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{ "a_id": [ "cvh1ywh" ], "score": [ 34 ], "text": [ "Debates over whether or not the idea of a \"Schlieffen plan\" actually existing aside, the Plan itself was kept fairly secret, with wargaming of scenarios based on it being few in number, and knowledge of the actual plan being restricted to high ranking war ministry and General Staff members.\n\nThat being said, to an extent the French and the Russians had guessed German intentions before. The French formulated Plan XVII with the expectation that the Germans would invade through southern Belgium (ie south of the Meuse) and Luxembourg, avoiding the bulk of the country while also avoiding most of the French fortress line. Hence Plan XVII envisioned placing two French armies inside Alsace-Lorraine via offensives to threaten the German advance from the south, while three armies to the north parried and reversed the main German attack. Likewise, the Russians promised to mobilize '800 000 men' to be sent against presumably weak German opposition, in support of the French, while two thirds of Russia's mobilized forces would move against Austria-Hungary. \n\nWhen the German invasion actually came, it was certainly a surprise for France, Britain and Belgium. The French did not expect an invasion of Belgium on such a wide front, and with all of Germany's reserve divisions committed. The British were shocked considering that the invasion encompassed the whole country; had the invasion taken place as the French believed it would, the chances of British involvement would have been greatly reduced. Few were also prepared for the ferocity of the German attack: in spite of Belgian civilians having been told to avoid altercations and largely heeding this advice from their government, the invading Germans lashed out at 'francs-tireurs' real or largely imagined, and c. 5600 Belgian and c. 900 French civilians were murdered, and tens of thousands of homes destroyed. Dinant and Lueven (including it's university library) were almost completely raised. \n\n* *War Planning in 1914*, Holger Herwig and Richard Hamilton\n* *Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War*, Annika Mombauer\n* *Catastrophe*, Max Hastings\n* *Belgian Atrocities 1914: A history of denial*, John Horne and Alan Kramer\n* *The War that Ended Peace*, Margaret MacMillan" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8sy710", "c8t1y6h" ], "score": [ 8, 2 ], "text": [ "Okay, no. No, no, no, no. No war is ever a \"good guy vs. bad guy\" sort of thing from a historical perspective, though individual nations by and large choose to cast the war they're fighting in that sense. You can bet World War II was seen by citizens of the Axis powers as a \"good vs. evil\" affair, just as certainly as you can bet that they didn't see themselves on the \"evil\" side.\n\nThe truth of the matter is that history really is, to raise the old cliche, \"written by the victors\". Or at least by those left alive to write it. Retrospect allows us to see the horrors of the Holocaust or the unspeakably brutal after-effects of the Eastern or Chinese or Philippine Fronts, but it's probably safe to say that the majority of German conscripts fighting at, say, Kursk, were not there so that their leaders could continue to exterminate millions of innocent civilians in frighteningly efficient fashion.\n\n**tl;dr: No war is ever \"good vs. evil\"; individuals and nations just choose to cast it that way.**", "The truth is that WW1 wasn't fought over anything in particular. Perhaps the only belligerents that had any real reason to go to war were the Serbians who wanted to remain free of direct Austro-Hungarian control and the Austro-Hungarians who wanted to control the Serbians (in a manner of speaking). The other parties had a variety of reasons which I'll cover below.\n\nWar had been coming for a long time before the actual event. The arms race between Great Britain and Germany resulted to the development of the Dreadnought and increased tensions between the two nations. The intricate treaties and alliances saw Germany surrounded by Triple Entente powers. Obviously this left Germany feeling threatened and coupled with the existing German military tradition, preparations for war were inevitable. \n\nFrance had territorial ambitions. It had been humiliated by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War and was forced to cede the territories of Alsace-Lorraine to the Prussians. Russia is probably the more interesting. It had no real interest in joining the war and only did so because of Serbia's plea that Russia aid its Slavic brethren. Following German unification, Russia feared German military intentions and so agreed to an alliance with France, encircling Germany. \n\nItaly really had no reason whatsoever. It had initially been aligned with Germany and the Austro-Hungarians but withdrew when hostilities broke out. It eventually joined the Entente and spent most of the war getting its butt handed to it. The British were part of the Entente but only entered the war after Germany violated Belgian neutrality. I don't recall reading anything about it, but I suspect the British were also suspicious of German colonial ambitions and with the High Seas Fleet, Germany had the naval power to threaten British colonial possessions abroad.\n\nThe Ottoman Empire only entered the conflict after initial hostilities had broken out and only did so because war would have provided a nice distraction to its domestic issues of which it had many. The Empire also didn't really care who it allied with, it approached the Russians but refused Russian demands that would have effectively placed parts of the Ottoman Empire under Russian control, the British also refused. Germany on the other handed needed an ally in the Middle East. The Ottomans could threaten British interests which would tie up British forces (which it did) and also had the potential to threaten Russia (which it did to some extent).\n\ntl,dr: the reasons that the different belligerents entered the war were varied and all served national interests. None can be labeled good or evil.\n\nEdit: a word" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjrnvho", "cjrq9z8" ], "score": [ 25, 18 ], "text": [ "I can only give some descriptions on the changes throughout history. The essence basically remains the same throughout history: the mass of the catechumens and the eucharistic liturgy proper. Initially Mass was offered only on Sundays and feast days, but as more feast days were inserted, daily masses began to be offered.\n\nChanges were made throughout history: additional prayers, or changes in the order of prayers. But the Canon of Mass, the core eucharistic prayer in the eucharistic liturgy, has more or less been the same in Rome since Pope Gregory I (600 AD) to 1500 AD. Elsewhere there is more variation, and only unified by Pope Pius V in 1570 after the Council of Trent.\n\nThe liturgy in 500 AD compared to 1000 and 1500 AD was simpler, with fewer prayers, graduals, and no Credo, just to mention a few. It should therefore be shorter, but since the medieval ages sometimes did not have sermons, the length could be the same. A Tridentine mass (after 1500s) could reach 3 hour long in high mass form with a sermon.\n\n", "If you're curious, the liturgy of John Chrysostom (4th century) is still performed in Eastern Orthodox churches today every Sunday morning with very little difference, except a few: Pews wouldn't have been there; catechumens would be standing in the back, in the narthex, and would leave after the catechumen prayers mid-way through; non-Christians would also leave mid-way through, before the eucharist; men and women would be on separate sides of the aisle. Besides these minor differences though, attend pretty much any Eastern Orthodox Sunday morning liturgy and it's word-for-word (translated) the same one done in the fourth century as written by John Chrysostom." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eepz4ke", "eeq6tfn" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "First and foremost it's amazing that they've been kept. Please do what you can to make sure they don't get damaged and do what you can to minimize the damage. Original documents are often a wonderful treasure trove to many historians. Often even mundane documents can lead to some critical insight that nobody would have suspected at the time or even a century later. So please make sure they stay safe until they can be properly inventoried/scanned/saved.\n\nIt is also possible that they are of little actual value outside of the connection to your grandfather. Still better safe than sorry. Scanning the documents (provided the scanner itself does no damage) would probably be a good place to start as it preserves what is there.\n\nNot sure about the UK, if this were the US I would probably look at whatever preservation/museum that the particular unit he served in might have. I know the several army, navy, and air force units in the US have museums and archives at their home bases. That might be a place to start in the UK as well.\n\n ", "If there's a local museum or historical society it might be worth contacting them to see if they can help or direct you somewhere. I'd definitely advise giving them a quick read through to see if there's anything particularly interesting in there that you can mention." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck2fxfk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Are you referring to the letter Prince Edward sent to the City of London following his victory? Edward doesn't exactly say he was planning on retreating. Instead, he says he was withdrawing to link up with the Duke of Lancaster after abandoning an assault on Tours. After he rejected the French negotiators, Edward waited at Chatelleraute for four days in order to determine where exactly the French king and his army were. After that, it was in fact Edward who was pursuing the French, rather than the other way around. After that, the campaign was a messy series of maneuvers and skirmishes as both armies attempted to locate the other. Edward was clearly intending on having a battle, but it would be on his terms and on terrain carefully chosen to protect his men from the French attack. \n\nThe Poitiers campaign is (in terms of strategy) not very different from the Crecy campaign, or the Black Prince's 1355 *chevauchée* (although in that case, the French refused to come out to fight in the field). It is a common misconception that the English engaged in *chevauchées* in order to avoid confrontations with larger French armies. Most sources point to the exact opposite scenario: the English actively desired open combat in the field, while the French only attacked marauding English armies when they felt they had no other choice. The English knew that their armies were highly effective in the field, and frequently won battles against numerically superior foes. The prospect of engaging larger forces was not a cause for much fear, provided that the English were able to maneuver so that they 1)fought the battle on favorable terrain and 2)prevented multiple French forces from enveloping them. What has often been interpreted in the past as English armies being chased by French armies is more often English armies attempting to maneuver in order to pick the best location for open combat. For more on English military strategy in the opening stages of the Hundred Years War, I highly recommend Clifford Rogers' *The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations*." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c67kk7h" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "By the time of the Salem trials the witch craze was already well into its decline. It was an anomalous outburst for the time. If you want to know the witch craze in general I can talk a bit about that, though I only really know about the European trials, and only English ones in any detail.\n\nDifferent parts of Europe experienced the witch craze differently, and to different degrees. In the mainland (Germany, France, etc), the witch hunts were an institutionalised phenomenon presided over by the Church and enforced by the local authorities, from the top down. Witchcraft was considered a form of heresy, and so the Inquisition was granted the power to carry out its own investigations. Continental witches were believed to be part of an organised cult in league with the devil as part of some grand diabolical conspiracy. They were tortured for confessions and forced to name names, tried in ecclesiastical courts as heretics and burned alive. \n\nEngland's treatment of witchcraft was quite unique. For a start, the Catholic Church had no authority there, which meant no Inquisition. Accusations arose from within local communities, rather than from above. With the exception of Matthew Hopkins (the self styled Witch Finder General'), there was never any attempt by the authorities to incite a witch hunt. Witchcraft was not seen as a heresy, but rather as an extreme form of public disorder. There was no conspiracy, no 'witch cult', no witch's Sabbath, no flying and rarely any references to a diabolic pact. In fact English witches had a pretty boring time, though unlike continental witches they did get to have [familiars](_URL_0_), which I guess is kinda cool. English witches were usually tried by jury in secular, common law courts just like any other felon, and the guilty were hanged rather than burned.\n\nIn England, accusations of witchcraft tended to follow a basic narrative. Typically they would begin with an old woman going door to door begging for alms, and then being turned away by a disgruntled neighbour. Some tragedy would inevitably befall the neighbour, who would then accuse the old woman of witchcraft. It's amazing how many pamphlets from the time describe cases that follow this exact pattern. So how easy was it to accuse somebody? Quite easy. But it wasn't unheard of to be found innocent. In fact, it was relatively common. Some courts were naturally reluctant to prosecute something so unprovable, and if you could find enough people to vouch in your favour, you could be let off automatically.\nTrials on the continent were significantly scarier due to the use of torture and the large amount of authority given to individual judges/inquisitors to prosecute witches.\n\nThe total number of executions is usually estimated to be around 40 to 50,000, but higher estimates do exist." ] }

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[ [ "http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/assets/0702/0000/0341/hopkins_mid.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cww73w8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This is a pretty complicated question and, largely, is based on an interpretation of the histories of Alexander that is now considered unfeasible. That, however, doesn’t mean that there isn’t some truth to the claim. I don’t have the time to find my sources right now so this is going to be a bit informal.\n\nWhy it’s wrong:\n\nEarly modern Alexander scholarship was dominated by some British guy (sorry I don’t remember his name) who saw Alexander as basically a pre-Jesus. After Alexander finished with his conquests, he started taking on Persian customs and airs. The scholar saw this as proof of Alexander being an equalizing force: by elevating conquered Persians to the level of their Greek counterparts, Alexander was declaring equality of man. Christianity, which is a universal in its acceptance, spread easily because of the progressive framework wrought by Alexander’s liberal policies.\n\nEnter Badian. Basically the old British dude was the premier Alexander scholar until Badian showed up, slapped him around, and took his throne. Alexander’s ‘persianization’ Badian said, was not an attempt at syncretism but rather an attempt to fully adopt the Persian system. Alexander’s position on top of the Greek world was rather tenuous: Athens and Sparta were constantly angling for independence and Alexander’s supremacy was only guaranteed through military might. In contrast, the Persian monarchal system was steeped in tradition and (largely) unwavering loyalty for their ruler. Furthermore, in terms of bureaucracy, the Persian system was significantly more advanced and efficient. Think feudal lords paying tribute (Greece) compared to a much more modern taxation and levy system (Persia). It was therefore in Alexander’s best interests to position himself as a successor to Darius III rather than as a foreign invader. Badian also did a lot of detailed textual analysis (both scholars based their conclusions largely on the works of Plutarch and Arrian) that made the British dude’s claims look silly.\n\nWhy it’s right:\n\nOk so this concept was created by the wishful thinking of some British historian who wanted to see Jesus everywhere he looked. It is not, however, completely without merit. Christian thought was not created from a vacuum but rather, in many ways, can be seen as an extension of earlier Greek thought: For instance, despite Augustine’s professed rejection of Greek thinkers, many of his arguments rest on distinctly Greek premises. The similarity can be seen quite easily: take a Greek concept like Plato’s allegory of the cave and replace the conclusion with Jesus/God’s love etc. and you get a rough approximation of Christianity. Aristotle can be such a boring read because (in the Judeo-Christian tradition) we have accepted his ideas so completely that they seem utterly dull and obvious. Furthermore, in many Christian traditions there’s some sort of intercession (usually by Mary) to rescue saintly sinners from hell. These sinners are people in hell who were not saved by virtue of being born before Jesus and are invariably composed of famous Greek thinkers.\n\nBasically, the idea is that the universal acceptance of Hellenic ideals allowed for an acceptance of a theology that is created in a Greek framework. Furthermore, the lack of strict language/cultural/political boundaries allowed for dissemination of ideas across vast tracts of land. This created the perfect infrastructure for the spread of Christianity; which is already a pretty liberating and attractive ideology if you (as most non-elite people during this era were) are living in the shit. \n" ] }

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[ "http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ironmaiden/alexanderthegreat.html" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dep2xw5" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "So contrary to popular belief, the \"Founders\" were not the main proponents of separation from Great Britain -- quite the contrary. Most Founders were quite hesitant to pull away. However, populist movements really started to become prevalent by the end of the 1760s. \n\nTo explain, Founders like John Adams had a long history of fearing Democracy and many other aspects of their future government. Check out [Adams' own early view of democracy](_URL_2_) in 1763:\n\n > Democracy, will soon degenerate into an Anarchy, such an Anarchy that every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes, and no Mans life or Property or Reputation or Liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral Virtues, and Intellectual Abilities, all the Powers of Wealth, Beauty, Wit, and Science, to the wanton Pleasures, the capricious Will, and the execrable Cruelty of one or a very few.\n\nYeah, not very flattering, is it? However, his views eventually evolved as the situation in America became more severe.\n\nBy the early 1770s, populist movements across America really shifted American politics as a whole. Books like Marjoleine Kars' *Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-revolutionary North Carolina* outlines the ways that populist movements in the South were able to fight back against corruption and the government (mainly between 1766 - 1771). This is important because \"Regulator Rebellions\" had a direct impact on what happened after the war.\n\nBetween 1772 - 1775, a lot changed, and most was spurned on by the general public. Everyone knows about the Boston Tea party, but most people don't realize that the Boston Tea Party caused a ripple affect with Tea Parties all across America in 1774. Tea Parties happened in many American cities, including [Philadelphia, Annapolis, Charleston, and many others](_URL_1_). This forced the gentry into a precarious situation. Some, like Charles Carroll of Carrolton [corresponded with his father about this in 1774](_URL_3_), essentially saying that while he doesn't think that these protests are a good thing, the rich and powerful must get involved in American politics so they can secure their place in America's future. \n\nThat's why the tone of the early Continental Congress is very tame. Internal proceedings show that many states, especially in the South, leaders were not keen to even consider separation from Great Britain. But the challenge was that as the Continental Congresses met, the people back home kept protesting, and burning down the houses of tax collectors, or kicking governors out of their homes. A great book that tackles this is Terry Bouton's *Taming Democracy: The People, The Founders, and the Troubling End of the American Revolution* where he correctly ascribes many of the Founders to be hesitant leaders towards independence. It also explains why, even after minor hostilities broke out in 1775, the Founders still sent the \"[Olive Branch Petition](_URL_4_)\" back to Britain as they vainly hoped to stop a full war before it happened. Even when the Continental Congress empowered General George Washington with command in June 1775, they did not expect that his duties would necessarily be a full-break with Great Britain. The Continental Congress wanted some autonomy from Great Britain and some representation in government, which they believed was more achievable than independence. \n\nNow I should disclaim that this isn't true of all Founders. Some, especially in the North were much more pro-separation than many others. [Samuel Adams](_URL_0_), who was very vocal and active during the Stamp Acts protests, helped organized the Boston Tea Party, and was a member of the Continental Congress Representing Massachusetts was very vocal from the beginning that he believed separation from Great Britain should be a primary goal. There are a few others that fall into this category, but not many. \n\nTl;Dr: Most founders dragged their feet as the American \"mob\" dragged them forward . \n\nEdit: fixed a misspelled name. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.biography.com/people/samuel-adams-9176129#synopsis", "http://rethinkingtherevolution.com/blog/2016/teaparty", "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0045-0008", "https://archive.org/details/gb2ZLwslLZQnQC", "http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-adopts-olive-branch-petition" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6psrkd" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Republicans ran Congressional campaigns in 1996 (Clinton/Dole) explicitly as a check against the presumed Clinton victory. (Clinton was up 8 points in October polling.) The NRCC warned against giving Clinton a blank check and pushed for voters in vulnerable districts to split their ballot." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ffoddbp", "ffoef6q", "ffoesob", "ffojy23", "ffol0v5", "ffost8t", "ffovyaj", "ffp33uo" ], "score": [ 17, 26, 8, 6, 7, 17, 6, 7 ], "text": [ "Welcome to ~~best-paid~~ ~~most-respected~~ ~~most pleasant~~ ~~least stressful~~ ~~highest-status~~ a job on the internet!", "Thank you so much for the warm welcome, u/hannahstohelit and the rest of the mod team! I'm excited to lend my hand in the effort to clean up the internet and let everyone know where all the comments have gone!", "All hail the glorious ascendant /u/SarahAGilbert! Welcome to the storied and legendary ranks of the moderators, and long may you reign over this majestic community.", "Gloria al nostro moderatore!!! May the stroke of your comment removals be fair and the swing of your banhammer be just!", "Добро пожаловать в команду! Welcome, welcome, welcome!", "On behalf of the lurking majority that come to read, thank you for sharing your insightful work, and thanks to all of you moderators for your stewardship. You've made it one of the most interesting and polite corners of the internet.", "Welcome! Hals- und Beinbruch!", "Welcome to our newest ~~slave~~ ~~unpaid intern~~ moderator! I hope you're ready for the massive influx of ~~wealth~~ ~~karma~~ interactions with neo-Nazis you'll be receiving." ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a3p1ig/meta_i_wrote_my_phd_dissertation_on_askhistorians/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a4yc1v/meta_i_wrote_my_phd_dissertation_on_askhistorians/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a5j123/meta_im_back_with_the_final_post_summarizing_my/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cbr4b3z", "cbr8xog", "cbr9v42" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Neat idea. Good luck!", "I only know of Amundsen's expeditions in passing (at the \"Wikipedia\" level), but I've read books by and about pre-flight-era polar explorers. \n\nIn slightly earlier days, Norwegians like Amundsen had been noted for using more indigenous technologies and survival techniques than, say, the British (notably Scott). By the time he disappeared in 1928, technology had evolved so quickly and significantly (e.g. airplanes), it's likely that those national differences no longer existed, but I bring this up because it's possible that Amundsen's crew had different technology than the searchers. \n\nWhat I'd suggest is to find his most recent expedition memoir, which I gather is *Our Polar Flight: The Amundsen-Ellsworth Polar Flight* aka *My Polar Flight* (1925) which will hopefully give a good description of the preparation, equipment, clothing, safety considerations, etc his crew were using around that time. Also look for books by any of the other parties involved, or books describing the search efforts. I usually find that the explorers themselves go into more technical details and practicalities, rather than filling pages with biographical information, politics, legacy, etc. If your library doesn't have what you want, ask if they can bring them in on an inter-library loan.\n\nBTW, while trying to find his book online, I found a couple of film shorts [1](_URL_1_) and [2](_URL_0_) which you've probably already found, but in any case are great for visualization", "Depending on the snow (incline, thickness) short and long skis (used by Amundsen on his South Pole expedition and Nansen's Farthest North expedition).\n\nSnowshoes (Fridtjof Nansen's Crossing of Greenland)\n\nSledges to haul provisions - dragged by either men or sled dogs (again, Amundsen South Pole and Fridtjof Nansen North Pole expeditions).\n\nRobert Falcon Scott used ponies to haul the sleds instead of dogs and that didn't work out so well. I'd presume the same could be said of using ponies in the North.\n\nPemmican -- something akin to beef jerkey -- would be eaten by humans or dogs. It's high in fat content so it provides many calories. Dried meats, because water is heavy and a burden to haul around. Biscuits. Tobacco, etc. This, again, makes sled dogs superior to ponies being that the food stores could be used by both humans and dogs. Ponies need hay, and that would be extra weight on the sledges that would be somewhat useless to humans. Other tinned goods would be added such as jams to provide some variety to the diet.\n\nFor the sleds, you'd need leather lashings of some sort to tie everything down, and then extra lashings in case the first ones broke. You would also need extra runners (skis on the bottom) for the sledges in case they break (which they will, it's the rough icy arctic).\n\nTents are a must. Sleeping bags are a must. Snow goggles to prevent snow blindness. Cocaine was sometimes used to help with the pain of snow blindness (staring at bright snow too long).\n\nBoots and pant linings were often made out of reindeer, sometimes out of specific parts such as the inside of the leg of the baby reindeer. \n\n*\"Reindeer-skin is, in comparison with its weight, the warmest of all similar materials known to me, and the skin of the calf, in its winter-coat especially, combines the qualities of warmth and ligtness in quite an unusual degree.\"* -Nansen (Greenland)\n\nFor a certain type of boot called 'finnesko', Nansen claimed the best were made out of reindeer leg skin from a buck.\n\nAdditionally, heavy woolen shirts and trousers were worn with layers of socks and gloves. To soak up moisture buildup in the boots and the gloves, Nansen would stuff 'sennegrass' near the feet and hands. [Sennegrass, according to the Meriam-Webster Dictionary: a widely distributed sedge (Carex vesicaria) with grasslike leaves that is used by arctic and antarctic explorers as insulating material ](_URL_0_)\n\nIn rain and blizzards, they would also wear a thin canvas overcoat to keep dry.\n\nA primus stove/cooker that runs on paraffin and/or alcohol is a must for heating up water and other food. It's been a while since I have read books on the matter, but I believe Nansen used seal blubber in place of oil/paraffin when the latter ran low. The primus would work, but would spew dirtier smoke since the blubber would be relatively unrefined.\n\nSpeaking of blubber. Harpoons. You're going to want some harpoons to hunt seals. Rifles as well, but harpoons will be good if you need to conserve ammo. You'll need some sort of knives to butcher the seals as well.\n\nSeals (and polar bears in the north) are another reason you'll want dogs. You can't feed seal/bear meat to ponies. And when you run out of food for the dogs, you can eat those as well (Nansen did just this in his Farthest North expedition)\n\nMotors aren't the best. At least not in the south pole expeditions. Too many pieces to break down and the gas/oil/other liquids would gum up at those low temperatures (Robert Falcon Scott brought a motor on his expedition -- it didn't work very long)\n\nFor shipboard entertainment, you'll want a library filled with books, and maybe a small piano/organ (Nansen expedition. Amundsen might have brought one South, too.) A small printing press to make a short \"newspaper\" is another way Polar expeditions have killed time in the long, dark winter. Cards. Cigars. Some alcohol. You have to keep spirits up. \n\nUsually on polar expeditions, they will bring scientific instruments for posterity. They'd bring *long* lengths of cable to make depth measurements around the shorelines of Antarctica. \n\nStraight out of Farthest North (1897):\n\n*\"The instruments of scientific observations of course formed an important part of our equipment, and special care was bestowed upon them. in addition to the collection of instruments i had used on my Greenland expedition, a great many new ones were provided, and no pains were spared to get them as good and complete as possible. for meteorological observations, in addition to the ordinary thermometers, barometers, aneroids, psychrometers, hygrometers, anemometers, etc., etc., self-registering instruments were also taken. of special importance were a self-registering aneroid barometer (barograph) and a pair of self-registering thermometers (thermographs). for astronomical observations we had a large theodolite and two smallers ones, intended for use on our sledge expeditions, together with several sextants of different sizes. We had, moreover, four ship's chronometers, and several pocket-chronometers. For magnetic observations for taking the declination, inclination, and intensity (both horizontal and total intensity) we had a complete set of instruments. Among others may be mentioned a spectroscope especially adapted for the northern lights, an electroscope for determining the amount of electricity in the air, photographic apparatuses, of which we had seven, large and small, and a photographometer for making charts. for hydrographic observations we took a full equipment of water-samplers, deep-water thermometers, etc. to ascertain the saltiness of the water, we had, in addition to the ordinary areometers, an electric apparatus specially constructed by Mr. Thornoe. Altogether, our scientific equipment was especially excellent, thanks in great measure to the obliging assistance rendered me by many men of science.\"* \n\nsources: \"Farthest North (1897)\" by Fridtjof Nansen. \"South Pole (1912)\" by Roald Amundsen. \"First Crossing of Greenland (1880)\" by Fridtjof Nansen." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.dieselpunks.org/video/roald-amundsen-lincoln-ellsworth-polar-flight-1925", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLeLohOIsD4" ], [ "http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sennegrass" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ce4fowl" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not to dissuade any new advice, but we've collected past posts in this topic under the FAQ section [History Careers and Education](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/theory#wiki_history_careers_and_education" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e8j9b34" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It's a byproduct of British colonialism. During their process of colonisation, the English settlers often took Irish names - of people and places - and Anglicised them. For example, the capital of the Republic is Dublin, based on the viking settlement that used to be there called Dubhlinn (Blackpool if translated literally). More than that, though, while Irish was never prohibited in general (contrary to many popular myths), English was the language which dominated the Irish education system and civil service, and English was taught *exclusively* in the education system until 1871. There was major social pressure from the Catholic Church as well to discontinue the usage of Irish and they advocated against people speaking it until around the 1890's. \n\nThat attitude continued among a huge section of Ireland in spite of the Cultural Revival at the turn of the 20th century because employment opportunities were to be found in the Anglosphere - the United Kingdom and the United States, so Irish people were encouraged to learn English for when they would \"inevitably\" emigrate.\n\nNow to the thrust of your question; Irish people's names are spelled with such variety because they weren't originally in English. They had to be Anglicised at some point and the method in which that was done wasn't done so consistently. O'Neill vs O'Neal vs O'Neil for example, would translate roughly back to Ó'Néill (grandson/descendant of Néill). Another example could be Piers v Pierce v Pearse v Pearson, which would go back to Mac Phearais (or Nic Phearais if they were a woman).\n\nThat's not to say Irish names in the original format are extremely consistent either. Ó'Néill could be Ua Néill, or Uí Néill, or Ní Néill but that's defined by rules - depending on stuff such as a person's gender." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clljv3q" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "In all likelihood most siege engines would have been a melange of cut and scavenged woods, some chronicles testify to ships hulls and masts, and houses, torn apart. However, oak and beech are the most common references in chronicles from Charlemagne (8th c CE) to Froissart (14th c CE), but that would be in areas where it was plentiful from forests in France, England, Germany. Fir was a good replacement: a strong tree with height and stoutness. Ash as well would have been a good substitute for some parts under some stress where flex was acceptable, and it was common for wheels, although did not grow as big. Hornbeam for axels where available, pretty much the hardest wood in Europe although did not grow in size like other trees. \n\nOnce you get to the Levant there are stories where crusaders needed to travel miles around to find suitable woods, although the woods are not named. The plentiful pines would have been liable to snapping, although Arabic siege engines were made of cedar according to one chronicle of the 8th c CE." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpfy6lj" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Not a historian, but you might look at the [San Diego History Center](_URL_3_) for answers on this. They appear to have some primary sources in their collection, but specifically on this they site Kevin Starr's Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920's (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). \n\nI also found a [1931 news article](_URL_2_) that mentions it, charging him with \"bias to Jews, Blacks and Negroes.\"\n\nMichael Newton's [White Robes and Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866](_URL_1_) mentions him.\n\nYou should also seek out the book [Chronological Record of Los Angeles City Officials: 1850—1938](_URL_0_) in a library. You might also look in LA newspaper archives - he was accused of being endorsed by the Klan and admitted his prior membership, so there should be something in the archives from 1928. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/chronological-record-of-los-angeles-city-officials-1850-1938-supplement-july-1-1937-june-30-1965/oclc/10140559", "https://books.google.com/books?id=NT0xBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=los+angeles+mayor+john+porter+KKK&source=bl&ots=U3v7LzZ2Jr&sig=pezmw7xBYxnUY2wD9hbfA27sn6E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R_cFVYa4HYuuggTI0YHoBw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=los%20angeles%20mayor%20john%20porter%20KKK&f=false", "http://www.jta.org/1931/07/13/archive/los-angeles-mayor-charged-with-bias-to-jews-negroes", "http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/2000-2/klan.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crh5oib" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "In short, we can show that Joseph and/or his compatriots were involved in intentional deception, explicit plagiarism, and attempts to bury evidence of misdeeds. I don't think we can ever completely rule out psychosis or an epic level of self-dillusion, but I think it highly unlikely considering what we know about his actions and behaviors. There's too much to write to go through it all, but I'll touch on some of the evidence below. \n\n1. As you mentioned, Joseph had a long history of cons and frauds. This started young as a failed seer or glass looker. He was involved in at least one expedition for buried treasure, along with his father. This produced no results. Every time they started to dig, Joseph would say evil spirits took the gold away. He was involved in a fraudulent banking scheme, which he fled from. He was involved in several secret and illegal marriages across multiple states, which he publicly and repeatedly lied about. There are others, but I mention these because they required an active attempt at deception. See [more information here](_URL_4_), and a copy of his youth arrest for [scrying here](_URL_1_). \n\n2. Joseph's origin claims are demonstrably fraudulent. For example, the Book of Mormon claims to have been completed in 600 BC and translated solely from that record in 1829; however, several verses were copied verbatim from the 1611 KJV + Apocrypha (his family bible), including [translation errors of the KJV translators](_URL_3_) (Joseph's family bible). There are many other examples of plagiarism, but this one is the most blatant. Again, something that required an intent to deceive. \n\n3. Joseph had a history of hiding evidence of his misdeeds. For example, we have one letter he wrote where he told a potential lover to [burn the letter to protect him](_URL_5_), one of his former wives [accused him of ordering abortions after impregnating a girl](_URL_2_), and ordering his secretary to [burn the minutes of his infamous council of 50](_URL_0_) (his attempt at the presidency) when arrested for treason. \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://web.archive.org/web/20150319092257/http://bycommonconsent.com/2013/09/11/the-council-of-fifty/", "http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/no68highlightedbillwholep1.gif", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Marinda_Bates_Pratt&oldid=661028840#Allegation_of_abortions", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Book_of_Mormon_and_the_King_James_Bible&oldid=652782240#Perpetuation_of_KJV_translation_variations", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Smith_and_the_criminal_justice_system&oldid=662764222", "http://user.xmission.com/~research/family/strange.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cl5sl10" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "On a purely technical level, \"visual and command\" references both German radios and optics. Although German tank design was relatively conservative, especially at the start of the war, their tanks incorporated good optical equipment and effective radios. The latter was especially effective at coordinating German panzers as an effective unit. German optical sights were often quite advanced as well. This gave the early war German tank commanders a better sense of situational awareness than his French, British, or Russian counterparts. \n\nBut the Germans' early superiority in situational awareness was not just of a technical nature. Most German commanders did not fight \"buttoned-up,\" which is tanker parlance for fighting inside the vehicle. At the top of a German turret was an circular armored cupola with vision ports all around it. This allowed a commander to scan terrain with the \"Mark One Eyeball\" from a [relatively safe position](_URL_0_) as seen in this photo of a Panzer IV. Early war Allied tanks did not have this ergonomic design. For example, the [earlyT-34's top hatch](_URL_2_) was notoriously clumsy and did not give the commander a good view and exposed him to fire from the rear and flanks. When the Germans captured Allied tanks, one of the first things they would do if able was replace the top hatch with a German one, as in these [*Beutepanzers*](_URL_1_). \n\nSo in sum, not only did early war panzers possess better optics and radios, they were a more ergonomic design than their contemporaries. \n\n*Sources*\n\nForczyk, Robert. *Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front*. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2014. \n\nZaloga, Steve. *Panzer IV Vs Char B1 Bis: France 1940*. Oxford: Osprey Pub, 2011." ] }

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[ [ "http://panzerfaust.ca/AFV%20interiors/pz4d_files/pz4h-01.jpg", "http://beutepanzer.ru/Beutepanzer/su/t-34/t-34early/t-34_camo_01.jpg", "http://www.asisbiz.com/Battles/Barbarossa/images/Soviet-T-34-tanks-abandoned-after-a-battle-with-German-forces-01.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6ao6xm" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Someone did a presentation about this in the constitutional law class I took ages ago but I barely remember it. I do remember that at a national level, the [Confederate Constitution took the Article III language virtually word-for-word](_URL_0_) from the United States Constitution. It empowered the creation of a supreme court and tribunals inferior to it, but Davis and the Confederate Congress never got around to appointing justices to a Supreme Court of the Confederacy. I believe most of the district court judges simply continued serving in the antebellum benches. Given that early American courts frequently cited British common law precedent from before the Revolution (and the Supreme Court still cites pre-revolutionary British common law to this day), I'd theorize that the Confederate district courts continued to operate under prior precedent unless that precedent was explicitly changed -- but don't cite me on that.\n\nState courts, to my knowledge, functioned the same way they did before secession since the states themselves didn't change. It'd be interesting to see the extent to which the Confederate courts changed after 1865, because Republican state legislatures theoretically could've created a whole new judiciary by ousting the sitting judges on treason charges. That'd be interesting to research too.\n\nIf you do end up researching the Confederate judiciary, please send me your findings! My interest has definitely been piqued." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dqfhs27" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Oh dear. I'll be frank with you: the reason why you haven't received an answer to this question is because the answer would be enormous. You could spend the rest of your life studying how these questions apply to but a single group of people - like the Maya - and never arrive at a definitive conclusion.\n\nI'm a bit occupied at the moment but I want to point you in the direction of [a series of posts I made a while back.](_URL_0_) A redditor asked why people in the United States do not say that native peoples were conquered, another user replied incorrectly, and I offered a brief overview of how Europe responded to the conquest. I think the linked reply will give you a taste of how complex the \"motivation\" question is. \n\nBut the real issue I want to discuss is the \"why couldn't indigenous peoples defend themselves\". Again, I want to point you to [a post](_URL_1_) I made on that thread which contextualizes the topic you are talking about. After you have read that material, why don't we see what questions you have and we can go from there?" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3drttg/why_does_everyone_say_native_americans_were/ct8am3i/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3drttg/why_does_everyone_say_native_americans_were/ctch56l/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cd94059" ], "score": [ 24 ], "text": [ "I don't have any sources at hand but I will tell you what I remember from my Spanish High School history lessons:\n\nFranco no longer is the dictator he was at the end of the Civil War, his aging and loosening of the executive power have made him a somewhat ceremonial figure, specially after he appointed his close confidant, admiral Luis Carrero Blanco as prime minister in june 1973. In this time ETA became an active threat, but they almost never made moves on civilians, and targeted mostly politicians and the military, Carrero Blanco himself being one of the casualties.\n\nWhen talking about political issues you have to take into account that all Spanish parties besides Francoist movements were not dead in any way and were active either very discreetly or abroad. People did discuss politics but no real protests or manifestations ocurred because a) censorship was strict and powerful all the way until Franco's death and b) Spain was ending a period of incredible economic and social prosperity. Almost everyone everywhere was happy, had a wealthy lifestyle and managed to do things that many other western nations had done 40 years before, such as buying their own cars, partying, going to concerts and travelling. Tourism BOOMED in Spain, and has not stopped since. It is rumoured also that Francoist authorities somehow managed to rig the Eurovision Song Contest in favor of Spain in 1968, making a singer called Massiel win with an awful song called 'La La La'.\n\nIt was only after Franco's death that the country was somewhat shaken up and had some economic troubles and challenges, but once democracy had been brought back, it would most certainly have seemed that the country had been a stable democratic state in appearance for some time. Cuturally, economically and diplomatically speaking, the country was the same as its neigbours except for the fact that it was a dictatorship. By 1972 people were just waiting for Franco to die." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "elkeivm", "ellbequ" ], "score": [ 136, 27 ], "text": [ "This question is so broad, the answer will depend pretty much entirely on what you want it to be. It would be easy to name many cases in which war produced technological innovations, but just as easy to cite many cases in which it didn't. Whichever point you want to prove, you can pick your examples to match. Someone who reads the question and thinks immediately of the World Wars will say \"competitive arms development, and the wartime challenges of logistics and medical care, contribute to technological invention and improvement in ways that might otherwise have taken longer, if they would have happened at all.\" But someone who thinks of, say, the Peloponnesian War might answer \"war is only a destructive force; the priorities and costs of war actually inhibit any technological development that might otherwise have received the necessary funding, manpower and thought.\" Whole swathes of human history attest to the fact that endemic warfare often produces anarchy and poverty, not innovation and technological change.\n\nThis is complicated by the question whether the particular technologies developed in wartime (and for the sake of fighting wars more effectively) actually matter outside of that context. Wars may make a society better at fighting wars, but does that help anyone in society at large? It's easy to point at technologies that were invented for a military purpose and have since made the leap into civilian life; but similarly, it's easy to point at technological innovations (like, say, siege towers or anti-tank shells) that serve only to solve military problems and don't contribute anything to the way people live.\n\nThe guide you offer into these hugely subjective topics is that you're asking whether society *needs* war as a way to propel technological change. The implied assumption is that without wars, such change might not happen at all, or at a much slower rate and in fewer ways. This framing would theoretically allow us to put all of the war-related technology of history onto a big pile and ask (passing by the question whether all of it has a use in society) whether war was needed to produce all that, or whether it would have been developed regardless. But the problem there is that there's no cut-and-dried distinction between \"war tech\" and \"civilian tech.\" They build on each other. For example, the steam engine was invented in an entirely civilian context and applied first in industries like mining and cloth making. But then it was adopted by navies to propel ships, which then kicked off a host of military innovations related to the new energy source. Modern tanks may be marvels of offensive and defensive technology, but the first tanks were designed around readily available agricultural tractor chassis. Does society need war to generate more advanced technology, or does military technology need society to produce things that allow it to develop?\n\nAny answer will inevitably devolve into a chicken-and-egg question. Who actually owes whom for what? Which innovations can militaries wholly claim (especially given that modern military technology is developed in a network of government contracting and liaison with civilian industry)? Can we isolate the improvements made during certain conflicts and can we assume they would not have been made without those conflicts? How do we define \"need\" when we say that society needs warfare to propel technological change?\n\nSuch questions can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. Technological improvements need to be seen in their historical context: not just the when and why of their development, but the origins of their parts and their principles. You don't just randomly come up with radar or nuclear fission to fight wars better. Similarly, society at large doesn't just sit there waiting for the boffins at the War Department to give them these things to play around with. The development of new technology is a process with different people contributing for different reasons - some in the military, some in universities, some in their shed or their study. It's impossible to say categorically which side needs the other to make any progress.\n\nJust as importantly, the mere existence of a military conflict does not speed up military innovation; there needs to be a context in which new technologies are available from other spheres and new technology is thought to offer opportunities for major tactical or strategic advantage. If these conditions are absent, wars will simply be fought in the tried-and-tested manner until one side wins. Many resources will be spent or destroyed in the process. It's not by definition an ideal environment for the development of different technology.\n\nIn short, we can't simply answer this question one way or the other. It is uncontroversial that research spurred on by war has contributed substantially to the improvement of existing technologies and the development of new ones (especially in recent times). After all, people invest ingenuity and resources in things that matter to them, and warfare has tended to matter a lot. On the other hand, it is also uncontroversial that technological innovation happens outside of the military sphere, and that militaries benefit substantially from this. It is also presumably uncontroversial that war is not primarily a creative force, but one mainly interested in enhancing its ability to destroy. Any attempt to resolve these contradictions in a single universal truism about war's influence on technology seems futile to me.", "There's a bit of determinism wrapped up in this question that I'd like to tackle -- although u/Iphikrates and u/restricteddata have done a good job of delineating how we think of \"technology\" and how it's applied, and how our specific technological-collegiate-military-industrial research-driven era is very much a product of the postwar period -- there's also a bit of an assumption that technology wins wars, and the side that techs the best will win. \n\nI'd like to tackle this by relating the question to ships and shipbuilding, which seems like it's an obvious area where \"better technology\" will win the day. But the weird thing is that the early days of the English (later British) navy's real rise as a power started at least partly because they adopted an inferior technology. \n\nI was reading about cannons the other day, as one does, and I was reminded of a major change in procurement that happened starting around the 1540s in England. Henry VIII was a Renaissance prince in many senses, not least his admiration for and desire to own many large guns. At the time, large cannons were cast from bronze, an alloy of copper and tin; while England (or Cornwall, anyhow) was rich in tin, copper had to be imported or guns themselves imported entire, which was expensive even for someone who dissolved monasteries and seized church property. (Copper was not discovered in England until Elizabeth's reign.) In the 1540s, though, crown investment in gun foundries in the Weald of Kent started to pay off in the form of cast iron guns, the first of which was cast in 1543. \n\nIron is not nearly as good a material as bronze for casting guns. Iron melts at a much higher point than bronze; it is heavier (more dense) than bronze; it is prone to flaws in the casting, which can compromise its strength; the black powder used at the time will corrode the inside of the gun (sulphuric acid is one of its combustion products). \n\nIron guns will also burst without warning, whereas bronze guns will bulge around flaws and then split. This was a major drawback for gunners at the time, who had no way of calculating how much powder and shot a gun might be safely charged with, other than by loading it and firing it off. \n\nBut the crucial advantage iron guns had over bronze ones was that they were substantially cheaper -- medieval England was rich in iron, and iron guns and shot (bronze guns usually used stone shot) were between 10-20 percent of the cost of bronze guns. (The cost of iron guns actually fell by about 20-25 percent, from £10-12 per ton to £8-9 per ton, from 1565 to 1600, in a period of otherwise rapid inflation.) \n\nSo, the iron gun was heavy, of uncertain strength, and prone to bursting without warning; but you could also get 5 or 10 iron guns for the cost of one bronze gun. The Royal Navy was still armed mostly with bronze through Elizabeth's reign, but cheap iron guns were suddenly widely available for smaller ships, including many that straddled the late-Elizabethan line between private commerce, privateering, and piracy. \n\nSo the reason for this rather long-winded answer is to point out that the measures we're often drawn into for what technology is \"better\" don't always match with how the rubber meets the road. The Japanese Zero was a \"better\" aircraft than the Grumman Wildcat for values of \"better\" that value speed, range and dogfighting, but the Wildcat racked up something like a 6:1 kill ratio when pilots fought in pairs and took advantage of their planes' ruggedness. British-built ships in the period I study are [often argued to be \"worse\" than French and Spanish designs,](_URL_0_), yet Trafalgar was so decisive a British victory that it was the last fleet combat for 111 years. Warfighting is not just about the stuff, but also logistics, training, performance and a host of other things." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/44sivx/ship_design_and_construction_in_the_age_of_sail/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cv9eh64", "cv9yi08" ], "score": [ 84, 24 ], "text": [ "It depended on the country. I can shed some light on the American and Soviet methods of disarmament.\n\nWhen the Red Army began to demobilize large formations of its troops, the Soviet officials told them to hand over any firearms (government issue or enemy capture) or face potentially being sent to a labor camp. The Soviet government was very careful about how it went about demobilizing its vast army. Its troops had been exposed to capitalist societies, the shortcomings of the government during wartime, and many had witnessed/participated in atrocities that would tarnish the image of the Red Army soldier which was so essential to Russian post-war propaganda. Though the government bestowed numerous gifts upon discharged troops, every soldier who was demobilized also had his/her bag searched on the train before arriving back home. Most did not put up too much resistance to this action because there were still so many weapons and explosives laying about the numerous battlefields back home in Russia. (Source: Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale, pp. 356-357)\n\nIn the American military, soldiers were officially allowed to take home one souvenir firearm, and they had to register it before departing back home. The lines to do so were pretty long at places like Camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre, and many soldiers sold off what extra weapons they had. I don't know what the policy was for service weapons or if a service member could send weapons through the mail before being sent to demobilization camps. It wouldn't surprise me if they did.", "I can help a bit with Finland. [EDIT: improved sources.]\n\nThe Finnish army was disarmed essentially in two phases: the interim peace treaty signed 19 September 1944 stipulated that the army must be demobilized from its peak of over 500 000 troops to peacetime strength of 43 000 in 2.5 months. The latter part, mostly comprised of the youngest troops, still fought in the Lapland War against the retreating Germans. Additionally, the paramilitary Civil Guard had to be dismantled, and with it its own depots and stored weapons.[1]\n\nPlanning for demobilization began as soon as the Continuation War began in 1941 [1], as the chaos following the First World War was still within memory and everyone wanted to avoid that. There were fears of widespread unemployment, housing crisis and problems when men returned to their workplaces after years of absence. In principle, they had a legal right to return to their pre-war places of work, but as you can imagine many of those posts had been filled during the war for example.[2] \n\nIn practice, Finnish units first moved on foot and by rail to the local area where they had been raised, and demobilized there. At designated demobilization points, the men turned in their weapons and other gear; they could keep their uniforms (with epaulettes cut off) and shoes, but had to turn in hats and belts.[1] (After the war, probably the most common menswear was the old uniform jacket, or something made from it.)\n\nIn principle, every weapon had to be turned in, including those captured from the enemy. In practice, quite a few men had already, during the war, smuggled captured trophies back home on leave for example; these trophy guns (mostly pistols) still turn up from old homes and estates. Hiding war trophies was illegal, but many officers seemed to turn a blind eye to that as long as it wasn't overtly conspicuous; on the other hand, I've heard of one sergeant for example who was court martialed, fined severely and demoted to private for hiding captured binoculars. \n\nHowever, there was also semi-official squirreling away happening: the so-called Weapons Cache Case.[3] Afraid of Soviet designs for Finland, high-ranking officers selected trusted men and began secretly caching equipment for guerrilla war all around Finland. The goal was to gather enough weapons, equipment and supplies for 8000 men, but after careful planning, in a few days enough equipment and food had been cached for about 35 000 men in over 1300 caches all around the country. Most of these weapons were obtained from demobilization depots and had been marked as \"damaged beyond repair\" or \"lost\" in official accounts. The operation came to light in spring 1945, and most of the weapons were returned to depots. However, it seems that as the caches were being cleared, at least some of the weapons went missing entirely - taken by men involved, as final \"life insurance.\" There have been cases where a SMG or even a light machine gun turns up during renovation, although these are rare nowadays. \n\nAccording to Finnish Police, substantial but unknown percentage of illegal firearms in Finland - estimated to be some tens of thousands in total - are thought to be old war trophies, even though thousands have been collected through amnesty legislation. As said, pistols such as Nagant feature prominently.\n\nSources: \n\n[1] master's thesis of officer cadet Ratinen, J. (2009) *Suomen Puolustusvoimien liikekannallepanokyky sodan jälkeisinä vuosina.* National Defence College, Helsinki. Particularly pp. 19-23, also pp. 31-34 for Weapons Cache Case.\n\n[2] Holmila, A. and Mikkonen, S. (2015) *Suomi sodan jälkeen: Pelon, katkeruuden ja toivon vuodet 1944-1949.* Jyväskylä: Atena. Chapter 1 in particular. \n\n[3] Lukkari, M (1992): Asekätkentä (3. täydennetty painos). Helsinki: Otava." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chrt58h", "chru2yb" ], "score": [ 10, 266 ], "text": [ "There are two problems, I think, with the German War in the east. 1) the Germans, due to the racist Nazi ideology, was far too brutal against the Slavic nationalities in the conquered territories. 2) The size and scale of Russia made a rapid victory like in 1940 virtually impossible. \n\nTo point 1), Hitler famously said that his first attack would wreck the fragile Soviet state. He was alluding to the many national and racial minorities which the Russians dominated. This included Hungarians, Poles, Finns, Baltics, Siberians, Asians, Arabs, and a myriad of other ethnicities. Famously, the Ukrainians welcomed the Germans with open arms in the first weeks of Barbarossa. But, rather than courting dissident groups and promoting revolt behind Soviet lines, the Germans instead implemented a large scale program of harassment and extermination. This news was carried rearward by the retreating Red Army, and by Winter of 1941 any possibility of counter-revolution had been killed. Instead, Russians and non-Russians unified to defeat the barbaric Nazi menace. It was a major opportunity which the Germans wasted. \n\nTo point 2), the Germans had grown used to quick victories. In 1940, they had smashed the French Army, destroyed the cohesion of its armies, and quickly occupied regions of critical importance to French government (like, say, Paris). But Russia was big, and even if the German army achieved smashing success, it would never reach Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) as quickly as it did Paris. The distances are simply not comparable. Instead, the German army focused on destroying the Red Army along the border. It makes sense, if the Red Army was destroyed in Soviet Poland, who would stop the Germans from taking Moscow? Nobody, thats who. *But* it wasnt that simple. The Germans were really good at destroying an enemies *cohesion*, or its ability to operate effectively. But it had a harder time destroying the Russian army. Again, the spaces involved (and especially the unit density, or the average number of men per km) were so great that while Russian Corps and Armies were destroyed, many men simply passed through the porous German lines. They would later reform into new units which would defend Moscow. Its hard to say how the *Wehrmacht* could have solved that glaring issue, but it was a major cause for their defeat. Russia is just so big, and the Germans were totally unable to account for that.\n\n", "Wall of text- I'm sorry but it's a really complex answer that I've already really pruned down.\n\nI'm going to direct your attention to a frequently underappreciated aspect of the historiography- differing conceptualisation of warfare at an operational level. Under appreciation for this level of history stems from a Western lack of appreciation of it's intricacies, and an often excessive reliance upon German Generals and sources who sought to rationalise their defeat in the terms of tactics and strategy- simply put, they argued that German generals and armies were constantly tactically superior to their enemies, and Hitler is responsible for all strategic mistakes. This rather conveniently ensures former German generals were freed from having to admit they made mistakes, and allowed them to keep their lucrative lecturing tours. that the German army deployed a somewhat complex operational method at this time was conveniently forgotten.\n\n'the Wehrmacht is generally portrayed as immensely superior in every aspect...its failure are ascribed to adverse climatic conditions, the sheer size of the USSR, overwhelming soviet numbers, hitler's mistakes...everything...except superior Red leadership and combat performance.(1)'\n\nFollowing the end of the first world war and the Russian civil war, Stavka (the Russian high command) recognised that the traditional division of warfare between tactics and strategy was outdated, and that a gap existed between these. Tactics had come to be associated with divisional combat downwards, while strategy was a question of Army Groups and High Command. Operational level technique exists in this gap, and the relationship between all of these levels is implicitly interlinked as it's first proponent, Aleksandr Svechin pointed out 'tactics make the steps from which operational art leaps; strategy points out the path.' The operational level of warfare deals with this path, and is best described as being\n\n'Concerned with the disruption of the enemy's overall cohesion on a large scale, preventing him from accomplishing his aims and breaking up his organisation and control of higher formations. destruction of large enemy groupings is achieved as a result of the disruption of his plans, timetabled and ability to organise over a wide area and in great depth (i.e. 300-500KM).(2)'\n\nThese concepts were outlined initially outlined in the Russian manual PU-36 (field manual-'36) and detailed two key concepts, deep battle, and Maskirovka. The great purge (or as the Russians prefer to call it 'the events of 1936-8') saw the rejection of these ideas for a more traditional approach, but they were rapidly re-introduced with PU-42. Maskirovka is a term describing camouflage, concealment, deception, signals counter-intelligence and surveillance methods and has no accurate English translation, just note that it was the means by which the Russians aimed to achieve surprise, and that Russian doctrine views the surprise as a 10X force multiplier- one man with it, is worth 10 without.\n\nDeep battle was a term utilised to describe what we would call blitzkrieg, but carried out on a far larger scale. A Russian Army group (called a 'front') would be devided into two unequal halves. the first, representing 1/3 was called a pinning group, and was responsible for holding the frontline when it was static, carrying out spoiling attacks etc. this allowed for the major concentration of resources into 'strike groups,' representing 2/3 of the forces deployed. these were divided into shock armies and mobile groups\n\nShock armies were essentially break-in formations, heavily provided with infantry support tanks, engineers and artillery. they would punch a hole in the initial defences through overwhelming concentrations of force and firepower.\n\nthese openings would then be exploited by mobile groups- composed of tank armies equipped with anti-tank guns, mechanised infantry, self propelled guns and medium tanks such as the t-34. these would develop the break-in into a break out and exploit deeply. \n\nIt is important to understand the scale of these operations, and the interlinking of them. A series of shock armies would engineered several break-ins of about 12-15 km width, with about 16-20km between each of them. These break-ins would have a depth of about 10-15 km, which would then be rapidly exploited by the mobile groups, sacrificing some combat power to complete the break out. These formations were then expected to drive deeply to a depth of 100-200km. They would screen surrounded German units, who would then be reduced by hard-marching shock armies as the mobile groups conducted a mobile defence against German counter-attacks.\n\nThe most important aspect to remember is Maskirovka, all of these offensives were to be mounted in the utmost secrecy. Briefing were carried out in the third period (more on this later) Orally only, and just 5-10 days or so before the attack to front commanders, who in turn briefed the subordinates. The fact that entire tank armies (seriously, the Russians had formations called tank armies) were able to entrain, move 100s of miles, detrain and then launch these huge assault with only days of preparation and acting on verbal orders hints at an often underestimated genius in the west for Russian staffwork, professionalism and the effectiveness of maskirovka.\n\nFor the Russians, the great patriotic war is divided into three periods, based upon how effectively these principles were deployed- \n\nThe first from the 22 June 1941- 18th November 1942 saw an endless period of defeats as the germans advanced rapidly. They destroyed 28 divisions, and reduced an additional 70 to 50% strength. These defeats eventually led to the re-introduction of the operational method outlined above in PU-42. severe mistakes were continuously made. a lack of maskirovka meant attacks failed to achieve surprise, lack of concentration, poor command and a lack of appreciation of the operational level of warfare allowed opportunities to slip away.\n\nThe second period was a slow and painful learning experience, lasting from 19th November 1942 to the end of '43. every aspect of their warfighting capability was overhauled- command, control communications improved, better combat support and service support. Better weapons and more of them, overhauled formation organisation etc. they still made mistakes, but they slowly learnt from them and showed an increasing capacity for waging war. encirclements, where they occurred, took a considerable amount of time to reduce, but the effectiveness of such methods was obvious, and formations fought deeper, and reduced the encirclements far quicker.