = d).\n\n > Novr. 3 at Lauder, Sunday, to 15 pd Candels at 8d--0.10.0 \n\n > Novr. 13 at Brampton, Wednesday 3 pd Candles forgott--0.0.18\n\n > Novr. 23 at Pireth, Friday for 12 pd Candels--0.1.0\n\nto more Candels 6 pd--0.3.0\n\n > Novr. 30 at Manchester, Saturday to 18 pd Candels--0.9.0\n\n > Decr. 28 to 32 pd Candels--0.16.0\n\n > Janr. 6 at Bannockburn, Monday to 2 Stone Candles--0.14.8\n\n > Janr. 22 Wednesday at Bannockburn to a Stone of comon Candles--0.8.0\n\n > Janr. 23 to 2 Ston Candles--0.16.8\n\n > March 5 Wednesday at Inverness to candles since in town [three days]--2.0.0\n\n > March 11 Tuesday, Inverness to Candles--1.5.0\n\n > March 25 Tuesday, at Inverness pd for Candles since in Inverness--5.1.0\n\n > April 10 Thursday, at Inverness to Candles since y^e 1st of April--1.16.0\n\n > April 12 Saturday, at Inverness to Candles--1.0.0\n\nCompare the entry for Novr. 18\n\n > to a Cheare woman [maid] i: e: washing y^e Kitchen--0.0.9\n\nand on the 21st\n\n > pd to a chear woman--0.1.6\n\nHowever, on Novr. 26\n\n > pd to hugh y^e Cooke--1.5.0 [this can be presumed one day's wage, as it was their first day in Preston]\n\nOn Novr. 28, a woman is paid 10.10.0 for a night's use of her house in the landlord's absence. This appears to be rather rich, as another woman later receives 2.2.0 for the use of her house (Dec. 17)\n\nIn March and April, several servant's wages are noted: Lord Lovet's Servant at 0.2.0, Lady Mcentoch's servant at 0.2.0, Lady Seforth's servant at 0.3.0, and Ladys kilracs Servant [and Mrs Donin's Do] at 0.2.0.\n\nUnfortunately, it's somewhat unclear in many of these cases if it represents a daily wage or the wage for a longer period, but using the numbers we do know, candles were not priced out of range for even a charwoman, though this does not attempt to work out the rest of the household budget of the time.", "Wax and whale oil were actually quite expensive for consistent use. Even the cheaper alternatives of tallow candles, oil lamps, or rush lights were still occasionally used by the upper classes in order to keep down the expense of candle lighting, though obviously candles were preferred because they didn't smell as bad. It was considered an aspect of Louis XIV's wealth that used candles were never relit. \n\nWhich is why in almost all cases with the general majority of the population (at least in Europe), hearth fire was the primary source of lighting in a home. \n\nFrom At Day's Close, a history of night in time past:\n\n*\"Such illuminants (like candles and whale oil lamps) were costly. Prices fluctuated over time, but never did wax or spermaceti candles become widely accessible. To light and heat the palatial home of the Marquis de la Borde, a wealthy Parisian financier, Horace Walpole in 1765 estimated an annual expense of more than 28,000 livres.\"*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dfjxc42" ], "score": [ 36 ], "text": [ "There are plenty of claims, but there is no way for modern historians to confirm any of them. The Anicii only appear in 298, when Anicius Faustus became the consul and I don't think there's any indication that they publicised their Republican heritage - the late antique Anicii originally came from North Africa, whereas the Republican Anicii came from central Italy. Of course, the imperial Anicii could still be descended from the earlier family, but we cannot evaluate this hypothesis with the available evidence. The Anicii's claim to antiquity may have come from their marriage into the Acilii Glabriones, who did have what appears to be a long and distinguished ancestry. But even then this is only based on the fact that a certain Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus (consul in 438) was the son of Acilius Glabrio Sibidius, which has been interpreted by Alan Cameron as evidence that Sibidius had married a female member of the Anicii and added 'Anicius' to his son's name to 'advertise their union'. The Acilii Glabriones claimed descent from Manius Acilius Glabrio, the consul in 191 BC, and their claim was seemingly well-known, as the third-century historian Herodian discussed another member of the family, Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 186)\n\n > This Glabrionus was the most nobly born of all the Roman aristocrats, for he traced his ancestry to Aeneas, son of Venus and Anchises, and he had served two terms as consul.\n\nCameron however points out the obvious problem, since we know of no-one from this family between yet another Marcus Acilius Glabrio (consul of 256) and Sibidius in the late fourth/early fifth century (though there is an unknown Acilius Glabrio from an inscription in the early fourth century). For a family to pass their name through their male line for five centuries is extraordinarily unlikely (see for instance the often-noted longevity of the House of Capet in France - which is only frequently pointed out because it was so exceptional), so it would be safe to presume that descent from a female line and/or forged ancestries were involved somewhere along the way.\n\nThere were of course many other claims. Lucius Aradius Valerius Proculus Populonius, prefect of Rome in 337/8, was for example praised by a friend to be descended from the Poplicolae family active during the Republic, whilst the fourth-century inscription of Creperius Amantius and Caeionia Marina declared their descent from Munatius Plancus Paulinus, consul in 13 AD. The Decii and Corvinii, both families active at the same time as the Anicii, similarly had their Republican ancestry praised by Cassiodorus and Ennodius, two authors writing in Ostrogothic Italy in the sixth century (interestingly, the Anicii were not praised in relation to their Republican ancestors here). Personally, the most fascinating theory is the idea that Emperor Anastasius (491-518) was a descendant of Pompey the Great, as the Republican general was mentioned a few times in panegyrics dedicated to the emperor and the name 'Pompeius' is attested within the emperor's extended family - which is an indication that the family held the name to be somewhat important to pass on through the generations.\n\nUnderstandably, despite all these claims, we have to be cautious, since we are reading what these families and their allies want us to read, not factual reports of their descent. The Romans loved everything from the past and evidently fictional ancestries were omnipresent. St Jerome for instance celebrated his patron Paula's descent from Agamemnon from the Trojan War, whilst Ruus Volusianus was allegedly descended from the Volusus featured in the *Aeneid*. Most famously, Constantine the Great (306-337) manufactured an entirely fictitious familial connection with the relatively recent emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270). There is no reason for us to think that other Roman aristocrats were not capable of writing similar fabrications. Many people no doubt believed that they had many illustrious ancestors, and in reality they probably did, as they no doubt were all descended in some way from Roman families dating back to the Republic, but we have to be very cautious about their claims that they were descended from specific individuals, since the evidence available is not enough for us to test any of them.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d2s0yg3" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Yes, its pretty well accepted that the yellow and white cones seen in Egyptian art from the New Kingdom are cones of fat that were meant to perfume the person as they melted. However, they were only worn in scenes where people were meant to be enjoying themselves, like a feast or festival. They were also worn by both men and women in art. Of course, the frequency with which they would have been worn in real life and whether artistic depictions are completely accurate is up for debate, but the basic concept of perfumed cones is sound, as strange as it may seem to us." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwevmva" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "Indeed, medievals liked their timber as square and smooth as we do. \n\nI love [this manuscript illustration](_URL_12_), which comes from the [Bedford Hours](_URL_8_), a prayer book from ~1423 CE. It is supposed to depict the building of Noah's Ark, but it looks suspiciously like a timber-framed house. The artist clearly saw house construction and fudged it to be the Ark. \n\nAnd for our purposes, the tools of house builders and shipwrights are the same: the Bedford Hours shows tools which we would recognize today: saws and adzes for cutting and rough straightening timber. You can see someone at the bottom drilling a hole, and someone drilling a peg-hole in the assembled timber-frame. Scattered on the ground are hammers, wood mallets, chisels, adzes and another type of saw: the frame or bow saw.\n\nWe see these tools again in another picture of a carpenter [here](_URL_11_). But this time he has badly injured himself while truing timber with an adze. This image is part of a set of painting by Antonio Vivarini from 1450; they illustrate the miraculous works of [Saint Peter the Martyr](_URL_3_). The description from the Metropolitan Museum in New York:\n\n > This painting belongs to a series of eight scenes that would have been arranged around an image or statue of Saint Peter Martyr (1205–1252). Here the saint ministers to a youth who had kicked his mother and cut off his leg in remorse. A genial storyteller, Antonio sets the scene in a carpenter’s shop. \n\nThe clever Vivarini has given us a picture of the medieval carpenter's shop: the frame/bow saw again, a long plane, the adze, and various timbers leaning against the workshop walls.\n\n\nReturning to the first picture of the bedford hours: in the bottom left corner is a carpenter working a large plane - the long soled planes are meant to flatten long lengths of wood. The wood he is working on is so large that it rests on the ground, and it's wedged in logs for stability so the planing is straight and true.\n\nNow, look at [this guy](_URL_0_) working in the house itself. Hanging from his belt is a black object - an object which looks suspiciously like a windable chalk line reel for setting long, straight lines, something we still use today (if we can't afford a laser). Or it may very well be a windable cloth measuring tape.\n\nYou'll note that all the images are Christian motifs. Another one which provides us with lots of building techniques is the constructtion of the Tower of Babel. [Thisone](_URL_6_) shows us a 12th century depiction of levels, plumb bobs, and squares.\n\nNow, if the carpenter wanted a polished surface he had other tools for the job. Below is a copy of a [post I did some time ago](_URL_2_):\n\n----------------------\n\n\nThis is one of those weird bits of history that I have researched, going back to when my teenage interest in medieval history dovetailed with a passion for woodworking (see what I did there?).\n\nAnyway, I recollect references to 3 types of 'sanding' of wood before the modern era: a sharkskin called dog shark or dog fish, certain silica-heavy rushes (stiff marsh grass) and leather or cloth impregnated with ground stone, perhaps carried with an oil.\n\nAs I said my 'research' was in libraries over 20 years ago and I remember finding it in a book about medieval building. I remember this because I was seriously stoked at digging something out of the stacks. Sure enough, tonight google found it for me in a reference to a reference. In this medieval terms reference book there is a word 'hundysfishskyn' in [Middle English Dictionary from University of Michigan](_URL_4_), and that points to the book I actually remember looking at: [Building in England down to 1540: a documentary history by Louis Francis Salzman](_URL_1_). Hundysfishskyn is houndfish or dogfish. Unfortunately Google doesn't seem have this book scanned in and available to look through. [But I found another web reference to the text](_URL_9_), take it for whatever it's worth to you:\n\n & gt;L.F. Salzman in Building in England down to 1540: A Documentary History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952) mentions \"sanding\" using rottenstone, scouring rush (aka equisetum, horsetail fern, shave grass, etc.), or dog-fish skin. On the latter, Salzman notes receipts for \"hundysfishskyn for the carpenters\" (Westminster, 1355) and \"j pelle piscis canini pro operibus stall\" (Windsor, 1351).\n\nAs it turns out [Equisetum is known for scouring](_URL_5_).\n\nSo that's a 14th century reference. But wait, there's more!\n\nIn the same obscure web site above, there is a reference to the book [On Divers Arts: The Foremost Medieval\nTreatise on Painting, Glassmaking, and Metalwork by a certain Theophilus of the 11th century](_URL_10_). This book is partially searchable and seems to turn up the reference to the same rush called shave grass for sanding wood; alas, Google does not preview anything but a snippet.\n\nIncidentally, smooth polishing of fine wooden stringed instruments is still done the same today as it was in the baroque period: with rosen powder after shellac coats. \n\nThe above would all be final finishing. After hand planing surface imperfections can be removed with a [cabinet scraper](_URL_7_). If you've used a scraper before, you'll know the burr on the edge will give you a surface finer than sanding as it cuts the grain, not grind it down. Sanding 'fuzzes' the raw grain and so it's preferred for finishing coats that have stiffened the grain enough for the sandpaper to 'cut'. Scrapers are very old technology: basically a thin piece of steel with some flex. Some handplanes in museums carry confused labeling and are actually devices for holding the cabinet scraper: using a cabinet scraper for extended periods will burn your fingers. I have seen examples of cabinet scrapers dating back to the baroque period.\n\n-------------------------" ] }

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[ [ "http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ef8tgk3bEB0/VM_0ibIjRrI/AAAAAAAAGT4/MU82tzvZySg/s1600/2015-02-02_225727.jpg", "http://books.google.com/books?hl=fr&id=4MG3AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1w29oq/the_primitive_forms_of_sanding_wood/cey29wb", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_of_Verona", "http://books.google.com/books?id=QaIXR97zpC4C&pg=PA994&dq=hundysfishskyn&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=4triUoPyNOWX1AXJwoDgDQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hundysfishskyn&f=false", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equisetum_hyemale#Uses", "http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bPsE6e1ajLs/UfA1cn4FVsI/AAAAAAAADgA/gvGtX1loGW8/s320/babel+no+11+plumb+bob.jpg", "http://ofb.net/~ania/toys/tern14/007web_scraper.jpg", "http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/bedford.html", "http://www.florilegium.org/files/CRAFTS/polishing-msg.text", "http://books.google.com/books?id=MMiLTJqvYnYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://i.imgur.com/0xnaiDG.jpg", "http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/external/bedford-large.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cabvq8q", "cabzbsx" ], "score": [ 9, 2 ], "text": [ "While I can't speak to the specific members of the crew that first founded Jamestown, the initial motivations of colonists in the first half of the 17th century were as follows: \n\na) For the rich: A quick profit - either from gold or timber or soap manufacturing or exporting pitch, additionally many were hopeful of the western passage to China that never materialised. \n\nb) For the poor the motivations are harder to discern considering the lack of the records that they were able to leave, but most were persuaded by the hellacious and over-blown propaganda at the time that portrayed Virginia as a paradise (one slogan ran \"In Virginia land free and labour scarce, in England land scarce and labour plenty\"); and considering the state of England's poor at the time it was not suprising that many would leave (although of course they were more or less deceived and the initial colonists died in huge numbers). \n\n\nI think the specific motivations and lives of the specific Jamestown colonists could be hard to discern.\n\n~~~~\n\nSource: Mainly Brogan's 'The Penguin History of the USA'", "The men and boys that went were either second(those who would not inherit land) sons of wealthy families or middle class men who wanted to improve their social standing. As passage included 50 acres of land, the prospects were much better than those in England. Since this was a private venture (the Virginia company) the interview process was pretty lenient so long as you had the money and ability to work. \n\nSource = I was just in Jamestown on vacation and this is what I learned while there." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eg0uip1", "eg11san", "eg2heiw" ], "score": [ 4, 9, 3 ], "text": [ "It looks like there was some kind of handle that selected between \"Voice\" and \"Tone\". The CAD files don't show that detail. Does that mounting seem to do anything inside?", "My father is a radio enthusiast who served as a 1st class radio operator during military service in 60ties' Czechoslovakia. Nowadays he likes to repair 20ties-40ties radios as a hobby.\n\nHe says that he's never seen anything like this in a radio and that he is sure that those objects were NOT a part of a radio. Since there is a robust VOICE/TONE switch, his guess is a siren/megaphone combo.", "I tried looking with:\n\n* Acoustic waveguide\n* Acoustic cavity resonator\n\nAnd got a lot of theoretical papers and the term \"Helmholtz chamber\" seems to be related to those as well.\n\nI tried adding in \"cylinder\", \"cylindrical\", \"double cylinder\" and aluminum, but got nothing.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT:\n\nDoes it look like the voice/tone/receive switch connects to anything internally? \n\n\nI wonder if the tone somehow transmits a pure tone that is used to calibrate some sort of array (or to annoy people). As a tone is a fairly distinctive sound and has excellent signal-to-noise properties, it makes for a good calibration mechanism. That said, it is terrible for transmitting information (except simple Morse or On Off Keying) because it has a low bandwidth (theoretically 0, but practical affects might give it some wander. \n\n\nDoes it look like there is a plug anywhere?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci4ipiw" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Great question! Before I get into it, I want to provide a little context. I've talked quite a bit on here about different understandings of 'homosexuality' throughout history. How sexuality was understood and conceptualized has changed dramatically over the course of history, although not in a linear or teleological fashion. When we use words like 'gay' or even 'homosexual' we situate our discussion in a particular time and place. The 'modern' homosexual-gay-lgbt-queer movement has its origins in late 19th and early 20th century Europe, where Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Karl Maria Kertbeny, Magnus Hirschfeld, and others began to create a framework, and some of the corresponding vocabulary, for understanding 'new' ways of framing gender and sexual identity. In the US, we often use the end of the Second World War as a kind of point of demarkation between earlier notions of sex, gender, and sexuality and the more current frameworks. For that reason, I'm going to confine my answer to that period. Although there was a vibrant (and remarkably open) homosexual culture in the US from the late 19th century to the 1930's, there are so many substantial and important differences that it would be both challenging and potentially problematic to compare movements. \n\nThe main organizations of the post-WWII pre-Stonewall era were the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Mattachine was more male-centered, although there were some mixed chapters. DoB was entirely lesbian. Both organizations were formed in the 1950's, at a time of reactionary social-sexual attitudes. Whereas there had been a certain kind of openness allowed by the different social-sexual frameworks of the pre-WWII period, gay life in the 50's and 60's existed almost entirely in the closet. Although both these organizations were created to advocate for gay and lesbian people, maintaining the privacy and anonymity of their members was an extremely high priority. The Mattachine Society was named after a medieval French fraternal organization known for their masks; the name was chosen to indicate the need for homosexuals to be 'masked' from society. The name 'Daughters of Bilitis' was chosen because it was deliberately vague. Members were allowed to use just their first name - or a fake name- at meetings, and their publication *The Ladder* frequently mentioned that the identities of it's members would be protected (although this did not prevent the organization from being infiltrated by informants who provided the names of members to the FBI and CIA.) \n\nBecause of the strongly homophobic social attitudes of the 1950's and 60's, organizations like DoB and the Mattachine Society had a limited influence. They did make an effort to inform and educate the public about gay and lesbian people, but the extremely high social risks associated with homosexuality made any kind of substantial political organizing a challenge. Bars provided their own kind of organized community, particularly for working class lesbians, gay hustlers, 'drag queens' and other gender and sexuality outlaws. The informal (and usually underground) networks created in bars were often far more influential and important that organized groups like Mattachine and DoB (which were small, operated primarily in cities and by mail, and largely made up of the upper middle classes.) \n\nAfter the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, there was a new kind of openness in regards to sexuality. People began to come out in large numbers, and new organizations were formed to lend a voice to this new generation. There was a flurry of activity in the couple of years after Stonewall, and this saw the creation of two organizations - the Gay Liberation Front and it's offshoot the Gay Activists Alliance. Both organizations came to be mostly dominated by white, middle class, cisgender gay men, despite the large number of trans* or gender-nonconforming people of color involved in the Stonewall riots. Despite some exciting action at the beginning organizations fizzled out within a few years, and failed to create a cohesive movement. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot going on in the 1970's. Gay men created impressive social-sexual networks in the 'gay ghettos' found in most urban centers. Lesbians became involved in lesbian feminism and lesbian separatist communities. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign - two of the most prominent national LGBT groups today - were both formed in the 1970's as well. Although they both played important roles in regards to lobbying and political fundraising, it would taking time before political and social attitudes towards gays and lesbians shifted enough for those organizations to gain real political traction.\n \nThe 1980's brought the kind of change that allowed political organizations to enter the mainstream. AIDS brought homosexuality into the mainstream consciousness in a way that nothing else had done before. Groups like ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers were formed to draw political attention to AIDS and Queer issues, and brought a huge amount of visibility to LGBTQ people. By the 1990's gay and AIDS organizations really started to have political and institutional power. As gay became increasingly accepted by the mainstream, these organizations were able to broaden their fundraising base and expand their organizational goals. In earlier generations gay, lesbian, and trans* advocacy groups were small, kept afloat by volunteers and in some instances a handful of wealthy members. \n\nWhen it comes down to it, organizations in the formal sense, played a pretty minimal role in modern LGBTQ movements. Informal community networks - although harder to trace - were hugely important in creating the movement. \n\nThat was a lot of information! I hope that at least kinda-sorta answered your question. And now for a brief list of sources: *Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers* - Lillian Faderman, *Transgender History* - Susan Stryker, *Gay New York* - George Chauncey. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8kbeef", "c8kbr1l", "c8kc1v0", "c8kc5s6", "c8kcmm4", "c8kfyi0", "c8kh48u", "c8kkmmm" ], "score": [ 56, 17, 7, 5, 134, 9, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "There is a large difference in response to this based on where in Rome you were at the time.\n\nI think it's fair to say there was an incredible, inconceivable amount of denial on the Italian peninsula which culminated in full blown panic in 410CE, again, for Italians.\n\nAll Roman's pride was irrevocably tarnished, however (in my view at least) most outlying Roman provinces sighed with a heavy heart and then simply started fending for themselves because \"they expected this\" and it was just a matter of when, although this didn't really finish setting in until almost 500CE.\n\nI would like to state that, although my expertise is Classical Europe and the Roman Empire, we are getting into the fuzzy edge of the timeline I am comfortable with.", "To piggyback on this question: were there comparisons to Ancient Egypt or other large civilisations that preceded them and fell?", "I've been reading a lot lately about the \"Crisis of the 3rd Century\" and political & military leaders of that earlier period were certainly well aware than the imperium was in trouble. BUT: They had gone through weak periods before and most historians and philosophers seemed rather ho-hum about it. (\"Don't worry, things will get better.\") This being the case, I'm inclined to think your average informed Roman citizen of the 5th & 6th century probably would have laughed at the notion that the empire could ever \"fall.\" After all, the whole enterprise was a thousand years old. And events in hindsight always seem obvious.", "In Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo biography, he mentions that a lot of people complained about the Roman Empire's decadence and blamed it on the Christians because they were \"Atheists\", in the sense they didn't believe in Roman Gods and thus stripped Rome of it's virtues.\n\nThere were a series of smaller invasions before the last ones when the west empire collapsed. I think people realized that there were problems and things were not going well, but most probably they couldn't imagine the empire would fall.", "Augustine's *City of God* was written as a response to the seemingly imminent collapse of the Roman Empire. The sack of Rome in 410 was traumatic to an extent that I think it is difficult for us to comprehend. Today we tend to shy away from pronouncement's like this one from 1905 that said \"the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety of Rome was the safety of all civilization. Outside was the wild chaos of barbarism. Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a thousand miles of western Asia\" but that is absolutely how the Romans viewed it. St. Jerome, on hearing of the fall of Rome, said \"The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken.\" It was apocalyptic in the most literal sense.\n\nBut it is still difficult to actually name the fall of Rome because none of the players involved were aiming for that. Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410, was a Roman military officer who was seeking recognition and reward. Odoacer, who is generally credited with the death blow, invaded because the Roman government would not grant him *foederati* status. However, everyone picking away at it and reaching for their share of the pie had the effect of destroying it.", "All the time - there was always some windbag complaining of the decline that he could see around him. Often, this was equated with moral decline. The *mos maiorum* (The Way Things Have Always Been Done) and sticking to it was a big deal for the Romans.\n\nCato the Elder was always [banging on about luxury and it's perils](_URL_1_). The citation there is to the full Plutarch's *Life of Cato* - you won't have to read far to find an example.\n\nSeneca the Elder blamed declining morality for the decline of oratory. I can't find an English translation of the relevant passage on the web, unfortunately (it's in the preface to the first book of the *Controversiae*). You can find discussion [here](_URL_0_) if you have access to JSTOR.\n\nAugustus actively tried to prevent the decline of morality through legislation - laws promoting patrician marriage and against adultery - the *Lex Iulia de Maritandis Ordinibus* and the *Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis*. Also the *Lex Papia Poppaea* advantaging the production of children. They were poorly received. Augustus was presented as the bringer of a Golden Age (see Horace or Virgil or the *Ara Pacis*) and this was part of his role as the restorer of peace and a return to the Old Ways following the turmoil of the late Republic. An active response to the decline of those times, if you will.\n\n\n", "After Adrianople, Rufinus of Aquileia, declared it to be the \"beginning of evils for the Roman empire then and thereafter.\"\n\nAs far as complaining in better times goes, here's a quote from [Cassius Dio](_URL_0_) regarding the passing of the throne from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus:\n > …after rearing and educating his son in the best possible way he was vastly disappointed in him. This matter must be our next topic; for our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.\n\nOf course, I'm pretty sure people were complaining about the decline of the moral fabric since at least Greek culture started become hip after Scipio. It also wouldn't surprise me if there were similar warnings about plebs starting to get involved in government back in the day. Too lazy to go look though.", "Rome was always in a perpetual state of thinking their wonderful civilization was on its way out. They had an incredibly conservative mindset, so the changing world always made them think that their culture was in danger.\n\nLivy's *Early History of Rome* was in many ways a condemnation of the Republic in his time. Polybius declared that if Romans lost their morality, their government would fall (which is in many ways what happened). Even in the days of the Empire, people were constantly in thought that they were becoming too corrupt and un-Roman to go on much longer (thoughts expressed in Tacitus's annals).\n\nSo yeah, the various \"Cato\" figures were always asking what was wrong with their country." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25010639?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101715940421", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Major*.html" ], [ "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/72*.html" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvw3i45" ], "score": [ 31 ], "text": [ "Not talking about symphony, because the real drama is at the opera, c'mon! The Metropolitan opera had been performing German-language opera since the 1880s. During 1914-17 the Met did German opera as usual, but when the US entered WWI in late 1917 they did cancel all German operas. [Check out the 1917-18 season.](_URL_2_) [German was reintroduced pretty quickly though.](_URL_1_) However during WWII [Wagner was performed without interruption, along with other German pieces,](_URL_0_) as well Italian operas. Some of this was due to censorship being seen as unpatriotic, but I mean, some of it's also just practical: you ban all German AND Italian operas for the season, what do you have left? You're probably going to be doing *Carmen* until you want to barf roses. *Madame Butterfly* did disappear during the war though, presumably due to subject matter and not language. \n\nSo, WWII opera didn't fight a war against Axis music per se, the real story is with the singers. During WWII the Met essentially could not hire any top global talent, as at that time the top singers of Italian opera were from Italy and were unable to leave Italy (the Fascists banned opera singers travelling without permission in 1939). Tito Schipa, famously, cancelled his contract with the Met in 1941 to return home to Italy for the war because he was a very loyal Fascist. Top Wagnerian talent was from Germany, so obviously also no dice there. So, the real change at the Met during WWII is they started hiring a lot more American singers instead of Europeans, which was taken to be very patriotic and much lauded at the time. As opera houses closed through-out a war-ravaged Europe, America was also framing itself as this last bastion of opera, and therefore the highest ideals of Western arts and culture. Which is also why the 1942-43 season was saved from getting canceled! Unsold tickets were also given to off-duty servicemen, which of course is mega patriotic. (This is also why Met dropped their dress code during the war, for the servicemen, and it has never returned!) \n\nSo yeah, by being the only ones doing opera AND doing it with American singers, they kinda got to trumpet the Met as this All-American institution during WWII, despite opera being an art form dominated by 2 Axis cultures. Sadly, ethnically German and Italian opera singers living and working in the US at that time also faced discrimination and pressure from the government, and later on after the war they still faced discrimination. Most notably Kirsten Flagstad when she returned to the Met in 1951, after leaving America for her home Norway in 1941, which was occupied by Germany at the time. She was seen as disloyal and her return was protested. But, other than challenging the ethnic makeup of who gets to be a Heldentenor and a Wagnerian soprano, WWII didn't have much lasting impact on German opera in the US! \n\nThis is from *Grand Opera, the Story of the Met* by Afron and Afron, which came out late last year. " ] }

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[ [ "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1944-45&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1944-45&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0", "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1919-20&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1917-18&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0", "http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/gisrch31.r?Term=1917-18&limit=5000&xBranch=ALL&xmtype=&xsdate=&xedate=&theterm=1917-18&xhome=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/bibpro.htm&xhomepath=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/&x=0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fg410ur" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This is what I study in the real world, and partially what my thesis is about, so there’s a lot to say about it! Hopefully this answer doesn’t go on and on forever…I think I've written most of this in previous answers, so here they are, all collected in one spot.\n\nThe Frankish crusaders did try to import a European-style “feudal system” in some ways, but in other ways they also adopted local customs. \n\nThe most important thing to remember is that Jerusalem was much more diverse than France. It was more like Spain or Sicily, so they didn’t create a completely unknown type of society, but it wasn’t anything like France or England. In Jerusalem there were Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Nestorian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Syriac, and Maronite Christians. There were also Jews and a small number of Samaritans. There were Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, offshoots of the Shi’i like the Druze and the Nizaris. Some Muslims and Christians were Arabs, some were Turks or Kurds. When the First Crusade arrived, there was a Sunni Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, but he was mostly just a figurehead, and political power was held by the Seljuk sultan. Several other Seljuk emirs and atabegs ruled the cities of Syria, somewhat independently.\n\nIn 1099, Jerusalem was controlled by Shi’i Fatimid Egypt. The Sejuks had captured Jerusalem from them in 1070, but the Fatimids took it back in 1098 while the Seljuks were distracted by the crusade, then the Fatimids lost it again to the crusaders in 1099. \n\nWe don’t really know how many people lived in the crusader states, but one estimate (by Josiah Russell) suggests that all of Syria had about 2.3 million people at the time of the crusades, living in eleven thousand villages. Three hundred and sixty thousand of them lived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and two hundred and fifty thousand of those lived in rural villages. (Probably, anyway - we really have no idea about actual numbers.)\n\nAccording to the Persian traveller Naser-e Khosraw, who visited around 1050, the population of Jerusalem was about twenty thousand people, and the city was always full of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish pilgrims. Ibn al-Arabi, who visited Jerusalem only a few years before the crusaders arrived, mentions Sunnis living in Jerusalem, but says the cities along the coast and elsewhere in Fatimid Palestine were majority Shi’i. Christians and Muslims had lived together in Jerusalem until 1063, when they were segregated into separate quarters. The Christian community controlled the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and, outside the city, the town of Bethlehem. The Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed by the Fatimids in 1009, but was rebuilt starting in the 1050s (and then the crusaders later modified it into its current structure in the 1150s)\n\nUnder the Muslims, Christians and Jews were dhimmis and paid a specific tax, the jizya. The cities were sometimes governed by a qadi (an Islamic judge) or a ra’is (Arabic for “head” or “mayor”), or more directly by a Seljuk or Fatimid governor. In rural areas there was also a semi-feudal system that the crusaders found familiar and easy to adopt: land was granted as an iqta' and revenue was collected by the muqta', who could rule the iqta' as an independent fief.