\n\nThe third period from 1944-45 is simply awesome. They were not just conducting these massive offensives one at a time anymore, these huge operations were now interlinked, as one closed down, another was just in the process of opening up. The perfect example of this is Operation Bagration. another would be the vistula-oder operation, 'liberating' most of Poland in 17 days. Additionally they constantly achieved complete surprise and destroyed tactically superior German armies at every turn. \n\nSo yeah, it didn't really matter that the Germans were tactically superior when the Russians had perfected their operational method for the operational level of war, were able to mass huge numbers of troops, achieving complete surprise and overwhelming the enemy through systematic manoeuvre warfare, crushing every single enemy formation they met with superior material, generalship and staffwork.\n\nReferences\n\nHastings, M., Armageddon, (London, Pan Books,2004)\n\nGlatz, D.M., Soviet Operational Art (London, Frank Cass, 1991)\n\nHarrison, R.W. The Russian Way of War (Laurence, University of Kansas press, 2001)\n\n (1) Dick, C.J. 'The operational employment of soviet armour in the great patriotic war' In Harris J.P. and Toase F.N. eds Armoured Warfare (London, Batsford Ltd.,1990)\n\n(2) Dick, C.J., 'Soviet Operation Art, Part 1' in International defence review, July 1988" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e4o0lpy" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Well, first let's sort out what the Kalmar Union _was_ (and wasn't). \n\nIt was a personal union, where three different countries had the same monarch. All three Scandinavian countries had elective monarchies at that time, albeit with a preference for electing people within he same dynasties. So the nobles (or _stormän_, or jarls if you want to go even farther back) could elect and also dethrone kings. That alone tells you that the monarch was not that strong. The countries did not have strong central government. Besides power being held by local jarls, the church and its bishops had huge power and wealth. The countries had also been hit hard by the Great Plague int he 14th century, and the Hanseatic League of north Germany was the dominant trading power in the Baltic. Ok, so the king is fairly weak. Being in another country there's not even a theoretical chance of exercising direct control anyway. \n\nSo in the late 15th century Danish Margarethe comes along, and in very simplified terms, basically inherits Denmark, marries into Norway and gets herself elected as queen of Sweden on the condition of defeating their German king, which she does. Not bad! Not having any heirs of her own, she adopts her sister's daughter's son ~~Bogislav~~ now Erik of Pomerania, has him coronated in Kalmar and then an act of union is signed or something. We don't really know! The document we have doesn't have the correct seals on it, is on paper rather than the expected parchment, has amendments and crossed-out stufff and doesn't exist in six copies like it says it should, so interpretations have varied. It may be just a draft document, or it might be an attested copy of a summary of what was decided, which is why the seals aren't right - they're for the witnesses and not the original signers.. Anyway, the content makes it clear that the three countries remain three countries, with their own laws. But they are also bound to to assist each other in war. \n\nSo in short the monarch gets to collect taxes, appoint foged/fogde/fogds as local administrators and tax collectors, appoint clergy (the Vatican at that particular point is too weak to stop it), handle foreign policy and wage war. The latter bit is an important to the motive of taking up competition with the Hanseatic League. (at least according to historian Erik Lönnroth)\n\nAnyway, Margarethe still continues as de facto ruler but with power being gradually transferred to Erik until her death (1412). Already 1410 Erik starts war for territory against Holstein (at the base of the Jutland peninsula) and then against he Hanseatic League, which, with breaks, would continue until the 1430s. In 1429 he also starts trying to claim the Sound Toll on all shipping in and out of the Baltic, which would ultimately become a Danish cash-cow all the way until the 19th century.\n\nThis isn't that much in the interest of Sweden and Norway though. Norway's selling fish to the Hansa, who have offices in Bergen. (Everyone's still Catholic, so fish on Fridays is a big deal, not to mention lent) and Sweden's shipping iron from Bergslagen down to Lübeck through Stockholm (nominally a Hanseatic city). They have much less to gain from picking a fight with the Hanseatics. Add to that, the Swedes are angry that Erik has been appointing Germans and Danes as _fogdar_ in the crown castles and estates, despite promises that only Swedish nobles would get those. Taxes are high as well.\n\nSupposedly the Danish _fogde_ of Västerås, Jens Erikssøn, was super-cruel and forced pregnant women to work so hard they had miscarriages and other horrible things, according to the Swedsh chronicle of Engelbrekt, which is a highly biased source nobody really takes too seriously. But in any case, the figure Engelbrekt comes out of Bergslagen in 1434 and demands Erikssøn be replaced, but gets nothing. So he raises an army and takes matters into his own hands, forces Erikssøn out of his castle and executes him after a trial. The rebellion continues, with Engelbrekt and his men successfully laying siege to castle after castle until he's taken 14 of them, 2 in the then-Danish province of Halland before a truce is declared. At which point only the 7 strongest castles are still left in Sweden (plus the ones in Finland). \n\nAnyway, in the peace negotiations they agree on only letting the king put foreigners in three castles, that he was required to listen to the advice of the national council (but not to follow it), and that there would be future discussions about taxes. Notably, Engelbrekt did not demand or appear to want to dissolve the union, but the secessionist tendencies nevertheless increased in Sweden. Engelbrekt passed away in 1436, and the Swedish nobles, considering Erik to have broken the treaty in a number of ways (including by intending to designate a relative as heir without any election) declared Erik deposed not long after that. The remainder of the history is a pretty messy back-and-forth of rules, but the short is that the Swedes pretty much do what they want while the Danish kings try to reclaim power, it breaks out into open hostilities under Sten Sture the Elder and then the Younger (no relation! the latter just took the former's name as a political statemnet). Initially these are however fought mostly between pro-and-anti-union Swedes rather than being the Sweden-vs-Denmark affair it became at the end.\n\nSten Sture the Younger is killed by the invading Danish king Kristian II, who takes Stockholm, has himself coronated as king of Sweden and then celebrates with the Stockholm Bloodbath, where about 100 anti-unionist Swedish nobles are executed. This leads to Gustav Vasa taking up the fight (bankrolled by the Hansa) and defeating the Danes, becoming king (1523) that's the formal end of the union. Vasa also converts the country to Lutheranism, confiscates church property and gathers power, and it's now you start to have a really strong central state both in Sweden and Denmark. Not long after Frederik I of Denmark decides that Danish nobles should have privileges in Norway as well, and it's now the union really starts transforming into the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway-where-Denmark-calls-all-the-shots. (However even as Sweden had started to pull away, Denmark-Norway signed a treaty in 1450 stating they'd have the same king 'in perpetuity', so one might also consider it to have started there)\n\nHo-kay, so that's the short version of the history of the Kalmar Union. As you can hopefully tell from the above, you can't really describe it as Denmark ruling the union, but rather a \"king in Denmark\" ruling the union. One with certain tendencies to put Denmark's interests first. \n\nHow could Sweden and Norway be dominated by Denmark despite being bigger? Well, first - territory doesn't matter, especially not when it's mostly empty, as was the case. Denmark was population-wise larger than Norway, and about the same as Sweden in 1400. More importantly though, Denmark _couldn't_ actually rule Sweden once Swedish opinion was firmly anti-Danish, as during the end of the Union. But up to the Stockholm Bloodbath there were a significant amount of pro-union Swedes, especially in the clergy. Roughly it started becoming more of a Sweden-vs-Denmark thing around 1500. Of course nationalist historiography in Sweden would long paint it all from the start as a grand war of liberation from a foreign oppressor rather than strife between pro- and anti-unionist Swedish factions. \n\nThe probable reason why the coronation and act of union (if there was one) was in Kalmar is because it was a conveniently-located coastal town, near the Swedish-Danish border (Blekinge province being Danish at the time), roughly equidistant from Copenhagen and Stockholm, with a royal palace and a cathedral. So a good spot for everyone except the Norwegians.\n\nFinally as for why Copenhagen would be the seat of power, there's the simple fact Margarete was Danish. Sweden was the country she had least personal connections with. Copenhagen was closer to the continent, which she had plenty of aristocratic connections with. It was closer to other useful things like the Universty of Rostock, where Danes usually studied at that time. (Copenhagen and Uppsala Universities were founded in the 1470s) It was also much closer to the rival Hanseatic league, without them having as much influence as they did in Stockholm (which still has a medieval church just for Germans in the old town, to this day). \n\nSources: Any good Scandinavian general-history book will tell you all or most of the above, but I don't really know what to recommend in English. I like Alf Henriksson's book in Swedish though. There are some nice Danish books about Margarete in particular too (even fictionalized novels about her life).\n\nI'm also taking the 'conventional' view and fallacy of viewing the union with the hindsight of its dissolution, in giving the period 1440-1520 short thrift. If you want to start getting more angles on the union history Gustafsson's ['A state that failed?'](_URL_0_) is a great place to start." ] }

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[ [ "http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03468750600930720" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d7wlp92" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "16th century sources do indeed tend to be pretty unclear when it comes to firearm's rate of fire. Humfrey Barwick was a strong proponent of firearms at the end of the century and as such is probably represents the upper end of what might be expected in terms of fire rate. While serving as a mercenary for the French army he described a war meeting in which he overheard a nobleman claim that an arquebus could only be fired 10 times per hour. Some people apparently did think the fire rate was this low, but Barwick thought the man was daft and afterwards approached him offering to personally demonstrate shooting 40 times in one hour with a single piece. One shot every 1 minute and 30 seconds doesn't seem like much, but this seems to have only been the rate for long term fire over the course of an hour, which would have required occasionally cleaning the weapon, adjusting the match, and measuring the powder for each shot independently since a soldier at the time typically didn't carry 40 whole wooden cartridges at a time.\n\nFor short term rate of fire, later on in his discourse he described the maximum number of times that a soldier with a *musket* could shoot at an advancing army, which involved shooting once in the time it took the enemy to march (not running) 80 yards (presumably 60-90 seconds, he recommended making up the difference by shooting multiple bullets at a time as the enemy got closer). The fact that he says this is for a musket is significant because the 16th century musket was a very different beast compared to the muskets of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was extremely heavy with a longer barrel and a larger bore than later weapons and had to be supported by a forked rest while firing. Most troops at the time would have been armed with an arquebus or caliver, firearms which which were much lighter and had a much shorter barrel. Humfrey Barwick and Sir Roger Williams both wrote that the arquebus/caliver could fire twice as quickly as the clumsy musket could (though they prefered the latter because of its far greater force).\n\nThat would make the ideal rate of fire for the late 16th century arquebus/caliver: 30-45 seconds per shot max, 40 shots per hour sustained\n\nAnd for the heavy musket: 60-90 seconds per shot max, 20 shots per hour sustained.\n\nAs far as how rate of fire compares to the wheel lock or flintlock. A matchlock is generally more complicated to load since it requires constantly tending the match to keep it burning as well as adjusting the match length as it burns down. In addition manuals on loading reccomends removing the match after every shot and holding it in the opposite hand so the soldier doesn't accidentally blow himself up while handling powder (loading could still potentially be done much faster if shortcuts are taken as demonstrated by [this reenactor with an arquebus](_URL_0_)). A wheel lock firearm did away all this but added the need to reset the spring with a specialized tool after every shot. As far as flintlocks go, most manuals and sources tend to give a maximum fire rate of around 3, maybe four shots per minute. As far as I know, even with greatly simplified drills reenactors tend to have a lot of difficulty reloading a full sized Napoleonic musket in under 20 seconds.\n\nSo to sum up, 16th century muskets did take a long time to reload, largely due to its size. A flintlock musket was generally quicker and easier to reload than a 16th century matchlock caliver (which was similar in length and weight) though probably not as much as you're saying. And there was more to reload speed than the type of lock." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-lGCtbg580" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dx4nqiw" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Although comprehensive only in the sense that it attempts to cover the whole globe across most of the seventeenth century, with special focus on the impact of the Little Ice Age and associated abnormal El Nino episodes, Geoffrey Parker's book *The Global Crisis* (2013) is a major contribution by a senior historian to efforts to integrate social, political and environmental history. \n\nParker's thesis is that climate change during this period is crucial to understanding the very widespread political turmoil of the 17th century, which \"saw more cases of simultaneous state breakdown around the globe than any previous or subsequent age\" – from the Thirty Years War and British civil wars to the Fronde, the downfall of the Ming dynasty, civil war in Mughal India, the overthrow of the African kingdom of Kongo, and the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. \n\nParker contends that the period was also marked by a sharp increase in the number of revolts, and more and longer wars than occurred in any comparable period before the 20th century, all accompanied by dearth and plague leading to massive mortality – which in turn led (as Hobbes suggested in *Leviathan*) to the feeling that\n\n > \"There is [now] no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; ... no arts; no letters; no society. And, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.\"\n\nand which prompted the contemporary Welsh historian James Howell to conclude that:\n\n > \"God Almighty has a quarrel lately with all mankind, and given the reins to the ill spirit to compass the whole earth; for within these twelve years [1637-49] there have the strangest revolutions and horridest things happened, not only in Europe but all the world over, that have befallen mankind, I dare boldly say, since Adam fell, in so short a revolution of time ... [Such] monstrous things have happened [that] it seems the whole world is off the hinges.\"\n\nFinally, although perhaps least persuasively, Parker also attempts to explain why Japan, pretty much alone among the major nations studied, escaped most of the problems caused by climate change in this period.\n\nIt's a very big book, but he writes extremely well and it flies by, if the subject matter itself grips you." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cabafi2", "cabcohx", "cabcq0i", "cabcwda", "cabd3bw" ], "score": [ 130, 8, 58, 10, 34 ], "text": [ "To answer the former question: Athena was the protector of Athens. Athena had an owl because owls were abundant in Athens. There's a proverb that says \"bring owls to Athens\" for a pointless venture.\n\n\nedit: I was answering the question of why owls are associated with the Greek goddess Athena.", "Owls have long been considered deeply connected with magic and shamanism (even such as in our tales of Arthur, Harry Potter, etc) and that, coupled with the ability that they can see at night and their eyes are in a fixed position makes them seem like they are more intuitive and intelligent, seeing (otherworldy) things that humans cannot. Owls also share similar personality traits with cats, another animal long regarded for it's intellect and cunning. \n\nEdit: Since there seem to be quite a few downvotes-without-retort, here are just a couple of easily google-able pages that will show the same claims.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n", "The question is somewhat biased - owls are not associated with wisdom in much of the world. In Africa, for example, they are harbingers of evil and associated with black magic.", "The Owls of Athena [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) has an interesting alternate theory about their vision:\n\n > On the other hand, Cynthia Berger theorize about the appeal of some characteristics of owls —such as their ability to see in the dark— to be used as symbol of wisdom (Berger, Cynthia (2005). [Owls](_URL_1_). Mechanicsburg, PA, USA: Stackpole Books. p. X. ISBN 9780811732130.)\n\n", "Owls are not always considered intelligent; you need to factor in culture as well. The Hindi word for owl which sounds something like ['oolu'](_URL_0_) actually means foolish. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/436310/owl", "http://www.macrameowl.com/owl_symbolism.html" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl_of_Athena#Greece", "http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=azCFGSeKjw4C&lpg=PR10&dq=Minerva%27s%20owl%20wisdom&pg=PR10#v=onepage&q&f=false" ], [ "http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/3628081/A_wise_owl_or_a_foolish_oolu/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dyk3lql" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You might try /r/Askanthropology. There may be someone here with the answer, but this other sub has a concentration of people with a background in comparative ethnography." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc2ehla" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Of course there was. In the early days of Czechoslovakia, tensions between Czechs and Germans were a major issue that would later play a part in the months preceding the Second World War and the occupation of Czechoslovakia, and that would only be resolved until after the war. And even then only via the highly controversial Benes Decrees.\n\nGermans have lived alongside Czechs (or Bohemians and Moravians, if you will) since the earliest days of a Czech state, colonizing parts of it from about the 10th century onwards in what we now call the Ostsiedlung - settling of the east. This was caused by both a growing population in German lands as well as local rulers actually welcoming and encouraging settlers to come to Bohemia.\n\nHowever, after the Habsburgs had taken over some centuries later, Czech lands have been subjected to gradual Germanization and German culture as well as language became the norm for upper classes, politics and the like. This in turn led to the advent of nationalism and the Czech National Revival, a story that ought to sound quite familiar to many nationalities all over Europe around the 19th century.\n\nFinally this leads us to the end of the Great War, and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. The multiethnic monarchy had faced calls for independence or fair representation in politics from its constituent nations for quite a long time now, and the war had only postponed the resolution of these issues. Austria-Hungary did not survive, after the war, Czechoslovakia and others have declared independece and the empire soon ceased to exist.\n\nThis is where things get rather interesting. The idea of a Czechoslovak nationality is an artificial concept promoted by the leaders of the independence movement and future presidents Masaryk and Benes. It does have its roots in reasonable assumptions as the two groups have mutually intelligible languages, are close culturally and have lived in close proximity for centuries, but ultimately it was a calculated decision much influenced by the political situation.\n\nYou see, according to the 1921 census, there were 8 759 701 Czechoslovaks (roughly two million of which were Slovaks) and 3 123 305 Germans in Czechoslovakia, with other sizeable minorities such as Hungarians. This was a direct result of the newly independent country keeping its historical borders which, however, included the regions with a sizeable German population – Sudetenland.\n\nThe Germans had actually called for some sort of exclusion from this arrangement or self-determination, such as becoming a part of Austria – indeed, in the spirit of Wilson's Fourteen Points and the general post war atmosphere that allowed various peoples to declare their independence – but the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye ended their hopes as the lands of the Bohemian Crown were preserved in their historical shape.\n\nIn the two decades that followed, the relations between Czechoslovaks and Germans have deteriorated, albeit rather slowly at first. German was preserved as an official language in areas with a considerable German population, Germans were represented in the parliament, but on the other hand Czechoslovakia was ultimately a Czechoslovak nation and many policies reflected that, such as a clear preference for Czech officials in local politics.\n\nAn important point that I feel has to be made is that although this was at a time when Nazis were on the rise in Germany, Germans in Sudetenland were not yet particularly strong sympathizers of the new regime. Henlein's separationist Sudetendeutsche Partei only came under Hitler's major influence from 1937 onwards, two years after securing 44 seats in the chamber of deputies, more than any single Czech party, and 23 seats in the senate, tied with the agrarian party.\n\nGermany portrayed the situation in Czechoslovakia as extremely untenable, Hitler made no secret of his ties to Henlein's party, with the Sudetendeutsche leader in turn exerting internal pressure on Czechoslovakia presenting mostly unacceptable demands including autonomy to the government. Besides overt political action, Germany also prepared for a military conflict if their demands were met.