\n\nSo, that was the situation that the crusaders found when they arrived in 1099. They were now the rulers of this complex, ancient society, and they didn’t really disrupt it too much. They left the agricultural system in place, and the tax system - but now Muslims had to pay the jizya to the crusaders. There were never enough Franks to displace all of the Muslim or eastern Christian leaders, so in all of the towns and villages under crusader rule, there were still qadis or ra’is. The Franks found it easy to adjust to the iqta’ system, so they simply interpreted an iqta’ as a fief and a muqta’ as the fief holder, who owed them taxes and services, just like a fief back in France. \n\nThey had their own system of fiefs on top of that - in Jerusalem, the king had four major vassals (the Prince of Galilee, the Count of Jaffa, the Lord of Sidon, and the Lord of Oultrejordain), and each of those fiefs had smaller fiefs of their own, and these were all governed by Frankish lords, but the villages and towns and farms within those fiefs were left to the Muslims or eastern Christians who already lived there. \n\nOr at least, this is what we're told by one of the crusader lords, John of Ibelin, who was the Count of Jaffa. According to him the County of Jaffa was the most important one. Of course he would say that! It also looks like John of Ibelin was painting an incredibly idealized picture of how “feudalism” was supposed to work in Jerusalem, and not necessarily how it actually worked in everyday practice. Historians in the past usually took him at his word, so Jerusalem has been described as having some sort of “perfect” form of feudalism, but we don’t think of it that way now. “Feudalism” itself is a pretty questionable concept these days (there is a lot of info in the AskHistorians FAQ about that so check that out as well). But in Jerusalem, like in France or England, theoretically the king and his vassals collected taxes from the people who lived in their territories, and those people also owed them military service or some other kind of service. John of Ibelin even lists how many knights each fief owed to the king (he himself owed 100 knights), but again, that is probably an idealized picture.\n\nThe biggest difference in Jerusalem was that the fief holders didn’t always live in their fiefs. They tended to live in Jerusalem or Acre or one of the other major cities, and they collected income from their fiefs, but these were “money-fiefs” for them. There was a lot of agricultural land in Jerusalem, but it was also much smaller and much more urbanized than, say, the north of France were a lot of crusaders came from. \n\nThe crusaders were “Franks” so we tend to think of them as “French”, but there were lots of people from all over Europe: the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres, who participated in the crusade and spent the rest of his life in Jerusalem, lists French, Flemings, Frisians, Swiss, Germans, English, Scots, Italians, and Bretons, among probably many others. Fulcher famously wrote that:\n\n > “…we who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or a Palestinian. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned any more. Some already possess homes or households by inheritance. Some have taken wives not only of their own people but Syrians or Armenians or even Saracens who have obtained the grace of baptism...People use the eloquence and idioms of diverse languages in conversing back and forth. Words of different languages have become common property known to each nationality, and mutual faith unites those who are ignorant of their descent...He who was born a stranger is now as one born here; he who was born an alien has become as a native.” (Fulcher of Chartres, pg. 271)\n\nThey all tended to congregate together in the cities, or in rural areas where fellow (eastern) Christians already lived. They didn’t really interact with the Muslims, but that’s probably how it was before the crusaders arrived as well. Everybody kept to their own villages and didn’t mix, so the crusaders did the same. The Franks also established new villages, which is sometimes considered an early form of colonialism. The most famous of these new settlements is probably Bethgibelin. The settlers at Bethgibelin came from:\n\n > \"...Auvergne, Gascony, Flanders, Lombardy and Catalonia. Generally, the largest number of European settlers...were from the central, southern and western parts of France, and a few also from northern Spain and regions in Italy. In Bethgibelin the other settlers were from nearby Latin villages...\" (Nader, pg. 94)\n\nThe towns and cities, especially along the coast (Acre, Beirut, Tyre, etc) were also full of Italian merchants and settlers. The Italians were kind of a state-within-a-state, since they governed their own neighbourhoods semi-independently of the Frankish lords. They were responsible for overseas trade with Europe - we know basically everything that was imported and exported from the crusader states by Italian and Muslim merchants - they sold dates, onions, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, linen, shoes, and hundreds of other products! Sugar was especially important - the Italians also ran sugar plantations and this was probably the first time Europe had seen sugar from cane plants. (They also traded “marshmallow” and “liquorice”, but those were medicinal plants, and not, as I like to imagine, the modern candy.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cht3tfr", "cht8ej9", "chteheb", "chttqnp" ], "score": [ 12, 5, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The [Avalon Project](_URL_2_) at Yale is one place where you can find many of primary sources related to the topic you are interested in. \n\nIn addition, [this website](_URL_0_) also provides numerous documents. \n\nLastly, the [Liberty Fund](_URL_1_) also contains numerous sources that touch on the Revolutionary period. \n\nEach site contains a treasure trove of unedited transcribed documents that detail the lead up to the revolution, the formation of the Articles of Confederation, and extend beyond the Constitutional Convention. \n\nHope this helps.\n", "Pauline Maeir's *Ratification* is the standard work on the ratification debates, although I think it is important to note that the Federalist papers had practically no influence on the decision to ratify the constitution. ", "James Madison's notes on the convention are among the most complete. They can be found in many places, including _URL_0_ ", "You will have to do your own digging and interpretation, but _URL_0_ has over 120,000 searchable and annotated documents from the founding fathers. \n\nFrom the website:\n > Now, for the first time, users can freely access the written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy. You will be able to search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You will be able to compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/", "http://oll.libertyfund.org/", "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp" ], [], [ "http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/debates/" ], [ "http://founders.archives.gov" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9lo909" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Although it is not a book about the Stone Age, Ian Morris's book *Why the West Rules -- for Now* spends several chapters on prehistory as part of a sweeping treatment of the entire history of East and West.\n\nOtherwise, I suggest asking this on /r/AskAnthropology." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9irwbv" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Most tribes had their own unique myths but most of these myths shared many common themes. In North America in particular, a common theme is the idea of humans climing out of a dark, shadowy underworld into the earth. In this view life originated in the underworld and at some point for some reason they found their way out, often times by climbing a tree or vien (I cannot remember the explanation as to why they finally found the way out but in many cases thier is a reason). Also in this world view, the world is believed to be in teirs (an underworld, the earth, the heavenly world above them).\n\nAnother common creation myth (particularlly in the North West) was the idea that a creator god formed man out of clay. I can remember one myth in which the creator god did this but that old trickster Coyote distracted god and made him burn the people, they were sent to Africa. God tried again but Coyote made god take them out before they were ready, they were sent to Europe. The ones who came out just right were Native American. (Many creation myths were revised after the arrival of Europeans) \nAnother common theme in these myths were animals with human and spiritual features. \nSorry I could not get into any real detail or provide sources im in a bit of a rush and its been a while since i studied the Native Americans. \n\nMythology is a very interesting subject though, especially cosmology. When studied on various levels these myths reveal all different types of ideas and beliefs that a culture had. Another interesting note is many cultures from across the globe share many similarities in their cosmology. Sometimes its uncanny and it will give you an interesting perspective on human nature.\n\nIf you want to further research this a simple google search will provide you with many native American myths. For the study of mythology and cosmology in gerneral I would recoment the books \"Cosmos and Chaos\" by Norman Cohn or \"The Sacred and the Profain\" by Mercea Eliade" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck6hy5i", "ck6k4pf", "ck6krbz", "ck6ljlu", "ck6qtlt", "ck6wcw7", "ck76gt6", "ck7a63t" ], "score": [ 655, 22, 133, 8, 16, 3, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "The kinds of figures that were lauded by Soviet propaganda were \"everymen\" who, because of their love of their country etc. etc., rose to do incredible things. The case in point here is Alexey Stakhanov, of the Stakhanovite movement. It would have been at odds with Soviet ideology for science-manufactured supermen to be the heroes.\n\nTo elaborate a little more: Stakhanov was a coal miner who supposedly performed way over his quota limit in the Stalin era. The Soviet propaganda organs manufactured a \"movement\" out of his feat, encouraging all workers to perform well above their (often unrealistic in the first place) quotas. \n\nAnother who fits this description is Trofim Lysenko, a \"barefoot agronomist\" who had some rather loopy ideas about how to improve crop yields (under collectivism) that were at odds with Western genetics. Lysenko's essentially peasant status was one of the things that made him appealing for the propaganda organs, and it led to denouncements of more stereotypically elite scientists as bourgeois. \n\nMy generalization is primarily for the Stalin era (1928-1953). I don't know how much flexibility there was under later Soviet premiers in their heroic archetypes. Under Stalin one of the most popular plots for films was a variation on \"boy meets tractor,\" just to give you an indication of what Socialist Realism meant for various types of media. It does not involve space aliens who can fly, fight for peace, justice, and the Soviet way, etc., or mutants (god forbid), or science-augmented men, or anything like that. These are _deus ex machinas_ and as we know there is know _deus_ other than the hard-working \"new Soviet man\" under Marxist-Leninism!", "hi! these posts asked similar-ish questions; you may find them of interest, especially the first one, which goes more in-depth on the cultural background\n\n* [During the Cold War, did the Soviets have their own James Bond character in the media? A hero who fought the capitalist pigs of the West for the good of Mother Russia.](_URL_1_)\n\n* [Did the USSR and other countries have a \"Superman,\" or other related type icons.](_URL_0_)", "The hero in Soviet propaganda was not usually an individual, although as already mentioned Alexey Stakhanov was one exception based on a real person, often it was the Soviet Union itself that was the hero, or the collective proletariat internationally.\n\nThe enemy was often clearly defined as stereotypical capitalists or Fascists, sometimes it was a combination of the two. There were many Soviet cartoons that depicted war, as does Captain America, but they were more likely to make it look dark and foreboding, compared to the Captain America-version where it is a chance for the hero to realize his true potential. The Soviet films more often showed the victims, and expressed sympathy for their plight, and the saviour was the combined Soviet might and the enemy was a gross caricature, such a dirty, violent pig as in [Fascist Boots on our Motherland](_URL_4_) from 1942. \n\nThe cartoon from 1967, [Prophets and Lessons,](_URL_5_) is a good example of the Soviet hero being the collective people of the Soviet Union. It begins with White-Russian rats being forced out by the revolution. They go to the West and find a Capitalist prophet (profit?) who preaches that they need to crush the Soviet Union, but every attempt by fascists and capitalists is easily crushed by the Soviet Hammer. The Capitalist press predict economic collapse of the Soviet Union, but the unstoppable communist worker and industry is the hero, and is unlikely to fail, \"even in 100 years!\"\n\nA good example of war being the enemy is the 1972 animated film for children, [Ava Maria](_URL_3_). It begins with religious iconography on the walls of a large banquet hall with a Christmas tree, fat capitalists in tuxedos, their wives in ball gowns, and uniformed Generals, who pop a Christmas cracker and gold coins burst out and then war begins in Vietnam. American soldiers are indoctrinated by the church, in league with the capitalists, and scenes of aerial warfare are shown with religious music playing. \n\nIn one scene a little girl holds a doll up to an American soldier and he guns her down. \n\nThere is an American propaganda poster shown that says:\n\n > USA is proud of you!\n\nThen it goes to the only scene with words, which is a voice-over on top of scenes of civilians being bombed and burning, destroyed jungles. The theme is that proletariats are the same the world over, the civilians weeping over their dead in Vietnam are equal to the working Americans who are shown weeping over coffins draped with American flags:\n\n > The land into desert the color of blood, they blight, the earth is dying with no end to this fight! \n > \n > Black Boeings, like thieves in the night, steal our husbands away, far out of sight, the women weep and the children cry, somewhere across the sea, we hear them weep yet this war will not die! \n > \n > Black Boeings, like thieves in the night are flying. Our husbands are killing people, and now they too are dying. And each dawn messengers call. Telling us of our own husbands' fall. We learn that our own husbands are dead. Yet this war will not end. There's no end in sight...\n\nThere is no singular hero to come and save the day, but there is a montage of news footage of American anti-war demonstrations showing babies, old people, and working-man type people peacefully marching with rows of police watching over them, and then charging into them with batons and riot shields raised, then scenes of tear gas, rioting, and police beating people. \n\nThere are also have scenes with the little Vietnamese girl who was gunned down holding her doll out with outstretched arms superimposed over the riot scenes, and the film ends with a church-like image of Jesus holding the Virgin Mary, who is holding the dead Vietnamese girl. \n\nApparently, the hero is the man or woman in the street willing to stand up against the capitalists.\n\nIn the 1962 cartoon, [The Millionaire,](_URL_0_) a bulldog inherits his master's fortune and becomes the stereotypical Soviet-version of a capitalist, flaunting his wealth, abusing the little people, mocking peace demonstrators, and hoarding his wealth. Once again, there is no hero to save the day, just the dutiful proletariat bidding his time, while the evil capitalist is dumb as a dog, and so bound to fail. \n\nThere was a cartoon aimed at youth in 1979 called The Shooting Range ([Part 1](_URL_1_), [Part 2](_URL_2_)), which could be looked at as an anti-Captain America. \n\nThe enemy is once again the evil capitalist, and the American city is his sidekick. An average guy is unemployed after his car breaks down, and the hustle and bustle of the freeway-dependent city is impossible to navigate without a car so he loses his job, after some desperate times he meets a woman and they go to work for the capitalist on his gun range. Their job is to replace the targets as they are fired on by a group of fat capitalists. They valiantly perform their duties, but it turns out their real job is to serve as targets themselves. They gain their dignity, and walk off the job, leaving the capitalist with egg on his face. However, because of the structure of the city, he quickly has another couple to replace his lost workers. \n\nedit: spelling\n", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Captain America was propaganda for the WWII period, not the cold war.", "I've spent the past 6 or so years of my life studying Soviet and Russian culture, so if it's acceptable to speak in an 'amateur expert' capacity, I'd like to shed a bit of insight into why a Captain America just doesn't really fit with the Soviet/Russian mentality.\n\nRussian culture puts a pretty high value on being an authentic, real person (in the areas where it counts). Because Captain America is a totally unrealistic fantasy, it would be kind of silly for the Soviet government to create this idealised, fictional figure with the counterparts to the most valued traits in the American mythological figure. If a boy goes to his mother and asks for a Comrade Soviet Hero-man costume for his birthday, she would look at him funny and say, \"Why? You're not Comrade Soviet Hero-man, and never will be. Why delude yourself like this? Go study for your lessons or practise something you're good at, instead.\"\n\nAlso, Soviet (and still Russian, to a certain extent) culture didn't really look kindly upon an individual figure being so famous and admired unless he was part of the Communist Party leadership. This became even more the case after Stalin's death and the Khrushchev government's attempt to erase the traces and dangers of the 'cult of personality.' A superhero really goes against this idea; why create a myth about this hero person who can do anything and is beloved by all when this turned out so catastrophically last time?\n\nA good Soviet citizen didn't go out and save the day; this was the job for Comrade Stalin or (later) a brilliant Party figure. A good Soviet citizen played his or her part as a cog in the great state machine.", "Most characters created for youth were pacifists and peaceful. There was [Alisa Selezneva](_URL_3_) - time travelling space girl from communist future appearing in several books, movies and animation. [She had less pacifist friends though](_URL_0_). Apart from her I can't remember any teenage-oriented multi-franchise heroes, others were mostly for younger children (with fairy tale characters or talking animals) or too bizarre to talk about it ([Investigation Held by Kolobki](_URL_1_)).\n\nThe most similar to Capitan America were probably [Elusive Avengers](_URL_2_). This is sort of Western about group of teen fighters in Russian Civil War.", "There was a Soviet superhero, a fictional character, called Uncle Styopa. He was an unusually tall man, literally a giant. Worked as a policeman, a firefighter and a navy. He was a depiction of an ideal Soviet citizen: honest, brave, no-mercy for criminals, and always ready to help people in trouble.\n\nTechnically, Uncle Styopa had all features of a superhero, and even his unusual size can be considered as a \"superpower\".\n\nHe first appeared in Mikhalkov's 1936 childish poem, but later, in 1964, Soviets made a cartoon, which was very famous in USSR.\n\n[[_URL_0_]](https://www._URL_0_/watch?v=4p8-M5dLWIc) - here is the cartoon, so you can have an insight on how it looked.\n", "Having grown up in the USSR I don't recall any fictional superheroes and I agree with others that this would be a very anti-Soviet concept. Soviet propaganda generally trumpeted hard work, honesty, and such virtues to which the idea of someone who can achieve great feats with less effort would have been antithetical.\n\nHowever I want to mention a few popular figures who haven't been mentioned yet. First is Gagarin, the first man in space. He reached an almost superhero status and many kids wanted to be cosmonauts just like Gagarin.\n\nSecond is Lenin himself who was the subject of many propaganda stories regarding his honesty, hard work, and humility. My feeling is that few people really believed these stories, but Lenin's reputation was not tainted the way Stalin's was (probably because he died so early) and this led to him being presented as the kindly father of the Soviet Union.\n\nThird is a variety of old Russian folk heroes such as Ivan the Fool and the Bogatyrs (such as Ilya Muromets). They generally did not have magical powers themselves (according to Wikipedia Muromets did have superhuman strength) but would through honesty, hard work, and kindness recruit a variety of magical helpers to help them accomplish impossible tasks." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmnwsp1" ], "score": [ 92 ], "text": [ "Two points to make here; Mutilation was a particularly gruesome tool used by the Byzantine (and lots of others), and they used blinding to far greater scope and effect than purely as a way to eliminate potential rivals.\n\nThere is an inherent second level to this question that greatly effects the outcome; what was the reason for the blinding?\n\nSometimes they were done to instill fear in a conquered people, sometimes mutilation happened to eliminate a rival from making a move on the throne (Castrated men could not be Emperor), sometimes it was done to punish criminals. The list goes on and on.\n\nThere is evidence that this was a special skill of executioners (even if it didn't result in death) or that they at least had people who explicitly focused on this method of mutilation, as the Byzantine Emperor Diogenes was overthrown and as a punishment, he was explicitly blinded by someone who had no practice, resulting in his death by infection (probably sepsis) several days later.\n\nThe Byzantine did develop eye-scoops, but there were a variety of tools this could be done with. Daggers, knives, tent pegs, sometimes burning coals, and heated metal bowls.\n\nI am not aware of any material that explicitly describes the method, however I was able to find depiction of the blinding of Leo of Phokas, that suggests they basically just held the guy down by sitting on his legs and pinning his arms behind his back, and gouged his eyes. I cannot tell you if this was \"normal\", or particularly personal, however Leo Phokas (Leo the Younger) lived in the 10th century, so this was still 'sort of early' in the perfection of this gruesome technique.\n\n*I have come across articles that suggest boiling vinegar was used. Other, similar articles have suggested that Byzantine would explicitly \"fake\" blinding on certain people, in an act of cruelty and punishment, or even force them to blind themselves by putting cloth over their eyes and being unable to take it off. However I have been unable to satisfactorily substantiate either of these. I included them merely as a frame of reference to the depth and breadth in which mutilation could be used.* \n\n**EDIT** [Link to Leo Phokas image](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Blinding_of_Leo_Phokas.jpg/300px-Blinding_of_Leo_Phokas.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg7q6v0", "cg7v1u8" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Rome's navy was actually very important when it had to undergo the Punic Wars against Carthage. Being that Carthage was on the other side of the Mediterranean, sea dominance was critical at the time. Since Hannibal had to march his army across Gaul and Hispania (modern day France & Spain) and while he did manage to keep Rome on its toes for a while he simply didn't have the forces to take on Rome's defenses. Critically, if he had the sea power necessary to bring over more units consistently and quickly, Rome may have fell. However, skilful Scipio Africanus managed to land a sizable force at the doorstep of Carthage in North Africa and his key victory in numerous skirmishes near the city caused the Carthaginian's to capitulate to an Armistace. However, afterwards, even during civil wars and conflicts with outsiders; their Mediterranean dominance wouldn't be challenged until the fall of the Empire because most enemies of Rome in the Mediterranean had been subdued. Another potential candidate is the Macedonian Wars in which the Roman's subjugated Greece but from what I've read the naval battles were skirmishes and mostly blockading on the Roman's part. Another major engagement of the Roman Empire was during Antony's Civil War but this was an exception to the peaceful \"Roman Lake\" that was the Mediterranean.\n\nSome key Battles were the Battle of Actium (Antony's Civil War) & the Battle of Lilybaeum where Rome crushed the Carthaginian Navy and asserted naval dominance. \n\nRome's navy would be challenged during it's collapse when outside groups like the Goths, Arabs & Vandals (who rose a navy and engaged Rome's) but ultimately the western half was in such a decline that the navy didn't do much to impede them. \n\n ", "As /u/laker_man said, it was very important during Republican Rome's struggle with Carthage, in particular the First Punic War, which was essentially fought primarily at sea after Rome quickly took over the inland parts of Sicily with help from Syracuse, which also controlled a good portion of the island. Some of the more notable battles in this war were Economus which was by far the biggest naval battle of the three Punic Wars, Battle of Mylae where Rome demonstrated the Corvus (Crow), allowing them to pin Roman and Carthaginian ships together allowing the Romans to board much easier, rather than ramming the ships, and the Battle of the Aegates Islands, where Rome's victory was the final tipping point where Hamilcar Barca decided it was time to make peace with Rome. It's an interesting little fact that during this war the Roman population actually dropped, which is contributed to the large losses at sea Rome suffered due to storms and top heavy ships.\n\nAfter that, Rome could said to anywhere in the Western Mediterranean she liked without meeting much opposition, as there were no other entities that could come near to match her strength. The Roman navy did continue to fight in her wars, even facing Hannibal Barca after he fled Carthage to serve the courts of the East. After this, my knowledge is sparse as it isn't the time frame I've normally studied, or even read of recently. I do know that Pompey cleared the Mediterranean of pirates in a six month time frame, gaining him much popularity.\n\nSources: \nThe Fall of Carthage, Adrian Goldsworthy\nIn the Name of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy\n(Sorry the sources aren't varied for authors, I'm stuck on my ship and don't have access to most of my books)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvojty9" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The answer for this is fairly simply, apologies therefore if this seems rather sparse for a top-level post. \n\nFranklin does not discuss the Revolution, because he died before finishing the autobiography. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9ktf7q", "c9kxn2e" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "These types of questions have been brought up a lot around here so I will try to sum them up and then post ones I am referring to later (bed time).\n\nOne post talks about how men in these battles would actually be pretty bad at aiming and only be drilled in firing and reloading, some never said \"aim\", only \"level\". Also, and I think this is the stronger of the two points; the bayonet was the one who did the damage in these days. Charges en masse to take a certain position or route the enemy were how you took the field in that era, it wasn't as if they stood there and shot at one another for hours without moving or flanking or what have you. Muskets certainly killed people, but they were inaccurate, often clogged or malfunctioned and were heavy.\n\n\nAs a side note, I remember reading something about how men in sieges who were first in were paid to do so. I have no source but perhaps someone could back me up on this. If not, I'll just scratch it out.", "Going a bit before your time-constraints but the set up is essentially the same with an example from the Napoleonic Wars. The Grande Armee was both a by product of up and coming reforms of Napoleon in terms of logistics but the heart and soul of a soldiers life was relatively unchanged from Royalist rule. \n\nThe actually battle was certainly a killer but the constant marching knocked off about 4/5 of an actual recruiting party, according to biographical accounts of the Napoleonic Wars. That is only 2 in 10 recruits that pass training will actually march with their corps at any given time due to sickness or injury. It is said time and again that getting to the battle is the hardest part. The search for food and water, fuel for fires, bedding and shelter affected the simple infantryman a lot more than a mere battle. In fact, most of the soldiers that marched with the eagle were mad keen for it as battles often gave promotion and plunder. \n\nA unit on the march is essentially never at full strength (something which Napoleon gave colonels eternal strife for; he had an enough library of notes about each and ever regiment in his army detailing officers, strengths and performance figures). \n\nCoherency was maintained first and foremost by the junior officers and NCOs of the army. A new recruit was often paired with a fellow soldier that shared the same cot whilst in barracks and the same bowl at the mess. \n\nSource: Autobiographies of Captain Blaze - Life in Napoleon's Army by Elzear Blaze; Captain Jean Roch Coignet of the Guard, Lejeunne vol 1 and 2, Swords around a Throne - Col J. Elting (ret). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fg09p5i" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I would suggest cross posting this question at r/AskAnthropology. They even have an entry in their faq regarding this subject." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnzwwae" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The first four are of American troops during WWI. No patches, distinctive hats, puttees (like an ace bandage wrapped around the shoe tops and lower leg). \nTho others are from WWII, one of an infantry division (91st?) corporal/technician on a what looks to be a plow horse (the 91st had a tough time). Another is an ambulance crew wearing \"dungarees\" (cotton fatigues), black boots, and patrol caps, which looks to me like post-WWII stateside training. The ambulance is one of the standard types, and vehicle had their USA serial number prominently displayed back then. The tourist on the balcony is wearing the Service Forces patch, so the war is probably nearly over; he looks to be in Italy or on the Riviera. The last two are P-38 fighters being unloaded by British workers, judging by their clothes. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "co1291w", "co17rtk" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "You might be interested in some threads from the WWII FAQ section on \"[The atomic bombs](_URL_2_)\" as well as from a recent search:\n\n**Overview of the Atomic Bombings**\n\n* [Could America have used the atomic bomb on a purely military target or some other more ethical way to force Japan's hand into peace?](_URL_4_) - 118 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters here lay out the issues as considered by US officials at the time.\n* [Why was an invasion of Japan or the dropping of the atomic bombs argued to be necessary for Japanese surrender in World War 2?](_URL_7_) - 25 comments, over 9 months old.\n * A user flaired for the subject matter weighs in with an overview of the strategic situation and comments afterwards discuss various recommended books giving contrasting views on the subject as well as the importance of the *unconditional* surrender that had been demanded by the Allies.\n* [Why didn't Japan surrender after the first atomic bomb?](_URL_9_) - 500 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The topmost commenter gives a big overview of the issue, talking about both the decision to use the atomic bombs and the Japanese reactions as well historiographical debate on the bombings' motive and importance.\n* [Would the Japanese have likely agreed to total unconditional surrender after just a \"warning shot\" pf the atomic bomb?](_URL_0_) - 36 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread address the mentality of the Japanese high command in the days just before the atomic bombings.\n* [How did military leaders first describe the capabilities of the atomic bomb to US President Harry Truman?](_URL_1_) - 2 comments, over 9 months old.\n * A flaired user links to copies of the documents that were eventually relayed to Truman and used in his decision to use the atomic weapons.\n* [Would it have been worse if America hadn't nuke Japan?](_URL_6_) - 36 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread dive into American memory of the bombings and counterfactuals involving all the myriad of ways things may have gone differently without the bombings.\n\n**Did Atomic Bombings or the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria make Japan surrender?**\n\n* [There has been some controversy on the true effect of the atomic bombing of Japan. Was it the bomb, or the Soviet declaration of war that ended WWII?](_URL_8_) - 19 comments, over 2 years old.\n * The commenters in this thread showcase the arguments made by in favor of the Soviet influence on the Japanese surrender using diary entries of the Japanese officials and other records that previously had not been looked over in analysis of the issue.\n* [Why did Japan surrender?](_URL_5_) - 33 comments, over 2 years old.\n * This thread goes into several criticisms of Hasegawa's conclusions regarding the Japanese surrender.\n* [Are Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's conclusions about the Soviet's influence in triggering the Japanese surrender of WWII widely accepted or are they in dispute? If he got it wrong, how did he get it wrong?](_URL_3_) - 27 comments, over 2 years old.\n * This thread not only gives further criticism of Hasegawa but details how he has been received in the historical community.\n\nI'd love it if /u/restricteddata could chime in on this question since he is a flaired user that is very well read on this topic, is involved in the matter at an academic level, and has given more high quality answers on all of its facets than I could link to in any single comment.", " > What I mean is, it seems really haphazard and unusual to just drop massive bombs and decimate civilian cities. \n\nBy that point in World War II it was common to do this — [the US had already dropped napalm on 67 Japanese cities](_URL_1_), killing well over 100,000 people — but that shift did not happen overnight. In fact, at the beginning of the European phase of World War II, the USA was the leader in trying to get pledges from the British and Germans not to bomb cities, and all of this kind of tactics sort of slowly built up over the war. As an aside, \"decimate\" means, in a literally sense, killing 10%. The atomic bombs killed about 30% of the populations of the cities they were in, so they were far worse than decimating them.\n\n > Was it really necessary?\n\nThis is a question that hinges on the meaning of the word \"necessary\" in this context. There were a lot of factors that went into these actions. They included, for example, whether the US could end the war before the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan (which certain US policy people saw as a possible advantage), whether the US could have tried to find a diplomatic solution with Japan, whether simply waiting it out would have ended the war either way, whether waiting for the Soviets to declare war on Japan would have provided the final straw, and so on. Popularly you will see it discussed as a question of atomic bomb versus invasion, but this is not quite the terms they used at the time, and the time scale on the invasion was not immediate (it was not scheduled until November 1945). Another, less-talked-about consideration was whether the US would be able to make such an expensive, resource-hogging weapon and not use it in combat as soon as possible (some of those who were in charge of making the weapon clearly had this particular bias, as they felt that without combat use the weapon would be seen as a boondoggle). There were also those who believed that the first generations of these weapons would need to draw blood of people were to take them seriously in the future, knowing that there were possibilities for nuclear weapons to become many thousands of times more powerful in the very near future.\n\n > Could they just have bombed the shit out of a not-so-populated area to demonstrate what was possible with the nuke and maybe prompt a surrender or something?