\n\nFaced with the possibility of war and at the same time the less than ideal German situation in Czechoslovakia, France and Britain kept with their policy of appeasement, sided with Germany, and the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938 with the Czechs not having much say in the matter, ruling that Sudetenland would become a part of Germany.\n\nIn the end the Germans in Sudetenland were a minority with many of the problems this presents for those labelled this way, as well as for those who would form the majority. Centuries of tension did not help either, nor did the fact that they were not afforded the same treatment as other nationalities when it came to the collapse of the monarchy. However, Austria-Hungary was on the losing side of the war, the Czechs had only kept their historical borders, and although their relationship was often problematic, never subjected Germans to harsh treatment minorities sometimes suffer before the war.\n\nThat everything played out the way it did was a result of the build up to the Second World War by Germany rather than historical relations and ethnic tension between Germans and Czechs in a single country." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e9a33ht" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ " > When Clodious , who was from a minor patrician family\n\n*Minor*?! The *gens Claudia* was one of the largest and most prestigious patrician *gentes*, outstripped only in surviving patrician lines by perhaps the *gens Cornelia*. To call Clodius a member of a minor family is like calling the sun a little hot.\n\n[You're completely misunderstanding what a plebeian (the singular of plebs is plebs, it's a collective singular) means.](_URL_0_) Patrician does not mean senator, and most senators were not patricians by far. Cato was a plebeian, like Cicero, Crassus, Pompey, Antony, Cassius, Lucullus, both Bruti, etc. The *gens Porcia* was a plebeian *gens*, and was heavily involved in the final stages of the Conflict of the Orders, during which members of the family passed several important *leges Porciae*, at least one of which protected soldiers on campaign from *coercitio* by extending *provocatio* to them" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3fmn4h/what_was_the_difference_between_patricians_and/ctq0ct3/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c717sid" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "In short (don't have much time, so perhaps someone can expand on this)\n\n1. Three of the United Irishmen's top brass were arrested on the eve of the uprising.\n\n2. Artillery stationed in Ireland had been upgraded and increased in size. One Lieutenant was to describe that the 'Grapeshot (cannister) worked like a wonder'\n\n3. The rising was more of a massive rural peasant riot that lacked proper cohesion and goals. While mobs would rise in a certain area, those with leadership abilities would come to the forefront, however their attacks were limited to local barracks etc\n\n4. The United Irishmen were under-armed and were facing a fairly sizeable government army which had at it's disposal 9000 regular troops, 25000 militia and 40000 yeomanry (civilians with arms). The well disciplined regulars were more than enough to change the tide in a number of critical locations.\n\n5. While the French did land in Co. Mayo I believe it was just too late, and once again it was a half hearted attempt like every other invasion of Ireland by Spain and France to support the nationalists." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "etftc00", "ethyt9l" ], "score": [ 16, 4 ], "text": [ "One particular aspect of maritime situation in the Indian ocean in the second half of fifteenth century which is often emphasized by scholars, is the *relative* peacefulness and *absence* of large scale naval conflicts. The accent here is really on the word *relative* as piracy was abundant and there was plenty of naval combat in the form of smaller neighboring states fighting each other, or a commercial center port subjugating its immediate surroundings. \n\nBut what you won't see, is the kind of power projection across the seas, sending combat fleets far way from home, or establishment of maritime empires backed by sea domination which you might associate with, for example Italian medieval merchant states. Again, before someone gets their pitchforks out, I am mostly referring to the *fifteenth century* and the setting in place in time of European arrival. It is quite possible somewhere back in time Indian ocean was full of such naval empires, I really wouldn't know.\n\nThe following consequence of such situation is that there really wasn't much large scale naval battles (like e.g. battle of Zonchio in 1499 in Mediterrenean) and for that matter, there were no clear large dedicated warships that might be considered an analgoue to European galleys, or later galleons or ship-of-the-line. And that's perfectly fine! In fact it is probably the Mediterrenean that was an outlier as in 14th century both England and France were raising their navies by commandeer and adapting merchant ships rather then having dedicated warships.\n\nIn those conditions, the naval fleets, when assembled, had usually consisted of a number of large merchant sailing ships taken for the occasion and filled with soldiers, augmented with a large number of oared vessels. Such combined fleet of smaller oared ships together with larger merchant ships were encountered several times by the Portuguese, in their fights at Hormuz, Chaul/Diu, Malacca, etc.\n\nThe smaller oared ships could vary in size (and have a mast with a sail, same as galleys) but were as a rule smaller then galleys as Portuguese often applied the term *fusta* to describe them, and *fusta* was a European type of small galley. if anything would be considered a warship of Indian ocean, it would be these oared vessels. Unfortunately, I can't find much information on them as they seemed to pass under the radar of most works. \n\nThe merchant ships, primarily propelled by sailing would be what you term dhows. That is if we are talking about the western part of the Indian ocean - the Arabian sea - where most ships were of this type. Most of the Portuguese descriptions (sorry for dealing with Portuguese sources, but it seems those are the main sources most of scholarship draws from. Hopefully the situation has changed and I am just out of date...) describe them as well built ships built, and particularly accent that they were built without nails (actually some sources disagree, but vast majority confirm) and instead either wooden pegs were used or the planks were sewn together, another interesting feature many sources agree with. By size those ships were just as big, and on more then one occasion even bigger then Portuguese naus they were up against. Yet unlike Portuguese ships it seems that the ship board artillery wasn't really a thing. Or it was, but the artillery it self was much weaker then the ones brought from Europe.\n\nIn the eastern part of Indian ocean, there was a considerable additional influx of SE Asian designs of such large ships, which Portuguese dubbed \"junks\" (juncos). Those had some Chinese influence in origins, but were actually heavily influenced by native SE Asian design. Unlike dhows, those are much more often described as having nails and in general had a different look and feel. They also had two side rudders instead of a stern rudder, a fact Portuguese wrote down with interest as they considered it a weakness in battle. They were also larger then Portuguese ships, and had multiple layers of planking which allowed some of those junks to resist even the largest cannon fire from Portuguese ships. The ships were still at a disadvantage against the Portuguese, and seems in the early days when Portuguese conquered Malacca they also succeeded in winning most of the few naval battles they had.\n\nTo conclude here are some of the 16th century (european) images of the ships. We are not sure if those are realistic first hand accounts or just imaginations of authors back in Europe.\n\n[Ships of the Arabian sea: a dhow and a 9-masted large ship - 1519 ](_URL_0_) \n\n[Ships from Java / SE Asia: junks - 1598](_URL_2_)\n\n[Ship from SE Asia: jong/junk - 1613](_URL_1_)", "In medieval India, the Muslim rulers (such as the Deccan Sultanates and Mughal Sultanate) had mostly ignored the naval arm of their military forces. It may be because they came overland from the North and won decisively in land battles. \n\nThis scenario changed, however, when the Portuguese arrived in India and started monopolizing and controlling trade on the western coast of the continent. Chhatrapati Shivaji (known as the father of the Indian navy) realized the importance of a strong navy; the first keel of a Maratha naval vessel was laid down in a creek near Kalyan circa 1654.\n\nShivaji took up the task of constructing multiple naval bases along the coast of present-day Maharashtra. He organized two fleets – one under the command of Admiral Mainak Bhandari and the other under Daulet Khan.\n\nThe Maratha Navy consisted mostly of native Konkani sailors; however, it was commanded mostly by mercenaries, including Siddi and Portuguese. Circa 1659, the Maratha Navy consisted of around 20 warships. \n\nHiring mercenaries was relatively common in Maratha military culture and the Navy was no exception to this practice. Portuguese naval officer Rui Leitão Viegas was hired as fleet commander, in part because the Maratha wanted to get insight into the Portuguese naval technology and capabilities. \n\nThe Maratha Navy was primarily a coastal “green water” navy, compared to an ocean-going or \"blue water\" navy. Their ships were dependent on land/sea breezes. The Maratha did not build ships large enough to engage the British out at sea far from the coastal waters.\n\nAs for the ships. here are three:\n\n[Galbat](_URL_2_): The Galbats were larger row boats but of smaller dimensions. These rarely exceeded seventy tons. They had two masts of which the mizzen was very slight. The main mast had one large triangular sail. When hoisted, its peak went much higher than the mast itself. The Galbats were usually covered with a spar-deck, made up of split bamboos for lightness. They carried only 'patteraroes' which were mounted with six or eight pieces of cannon ranging from two to four pounders.\n\n[Gurab](_URL_0_): The Gurabs had usually not more than two masts, although some had three masts. The capacity of three masted Gurabs was about 300 tons, and that of smaller ones, the capacity was about 150 tons. These warships were covered with a strong deck which was on the same level as that of the main deck of the vessel. On the main deck, under the fore-castle there were two pieces of cannon from nine to twelve pounders pointing forward through the portholes cut in the bulk head.\n\n[Pal](_URL_3_):The Pal was the biggest battleship of Marathas. The Pal had three masts perpendicular to the hull. They were made up of two pieces joined together just below the square sails. The stern of the Pal was square and had a spacious decorated deck. This was meant for the captain. The broadside of the Pal had four guns peeping through the portholes. \n\nSources:\n\n1. [Battles of the honorable East India Company: Making of the Raj - M.S Naravane](_URL_1_)\n\n2. [The Anglo-maratha campaigns before the conquest of india - Randolf G.S cooper](_URL_4_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://imgur.com/djTG7mv.jpg", "https://imgur.com/wZNkfNW.jpg", "https://imgur.com/JUjFAuU.jpg" ], [ "http://www.indiandefencereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Maratha-Ship-Gurab.jpg", "https://books.google.co.in/books?id=bxsa3jtHoCEC&pg=PA99&dq=kanhoji+Angre+guns+boat&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=kanhoji%20Angre%20guns%20boat&f=false", "http://www.istampgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1823-International-Fleet-Review-Galbat-India-Stamp-2001.jpg", "http://www.indiandefencereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Maratha-Ship-Pal.jpg", "https://books.google.co.in/books?id=qweZWra_tbwC&pg=PA31&dq=shivaji+navy&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=shivaji%20navy&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ds7v0m6", "ds9dnx5" ], "score": [ 30, 30 ], "text": [ "Hi there. There's always room for more discussion (and follow-up questions) but you might be interested in [this older answer of mine](_URL_0_) about the prelude to Mussolini's rise. [This great answer](_URL_1_) by u/Klesk_vs_Xaero is also great overview of Italy's descent into dictatorship\n", "Fascism aimed at fixing a score of new or recurring problems of the Italian nation – while some of those were considered defining traits of a general crisis of the liberal state, others were of course contingent, which is expected over a twenty years time span. For clarity I have chosen to begin with the pre-fascism issues that fascism attempted to find a fix for, starting right in the middle of the crisis of the liberal State.\n\nI also must say that in this Fascism wasn't really different from most governments, that sooner or later had to deal with “everything that doesn't work already” and often end up putting their hands to what was already working. I'll try to highlight those attempted fixes that had a firmer ideological root (or rather a stronger fascist tone), but the two fields mix together a lot.\n\nAlso; focusing on the weak points of the liberal state may give rise to the belief that Fascism was somehow unavoidable, a necessary consequence of the system's ailments. There is no reason to make such a statement; rather the judgement of the posterity over the liberal state has generally been more favourable than that of the contemporaries.\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nThe liberal State existed, with ups and downs, from 1861 to 1922. Its trajectory was fraught with difficulties, such as the impressive backwardness of many of the Italian regions immediately after the unification, a systematic commercial deficit, wide differences in economical and social structure between north and south (average salaries varied over five times moving down from Liguria to Calabria). Despite some of these difficulties being almost insurmountable, there are good reasons to cast on the old liberal state a more indulgent look.\n\nThe view of the contemporaries was less rosy.\nThe failures of the liberal state to solve some of the more dramatic issues had led to a (some times legitimate, sometimes overly) critical view of the Government's actions; with a consistent thread of north-south polemics, that crossed the political field from “left to right” and grew to include socialists and Catholics as soon as they became relevant.\n\nBoth socialists and Catholics appealed to masses. The liberal establishment (those “left” and “right” that held control of the Nation from the Risorgimento years, until after WW2) did not. They really couldn't find a way how – and this went beyond the general difficulty for a traditional political group to survive in an age of expanded representation.\nThe liberals were – for better and worse – an aristocracy of administrators. They had grown and made their first political steps in an age when politics was the activity of a smaller minority, followed by the interest of a slightly larger minority. The man of government was not a leader, he did not inspire the people – he handled their goods (the Nation) for them, because they couldn't do so by themselves. Acknowledging this point was to them the key of the democratic process: the people understanding that they needed the politicians in the same way a sick man needs a physician, or a healthy one looks for someone to handle his finances.\n\nWith the influence of the masses on society growing, the reaction of the old liberals was either to try and turn into mass politicians (failing, as proved by the experience of A. Salandra, that largely appealed to the interventionist public during the “radiant days” that led to Italy's intervention) or to just wait and see, hoping the masses would prove themselves – well – good. When discussing the possibility of a socialist participation to his Government, Giovanni Giolitti argued that the program did not matter, that an agreement was possible with good natured men such as the socialist leader Filippo Turati. That the masses could refuse the agreement did not cross his mind; and not – this must be said – for malicious reasons; as Giolitti had been throughout his fifty years long political career one of the key proponents of expansion of suffrage and political participation. Just, his concept of political participation ended right there, where the people gave charge to the politicians. That a political system could not hold for long on such foundations was apparent – and various observers argued that was only Giolitti's mastery of the “parliamentary” institutions that held it together. Conservative liberal, Luigi Albertini, observed that *when it was the statesman that shaped the majority, that built it around himself from the most different corners, through the most tenuous pacts, grounded on every kind of transactions [...] and then he made the program, and more so established the supreme convenience not to bother with the program and bent his followers to every contradiction without even thinking of solving them [...] then the politician might do some good [...] but the corruption of the parliamentary system was getting deeper and deeper and leading to grave danger in the future. At that point it was no longer a majority government, but a personal government and the function of oversight, to which the Parliament was needed, even more than for the people's representation, was substantially non existent.*\n\n\nStill, if we look at general economical-social indicators, the Giolitti era (1901-1913) appears to have been one of remarkable success (with the most favourable estimates giving a yearly rise in industrial production over 7 points). It was also that period when the criticism or downright opposition to the liberal system became more “dramatic”, to the point of gaining the denomination of *anti-giolittismo*, that was common occurrence already at the time [and has been discussed thoroughly by E. Gentile in various works – such as *Le origini dell'ideologia fascista* and *Il mito dello stato nuovo*]. That the growth of a fascist ideology owes much to the concept, imported from Sorel and Bergson, of a “political myth” - which essentially is an irrational theme the masses could rally behind, without requiring a level of understanding that is only possible for an individual – is a key element of Gentile's analysis. And it is rewarding to look at fascism almost in musical terms, as a composition of themes, either pre-existent or new. But, first, back to reality.\n\nGiolitti's Ministry followed a tradition of extra-parliamentary parliamentarism; a praxis where the Parliament and governative action were established and sanctioned outside and independently from the Chambers. The Parliament became thus ancillary to the legislative function, that should have been its primary reason of existence. This situation was broadly acknowledged by the liberals, even those who were part of the Government groups. In the last Chamber session of 1917, liberal Giuseppe Sanarelli argued for a reform of the Chamber's regulations pointing out that the Parliament regulations *were outdated already before of the war* as they contained no preventive measure *against the undeniable, progressive disrepute of the parliamentary institutions*. *The Country had often bemoaned [the Parliament's] waste of time and the poor performance of the parliamentary engine* whereas, *even the most valuable and esteemed* of its members have been accused of *limiting their action to purely verbal manifestations*. It was therefore necessary to devise a way to *translate into practice and effective value the good will and special abilities of the Parliament members*.\n\nThe reforms *would have re-established the value of the Parliament, allowing it to work as it is its right and duty*. Furthermore these institutions would have *restrained, corrected and channelled the impetuous stream of bureaucratic imperialism*; as the Parliament had been reduced to nothing more than *the highest advisory committee for the bureaucracy* to the point where the Ministries themselves had became *delegates of the majority to the Administration*. \n\n*The Parliament still loved that Idea […] of personal and individual freedom of the government* but in fact *lack of decision power as well as excess of decision power* were not *acts of individual choice* but *chronic ailments […] of every democratic system*.\n\nAccording to Sanarelli the state of things *was responding to neither the letter nor the spirit of the constitutional chart, which established […] the existence of a legislative power, not just distinct, but superior to the executive one*. On practical ground in fact, the situation was much different as the Parliament was *content with academical dissertations over the balance [under the Statute, approval of budget was a key element of influence of the Chamber on the governments action], without ever promoting modifications or revisions* or *abstract discussions over law projects devised by the bureaucracy and promoted by the ministries*.\n\nSuch a situation had become more apparent during the war through *the relations between the organisms of military power, those of political power and those of parliamentary power*. As Giuseppe Bevione had denounced, *as far as military action was concerned, the Supreme Command had enacted an undeniable dictatorship, updating the Government only summarily* and *established a State within the State, a Government above the Government*. At the same time *relations between the Government and the Chamber had been just as week and sporadic*; *the work of the Chamber was reduced to either confirm or deny confidence to the Ministry*." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49g1wb/what_led_to_the_rise_of_mussolini_how_did_he/d0s5dpm/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4a7b0f/mussolini_was_made_prime_minister_in_1922_at_what/d0y4koe/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqagl68", "cqao6vp" ], "score": [ 15, 6 ], "text": [ "This doesn't directly answer the question, but I think you may be overestimating the weight carried/worn by a knight.\n\nThe average sword weighed somewhere around 3lbs, an M16 with full ammo weighs about 9lbs.\n\nA suit of full-plate would generally weigh less than 60lbs (sometimes significantly less), such armor was also custom fitted and designed to be relatively easy to wear with little strain. A full set of modern combat gear tops 60lbs, and is \"one-size fits most\".", "\"Medieval times' is to big a timeframe to answer really. In early medieval period 'knights' would be nobility. While knowledge of nutrition was poor most nobility had a strong diet of meat. While poor in vitamins it's pretty great for getting muscle. They also had less plate in this time and relied more on mail and gambersons. For mail I want to point out it's worn on the hips with a belt and not hanging from the shoulders. That really helps with the strain. \n\nIn the later period most 'knights' were in fact man at arms, professional warriors not of noble birth. While plate was dominant at that time plate is form fitted to the wearer. It's not heavier then what a modern infantry man wears. \n\n > \"In Afghanistan, soldiers routinely carry loads of 130 to 150 pounds for three-day missions, said Jim Stone, acting director of the soldier requirements division at the Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Ga. In Iraq, where patrols are more likely to use vehicles, loads range from 60 to nearly 100 pounds, he said.