\n\nThe idea of a \"demonstration\" was [definitely pushed](_URL_3_) by many of the scientists who worked on the project, but was [also explicitly argued against by the top scientist leaders on the project](_URL_0_). On the very first, tentative \"target list,\" [the top slot was \"Tokyo Bay,\"](_URL_2_) which was probably a \"demonstration\" idea (set the nuke off in the middle of the bay and the Emperor and other high command could not help but see it, and casualties would be minimal). But as the weapons were incredibly scarce (they would have two to start with but only a trickle of new bombs after that) the military was not a fan of \"wasting\" one. But yes, it could have been done — there is nothing technical preventing it, and it was considered. The question was never put to Truman.\n\nThe question of the \"context of the atomic bomb\" is a very tricky one because a lot of what is passed off as considered history is really just self-justifying jingoism that has its origins in official propaganda. (I don't use the term \"propaganda\" lightly — it was very deliberately constructed in order to justify a controversial action.) Some of the propaganda does have truthful aspects to it, but a lot of it elides over actual discussions and considerations that were being had at the time, before it was known what effect the atomic bombs would have on the war. It is today not even clear, in fact, that the atomic bombs _are_ what caused the Japanese to surrender, to give you an idea of the basic uncertainties that remain among professional, serious historians. \n\nIf you are interested in reading more, the books I'd recommend are:\n\n* Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ — Rhodes' book is not what I would call up to date in terms of the historiography of using the bomb (it was published in the late 1980s and a lot has been revealed since then), and focuses primarily on the scientific/technical aspects of making the bomb, but it is very readable and still holds up pretty well. \n\n* Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's _Racing the Enemy_ — Hasegawa's book is a very careful triple-history of the end of the war from US, Soviet, and Japanese perspectives. He ultimately argues that the Soviet invasion, not the atomic bombing, is what convinced the Japanese to surrender when they did, a thesis I'm not sure I find 100% compelling personally, but even amongst skeptical historians Hasegawa has gone a long way to shedding light on the inner machinations of the end of the war and its intrigue, and his argument that the Japanese were deeply disturbed by the idea of fighting the Soviets as well as the Americans is at least persuasive enough for most to say that it was _at least_ as important as the atomic bombings, if not more.\n\n* Michael Gordin, _Five Days in August_ — Gordin is a friend of mine so I am biased here, but his book is a wonderful explication on the historical trickiness of sussing out what people's opinions were _at the time_ and not what they were _after they knew the results_. In particular he shows that before the Japanese surrendered, and before the atomic bomb was thought to have \"worked\" (that is, ended the war), the notions about the bomb that the people at the time who were involved in the decisions regarding it were very fluid and very uncertain. Personally I find this to be a very important point, and one that always needs to be reemphasized, because people like to cite Truman's much later memoirs (or Stimson's justifying article in Harper's, which was actually written by the military general who ran the bomb project) as evidence for how these people thought at the time, when the documents from the time make it clear that their views changed very much in the postwar, perhaps more than even they themselves realized.\n\nAs an aside, when I mention propaganda masquerading as history, it is because a lot of people see the answer to your questions as having a political tint to them — e.g. if you are a conservative you must believe X, if you are a liberal you must believe Y, and so on. I always emphasize to my students that this is a silly way to think about history (obvious once pointed out) and that the reality of these events usually avoids being put into straightforward modern political categories. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zzeq1/would_the_japanese_have_likely_agreed_to_total/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22b90c/how_did_military_leaders_first_describe_the/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_the_atomic_bombs", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24gvwd/are_tsuyoshi_hasegawas_conclusions_about_the/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ydn10/could_america_have_used_the_atomic_bomb_on_a/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rmc3g/why_did_japan_surrender/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xagc8/would_it_have_been_worse_if_america_hadnt_nuke/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2c1qzy/why_was_an_invasion_of_japan_or_the_dropping_of/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15kb3w/why_didnt_japan_surrender_after_the_first_atomic/" ], [ "http://www.dannen.com/decision/scipanel.html", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/03/12/firebombs-usa/", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1945-04-28-Nordstad-Target-Information.jpg", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/28/martian-perspectives/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ei6nqie" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Contrary to a lot of internet confusion, no leaflets warning about the atomic bomb were dropped on Japanese cities prior to the bombing of Nagasaki. Certainly none indicated any actual possible targets. You can read the whole story [here](_URL_0_), as well as read the official report on the leaflet operation which is linked to there. The long and short of it is that because of difficulties in producing the leaflets, and a desire to change them to reflect the Soviet entrance to the war, they were not dropped until after the Nagasaki attack. Nagasaki, in fact, got leaflets dropped on it a day _after_ it had been bombed, because the leaflet campaign was not at all coordinated with the bombing plans. There is no way anyone in Nagasaki would have known it was a potential atomic bomb target (and in any case, it was the fall-back target — Kokura was the actual city that was planned to be bombed, originally)." ] }

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[ [ "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5nsosy" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I am not a Bach scholar, so take this with caution.\n\nMy understanding is that we don't have much to know about his private life. There aren't many personal documents of his... For other composers we have many letters, and even fragments of conversations. We have many accounts of them because they were celebrities in the big fashionable cities, in a time in which artists were deemed important, but this was not the case at all for Bach. \n\nWhat you describe (\"fairly religious and perfectionist,\" \"kind of secretly wild and temperamental,\" \"a fatherly if dull figure\") are indeed not very descriptive, rather stereotypical, ways to describe the life of a person. As you say, there is a very romanticized view of him, created in the time of [Great Man theory](_URL_0_).\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "db6iugs" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "There's always room for discussion but perhaps the section [Travel and contact across the Atlantic before Columbus](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/nativeamerican#wiki_travel_and_contact_across_the_atlantic_before_columbus" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwqeqs8", "cwqez7k", "cwqf6v4" ], "score": [ 7, 4, 34 ], "text": [ "I haven't read Wilson and Wilkins' book, but I've read several reviews of it which, as far as I can tell, tear it apart. [Here's one response](_URL_2_) from Rev. Jack Davidson of Eugene, OR, engaging with a number of Wilson and Wilkins' primary sources - from the Slave Narrative Project - and pointing out how they must be taken with a great awareness of context that Wilson does not exhibit.\n\nFurther, [here's another response by attorney Thomas Alderman](_URL_1_), explaining how Wilson and Wilkins grossly misrepresent the origin of the Civil War, which was indeed about slavery - a point also [explained in great detail on this subreddit](_URL_0_). ", "On a similar note to this, I just had a history discussion yesterday on this very same subject where we looked at the arguments made by James Henry Hammond (Letters to a English abolitionist). It's a good read for anyone wanting to know how southerners justified slavery at the time. I haven't read the source you shared op, but a brief skim through as shown me a few similarities. ", "Accuracy: Little to none.\n\nTo begin with, it isn't even entirely by those two pastors, as it seems to have [heavily plagiarized](_URL_0_) another work from two decades prior.\n\nThe publishing house, [Canon Press](_URL_2_) of Moscow, Idaho, seems to specialize in publishing Evangelical tracts on topics such religiously inspired fiction by the likes of Kirk Cameron to convince people of creationism or a DVD on the death of freedom of speech whose cover is an LGBT activist painted in ominous red and black, carrying a chain-saw (with interviews with Ted Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, and others). In other words they seem to be publishing non-specialist propaganda for the fringe of the Evangelical community. Not a serious publishing house. \n\nSecond, the two essential pillars of the piece are refuted, in one case, and irrelevant to most people, in the other. \n\nThe first pillar is that Southerners should take pride in the Civil War because slavery wasn't the cause at the heart of the conflict and because criticisms of slavery are largely exaggerated. [Here](_URL_1_) is a great post by a mod refuting that argument in great detail. \n\n The other pillar of their case is that:\n\n > The truth is, Southern slavery is open to criticism because it did not follow the biblical pattern at every point. Some of the state laws regulating slavery could not be defended biblically (the laws forbidding the teaching of reading and writing, for example). One cannot defend the abuse some slaves had to endure. None can excuse the immorality some masters and overseers indulged in with some slave women. The separation of families that sometimes occurred was deplorable. These were sad realities in the Southern system.\n\nIn other words, the primary mistake made was not following biblical slavery, which implicitly seems to be fine by the authors. If you believe the bible literally, maybe their detailed justification of a certain kind of slavery would be interesting or even pertinent. If you don't believe it literally (or just aren't Christian at all) their arguments on this point are completely irrelevant. \n\nBoth successfully sidestep testimony from slaves, as well as non-slave sources such as countless newspaper adds referring to scars from lashes, which contradict the version of history they want to spin: That abuses were isolated cases of bad apples. They cite whatever backs that up and ignore whatever contradicts it.\n\nIn short, there are surely more serious historical revisionists to read for 'the other side of the debate' than these two." ] }

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[ "http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_the_South", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y0fTaMBESs" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/civilwar#wiki_causes", "http://web.archive.org/web/20130830105312/http://www.joshualetter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=63", "http://web.archive.org/web/20130830105624/http://www.joshualetter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=60" ], [], [ "http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3edss0/was_the_american_civil_war_about_more_than_just/cte2mj9", "http://canonpress.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csay242", "csayivi" ], "score": [ 11, 3 ], "text": [ "I can tell you about the Carolingian organization and the birth of feudalism\n\nCarolingian administration was in some aspects a direct inheritor of Roman tradition, attemtping a centralized imperial administration, where important regional powers were actually functionaries of the empire, so their authority was derived of their posting by the emperor. In this way, you had regional administrators, which were submitted to the vigilance of *comes*, a title of Roman origin. These *comes* were in charge of traveling the empire through the seasons, visiting landlords who were far away from their own jurisdictions, in order to verify that they were properly fulfilling their functions. In this sense, the person charged with performing a task, received *honorum*, which was the appointment to office, and *beneficium*, which was the benefit given together with *honorum* as payment.\nIn principle, *honorum* was easily revokable, and was not to be inherited by the holder's offspring, but in reality, the office was almost never revoked, and was most often passed directly from father to son. This tendency was intensified as the functionaries gained more and more gravitas, to a point when revocation became not only something that the emperor didn't want to do (in most cases), but also something he **couldn't** do, even if he wanted.\nThis privatization of charges came with a confusion of the concepts of *honorum* and *beneficium*, becoming one and the same, and hence feudalism was born.\n\nRegarding the economic administration, the Carolingian Empire kickstarted the confusion of *Res Publica* and private business that characterized medieval politics (to some extent) and particularly, medieval treasury and economic policy.\n\nIn the matter of warfare, Carolingian forces were highly centralized, which made the military much less flexible, and given that flexibility was needed to confront the menace posed by the non-Latin Christian peoples (vikings, muslim raiders and Slavic invaders), this centralized scheme of military structure was replaced by a highly decentralized one, where regional authorities took direct charge of local forces to react quickly to threats. This capacity of the local powers to better protect their people, further helped them to consolidate and legitimate their **authority of autonomous origin**.\n\nMy sources are \n\nDonado Vara, Julián, *La Edad Media. Siglos V-XII*\n\nRosamond McKitterick, *Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity*\n\nand others that I don't have at hand to quote.\n\n\nEDIT: to correct some typos.", "This question is covered in some ways by Ian Wood's *The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751* and was a pretty good read. He does a pretty good job showing that there is some continuity at least initially between Rome and Merovingian Gaul. In many instances the \"bureaucracy\" so to speak continued to function immediately after the Western Empire dissolves, but then evolves into its own organism that is based much more centrally around monasteries (see Matthew Inne's *State and Society in the Early Middle Ages*). In a Carolingian context they drew on older Roman and Frankish traditions, not to mention Christian ones, in order to maintain legitimacy. So there is a relationship between the three, but in some senses this is blurred, such as Charlemagne's so-called \"imperial coinage\" which has provoked a lot of debate. While some historians have seen the coins as representing this Roman heritage, others have also seen other influences. Rosamond McKitterick in her book *Charlemagne: the Formation of a European Identity* argues that the Carolingians relied on a plethora of earlier traditions in order to augment, maintain, and construct their political power. If you have any other questions let me know, I tried to give more of a broad overview. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cde7zcx", "cdenicn" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "I personally have no knowledge of any in modern times that did this on their own accord, though Germany post WWII was forced to deindustrialize. The [Morgenthau Plan](_URL_1_) was proposed by [Hengry Morgenthau](_URL_0_.) who was the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Post WWII no one in the world wished for Germany to be able to rebuild its military in the way it had, and the plan was to deindustrialize it to the point of it becoming an agricultural society. The German heavy industry was meant to be lowered to 50% of its power as it was in 1938.^1 Many other more exact restrictions were implemented for efficiency, steel production was reduced to 25% of its previous capacity being limited to 5,800,000 tons of steel every year.^2 \n\nDating back to post war Berlin, many plans were being made for deindustrialization. On February 2, 1946 a dispatch directly from Berlin read:\n\n\"Some progress has been made in converting Germany to an agricultural and light industry economy, said Brigadier General William Henry Draper Jr., chief of the American Economics Division, who emphasized that there was general agreement on that plan.\nHe explained that Germany’s future industrial and economic pattern was being drawn for a population of 66,500,000. On that basis, he said, the nation will need large imports of food and raw materials to maintain a minimum standard of living.\nGeneral agreement, he continued, had been reached on the types of German exports — coal, coke, electrical equipment, leather goods, beer, wines, spirits, toys, musical instruments, textiles and apparel — to take the place of the heavy industrial products which formed most of Germany's pre-war exports.\"^3\n\n\nOf course as a result of all of this, major economic faults ensued throughout Germany killing their economic state on a global scale. Many reprimands were taken from their country by other superpowers post-war. And the German industry would have to be rebuilt from the ground up for many years to come.\n\nIf you have any further questions or want to know more. Feel free to ask.\nCitation:\n\n1. Henry C. Wallich. Mainsprings of the German Revival (1955) pg. 348.\n\n2. \"Cornerstone of Steel\", Time Magazine, January 21, 1946\n\n3. James Stewart Martin. All Honorable Men (1950) pg. 191.", "Thou Cambodia was never an 'industrial nation' the Khmer Rouge, of Cambodia, 'de-industrialized' the county by closing factories and forcing the Urban population into Agricultural farms. The Khmer Rouge were influenced by the idea of Primitive Communism or agricultural Communism which i guess they thought would make the country fairer and more sustainable. The reality is that the Urban population couldn't farm very well which resulted in famine and widespread devastation. \n\nThe Khmer Rouge went to extremes to de-modernise the country: they closed Hospitals and schools and killed any intellectuals. People were thrown out of hospital beds and into the streets and teachers were sent to the 'killing fields' for execution. \n\nThe Khmer really pushed the Idea of being self-sustainable but at the end of their short four year reign the county was in ruins with 25% of the population dead _URL_0_ \n\n " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau,_Jr", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan" ], [ "http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccz5wzo" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "Mixed.