\"\n\n_URL_0_\nThat's double a full set of plate. Of course you still got a weapon to wield. But most weapons are pretty light, less then a modern rifle and perfectly balanced. A well balanced weapon isn't exhausting to wield. \n\nHowever full plate wearers did have one problem to overcome, heat. Wearing undercloths, a gamberson, some mail and plate was a pretty hot combination so I see over-heating being more of a problem then weight. \n\nAs for cleaving, you don't cleave with a sword. Against a user in plate you'll be stabbing with thin blades or crushing with a mace. For a mace you'll be keeping momentum and not ending your swing while the stabbing will be quick. Getting knocked down was a death sentence, beside that getting up wasn't that hard. Just laying there opened so many openings for a stab with a dagger.\n\nWhile yes wielding a melee weapon is more tiring on the arms I doubt combat was that much more physically demanding back then for a 'knight'. Modern soldiers carry around lots of gear, a M249 weights a lot, a WW2 browning MG even more. Preferably a duel/fight lasts as little moves as possible, you don't keep hitting the other guy till one drops like a boxing match. But I can't give you an exact timeframe.\n\nThis might interest you, while not being a direct answer it does go on about the weight of armor and the comfort of wearing it.\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013101717.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/275iz3/in_shows_like_game_of_thrones_characters_wear/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8r7c4o" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Could they be similar in role to the [Ghost Army](_URL_0_)?" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ec6nwoj" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "hey, sorry for the very late answer, i hope i don't break any rules by digging up old unanswered questions.\n\nTo answer this question you have to understand how the adoption of a self loading rifle would have worked in britain in the 1930's. \n\nTo get a new rifle adopted, someone in the board ordnance has to be persuaded to the idea of mass issuing a self loading rifle to the rank and file of the British army. Already we are fighting an uphill battle for the following reasons.\n\n > A very limited amount of choice in rifles\n\n halfway the 1930's there was a very limited amount of options for a self loading rifle. If we exclude all designs that aren't able to fire full power .303(the British standard munition of the time)or other full power rifle rounds we are left with weird enfield conversions and unproven prototypes(most of which they aren't even aware). \nThe belgian design ( the later fn49) and french design(the later mas49) were still secret and incomplete at this time too. \nThere is the pederson with a toggle lock, which causes problems in itself. And he zh29, familie of the zb-26(the gun the bren was designed on), but it also has problems that make it unsuited for mass adoption.\nThe most realistic options would be the then avs36(later svt40) and the m1 Garand.\nBoth those rifles would be patented so just copying them would not be an option. Lincensed production is very expensive and thus not really an option. Britain also still has a large arms production industry at this time, so they would design it themselves most likely.\n\n > .303 british\n\n.303 is an obsolescent round at this time, it underperformed compared to other cartridges of it's time and was expected to be replaced in the 1910's with .276 enfield, but testing showed some problems with the munition and ww1 halted this change completely.\nThe problem with .303 is that it is a rimmed cartridge , this causes issues when designing magazines and feed systems as there is a possibility to get the rims of the rounds caught on each other and causing so called 'rimlock'. Fully rimmed cartridges are fine for belt feds, but are very undesired for magazine fed solutions. There are ways to minimize rimlock, but no sane person would design a brand new mass issued main infantry rifle in .303(unless really desperate)\n\nBut changing to another caliber is not really an option at this time, the British empire has a massive stockpile of weapons and ammunition from ww1, and re-barreling existing vickers and enfields and producing all the new ammo is something that the british empire does not want to do in the economic depression of the 30's. They also just adopted the bren in.303 so .303 was there to stay.\n\n > Massive stockpiles of enfields\n\nLike is said in my last paragraph, the British empire has an absolute massive stock pile of enfields of various types in their armories. Most of them were converted to the latest patern or were in the proces of being converted. Building a new self loading rifle and spare parts, and then producing enough for the whole armed forces, takes a lot of time and money, both of which britain didn't want to spend on this. \n\n > Doctrine and tradition\n\nThe British army had a well established infantry doctrine, and the enfield was an important part of it. Those guys loved their enfields, changing to a self loading rifle would require changing doctrine and military tradition, something generals at the time wouldn't have been keen on. \n\nThe British military command took years to remove the magazine cutoff from the enfield, a feature that was almost never used.But some people clinged to it for some odd reason, changing their mind about enfields would be even harder.\n\nAnd we have to be honest here, a self loading rifle is better than a bolt-action, but the self loading rifle you would get at this point would not be a massive improvement. Add to this all the loss of experience with the platform and the gains would be fairly limited.\nAdditionally they would have to rewrite manuals , retrain soldiers, change the logistics as they would undoubtedly use more ammo and so on. These things all take a lot of time. \n\n\nSo if we take all of this together, and we place our selfs in the shoes of the British person at the board of ordnance.\nWe would have to do the following to adopt a selfloading rifle in the 30's :\n\nFirstly we have to design it in Britain because there aren't any real viable designs on the market, and use another cartridge as .303. Which we do not want to do at this time, and if we designed it with .303, we would have to spend time and money preventing problems caused by the cartridge.\n\nThen we have to pass military trials and probably refine the design, then probably do trials again(with the refined rifle).\nThen we have to convince even more generals and the rest of the board of ordnance that this self loading rifle is so much better than their tried and trusted enfields, and that their budget should not be spent on other things like more bren's, vickers, tanks, ... .\n\nAfter all of that we have to refine the design for mass production(not always the case but prototypes are not mass production friendly most of the time.), and tool up one or several factories, creating jigs, tools, milling machines... .\nAnd the military command has to rewrite arms doctrine, and formulate a new manual of arms for the rifle, and so on.\n\nAfter all of that we are probably in the same boat as france, russia, poland and belgium, they started development fairly early, hit some snags and before they could produce any meaningful number of rifles, ww2 had started.\n\nAdopting a self loading rifle during the war is even worse, after dunkirk the british needed to rearm a very large part of their army. They needed to start cranking out rifles, submachine guns, bren's, tanks, ships,aircraft,..., by the millions. The massive undertaking of designing a new rifle and retooling factories at that time is all but impossible.\n\nThe USA was the only country to field a self loading rifle as their standard infantry rifle in ww2, they did not face many of the problems European nations faced for developing a new self loading rifle. And even then it took garand years to get his design right, and for production to ramp up.\n \nAs for the g41, that rifle entered the scene when the war had already started and had some major flaws in itself. Most notably using the bang system to trap gas, instead of a hole in the barrel. Therefor it was never issued in any large numbers.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fdgkrzb" ], "score": [ 184 ], "text": [ "I afraid that I cannot offer a single definitive answer to 'why X didn't Y' type question of OP. Instead I'll make some corrections to OP's premise below. \n\nFirst of all, there was no known unified large-scale kingdom in Scandinavia before the middle of the 10th century (until the rise of the Jelling dynasty in Denmark), possibly except for the kingdom of the Godfred family in its southernmost part (Southern Denmark) in the early 9th century. Three Nordic medieval kingdoms, that is to say, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have primarily been political products since the last decades of the first millennium. In other words, it was not so likely that the majority of the Norse raiders in the middle to late 9th century were under the direct influence of one of such rulers in the unified kingdom, though some Frankish rulers might have misunderstood so that they tried to negotiate the ruler of 'the Danes' to deal with the onslaughts of the raiders mostly in vain. \n\nApart from the apparent problem, navigation durability of the fleet of any non-Scandinavian power at that time from their homeland to Scandinavia (that I personally have much doubt), to annihilate or to conclude a treaty with one or two polities (petty kingdoms) in Scandinavia around 900 to stop raiding would not have eliminated the threat of Norse raiders' invasion since there were probably much more polities remained than the fleet could possibly handle. \n\nAnd yes, there were indeed some attempt of non-Scandinavian European powers, especially some German rulers, to invade the southernmost part of Viking Age Denmark in the 10th century, as I illustrated in [The Danes or Vikings from later Denmark would often raid the Frankish Empire and later what would become the Holy Roman Empire. How were they so successful and how did the Danes avoid being conquered by the big powers?](_URL_0_). I suppose that main force of such German invasions comprised of cavalry and infantry, not the fleet, as long as attested in narrative sources and based on the location of the battlefield (Danevirke, the palisade built by Danish rulers). \n\nOn the other hand, I should also point out the fact that not all the Norse raiders didn't probably directly came to the British Isles from Scandinavia. Many Viking war bands were active around the British Isles as well as the English Channel in the middle of the 9th century, and now researchers suppose that they kept 'stayed' in this area for more than a few years, and sometimes took shelter in one of 'their' new political centers nearby, such as Dublin in Ireland or Rouen in Normandy, or further, York in Northern England, instead of Scandinavia. Then, targeting one of these 'diaspora' polities rather than distant petty kingdoms in Scandinavia would be much more realistic and successful tactic against the Norse raiders, and some local rulers actually did so (note that the Norse ruler was once expelled from Dublin in the early 10th century (from 902 to 917)). \n\nReferences: \n\n* Brink, Stefan & Neil Price (eds.). *The Viking World*. London: Routledge, 2008. \n* Garipzanow, Ildar H. 'Frontier Identities: Carolingian Frontier and the Gens Danorum'. In: *Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe*, ed. Id., Patrick Geary & Przemyslaw Urbancyzk, pp. 113-43. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cvzcjo/the_danes_or_vikings_from_later_denmark_would/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca7nv92" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Apparently during the 18th century the Dutch Republic was seen as being in a decline. Instead of commissioning new works by comtemporary artists, patrons preferred to obtain works from the Golden Age, when their country was more stable and prosperous. And in 1718, Dutch artist Arnold Houbraken published his first volume of biographies of Dutch and Flemish artists, which \"initiated a retrospective assessment of the artistic production of the past century, and thereby marked its end.\"\nSource: A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 by Mariet Westermann" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cenqoy1", "cenrdho", "centyhi", "cenvif6", "cenxsg2" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 8, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Before I refocused myself into Early Modern France, I was aiming to be a Classicist with a focus in the Late Roman Republic, so I had to learn Latin and Ancient Greek, the latter of which is still useful in my current focus on Early Modern France since the Habsburgs wrote laws in Latin first.\n\nI am to learn French and Germany to further my ability in the subject as there are a lot of sources that haven't been translated or books that remain in their local language.", "I'm studying for a BA in medieval studies, with emphasis on the British isles. Relevantly, I speak pretty good Latin, tolerable French, good Middle English, and beginning Old English. Less relevantly, I speak tolerable German and Spanish.", "I work in ancient materials, so it's reading, not speaking that's needed. Reading wise, I'm pretty solid in Hebrew and Greek, ok in Syriac. In terms of modern academic languages I can read/write/speak German pretty well. I got a relatively late start on languages and actually consider myself somewhat behind. Before completing the PhD I'll need two languages more minimum, and preferrably four. ", "Latin American historian here. To graduate with a Ph.D. from my university, it was required that we have fluency in one foreign language relevant to our field, and reading knowledge of a second. I have fluency in Spanish, and reading knowledge of Portuguese. The Spanish is absolutely essential to me, and I use it constantly. I literally couldn't do my job without it. The \"reading knowledge\" of Portuguese I picked up in a six week class that basically taught what minor differences there were from Spanish. I wouldn't really say I'm fluent in any way. I can generally get the gist of what written things say. Honestly, I may find the Portuguese knowledge useful about once a year for something that I probably could have figured out about as well on Google Translate. \n\nI will say that if I wanted to, I could go back to my same university (which I still live near) and pick up Mayan, Nahuatl, or Quechua, which are all offered as classes. Of those, Mayan would likely be the most useful to me, since I focus on Cuba and Mexico.", "Studying African history, you would assume that speaking an African language would be useful. However, as I focus on colonies and the post-colonial period, nearly every written source is in English; government documents, memoirs, newspapers, etc. I was lucky enough to learn Afrikaans growing up which means I can make use of any journal articles published in Afrikaans (not that there are many) and I learnt chiShona to help me converse with people when conducting interviews, but honestly, I could do as well just knowing English. However, I have found that despite the majority of people I have interviewed speaking English fluently (you would be hard pushed to find anyone outside of the really rural parts of Zimbabwe who doesn't have a good grasp of English), they really appreciate you making the effort to converse in their own language. It makes them a lot more comfortable and, in my opinion, makes it a lot easier to actually have a conversation with them.\n\nAs a side note, I'm currently learning Portuguese (when I can!) to help with possible future work on Mozambique - now that is a field in which lots of work done is not in English, so Portuguese really is a necessity!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "co24p1t", "co27zjo", "co2eo51", "co2fakj", "co2gh3o", "co2j12r", "co2nerp", "co2s0in", "co2sd3d", "co2v6nr", "co36kfx", "co382ye", "co39165" ], "score": [ 11, 8, 9, 3, 4, 7, 3, 5, 12, 8, 10, 5, 5 ], "text": [ "I wouldn't say it's destroyed (yet), but a lot of Phil Weigand's data is unpublished. Things like aerial photography from before agriculture became more intensive. Locations of looted shaft tombs and guachimontones. Profile drawings of looters pits in structures and tombs. Samples of ceramics from these looted sites. Even drawings of the sites he visited which were sometimes just sketches. His wife currently has all this data as far as we know, but she's not willing to let anyone look at it or see it unless you are going to enshrine Phil in the process. It's a shame, really. He was collecting data since the late 60s up until his death in 2011. We may never fully recover all the data he collected.", "A number of the papers and documentation related to Anne Boleyn's trial, and that of her brother George and the other four men charged with adultery, are missing or destroyed. For example, no record remains the deposition Jane Boleyn, George's wife, apparently gave, which was a large part of the Crown's evidence against George and Anne.\n\nWith so much of the trial documentation missing, we still don't conclusively know whether Anne was guilty of some or all of the charges laid against her, though most historians now lean towards her innocence. (In contrast, Katherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife and Anne Boleyn's cousin, was almost definitely guilty of adultery on the face of the evidence.)", "18 and a half minute gap in the Nixon tapes . . . .\n\nEDIT: Seriously though, the closing of the Chicago Municipal Reference Library is tragic not only for historians of the city but for historians of America. Though much was shifted to the Harold Washington Public Library, documents lost include:\n > The only collection of documents from other taxing bodies in Cook County, municipal codes pre-dating the 1871 Chicago fire, census information from 1890 to the present, original bids and contracts on construction of the airport transit systems, city planning documents, five-year plans for capital improvements, annual reports from every city department, maps of most underground conduits and above-ground airways, two million clippings from all daily newspapers in the area and 23 community and ethnic newspapers.\n\nWahhhhhhhhh. For the deets: _URL_0_", "In October of 1833, William Henry Fox Talbot was visiting Lake Como, Italy and attempting to make sketches using a Camera Lucida. Unsuccessful, he began to think of another way to capture the image. He wrote a note to remind himself of potential experimentation on the idea of capturing an image. This essentially marked the first time William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the Calotype, thought about any sort of photographic process. Since then, the note has been lost, but Talbot transcribed it into one of his many journals a couple months after writing the original note. The journal reads:\n\n > Nitrate of Silver. Wash a sheet of paper with it. Place a leaf of fennel or other of complicated form upon it. Press it down with a pane of glass - when blackened with the sunshine place it in something that will alter its property of blackening - qu. Prussiate of potash? Sulp. Acid. Mur Soda. Carb. Soda. Instead of the leaf try several bits of coloured glass - thus a silhouette might be taken, especially in a dark room.\n\n\nThese early ideas for experimentation are what led Talbot to create one of the first photographic processes in our history. I, personally, just think it would be interesting to see and preserve the note. Mostly because it could be labeled as a starting point for the experimentation of the Calotype.\n\n[Source:](_URL_0_) Roger Watson, Helen Rappaport. *Capturing the Light.* New York: St Martins Press. 91-94", "Many silent films from the silent film era are (unfortunately) deemed lost. It's really sad to think that there are thousands of hours of film that no longer exist. There may have been movie stars that we have very little or no record of studying. ", "Letters are excellent sources for the study of late antiquity and the massive *Register* of Pope Gregory the Great stands out even today due to the range of topics covered. He corresponded with emperors, kings and heretics from across the Christian world, making it an outstanding source for the end of the sixth century. Unfortunately, his successors' letter-collections were not preserved in a similar way and we have to make do with only a small number of letters preserved principally in the records of church councils (such as from the Lateran Synod of 649, the Ecumenical Council of 680 and the gazillion Councils of Toledo in Spain), so we get the impression that popes after Gregory were seemingly only interested in doctrinal issues, not political and administrative matters, which was obviously not the case. What is particularly fascinating is the fact that the seventh century was an extended crisis for the Byzantine Empire and that we have no contemporary Greek histories or chronicles to tell us what happened, so we have to reconstruct events from religious and non-Greek sources. From the sources we have, the papacy emerges as a shadowy power acting behind the scenes of major revolts and religious controversies, which I think is a very dramatic demonstration of how western bishops were still intimately involved in Byzantine affairs. \n\nSo what do we know? Pope Honorius I in the 630s had agreed to the monothelete doctrine proposed by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, an act that must have angered many Chalcedonians in the west, yet from the sources we only hear of eastern dissidents. The papacy then did a volte-face after Honorius' death and condemned monotheletism openly from 640 onwards, which in my opinion directly caused a revolt by the Byzantine governor of North Africa in 646 - what wouldn't I give to read the letters exchanged between Rome and Africa at this time! Pope Theodore I also began to prepare for a synod to be held in Rome to condemn monotheletism, which was again a giant slap to the face of Constantinople. From the list of attendees, it is clear that it was an overwhelmingly Italian synod, yet records also indicate that there was support from Francia and Visigothic Spain, so why were there no attendees from the west? \n\nTheodore died before the council was held, so Martin I became the pope chairing the treasonous proceedings. A Byzantine exarch was sent to arrest the pope in the synod's aftermath, but for some reason the exarch turned against the emperor and began a civil war in Italy on the pope's side in 652! Again, we only have a few hints of what happened in this revolt; we have a few letters from Martin urging bishops across Christendom to side with him, so I do wonder to what extent did he urge for secular officials to join his side too. A bit later there were purges within the Byzantine aristocracy that can plausibly be tied to this too, so my pet theory is that the anti-monotheletes' influence was widespread across the empire and took years to be completely wiped out.\n\nThe exarch died soon after and Martin was arrested (for realsies) in 653. The next two popes were pro-imperial candidates imposed on Rome and they swiftly reconciled with the heretical emperor Constans II. This period is perhaps even less known, since both the papacy and the emperor after 680 (when monotheletism was condemned as a heresy) had no interest in preserving what happened in those years. Still, the hints we have are absolutely fascinating, since it looks like a North African monk served as an imperial ambassador to Francia and was seemingly involved in a plot to bring down Burgundy, whilst another monk, Theodore of Tarsus (incidentally one of the dissidents in 649), was appointed by the pro-imperial Pope Vitalian to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Was Constans II trying to extend imperial influence to Francia and beyond through the papacy? Was he trying to heal the wounds made by rebellious popes from the 650s? All these questions would be answered if only more papal letters survived...", "Of the lost works of Archimedes of Syracuse that we know about, the most intriguing to me is *On Sphere-Making*, mentioned in Book VIII of the *Collection* by Pappus of Alexandria (see Chapter 3 in S. Cuomo, *Pappus of Alexandria and the Mathematics of Late Antiquity*). This apparently contains a description of a miniature planetarium Archimedes built, \"a sphere constructed so as to imitate the motions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets in the heavens.\" (Heath, *[The Works of Archimedes](_URL_1_)*, p. xxi). \n\nHere is an excerpt from a description, from Cicero's *De Re Publica*, of a device which he says was Archimedes' \"sphere\" (source and commentary [here](_URL_2_)):\n > But when Gallus began to give a very learned explanation of the device, I concluded that the famous Sicilian had been endowed with greater genius than one would imagine it possible for a human being to possess. [...] this newer kind of\nglobe, he said, on which were delineated the motions of the sun and moon and of those five stars which are called wanderers [the five visible planets], or, as we might say, rovers, contained more than could be shown on the solid globe, and the invention of Archimedes deserved special admiration because he had thought out a way to represent accurately by a single device for turning the globe those various and divergent movements with their different rates of speed.\n\nIt's likely that the contents would bring us some clarity on the mysteries surrounding the [Antikythera mechanism](_URL_3_).\n\nSpeaking of Archimedes and lost works, Johan Heiberg's discovery of the [Archimedes palimpsest](_URL_0_) is an extraordinary lost-and-found story. The codex contains several works by Archimedes, some of which were previously thought to be lost, hidden under a 13-th century Christian religious text. \n\n", "Although a lot of the data has been published so I can't be too upset, the sheer pointlessness of the destruction of the [Nemi ships](_URL_0_) still gets to me. It is also a little frustrating that there is no real certainty over who was to blame, although to be frank the Allies' explanation always struck me as a little mustache-twirly.", "I deal with formerly classified documents pretty much every day. Government secrecy makes the terms \"missing\" and \"destroyed\" a little tricky to use, because they may be effectively missing and destroyed to most historians, but in reality they are often just being denied to us. Some secret documents do go missing, however, because they get misplaced or misfiled within the gargantuan government bureaucracy that at one point was trying to keep them secret, even if they no longer contain secret information in them. In fact, when it comes to secret documents, being misplaced is more common than being destroyed, because legally you cannot detroy secret documents without leaving a large paper trail — so that means that the documents are usually preserved, _if_ anyone can figure out where they are preserved.\n\nAnyway, on my blog not too long ago I wrote a series of very long posts about my hunt for, eventually success at finding (through unorthodox archival practice), and frustrations with declassification, regarding the legendary unredacted copies of the security hearing of J. Robert Oppenheimer. [Here is the link to part I](_URL_1_), where I describe why I started looking for them and how I found them. [Here is the link to part II](_URL_0_), where I analyze the new transcripts for what they do (and don't) tell us about the Oppenheimer case.\n\nSeparately, a few years back [I wrote about a case where the US government \"lost\" about 4 million pages of secrets](_URL_2_) through misfiling. It happens more often than one might think, if one thought (erroneously) that the US government was very good at keeping track of large amounts of historical paperwork (it is not).", "i do a lot of work in the history of islam in america and we lack a ton of valuable documents for most groups that started before 1950, especially african american groups.\n\nI'd say some of the biggest things that scholars would want are:\n\nA) any writings connected to W.D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam (a few of his supposed letters are circulating, though). I think number one on his list would be a book that police found and that was supposedly written by him, entitled \"the bible of islamism\". Also, it would be great if any of the supposedly hundreds of letters written TO him that the police found came up one day. Karl Evanzz supposedly got the Detroit field office FBI file on the NOI which supposedly had details that no other document contained, including info from the local police's files after they arrested original members. However, evanzz gave his papers to Howard Univ, and when I made a request for the Detroit file, they couldn't find it in the collection.\n\nB) documents related to other early black groups such as Satti Majid's Moslem Welfare Society and Abdul Hamid Suleiman's Canaanite Temple (and of course Noble Drew Ali's 1913 Moorish Temple). Of particular value would be the State Department records of the 1922 Shriner push to have Suleiman investigated. Unfortunately, the State Dept says they can't find it. \n\nOther than that, I am proud to say that I recently discovered a document, tucked away in an extremely rare microfilm collection, that no one ever had any idea existed before: A letter used for organizing the very first Sufi group in the US (pre-Inayat Khan)--and perhaps the first Sufi group for ANY modern white europeans/americans ", " > As an archivist, it pains me to admit this, but sometimes humanity’s records don’t survive.\n\nMy reasoning for suggesting this topic is was to talk about an instance where missing documents can actually be a good thing, in some sense.\n\nI'm talking about the mountains of documents about Chinese immigration which were destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. On the one hand, these documents would have been invaluable resources for quantitative historical research on early China-to-U.S. immigration of Chinese people. However, the destruction of the documents made life easier for a lot of Chinese people.\n\nSince corroborating documents were all destroyed, Chinese people living in the U.S. that claimed to be natural citizens essentially had to be taken at their world by the federal government. While I can't find an academic citation for this number, I've heard it claimed that if everyone who came forward as a natural citizen actually was, it would have required every Chinese woman to give birth to 800 people. At any rate, it was a widespread phenomenon, allowing Chinese immigrants the ability to secure a lot more rights, all possible only because of the destruction of a massive stack of documents.\n\nThis all had a trickle-down effect to--with so many Chinese claiming natural citizenship, they were then able to import their children. Oftentimes these didn't end up actually being \"their\" children, I've written on the 'paper sons' phenomenon before. The gist is that Chinese-American citizens would sell native Chinese children the right to claim they were the Chinese-American person's children, and thus have a chance at immigrating to the U.S. that way.\n\nLord knows how many fewer Chinese citizens the U.S. would have had in the early 20th Century if it hadn't been for that fateful destruction during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.", "For many documents in my field, it was not that they have been lost, but they were never recovered in the first place. Many African-American newspapers were never saved beyond a few years past their original publication date and thus major sources of ethnic communities have been lost. In addition to seemingly simple sources of history such as newspapers, the whole of African-American history is being tainted by a lack of primary sources, oral interviews are hard to come by (in part due to the traumatic events associated with their communities) and the problems with literacy that were endemic early on leave few letters and diaries in some areas. One thing that actually comes to mind where an important series of artifacts being saved was the donation of the [Richard Samuel Roberts photographic plates](_URL_0_) to the University of South Carolina. Roberts was an African-American photographer in the 1920's and 30's specializing in photographing African-American people and society. After his death, all the remaining glass plates were placed under the house for saving. It was not until the late 1970's that researchers were able to locate and preserve the plates, as well as reprint them in their entirety, has conditions been slightly different, or it had taken longer to recover, these important images would've been lost. ", "The most important letter signed by Soekarno, dubbed Supersemar (Surat Peritah Sebelas Maret) or the March 11^th Command Letter that gave birth to New Order and ended the era of Soekarno is... not really lost, but there are three different versions that are being kept in National Archive right now, and are believe to be [fake.](_URL_0_)\n\nFirst version was issued by the Secretary with Garuda letterhead, was short and to the point. \n\nThe second was issued by the Army with Garuda letterhead, stating Soeharto as Revolution General and added one more command while embellishing the first command. \n\nThe third doesn't have any letterhead whatsoever or any information who issued it, and Soekarno's sign is also slightly different than the other two. \n\nPresident's formal letterhead should be stars with cotton and rice-paddy and not Garuda.\n\nThe letter supposedly gave all the rights for Soeharto, our second president, to take any means necessary to quell the dire situations pasca Indonesian Communist Party riot and subsequent purge. \n\nSoeharto then used this letter as justification for massacring Communist Party members and every person who had ever donated money to the party (mostly Chinese - Indonesian), executed fifteen Soekarno's loyalist generals, and suppressed media's news report at the time. \n\nA year later, Soeharto became President without election. " ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/features/trivia" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-late-great-municipal-reference-library/Content?oid=887378" ], [ "https://www.worldcat.org/title/capturing-the-light-the-birth-of-photography-a-true-story-of-genius-and-rivalry/oclc/827256979&referer=brief_results" ], [], [], [ "http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/", "https://archive.org/details/worksofarchimede029517mbp", "http://hist.science.online.fr/antikythera/DOCS/THE%20PLANETARIUM%20OF%20ARCHIMEDES.pdf", "http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/project/overview" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships" ], [ "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/01/16/oppenheimer-unredacted-part-ii/", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/01/09/oppenheimer-unredacted-part-i/", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/07/missing-four-million-pages-of-secrets/" ], [], [], [ "http://www.columbiamuseum.org/exhibitions/ourtime-ourplace/" ], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Supersemar2.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cq0y5eh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Practically all physicists knew that atomic bombs were theoretically possible after the discovery of nuclear fission and the nuclear chain reaction in the early months of 1939. Most thought that they were a technology that was not going to emerge for another decade or so, and if they were interested in chain reactions, they focused on the possibility of using them to generate power, which is a much easier problem than that of a bomb. The idea of atomic bombs had been \"in the air\" in a general, science-fiction sense since 1914, but certainly by 1939 they were a common trope in \"gee whiz\" newspaper and magazine stories. When fission was discovered there was plenty of press about its possibilities, though, again, scientists had long grown skeptical about the idea of being able to release atomic energy on an industrial or military scale, because most of the discussion of it had been uninformed nonsense, and there were many technical factors that were still unknown (and, had nature differed in tiny, almost imperceptible ways, would make such weapons impossible, or at least unlikely in the near term). \n\nThe Japanese had a small nuclear project that looked into both of these possibilities. So they were aware of the theoretical potentials, though they also recognized that to develop even the power option would require creating an entirely new industry from scratch, and involve a lot of risk, and that developing a weapons option would be even more difficult.\n\nAs for specific awareness of an Allied projects, there is no evidence that anyone in Japan considered it a real issue. The Japanese scientists concluded that even the Americans would have a tough time of making a nuclear weapon. (They were right — it wasn't easy.) They seem to have made no serious effort to find out whether it was true, however. If they had, I suspect they would have quickly figured out that the United States was expending vast resources on the subject — there was a lot of evidence in plain sight, in the form of leaks and mysterious disappearances (all of the nuclear physicists stopped publishing, for example). But Japanese intelligence in the US mainland was terrible, on the whole, so I tend to just chalk up this lacunae to that fact. \n\nI have never found any evidence that the Germans had much of an indication of the American bomb project either. [I have written on this question a bit here](_URL_0_). Basically, from what sources I have available to me (which are not complete, to be sure), it seems the Germans believed that they were far ahead of the Americans with regards to fission research. They did send information to German spies asking them to look into the question but the very questions they asked indicated that they thought it was small-scale and probably not very sophisticated. (The spies were immediately caught — the Germans also had poor intelligence in the mainland USA.) \n\nThe Soviets are a different story. They had indirect indications of an American bomb project — they noticed that the people who were working on fission right before the war suddenly vanished — and they also had volunteer spies (moles) in both the UK and US portions of the fission work. They had an extensive overview of the project as well as knowledge of many specific technical details as a result, from very early on. So it was not unexpected at all for them.\n\nAs for other countries, one of my favorite episodes is when a group of Indian physicists showed up to the United States during the war and started asking around to find out where the uranium was being enriched. The Manhattan Project security people quickly found them and asked them where they had gotten such an idea. The Indians (quite indignant about being interrogated) told them it was obvious to any competent physicist that this was something the United States must be doing. They were told to stop asking questions and released. " ] }

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[ [ "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/13/what-did-the-nazis-know-about-the-manhattan-project/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "echmj06", "echn75w", "echnba5", "ecidhuq", "eciwcyo" ], "score": [ 7, 3, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Now we get to the comments thanking the contributors to the list. Firstly, I’d like to give special thanks to three flairs whose contributions are not (at present) immediately apparent on the list itself.\n\n* Firstly I’d like to thank fellow Asia flairs /u/keyilan [Moderator | Historical Linguistics | Languages of Asia](#flair-moderator) and /u/NientedeNada [Late Edo Period | Meiji Restoration](#flair-asia), who were of great help during the initial planning phases in terms of deciding upon what changes to make, from broader issues like the extent of the rewrite to more minute issues of formatting.\n* I’d like to again thank /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov [Moderator | Post-Napoleonic Warfare & Small Arms | Dueling](#flair-moderator) for taking the time to add affiliate links to the doc, as well as more generally for being such a great mod and such a prominent presence on this sub. Rock on, Georgy!", "I'm glad this is out! So will we be able to add more entries to this? ", "Heads up, the links appear to be in edit mode. Reddit gives me a permission error when I try to view the lists. ", "Thank you for this! Really excited to read some of these and appreciate the hard work you guys put in! ", "Looks like a great list, I cant wait to dig into the books. Thanks to all the flairs and folks who put in the work to make it." ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/innerasia", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/southasia", "https://imgur.com/V1vAZI6", "https://imgur.com/hnjlBTj", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/eastasialegacy", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/southasialegacy", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/innerasialegacy", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/eastasia", "https://imgur.com/E5Y8IWa", "https://imgur.com/y2X2MoP" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dgcw923", "dgoswby" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "_URL_0_\n\nu/commiespaceinvader answered a lot of my questions in this post, but I'm still unsure of how it was decided who went to what camp", "Good question! I hope that you read the link given in another answer and that you found some answers there. However, I will try to give you some idea of the situation. In addition, I write about the difference between death camps and work camps [here](_URL_0_).\n\nAs you can see from the link I provided, there was a significant difference between the death camps and the concentration/work camps. In short, concentration camps served a variety of purposes from slave labor to incarceration of criminals or other \"undesirables.\" They could house German criminals, German homosexuals, Poles, clergy who protested the Nazis, communists, etc. The purpose of the concentration camp also varied depending on the commandant or the location. In some camps, the death rate was higher than at others (excluding the end of war transports of Jewish prisoners that greatly inflated death rates at those camps to which they were transferred), while at others, the goal seemed to be economic to some degree. In other words, the camps were much like every aspect of the Nazi regime, varied according to the nature of the leader in charge of it. \n\nIn the concentration camps, people might be separated based on any number of reasons, but often Jews were kept separate from others. Kapos (prisoner functionaries) were often common criminals and abused the others, with Jews and homosexuals tending to be on the low end of the hierarchy. Some camps themselves became known for specific types of prisoners (Dachau, for example, was known for the number of clergy it held). \n\nThe most famous \"selections,\" however, are associated with Auschwitz and applied to Jews. In these, men and women were separated from one another. If the work camp portion of Auschwitz was full, the entire train might be gassed without any selection whatsoever; however, in instances where \"workers\" were needed, the weak, elderly, children, and often women with children were selected for gassing. Those who were selected for work were then taken into the work camp. \n\nRegarding your last question, there was a debate between 1939 and 1941 regarding what was to be done about the Jews. As the General gouvernement of Poland became a dumping ground of Jews (creating much consternation on the part of Hans Frank, the Governor-General, who opposed it being used in such a way), the various German rulers of Polish cities with Jewish ghettos each had different goals. In *The Origins of the Final Solution*, Christopher Browning states \"a the core of the dispute over ghetto policy was a split between \"attritionists\" and \"productionists.\" As the ghettos became longer term features rather than simply collection points, Jews were paid for work and an emphasis might be on economic productivity. Alternately, such as in Lodz, while Jews worked, the focus by the German officials was on getting rid of the ghetto through \"attrition.\"\n\nWhat changed this policy seems to have been the invasion of the Soviet Union and with it the drastic increase in the number of Jews under German control. Ghettos had never been a permanent solution to the Jewish Question and had been much opposed by almost every Nazi in Poland. Moving the Jews into the East became a fascination of most such leaders. In the Soviet Union itself, Jews became the victims of the *Einsatzgruppen* as they were tasked with eliminating threats to the rear of the German army. This radicalization of Jewish policy soon encompassed those Jews in occupied areas as well. The Polish ghettos were liquidated and the Jews of Europe were relocated to the East. \n\nAll this is to say that the policy of extermination MIGHT not have been the most economically beneficial, although the linked post from the previous comment will give you more information on that. Ultimately, however, economic benefit was not the only principle at play. Enrichment of the SS leaders was key and speed was an important aspect of that. Hence theft of Jewish property trumped long term economics and slave labor. Also, anti-Semitism and a desire to exterminate the Jews played an important role. Finally, the radicalization that came along with the invasion of the Soviet Union provided impetus as well.\n\nHope this helped." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4nz0tk/why_didnt_hitler_wait_until_after_world_war_ii_to/" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/47sgtq/why_is_auschwitz_the_archetypal_concentration_camp/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctwa4zo", "ctwl55s" ], "score": [ 56, 13 ], "text": [ "[Mark Isaak has collection about a gazillion flood stories.](_URL_0_) That is a lot, but not every country has one. Nor is there all that much similarity across the stories. Boats are common, but you expect boats in a flood story. Some destroy the world and we go to a new one, some just destroy the local area. Nor is there any way to somehow line up any timeline.