\n\nSome pirates utilized them to great ability, if your definition of \"pirate\" encompases privateers, buccaneers, corsairs, and freebooters. For simplicities sake, I'll use the term \"pirate\" as a catch all term for non-traditional non-governmental forces though including those groups that were *sanctioned* such as privateers.\n\nSome pirates used them as guides against the Spanish. For example Sir Francis Drake used Cimmaron Indians as a guides to ambush the Spanish \"Silver Train\" in 1573. Morgan used them in his sack on Panama and Portobello.\n\nA particular tribe called the Mosquito often were hired by buccaneer and privateers to be hunters, fishermen and \"light infantry\" scouts in raids on towns. These men were known as \"strikers\" amongst the Europeans.\n\nAt the same time, they were not altogether friendly. Many treated the Natives poorly. They would raid their villages, sell them into slavery, and other various evil acts. In fact, Francois l'Ononnais was so notoriously cruel that he was captured by the Kuna tribe and eaten alive. According to Exquemelin:\n\n > tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air; to the intent no trace nor memory might remain of such an infamous, inhuman creature.\n\nBut then again, l'Olonnais was reputed to be one of the most evil bastards to sail the Caribbean. And that's saying a lot." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "evb71zy" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "There were rumors of each of them being the sibling to have survived, actually - and bear in mind that the full story we know of the Romanovs being executed in the House of Special Purpose was not publicly known at the time. People weren't even really sure that Nikolai and Alexandra were dead, let alone that their children had also been put to death in a basement in Ekaterinburg. (Note [this excellent discussion about Larissa Tudor](_URL_0_), said to be Tatiana, by /u/mikedash.) There were actually quite a few men who claimed to be Alexei! It's hard to imagine this, as a Millennial or younger and having grown up with a) all of this in the past, since none of them would have lived beyond the 1980s given their birth dates, and b) a number of fictional representations of the matter, especially the Ahrens-Flaherty musical animated film and Broadway show, but for many years it seemed quite plausible that one of the group had managed to survive and was out there, able to be found and to give evidence of the tragedy.\n\nThe main reason Anastasia is thought of as \"the one\" is that a woman named Anna Anderson claimed to be her through much of the twentieth century (from 1921 to her death in 1984). She was found in a Berlin canal in 1920, having jumped in in a suicide attempt; she wouldn't identify herself, had a few scars as evidence of some past injury, and was obviously mentally disturbed. As \"Fraulein Unbekannt\", she remained in a mental hospital for more than a year, hardly speaking, but behaving in a \"ladylike\" way that made the nurses curious. She also requested and read books in French and English, and spoke Russian as well as German, according to one witness. The first Romanov connection came up a year later, when she was shown a copy of the magazine *Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung* with the grand duchesses on it and a headline about a potential survivor (inside, the speculation was about Anastasia) - her manner changed, and later one she drew a nurse's attention to the resemblance between her and Anastasia. The nurse was reluctant to do so, but when she finally asked her flat-out if she was the Tsar's daughter, the unnamed woman came out with a flood of details about her escape. Word filtered out through a fellow (but short-term) inmate who came to believe she was indeed Anastasia, and reached the Supreme Monarchist Council in Berlin, an antisemitic group that coordinated with aristocratic Russian emigrés. One of the latter briefly recognized her, and then the flood of visitors began. In 1922, she was released into the custody of a minorly aristocratic married couple who'd become very close to her, who kept her in comfort.\n\nAt this time, she really didn't work to take the place in society the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia would have been able to have - she just insisted that she was Anastasia when people were brought in to look at her, although she only asked to be called Annie. (I suspect that this is a huge part of the reason why her story was so compelling - a woman who stands up and says, \"I'm Anastasia. Money please!\" is automatically suspicious, while a woman whose case is only brought to people via supportive third parties and who never asks for anything but her name is seen as having more integrity.) She didn't always recognize the people she was supposed to recognize (and was in turn dismissed by many of the people who came to see if she was the girl they had known), she was very opposed to speaking in Russian, and her escape story was fragmented, contradictory, and uncorroborated by any real evidence; she was also emotionally volatile and, according to the couple's daughter, had no social skills or grasp of refined behavior. Being unable to support herself and a suicide risk, she was passed from supporter to supporter for years. Most importantly, despite her generally obscure situation and the fact that the living people who'd been closest to the royal family dismissed her claim, her story was blowing up across Germany and then the world: tiny scars on her body were represented as the evidence of her having been shot and stabbed, people who'd denied that she was a Romanov were said to have embraced her as a niece or cousin, and many other pieces of \"evidence\" suddenly appeared in the popular consciousness. Multiple adaptations were made, fictionalizing the already-fictional story she told: *Clothes Make the Woman* (1928), the classic *Anastasia* (1956) and a different German one in the same year, the Broadway show *Anya* (1965) ... Decades later, a thorough investigation was undertaken - as thorough as they could be without being able to test DNA - and the courts declared that she failed to meet the standard of proof for taking back Anastasia Romanov's identity, though the newspapers frequently leaned heavily on her side. And now, of course, we do have DNA evidence that shows that she was not Anastasia, and was most likely a Polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska, as rumors had had it even during her lifetime." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aba044/who_was_larissa_tudor/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dn2a7pl" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Firstly, Moscow was never a large city prior or during Mongol conquest. And it was sacked.\nSecondly, Novgorod avoided the fate because it was far enough away to the Mongols to not bother to go there. Novgorod accepted the Mongol rule anyway.\nThirdly, there was no 'powerful Russian state' based out of Kiev prior to the Mongol conquest. While Kiev principality was the richest and most populous of all Russian principalities, it was still relatively small. United Rus ceased to exist more than half a century before Mongols came.\n\nThe reason why Kiev never recovered was not even tied to the Mongols. The source of the Kiev wealth and power was trade along Dnieper river from the Baltics through Novgorod and to the Constantinopole and then Levant and further east. But this trade 'dried up' with the decline of Byzantine Empire and because Crusades reestablished alternative trade route with the East through Mediterranean sea.\n\n Because of that Baltics-Volga-Caspian Sea became a main trade route in the Rus lands. Novgorod controlled the Baltic part of the route still but Kiev was now out of the way. Because of that center of power gradually switched to the Vladimir and then to Moscow. It would happen even without Mongol invasion just more slowly.\n\n The sources for the post are various lectures by historian Klim Zhukov (unpublished) and Khrustalev's work \"Rus and Mongol invasion\" (Хрусталев Д. Г. Русь и монгольское нашествие (20-50 гг. XIII в.). — Спб.: Евразия, 2015)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "coq8qrs", "coq9p1d", "coqvzlf" ], "score": [ 9, 6, 6 ], "text": [ "Hi! You might be interested in this similar thread:\n\n* [How was it that Protestantism spread so far and to so many people in Europe, when previous heresies such as Catharism and Fraticelli were much smaller and more confined?](_URL_0_): A flaired user answers the OP's question plus some follow-ups.", "Well, I think the most important post on this topic is the ones by /u/idjet who [explains](_URL_0_) that there is actually little evidence that the Cathars even existed.\n\nI think your question misunderstands the nature of both Catharism and Protestantism. Not only are there the problems with the existence of Catharism that /u/idjet relates, Protestantism was not originally perceived as a heresy. It was a protest against the abuses of the Roman hierarchy, and a call to reform, not a heresy agaisnt the doctrines of Christianity as it was observed in the West. What is, to me, more interesting is that the protestant reform movement was successfully outright rejected by the Church majority, forcing both sides into a schism, when previous reform movements such as the Cluniacs and Franciscans were absorbed into, and helped to strengthen the Western Church.", "In the European west of the high and late middle ages, no heterodox form of Christianity stood a chance of success in the face of the alignment of power of Catholic secular and ecclesiastical institutions and law. Whether it be one-off 'heretics' like the raging independent Henry of Lausanne in the 12^th century, or the Waldensians that grew out of the movement Peter Valdes (Waldo) started in late 12^th century, whether it be the spiritual Franciscans or the various forms of Beguines or the Free Spirits of the 13^th and 14^th century, none could survive the enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy through either the Church's aggressive preaching and prosecution (the medieval inquisition, et al) or through the secular support and enforcement of the same. To be heterodox was not just a religious matter but effectively became a secular crime.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNor could what one historian usefully called the 'debris of pre-Gregorian forms of Christian worship' survive the rooting out and persecution, and this includes the varieties of worship wrongfully collected under the term 'Cathars' and those 14^th and 15^th century targets, witchcraft and devil worship.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nNow, as for the question of 'which social groups were most likely to be attracted to the 'heretic' religions', this is a problem that historians have tried to solve for centuries, and the Roman Church tried to solve itself in the middle ages. A sociology is, frankly, impossible for one single reason: the definition of a 'heresy' is entirely contingent and changeable depending on the prevailing definition of orthodoxy at the moment. So, for example, in 1179 at the Third Lateran Council Waldensianism was normalized in relation to Roman Catholicism and officially considered orthodox; within two years Valdes was excommunicated by the same papacy for not following certain 'rules' set down, chief among them that Valdes must follow instruction of the Bishop for whatever diocese they happened to be preaching in; the followers of Valdes were suddenly found themselves considered 'heretics'. \n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nTime and again we see that heresy in the middle ages was not simply a matter of one making a deliberate choice from a smorgasbord of religions. Yes, at times some followers chose to align themselves or *believe* in a heterodox Christianity with deliberateness, the spiritual Franciscans, Beguines, Waldensians in the following century would qualify as deliberate dissenters, or in the Church's view as willful heresy. But, at the same time, and this follows for those regions in the 13^th century which we call Cathar, the poor infrastructure and assiduousness of the Church (for whatever reasons) just did not cohere the beliefs of the population - which lead to great heterodoxy in the *practice* of Christianity (but not necessarily the core beliefs). Chief testimony to this are the fairly voluminous inquisition records from the 13^th and 14^th century which tell not of an organized, heretical counter-church, but of a diversity of practices at a low-level; this would include not observing certain sacraments, not attending church on required days, minor infractions of theology, and the like. I would suggest in fact that many of the 'violations' which inquisitors turned up could in fact be found across Europe at the same time, but it is only because inquisitions gained a foothold in southern France that we know of it.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nThe links in other comments in this thread speak to the power which *permitted* Protestantism (the Reformation) to flourish; by the same token power was the reason Catholic orthodoxy was the law of the land for centuries after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and made effective development of wide-spread, uniform heterodox beliefs impossible." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ovpon/how_was_it_that_protestantism_spread_so_far_and/" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20qcoq/cathars_and_ranters_didnt_exist/cg5t9ki" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d4d6kdj" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Shakespeare was writing for a \"common\" audience, as well as for a noble one. His plays were ones that everyone could understand, which did mean that there are several that have \"low art\" in them. Much Ado about Nothing comes to mind, there are several dick jokes in it, as does Romeo and Juliet (the nurse has several humorous lines). He was certainly very popular, but he was seen as a great author, not as the defining voice of that period. After his death his plays were put on, but he was not the most popular playwright then. His popularity really grew in the 18th century into the 19th, and has only grown from there.\nMuch of how we view Shakespeare today is due to how it's taught in schools, where it is read as \"fine literature\", when in actuality it was very quick and full of humor and life. Remember, in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet it reads \"..is now the two hour mark of our stage\". Imagine reading all of R+J in two hours and you get an idea of how fast paced and different these plays were live than read. \n\nTL;DR: Shakespeare never sucked, was often crude in his humor, and the widespread adoration of him really kicked off in the 18th/19th century. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cmnidcn" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Originally, the CHEKA was originally drawn from Petrograd Bolshevik members. As it grew into the 1920's Felix Dzerzhinksy, the man Lenin put in charge of the CHEKA after its initial head, Moses Uritski, was shot and killed, recruited from members of the Bolshevik faction he knew to be trustworthy and not squeamish. Basically, it was an invitation only club, one could not simply join, one was recruited. \n\nEDIT: I forgot to reference your original question, the CHEKA was reorganized in the early 1920's into the Joint State Political Administration (OGPU), basically changing the nameplates on the office doors, Iron Felix was still running the show. \n\n_Ronald Hingley, \"The Russian Secret Service: Muscovite, Imperial Russian and Soviet Political Security Operations, 1565-1970\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4vdwak" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Forgive me for not directly answering the question, but since there are no responses yet, I'll give a little background on the Turner thesis. You can find the text of the thesis online here (1920 republishing): _URL_0_\n\nThe American frontier was officially declared \"closed\" in 1890, with Turner publishing his thesis in 1893. The big idea here is that the frontier changed Americans, as the Americans changed the frontier. The frontier is postulated as what makes Americans \"American,\" bestowing virtues on its settlers as they struggle against the environment. This quote (from the 11th paragraph of chapter 11) illustrates this point:\n\n > American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not \n > carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to \n > Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new \n > strength each time it touched a new frontier. Not the constitution, \n > but free land and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit \n > people, made the democratic type of society in America for three \n > centuries while it occupied its empire.\n\nAs years and decades passed, the Turner theory waned in influence, as few people believed that the closing of the frontier had drastically changed the character of America, as Turner believed it would." ] }

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[ [ "http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/turner/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c679gu1", "c679s6b" ], "score": [ 17, 27 ], "text": [ "Unfortunately, there are few sources available to answer this definitively. Most chronicles from the time would be more concerned with the affairs if the Church and of those people rich enough to matter.\n\nIt is certainly recorded that peasants could often find themselves victims of deliberate attacks by their lord's enemies, as it was easier to attack their source of income than their source of strength. William the Conqueror ordered the North of England to be laid to waste in the Harrying of The North, as can be seen in Domesday Book. And The Black Prince was known to treat his aristocratic enemies with unprecedented respect, but would barely blink at the thought of razing a village to the ground as a military tactic.\n\nThat said. Accuracy doesn't sell a lot of film tickets. One glaring example featured in Braveheart was the rights of Prima Nocta, where a lord could have the first night with a peasant woman after her marriage. This is total fiction. \n\nWhen it comes to a lord's treatment of his own property, its almost impossible to say, but It seems unlikely that a lord would destroy his own property without food cause, after all, that is the way most peasants were treated. Laws were introduced in the 13th century prohibiting amputation, and trial by ordeal... suggesting they were common practice beforehand.", "First thing to be considered for western europe (old Western Empire) the \"peasants\" have two origins, slaves and former slaves, or former citizens that fled the cities when plague and invasion struck them. The lords were germanic warriors (Franks and the like) who were given lands in exchange for the fight, and later on became \"administrators\" for the Merovingiens king and the Carolingiens Dynasty. These administrators were of course \"local\" bosses, but their function (Count, Duke etc.. derives from administrative-militaristic title of the Roman Empire) became hereditary. \n\nduring those era the slaves weren't freed and mostly were kept slaves, somehow it ended. \n\nThe violence was in their social status. They weren't \"peasant\" per se ( depending on the areas) but various social \"classes\" of under statute that were dependant on an administrator (who later on became a \"noble\" in the full sense of the term) and owned him various obligations depending *again* on there status. In return this administrator had full right of \"justice\" (i.e. when a dispute arose he was the one to settle it), \"police\" (i.e. he was obligated to ensure \"safety\") and fiscal rights (they preserved the taxes in the name of the ruler).\n\nSome peasants were legally binded to the land they lived on, some were free men (fully owned their lands, rare and hated), some were middle free men (not serfs, but worked the land for nobles).\n\nDepending in the area the common point was that they \"owned\" to the nobles and the king obligations, services \"corvées\" , and supported the fiscal burden. The full fiscal burden. \n\nThe western-european society was a society of orders, nobles, clergy and third-state. Clergy is to be considered apart as it predated the two other orders. But nobles and third-state weren't the same \"race\" litteraly. the third-state itself englobed every non peasants like artisan, merchants, \"soldiers\", clerck etc...\n\nAnd on that basis they didn't have the same rights and obligations. Nobles had what we called \"priveleges\" they didn't pay taxes, had their own justice (by their suzerain or their peers) and were limitless in the powers they held onto their lands, with the limits more or less important of their vassals controls (Rights), the Church (who offered a lot of protection to the peasants) and the religion/faith. They had to act as christians. edit : and of course the King.\n\nBut the peasants : couldn't in most case leave the land they were born onto without consent of the lord (or a letter authorizing them to), they couldn't marry without the consent of the lord (changed a lot and depended of the areas, mostly when the boy was not a serf), they couldn't hunt, they had to work for their lords' fields before their own subsistance, they had to paid to use the \"public\" oven, they had to paid for using the water pipe, etc...\n\nThey were subject to the Lord's justice and it could be cruel, if they had a conflict with their lord he was judge and party, unless they appealed to the church or the King (which they could do, and sometimes did, but rarely, Louis IX of France is the \"icone\" of such things, and the full expression of how the kings of France viewed their powers/duty i.e. to be \"king of justice\" for the Realm subject). \n\nThey could be requisitionned to fight if they were seen wandering on roads, they could be requisitionned to construct or clean said roads by the kings' officers or by their Lords without being payed of course. When siege broke out they were requisitionned to build fortifications etc...\n\nOften the partied obligations were written in a \"contract\" that variated wether the peasants was a free men or a serf. And it made the \"laws\" of the parties, as far were these contract negotiated ? I don't know. And never studied one. But I know they weren't strict piece of paper, they were \"customs\" and customary before being a document. The peasant owned certain things to the lord because that was \"how it was\" for other peasants and since their fathers' father.\n\nThey revolted also, and lords killed by their peasants weren't that uncommon AFAIK. But you can imagine what happened if someone killed a senator or a well off citizen now, same things but with medieval punishment.\n\nBut that asides, the army were often living \"on the land\" so in war times the area were pillaged and destroyed by the standing armies. And when two lords wared against each other, if the goal wasn't conquest then the \"economic\" forces were targeted.\n\nIn the penal punishment also, they could be hanged or left to rot on pikes, while nobles were \"decapitated\" and buried. \n\nOverall their situation was really shitty, at least for those that weren't free or hadn't fled (a reason cities boosted around Bishops in the late middle ages was that they were powerfull enough to create \"safe heavens\" for fleeing peasants).\n\nIt was part of a system more than an exceptionnal furry on the poor ol'peasants. But the myth that a nobles could just go and kill their people isn't true, they needed to have \"reasons\" (albeit skewed) to kill the workforce. Christiannity was both the prison (\"God wills it\", as the Crusaders said) and the best protection of the common folks.\n\nAnd most important this is from my \"legal\" knowledge for Western Europe (mostly the old carolingien empire). I know viking influenced areas had different rules regarding that. The Hispanic peninsula was also very different, since the kings needed men to fight they gave them lands and rights. (but slaves working for the muslims that weren't killed became serfs for the new masters).\n\nIn the East the situation was very different also, in \"russian\" area, the Kievan Rus used to be very \"liberal\" (no reference towards US politics, I just don't see another word for it) and the peasantry eventhough separated from the \"warriors\" had a lot of protective rights with a [code written](_URL_0_), which continued in Novgorod after the Mongol invasion, but changed when [Muscowy took over](_URL_1_). the peasant were becoming scarce so they were more or less turned into legal furnitures (which wasn't the case in the west after the early middle age) by a new code of laws.\n\nI know Magyar peasants had it quite bad also.\n\n**Disclaimer** : I'm a public law jurist, so I know a little about legal history of Europe's public and administrative rules (mostly about Rome/France though), this is a rough protrait that I think is accurate. But if a specialist could add/correct me I would be glad." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russkaya_Pravda", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudebnik" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cezsjfi", "cezsxw3" ], "score": [ 9, 14 ], "text": [ "Lorica segmentata was designed largely as a form of scale/plate hybrid armor that had overlapping strips of metal that allowed a wide range of protection. Its initial advantages, namely being more sturdy and resilient as a form of armor, were outweighed by its cost, and the technical proficiency necessary to create it.\n\nBy no means was the Lorica segmentata standard-issue for all Roman legions. Only a handful at a time possessed them, and largely based on seniority. By contrast, lorica hamata, or chainmail, was tried and true, and had been used since antiquity. Everyone knew how to create and use it, and it was relatively cheap and effective.\n\nThe period in which it was created and implemented was also the high-watermark period of the Roman Empire, when the Empire possessed a technological proficiency, with economies of scale, and labor markets that would not be rivaled until the industrial revolution. What ended it largely was the period of instability known as the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war and strife that lasted several decades and nearly ended it.\n\nThe resulting reconstituted Empire stabilized in the Fourth Century under the reign of Constantine and his sons. Constantine reformed the military away from a legionary model towards a rapid response model, firstly to eliminate the political threat the army posed, but also to posture the Empire towards defending its borderlands. However, by the end of the Fourth Century and the beginning of the fifth century, Rome was confronted with a new stream of problems: barbarian incursions.\n\nWhile barbarians had been encountered quite frequently, and many even made deep incursions in the Empire, only to be drawn back, this was the first time in which Barbarians had scored several crushing victories over the Romans, notably at Adrianople, where the Eastern Roman Emperor was slain by roving Goths.", "[Dan Howard](_URL_2_) tells us that the main reason for adopting the Lorica Segmentata was that it was far cheaper to produce than Hamata. Furthermore, because of the wide coverage provided by a scutum, the most common area of injury for a legionnaire would be the shoulders. Lorica Segmentatas' reinforced shoulder plates make it seem as if it was developed with that in mind.\n\nVegetius tells us that the main reason for dropping the Lorica Segmentata was because it was too heavy. Supposedly, the legionnaires got soft and couldn't bear to wear it anymore. Vegetius lamented this slothful attitude, because of the Lorica Segmentata's greater protection in comparison to the armor of Late-Antiquity. \n\nHowever, this is probably not the only reason, nor the main reason for the abandoning of such armor. [This comment](_URL_0_) by [u/bitparity](_URL_1_) tells us that the later emperors required a lighter, more mobile army attached to the emperor(s) that could more quickly respond to internal and external foes throughout the empire and its borders.\n\nLorica Segmentata also required much more effort to maintain compared to the Lorica Hamata. Rust was a very big problem for the plates. The use of leather under metal in high mobility situations would also lead to quick degradation of the leather, as it would constantly rub up against it during any sort of movement. As the empire's logistics collapsed, it is reasonable to believe that the legions could no longer adequately maintain their platemails and went with the sturdier alternative.\n\nReturning to Dan Howard, he claims that chainmail was actually the preferable alternative in most aspects aside from blunt trauma. It allegedly provided better coveragewith greater mobility, while not requiring the legionnaire to wear additional inner lining. It also was far easier to repair, as you could use a wire of metal." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dx0v2/why_did_the_roman_army_choose_to_abandon_its/c9ur99p", "http://www.reddit.com/user/bitparity", "http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctg6z7o", "ctg71b6", "ctg7o5q", "ctgj80x" ], "score": [ 79, 230, 486, 11 ], "text": [ "Hello everyone, \n\nUnfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread. In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_2_) 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 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_0_[META]). Thank you!", "As another aspect to this, if geographic proximity to the theatre had no impact on deployment, did experience with the terrain? Like, would draftees from New Mexico be more likely to be deployed in North Africa because of experience with deserts?\n\nEDIT: Reworded for clarity", "As /u/eleventeenth_beatle and /u/drpinkcream noted, branch of service played a major role in theatre deployment. I'm going to just address the Army in this comment. \n\nMy understanding is that deployment was not done by *draftee* but by divisions, which were the primary independent units of the Army (see _URL_1_). \n\nSo the next question is, how were divisions assigned geographically, and how was a division's recruitment pool generated?\n\nPer Maurice Matloff's \"The 90-Division Gamble,\" (_URL_2_), the manpower allotted to divisions had to be carefully regulated so that there wasn't too much of a drain on American industrial capability, and there was about a year's worth of training time for a given division before it was deemed combat-worthy. Furthermore, divisions didn't get all their troops at once - it was a piecemeal process as troops trickled in. (John Brown, [*Draftee Division*](_URL_0_), p. 16). The divisions pulled troops in from all over the country - for example, the 88th Division got one shipment largely from the Northeast, and then another from the Midwest and Southwest, dubbed 'Okies.' (Id., p. 17). \n\nSo you had divisions 'coming out the door' after a year after drawing troops from all over, and being assigned to one of four areas: Europe, North Africa, Pacific, or reserve within the US. (Matloff). The bulk of the Army's divisions were dedicated to Overlord, since the invasion had to be a massive punch a) to get through, b) to mollify the Soviets who were desperately calling for aid. \n", "I asked this before, but the thread never took off, so maybe I'll try and piggyback on this one:\n\nWhat were the odds of getting conscripted in WW2, or the Vietnam war?\n\nI mention those 2 instances as they seem to be the most prominent in the popular culture I'm exposed to, but I would assume it's happened in plenty of other times and places.\n\nSo if you were an eligible candidate in (insert war/country of choice), how likely were you to be drafted?\n\nI checked the FAQ and didn't see anything similar based on some keyword searches of the page." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&title=", "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules" ], [], [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=W9YeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=selective+service+world+war+2+division&source=bl&ots=xELHzDAzcw&sig=9_hxYSAgrvDBlPcr66mQik_lEj8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBDgKahUKEwjbjIuIx_fGAhVMig0KHVbqBzM#v=onepage&q=selective%20service%20world%20war%202%20division&f=false", "http://www.historyshotsinfoart.com/USArmy/backstory.cfm", "http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdhq2np" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "This [YouTube](_URL_0_) link shows some of the items a British solider would have during the Japanese invasion of Singapore. Some canned food, grenades, .303 ammunition, gas masks and a few other items that I can't make out. It also brings up another question for you. Which theater in WWII and which time period during the war. \n\nEquipment would be different for an army regular fighting in France, compared to someone another in North Africa. Logistical facts of war and the area of operation could change it up quite a bit." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbszSQaIGz8&t=19m" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7gmyoh", "c7gn3he", "c7gn6ay", "c7goqu5", "c7gsusx", "c7gxk4z" ], "score": [ 9, 4, 20, 14, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "The answer is pretty straightforward. Mass shootings didn't occur when the shooter could only fire one round per minute.", "I think a better question would be did killing sprees occurred prior to the type of 24hr tv news coverage we have now on scales which would be considered 'mass' according to the weapons used.", "Have you ever heard of the expression \"running amok\"?\n\nIt comes from the Malay term *(meng)amuk*, which refers to a type of killing spree. Dating back to premodern times, amok is a type of killing spree in which a sudden perceived mistreatment causes someone to go into a fit of rage and murder several people. Amok usually ends when the perpetrator is killed by bystanders. It is classified as a mental disorder in DSM-IV.\n\n[Some psychologists have compared](_URL_0_) [amok to the modern spree killer.](_URL_1_) (Two links.) So killing sprees do not seem to be a solely modern phenomenon.", "**This thread will be ONLY about Historical events. There will be NO current politics or I will burn this thread to the ground.**", "I also wanted to ask this question, but broadening to any lethal means. Stabbing sprees have also happened in parts of the world where guns are less accessible, so technologically this broadens the range of dates considerably.\n\nWe might also narrow down the criteria to lone-wolf attacks (as opposed to those planned by state or non-state organizations), the targeting of innocents (as opposed to specific assassination attempts), and some evidence of mental imbalance.\n\nThe amok reference partly answers my question...", "Although not a mass shooting, the Bath School disaster (1927) came to mind. Andrew Kehoe, a farmer & school board treasurer, killed 38 children, 6 adults, and himself. Blew everyone up except his wife, who he beat to death. \n\n\n[Wikipedia](_URL_0_) Interesting read and lists a lot of references.\n\nActually makes me wonder if this is Americas first VBID(Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) suicide bombing...?" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=66bBlXMEVYAC&pg=PA131#v=onepage&q&f=false", "http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-22/forensic-psych-on-violent-minds/4146324" ], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster#References" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbul9m2" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "hi! Hopefully some of the NZ specialists will drop by to address this question, but meanwhile, you can get a little start here\n\n* [Why has New Zealand embraced indigenous culture more than other former British Colonies?](_URL_1_) - /u/Cenodoxus makes a few comments on adoption of the Haka\n\n.. and if you're interested in New Zealand history with regard to Maori integration more generally, this thread may be useful; it includes links to a few more (including the above post)\n\n* [Why were the Maori so much more successful at resisting colonization than Australian Aborigines or other Pacific Islanders?](_URL_0_) - featuring /u/b1uepenguin\n\nAll of the posts have been archived by now, so if you have follow-up questions for any of the commenters, just ask them here and mention their username to notify them " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ibo8l/why_were_the_maori_so_much_more_successful_at/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1daol9/why_has_new_zealand_embraced_indigenous_culture/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctrgn30" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "side note: did experience differ from Black British and West-Indies/African immigrants? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmi9wln", "dmibcfn" ], "score": [ 113, 3 ], "text": [ "Not exactly true. Catholic Church does not opposed lay reading Bible. In fact, reading of the Bible is part of the Mass and regular attendee of the Masses will hear a large portion of both Testaments in span of few years.\n\nGiven, that Catholic rites formed in the period of nearly universal illiteracy that alone shows that Church was never against peoples learning the contents of the Bible.\n\nHowever, Catholic have a different stance on interpreting it. Theologically it's based on 2 Timothy, where Paul gives eponymous Timothy right to *righteously divide the word of truth* and in practice it means that only the Church hierarchs (bishops, approved theologists and such) can properly interpret the Scripture and teach doctrine as spiritual successors of the Apostols. \n\nHence the problem Church had with the Bible translations was not laymen reading the Scripture, but laymen reading *heretic interpretation* of it.\n\nCase in point- papal bull in 1713 as you name it, commonly known as [Unigenitus](_URL_0_). The bull was targeted against heresy called *Jansenism*, and ascetically against Pasquier Quesnel, one of the main advocates of Jansenism. Who, by the way, spread his teaching by publishing abriged version of Gospel with commentaries (*Abrégé de la morale de l'Evangile*).\n\n*Unigenitus* condemns 101 notions of Quesnel, giving source of condemnation:\n\n > _URL_1_ is useful and necessary at every time, in every place, and for every kind of persons, to study and know the spirit, piety, and mysteries of sacred Scripture.\n\nPope point to *1 Cor. xiv. 6*:\n\n > Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you and speak in tongues, **what good will I be to you, unless** I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction?\n\nor the very next Quesnel proposition:\n\n > 80.The reading of sacred Scripture is for all.\n\nPope replies with the Acts of the Apostles:\n\n > And on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. **“Do you understand what you are reading?”** Philip asked.\n\nIn short, Catholic view is that reading the Bible is pointless- or even harmful- if you do not how to interpret and understand the text, and it much better leave it to the properly trained professionals something that is made even mere clear rebuffing statement 85\n\n > To interdict to Christians the reading of sacred Scripture, especially of the Gospel, is to interdict the use of light to the sons of light..\n\nPope responds pointing the most famous lines of Luke:\n\n > No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.\n\nAnd that essentially it: Catholic Church is not against lay people reading (or hearing) the Bible, but is very much against theologically-inept Joe's going wild with they own interpretations of it. That's the job for properly trained and educated priests.\n\nIt somewhat similar how modern scientists and academics are often opposed to amateur researchers.\n\nP.S. In English speaking world Catholics have image of Bible haters, because of suppression of John Wycliffe, who was proclaimed martyr of reformation. However his work was suppressed not because he dared to translate Scripture to English, but because he views were, in fact, *extra heresy*. He even openly denied authority of the *spiritual liege*!\n", "As a follow-up question, did only the Catholic churches have this opinion? (if they really did that is)\n\nDid the eastern orthodox churches agree with this policy? Is it based in scripture or medieval politics?" ] }

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[ "https://i.imgur.com/MI9jV6n.jpg", "https://i.imgur.com/ZCP0YPW.jpg" ]

[ [ "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Canons_and_Decrees_of_the_Council_of_Trent/Second_Part/Condemnation_of_the_Errors_of_Paschasius_Quesnell", "79.It" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ffvpnk9" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "**TL;DR** - It stemmed from existing social pressures all across Mexico, annexation by the US meant the rest of the South's institutions and the Planters gained super strong influence. Sam Houston was alive in 1861, and was vividly and vibrantly against the Confederate Cause, viewing it as antithetical to what he fought for in the Texas Revolution.\n\nSlavery was not the driving factor for the secession of Texas from Mexico, although it was a social pressure that was present. According to the Texas State Historical Association, in 1836 (the Texas Revolution taking place 1835-1836) the population consisted of about 30,000 Texians, 5,000 Blacks, 3,500 Tejanos, and 14,000 indigenous persons. This makes about 10~11% of the population as Black, a significant majority of whom would be slaves. In 1847, two years after annexation, this ratio becomes about 28~29%. These would be mostly concentrated around the Anglo farming communities in the East and North, which would be politically influential and would become adapted to the Southern way of life in short order.\n\nHowever, to look at the Texas Revolution, we need to go back to the beginning. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West.\n\n(Terminolog: \"Texian(s)\" = White Texan, \"Tejano(s)\" = Mexican Texan, \"Criollo(s)\" = White but born in colonial lands, \"Peninsular(es)\" = White and born in Spain, \"Empresario(s)\" = Colonial contractor hired to bring people)\n\nSanta Anna was of *criollo* origins, privileged as a 'continental' Spaniard (compared to 'peninsular', from Spain proper) under the colonial system. When revolution broke out among the *mestizo* masses, he, like a great many criollos, fought in the name of the Spanish Crown to put it down. His senior officer was a *peninsular*, even more privileged than Santa Anna himself, and during this war he witnessed brutal counterinsurgency tactics such as mass summary executions. This was also some of his first experience fighting Americans, defending Spanish territory from sympathetic American agents. When the Spanish homeland fell into troubles, a royalist officer decided to switch sides with an agreement to establish himself as the emperor of Mexico and guaranteeing the privileges of the peninsulares and criollos, with Santa Anna following his lead from then. Mexico's independence was gained later that year. This first emperor proved to be unpopular with the republican masses that had led revolution in the first place, and he tried to shut down republican efforts by closing the national congress and replacing it with a new institution that served solely him. \n\nHere's where fates turn, for Santa Anna conspired in revolution against this emperor he had once supported - he conspired, at least, for the purpose of restoring the congress. He won, and the emperor abdicated and was sent into exile, only to be executed in 1824 when he returned to Mexico once more.\n\nLater that year, 1824, the First Mexican Constitution was drafted and officialized under President Guadalupe Victoria. Victoria had been part of the revolution since the beginning, and was responsible for establishing diplomatic missions and recognition with his neighbors, as well as abolishing slavery. He resolved the economic crisis facing the nascent country, invested in all sorts of infrastructure, and helped to foster a new national spirit.\n\nVictoria's federal constitution and governance style was well-received in the borderland regions, such as The Sovereign Free State of Coahuila and Texas, or just 'Coahuila y Tejas' if you're pressed for time. These border states, which were underdeveloped and lacking in population that was integrated with Mexican society, were free to govern themselves, and conditional immigration from the United States was encouraged to help fill them out a bit more.\n\nAn early Texian rebellion formed with the Republic of Fredonia, in modern Nacogdoches in Northeast Texas (remember the geography I talked about earlier?). This rebellion was started by one Haden Edwards, an *empresario*, on the land he had himself settled. Nearby Cherokee also joined the rebellion, inspiring a white-and-red flag standing for settlers and natives together. As inspiring as they may sound, Edwards was a bit of a jerk - a Virginian of wealthy stock who tried to invalidate land titles that had already been established in the area granted to him, and rejected the elected captain of his militia (which he created by obligation, as part of his empresario contract) in favor of himself. He called for a new mayoral election, but the established residents claimed that it was rigged and appealed to a higher authority, which overturned it, which Edwards did not agree with. With tensions between established settlers and newer ones rising by the day, Edwards's contract was revoked, and he was expelled from Mexico. Without any compensation for his efforts and personal investments both in time and money, he refused to comply. After the newer brand of settlers began to face a few evictions and arrests, the local government was overthrown, and Edwards looked for support among both his previous settlers and among nearby Cherokee, to whom he promised officialized land titles to a *very significant amount of land* while they had been neglected by the state government. He sent word to other empresarios to try to gather support, but none came. The whole affair was essentially bloodless, though the Cherokee chiefs who had promised support were executed by their fellows as a show of support for Mexico when the time came to reestablish order. \n\nAlthough this was, by all accounts, a fairly minor incident, it also had the impact of a butterfly effect of sorts. The rebellion led to a Mexican federal inquiry into the state of Tejas, which under a different president led to passage of new laws unpopular with just about *everyone*, both the established and the new.\n\nThe election of 1828 was a bit crazy, with the fact of Victoria's resignation in the following year looming over everyone's heads and the direction of the country up in the air. Santa Anna and Lorenzo de Zavala, a figure who will play an important part later in our story, both supported the same candidate. Although Santa Anna was most typically a classic Criollo Conservative, Zavala was a Basque criollo, and his family had for that point been colonial, rather than peninsular, for over a century. Zavala, contrasting to Santa Anna, had been involved heavily with the Mexican Revolution in its early days, and had been among those who drafted the Constitution. For Santa Anna, this is possibly because the candidate in question, Vicente Ramon Guerrero Saldaña, had been a hero of the nation and one of those who ruled interrim between the fall of the empire and the new republic's founding. Moreover, he supported plans to strengthen the Mexican position, such as abolishing the means by which Spain kept trying to invade by invading Cuba. For Zavala, it was clearly his liberal ideology that was a draw. As a fun aside, Guerrero Saldaña was of African descent.\n\nGuerrero Saldaña ultimately fell short, losing the presidency to one Manuel Gomez Pedraza. Pedraza was a criollo, a close friend of the now-dead emperor, and was a royalist during the revolution. Santa Anna did not take his victory well, and organized a rebellion - one which Zavala was forced into joining while the Conservative government plotted against him. Zavala, being based quite close to Mexico City and with some fair amount of support, was able to help turn the tide, and forced Pedraza out. Guerrero Saldaña was appointed in 1829, and instituted sweeping liberal reforms in public education, land title, and re-abolished slavery. After a bit of murmuring, and though Stephen F. Austin seemed to have nothing but praise for Guerrero Saldaña, the Mexican governor of Tejas sent a request to the federal level to allow an exemption for Tejas - Saldaña's own words: \n\n > The serious inconvenience apprehended by the execution of the decree of the 15th of September last, on the subject of abolition of slavery in that department and the fatal results to be expected, prejudicial to the tranquility and even to the political existence of the state, and having considered how necessary it is to protect in an efficacious manner the colonization of these immense lands of the republic, he has been pleased to accede to the solicitation of Your Excellency and declare the department of Texas excepted from the general disposition comprehended in said decree.\n\nIn short, while the emancipation of slaves was a big gesture for him, Guerrero Saldaña exempted Texas because, in his eyes, the effective colonization, development, and economic health of the land came before such a gesture. That he only made such an exemption for Texas is due to the fact that it was a borderland territory surrounded by hostile tribes and had a very small non-native population, and so prioritizing its development and stability had been a long-time goal of the federal government. Though, I must point out that these murmurs were not rebellion-worthy, as Austin wrote:\n\n > I have the satisfaction to inform you that there was never the slightest break in the good order of this colony on account of the decree of September 15, because these inhabitants have placed the most blind confidence in the justice and good faith of the government\n\nWhile slavery had played a significant part in the Texan economy at the time, particularly in the northeast regions, they were not terribly upset and uppity over its abolition, and the people were quite content under Guerrero Saldaña's rule. One reason that the prospect of abolition might not have had as violent a result was that Guerrero Saldaña had promised compensation to former is slaveholders to ease the financial and economic burden that the process would incur both privately and publicly.\n\nSounds great, right? Well, not quite. More to follow in Post Part 2." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fhx2vw5", "fhxbgpv" ], "score": [ 69, 677 ], "text": [ "As a a follow-up question, is there any precedent to a former president being considered for Supreme Court Justice?", "There have been very few Presidents who served in public office after the Presidency. JQA is *by far* the most famous of them, due not only to the mere length of his tenure in the house, but also due to the tenacious reputation that he earned while serving, where he became of the leading voices of abolition within Congress, fighting against the Gag Rule, the annexation of Texas, and participating in the famous legal case concerning the slave ship *Amistad*. He was the only former President to go to the House after, but not to Congress, joined in that by Andrew Johnson, although roughly opposite in terms of honor, Johnson serving a mere few months in the office in 1875 before dying in July of that year, and leaving no legacy to speak of.\n\nThere were a few others who had notable post-presidential political careers in highest level of government though. The next most obvious would be William Howard Taft, who was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by the next Republican, President Harding, in 1921, 9 years after he had failed to win reelection. It is often said that this had always been his true ambition anyways, and it is generally agreed that not only did he *enjoy* his time on the bench a great deal more than in the White House, but also that he was much better at it too, establishing himself as an able and forceful leader of the Court through the 1920s, generally seen as consistently conservative in how he kept the court directed, as well as being a strong advocate for legal reform from Congress, resulting in the creation of the Conference of Senior Circuit Judges and the passage of the Judges' Bill.\n\nThe final former President to highlight would be John Tyler, who I'm going to focus on here because conversely he is the most obscure on this count! After the Presidency he returned home to Virginia, and he did attempt to keep his reputation burnished, but didn't seek major office. With the decline of the Whig party, he began to turn toward the Democrats. In 1860, with deteriorating national situation, he attended the 1860 Democratic Convention, and although he didn't campaign for it, \"entertained the delusion\" that he might perhaps be offered up their Presidential candidate, under the impression that he would provide a unity candidate for the entire south to coalesce around. The odds of this were, in fact, nil, and he in the end became a supporter of Breckenridge, the more hardline candidate, announcing his impression of the situation to be \"*live or die, survive or perish.*\"\n\nNevertheless, he wished not to see the Union perish, even if he feared it might be impossible to avoid, and as the wave of secession began, he was a supporter of the Crittenden Compromise, which had hoped to over a means to ensure slavery had stronger protections to alleviate concerns over Lincoln's election, but of course in the end failed. He continued to try to position himself as a force for compromise, offering to head a conference of the six slave and free states closest to the border, but this too didn't prevent the march to war, even if serving in the Virginia delegation gave him further chance to feel like he was trying. He saw a few other honors in the period though, being picked by Virginia to head a delegation to Pres. Buchanan to discuss the crisis, as well as to later meet with Lincoln on the eve of his inauguration.\n\nHis return to public service continued further with his selection to attend the Virginia convention for secession, where he was considered one of the most honored members, and by that point had shifted to being pro-secession, and by the vote on the 17th, had become one of the vocal proponents, and afterwards gave a public speech comparing their coming struggle to that of their revolutionary forefathers\n\nWith secession a done deal, he finally returned to public office, standing for election to the Confederate Congress, and being chosen by Charles City County to represent them in the House. Congress wouldn't meet until February, 1862, so he spent the intervening months negotiating the official terms for Virginia's entry into the Confederacy, as well as the agreement to move the capital of the wannabe nation to Richmond, from Montgomery. He traveled to Richmond to begin his new position... and died a month before the Congress convened, passing away on January 18th, 1862. In the United States, his passing received perhaps the least notice of any former president, the traitor's death going without comment from Lincoln and the government, while in Virginia, a 150-carriage funeral procession and great mourning accompanied his passing.\n\n**Sources**\n\nBurns, Kevin J. “Chief Justice as Chief Executive: Taft’s Judicial Statesmanship.” *Journal of Supreme Court History* 43, no. 1 (March 2018): 47–68\n\nCrapol, Edward P.. *John Tyler, the Accidental President*. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. \n\nWaldstreicher, David, ed. *A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams*. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013.\n\nETA: Formatting and some clarity" ] }

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