\n\nI suspect that your friend has a confused version of the [Black Sea deluge hypothesis](_URL_1_). Roughly speaking this says that an ice dam held the Med back from the Black Sea and then it flooded. People postultulated that this event led to the various Mesopotamian flood stories (including the Noahic flood). There are several problems with that hypothesis. First, better evidence says that the Black Sea did not flood catastrophically, but rather slow enough for people to move when it was a problem. Second there is no evidence for some mass migration from the area. And finally there is nothing special about the Mesopotamian flood stories that requires a special explanation.", "As you said, since floods, tsunamis, and sea level changes are common place events, myths and legends concerning them are also commonplace. Additionally fossils of marine life are widespread on mountains, which can easily inspire people to hypothesize that the mountains were once underwater to explain how fish bones got all the way up there. \n\nThe set of flood myths in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia (Greek Deucalion, Israelite Noah, Sumerian Utnapishtim, etc.) have several common motifs. Perhaps they're all derived from a common ancestral legend, or perhaps they all arose as independent legends that became more similar due to cultural cross-pollination. \n\nOutside this area, flood myths and legends can be quite diverse. A common Australian motif involves children upsetting the Rainbow Serpent in its oasis, who floods the world punishment. It's basically a \"Water falls, everyone dies\" story since there's rarely any mention of survivors. They're morality tales to discourage kids from playing in unfamiliar waters. The Desert Finch Dreaming in South Australia also describes a flood, as the sea swept over the southern plains until the Desert Finch Ancestors dove into the water in the thousand to build up a high wall ([the cliffs](_URL_0_) that form the shore of the Great Australian Bight) to stop the water. This one may in fact be describing the post-Ice Age flooding of the southern continental shelf. \n\nIn a broad swath of eastern North America, a flooded world is the initial state, until Turtle offers to become the foundations of dry land prior to or during the arrival of humans. There's a few examples that alter this bit. In the Lenape version, Toad maliciously swallowed all the water. When he was injured in the fight to recover the water, it all poured out at once, flooding the world until Turtle becomes new land. In the Ojibwe version, the Gichi-manidoo floods the world to purify it, and humans have to be re-made by Nanabozho, again after Turtle becomes land. This is a rare example of the divine punishment motif in the area and may have been introduced through missionary contact.\n\nFor the Rapanui of Easter Island, the earth is *still* flooded. Their flood legend occurs sometime after the island was settled around 700 CE or perhaps a little earlier. Based on where it fits into the overall narrative of the islands history, it seems to correspond with to the time when changing weather patterns, the loss of the island's trees (needed to make voyaging canoes), and the abandonment of settlements on intervening islands cut the Rapanui off from the rest of the Polynesian world by the 1500s (interactions with the rest of Polynesia never seems to have been particularly common, but they didn't start really getting cut off until the 1200s). That the rest of the world had been drowned became the explanation for why the island was no longer visited by others, until the Tangata Hiva (Europeans, but literally \"People of Distant Lands\") finally showed up in the 1700s." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis" ], [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Great_Australian_Bight_Marine_Park.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fioy8xe", "fip8voj", "fipaviq", "fipvvmz" ], "score": [ 6, 5, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "That’s a pretty broad spectrum. Are there any events, eras, or regions that you find most interesting.\n\nThe sub has a series of book recommendations for all sorts of topics, broken down by subject matter. You should definitely take a look.", "I think something that should be mentioned here is that historians are not “history buffs” in the way that most laypeople would think. History is not simply memorization of events and dates. The study of history is the study of how to contextualize events, writings, languages, and many other things so that they say something about how people lived. This can also be used to explain why people live as they did in later periods or even now. Basically, history is another sub-area in the broader study of humans and their societies. Most people don’t understand this because in high school history class, memorization of dates without context is unfortunately how it is taught. In fact, you will find that if you really study history seriously that dates matter very little and that ideas and theories about how societies worked are far more important. Any serious historical work that anyone here will recommend you will have this as a framework too. You will notice that they all have a thesis or theses about the significance of the work, even if it is a little hidden in nice writing. You will come away with really learning about something deeper, not to sound cliche.", "History is arguably the science of the specific. At least, that's what I argue, so I suppose it must be arguable. Which is to say, while understanding the vast sweep of history is great, it's also hard to really dive into because so much of what makes history fascinating, informative and fun is the details. Often the best thing about general history is finding new rabbit holes of specific periods and topics to become passionate about and begin researching. Which is all to say, while this thread has some good recommendations on general histories, also ask yourself specifically what most interests you based on what you do know. Follow that passion! That's often what studying history is all about, whether you are a student or a hobbyist or an academic. I (and many people) find more focused interest is a lot easier to sustain and brings very tangible rewards. Which isn't to say you shouldn't study broader histories, but that if you find your passion and your curiosity pulling you toward a particular topic, follow it and see where it leads you.\n\nThis is also important for learning how to -do- history. Because studying history is in no small part about learning to think historically - how to criticize and contextualize sources, how to use those sources to infer causality, how to develop a historical argument. And that kind of thinking is often best shown in the smaller scale of more specific topic and period studies rather than in the broadest general histories - part of making a broad narrative is concealing all the work that you've done in constructing it, while it's expected that more focused histories will show their work.\n\nTL/DR study general histories, by all means, but don't be afraid to follow the rabbit holes of individual topics that interest you.", "I​ am​ so​ glad​ that​ you​ guys​ exist, really!. Thank you,Thank​ you!​ As​ I​ am​ a​ fifteen years​ old​ boy​ I​ really​ really​ fascinated in​ the​gilded​ age​ and​ the second industrial​ revolution​ ​ that​ produce​ them​ titans of​ america​ and​ their fabulous suit, top​ hat, and​ walking​ cane.I am​ so​ really​ glad​ from​ the​ very​ buttom of​ my​ sub-concious​ mind​ and​ heart.​May​ god​ keep you​ guys​ save, and​ I​ wish​ you​ guys​ have​ great​ success in​ part​s that​ you​ develope impact of.Much obliged!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdvc5a3" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The idea that the \"Aztecs were looking to gain captives in combat\" is really quite overblown. While the taking of prisoners was important for advancement in social and military rank, the number of prisoners to gain high status was quite small -- as few as 4 captives depending on the circumstances. That the upper echelons of social/military advancement were eventually restricted only to the nobility was a further disincentive to risk life and limb to take a captive in the heat of battle. Furthermore, Postclassic military engagements were proceeded by volleys of slingstones, arrows, and atlatl darts, none of which are particularly conducive to seizing prisoners. \n\nThe focus on captive taking really conflates the actions of the elite shock troops of the noble military orders, particularly during the ritual practice of *xochiyaoyotl* (Flower War) combats, with normal combat actions. The xochiyaoyoatl were more focused on taking prisoners, but they were also arranged and limited engagements largely between the elites of two like minded groups (like the Aztecs and the Tlaxcalans) specifically for that purpose. The Aztec could, and did, engage in combats which destroyed enemy forces, stormed their cities, and resulted in massive casualties of the opposing force. \n\nRemember that the Aztecs had spent over a century fighting near continuous wars of expansion against opponents who did not always share their zeal for seizing prisoners, and yet were rarely defeated. Moreover, in combat against the Spanish, they were really fighting a small number of Europeans accompanied by much more numerous Tlaxcalans and other native forces, including former allies of the Mexica. These indigenous forces would have been using the exact same tactics as the Aztecs they were fighting against. The idea that some sort of difference between the mentality of the Spanish and the Aztecs was a decisive part of the former's eventual victory is, in this light, simply bunk. It's not even supported by the Spanish themselves, who speak quite highly of both their native allies and opponents.\n\nI wrote a bit more on Aztec Warfare [here](_URL_1_) and previously wrote about Mesoamerican sieges [here](_URL_0_). On the latter point, it should be noted that while the logistical constraints of siege warfare were felt more strongly in Mesoamerica, and thus more infrequently practiced, the Cortes' troops weren't exactly well-prepared in this either. Chronically running out of powder and having their cannons seized and destroyed, Diaz del Castillo recounts how they tried to build a trebuchet. It did not go well.\n\nThose past comments reference Hassig's *Aztec Warfare* which is the seminal work on the subject. His *Mexico and the Spanish Conquest* is an excellent companion to that work." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1coe7f/siege_warfare_in_precolombus_americas_how/c9ixz4h", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lq5ma/military_capabilities_of_precolombian_mesoamerica/cc3csj7" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "elf5lmq" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "EDIT: For an answer to the main question, please see [my subsequent Saturday Showcase post.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe answer to your main question is something that will require me to do a little digging into source material that I can't access till I get back from holiday tomorrow, but on the matter of the Triads, what is important to note is that Hong appears to have succeeded in gathering a following *despite* the Triads, rather than including them. Spence's later *God's Chinese Son* brings this up in more detail, but of around 10 known Triad-associated river pirate chiefs who joined the Taiping in their early years, only two – Su Sanniang and Luo Dagang – actually converted to Taiping Christianity and joined long-term, whereas the others either deserted or, most prominently in the case of 'Big-Head' Yang, switched sides entirely and supported Qing forces against the nascent uprising.\n\nIndeed, Hong's early proclamations actively antagonised the Triads to an extent. He publicly proclaimed that he had no time for Triad pretensions of destroying the Qing and restoring the old Ming dynasty, for one becaue by that stage the Ming imperial line had effectively vanished, and for another because Hong believed that the imperial system as it then existed was inherently corrupt and blasphemous, and so a change in ruling dynasty would make no difference. Indeed, he reserved similar vitriol for the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang has he did for the Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty, due to the Qin emperor having been the first to usurp the apparently divine attribute of *di* 帝 from the Heavenly Father *Shangdi* 上帝 by calling himself emperor – *Huangdi* 皇帝. \n\nFor the most part, Hong presented himself not as a Triad ally, but a Triad alternative, emphasising not the comparatively mundane issue of dynastic renewal, but rather a spiritual revolution and the promise of cleansing China of (Qing Manchu) devils and demonic influences. His spiritual programme explicitly opposed Confucian, Daoist and, crucially, Buddhist 'idolatry', and his organisation was itself committed to fighting bandits, which put it in competition with the Triads, who were similarly operating as a local defence force. What would have further contributed was the Taiping's initial focus on protecting the Hakka-speaking minority population, whereas the Triads were generally more associated with the Cantonese-speaking Punti majority. So the Taiping were hardly successful in winning over Triads. Rather, they won over the Triads' potential support base.\n\nSources and Further Reading:\n\n* Jonathan D. Spence, *God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan* (1996)\n* Jonathan D. Spence, *The Taiping Vision of a Christian China, 1836-1864* (1998)\n* Thomas H. Reilly, *The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Religion and the Blasphemy of Empire* (2004)\n* Jen Yu-Wen, *The Taiping Revolutionary Movement* (1973)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bhzdia/saturday_showcase_april_27_2019/elxk8hd/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dxyyuc7" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "*\"Post Soviet Russia\"* by Roy Medvedev contains a day-by-day breakdown of the events. The crisis was that the congress ruled to impeach Yeltsin after Yeltsin attempted to introduce rule by decree. Now Yeltsin attempted to dissolve the congress which was something he explicitly wasn't entitled to by the Russian constitution.\n\nAt that point the approval ratings of both Yeltsin and of the Russian parliament were below 25%. Millions of Russians were disappointed by the shock therapy liberalization and wouldn't take sides in the resultant stand-off.\n\nGiven whole army units (along with left and right wing radicals) came to the support of the congress while it was under siege the events can well be said to have been a real civil war.\n\nAs for the long run, it is not something not covered by this subreddit. The supporters of Yeltsin feared his fall would have resulted in a roll back to the soviet times or a in new right wing dictatorship (and these opinions were especially popular abroad.) Today it's his critics who note that his refusal to share or cede power resulted in a centralized and not extremely democratic system. The Russian politician Xenia Sobchak had noted the liberals in Poland had no qualms about ceding power to communists after unpopular reforms and it, if anything, made Poland more democratic." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e8iidre" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You may be interested in [a recent answer of mine](_URL_1_) that begins to answer a little part of this question. To crib from the end of it,\n\n > One thing is that hooped petticoats have a long history in western fashion, and the more extreme versions developed out of ones that looked roughly like someone wearing many petticoats. I assume the period of interest to you is the 1760s-1770s (which is the segment of this rundown that gets the most attention in film) - by that point, two or three generations of wealthy women had grown up accepting them as a normal part of dress. \n\nFashions do not come out of nowhere, any more than any other aspect of historical life. Full skirts are still understood as attractive today: couturiers like [Oscar de la Renta](_URL_6_) still use them in ball gowns and wedding dresses, and even the more down-market David's Bridal carries them. We achieve these looks now largely on the backs of seamstresses who came before, who made us of new materials and techniques that stiffen or hold out fabric, but for quite some time, the only way to manage this was to wear multiple petticoats. Full-body images from [before the widespread adoption of the farthingale](_URL_2_) don't show an extreme width, but there is enough fullness there that several would have been needed to make the skirt fall this way. We see something similar [in the years before the return of the hoop in the eighteenth century](_URL_3_) (as discussed in the linked answer). So, the fashion for a full skirt happens, and then someone - in this case, it seems to have been an English person - develops a way to create a larger full skirt with an under-structure. To quote myself again,\n\n > Hoops did not come back into fashion until the eighteenth century. Around 1700, some women were wearing heavily starched or glue-stiffened petticoats in order to help hold out their skirts, but by 1710, something rather like the farthingale was back in style. This hooped petticoat was more of a [domed shape](_URL_5_), and provoked tremendous public comment relating to women taking up too much space on the city streets, flaunting their vanity, etc. etc. In the late 1730s it took on a shape that was [flatter in the front and back](_URL_9_), but still fairly rounded, which went on to develop into the stereotypical [flatness and breadth](_URL_4_) people often think of when they think of eighteenth-century hoops by about 1750. From there, they became [more rounded and narrow](_URL_0_) by about 1760, and eventually morphed into [a bustle situation](_URL_8_), with volume at the sides and back, before fading away in the very early nineteenth century.\n\nIt looks like the fashion suddenly appeared because the common pop-cultural perception of the entire eighteenth century is, boom, broad hoops from start to finish - but looking at the full progression shows the way that they started as a \"reasonable\" device and became an aspect of fashion that existed regardless of necessity.\n\nWigs and hair powder are similar. Longer hair was fashionable for men in the early seventeenth century, and by the 1660s it needed to be so thick, long, and curly that it was much easier to make use of a wig instead. Around 1700, a pale-colored wig was worn with high peaks of hair on either side of a center part; the peaks came down in height over the 1710s, and the color became grey over the 1720s. More conservative or professional men often continued to wear a \"bob wig\" through the middle of the century, but most fashionable wig-wearing men began to tie theirs back into a queue in the 1730s, with only minor stylistic changes occurring until the return to natural hair in the 1780s-90s. Women, on the other hand, tended not to wear wigs. On parts of the Continent, fashionable women began using powder in the 1710s, but it did not catch on in Britain until the 1750s. Their hair was actually worn rather close to the head until the late 1750s and 1760s, when a slight rise at the top became fashionable, which morphed into quite a tall hairstyle in the 1770s; by the end of that decade, it widened, and then it lowered in the 1780s while still keeping the width. As with men, a more natural, though sometimes still powdered look became fashionable in the 1790s.\n\nCosmetics I can't discuss in great detail, because I haven't done as thorough a study of it as I have hair and clothing, and to my knowledge nobody else has looked at how these changed over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But it would be a mistake to think of makeup as \"caked on\". As with big wigs and big gowns, the pop-cultural idea reflects our modern feelings that our standards are ideal and old ones are ludicrous, even though the current Instagram look requires an incredible amount of makeup and time to apply it. Eighteenth-century beauty for men and women required pale skin, but a \"naturally\" pale look caused by being indoors and having a clear complexion (still quite important), with pink cheeks and lips. Portraiture does not show thick, dead white makeup covered with red blotches. It's probable that - then as now - some people put it on without skill and looked awkward, but the goal was clearly to look \"born with it\".\n\n > Was there any contemporary decenters? Or was it just a minority of the wealthy wearing that fashion?\n\nFashion could only be fully followed by the wealthy, but there was not a stark line between them and everyone else. Fashion is not just fashion, it is a paradigm for what looks normal to people (particularly before the invention of modern art-couture). In general, people dressed as well as they could afford to. John Collet's *High Life Below Stairs* (which you can see [here](_URL_7_)) shows the difference between the upper servants like the lady's maid, who dresses about as well as her unseen mistress, and the lower servants, who wear no corsetry and have unstyled and unpowdered hair. Dressing above your station could result in gossip, but dressing below it would do the same. For the most part, people tried to conform to standards for their particular spot on the social scale.\n\n > It just all seems so inconvenient, so so so much time and effort.\n\nConvenience above all other considerations is a very modern idea. They simply didn't even think about having a \"wash and wear\" hairstyle and stretchy clothes that didn't require much fitting, any more than they thought about having gas-powered automobiles or telephones; people who couldn't afford to style their hair beyond the very basics or wear anything but loose jackets or bedgowns were pitied." ] }

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[ [ "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Deborah_Hall_-_William_Williams_-_overall.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9nxnv9/historical_fashion_question/e83e33n/", "http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=44743", "https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/anne-masters-16731763-4th-countess-of-coventry-89572", "http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/99954.html?mulR=24026", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pesne_Anna_Orzelska.jpg", "https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/bridal-fall-2019/oscar-de-la-renta/slideshow/collection#1https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/bridal-fall-2019/oscar-de-la-renta/slideshow/collection#1", "http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume5/december06/primsource.cfm", "https://art.thewalters.org/detail/16344/portrait-of-a-lady-wearing-an-elaborate-hat/", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maria_Amalia_of_Saxony.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccavofo", "ccaxq82", "ccay6nw" ], "score": [ 4, 44, 13 ], "text": [ "I would like to clarify that I mean to ask: if there is a significance outside of the biblical context? does the 7 day week predate the Torah, or did the concept originate purely from the Torah and spread through Abrahamic religious cultures?", "FYI there's a section on this in the FAQ*\n\n[Weeks, weekdays, and weekends](_URL_0_)\n\n*see the \"popular questions\" link on the sidebar, or the \"wiki\" tab above", "The lunar calendar throughout history is based on a 28 day lunar cycle. These 28 days were divided evenly in to seven day weeks. Different civilizations used different ways of expanding the lunar calendar to take the sun in to account. The Chinese would, during the Shang Dynasty, every few years, add a 13th month. I would provide sources but I'm on my phone in class, I'm sure someone on here will be able to provide a more detailed and sufficient answer than I. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/calendars#wiki_weeks.2C_weekdays.2C_and_weekends" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cu9c6da" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "One thing that should be established is that until the 60' or so College Football was much more popular then the multiple Pro leagues out there, and thus when many schools had to suspend play during WW2 that accounts for the downturn seen in the 40's.\n\nBut then when everyone comes back and tons more can go to college on the GI Bill, then all of a sudden you have more players, and more fans, and you see it take off. With more schools competitive, more Bowls popping up, and the spread of more NCAA controlled games showing up on TV.\n\nAnd with more quality players coming out of college the quality of the pro game began to improve, and of course once the AFL and NFL merged and the Superbowl began it was a perfect made for TV event that could drive viewership. " ] }

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[ "http://www.vox.com/2014/10/14/6951261/sports-maps-charts" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cvhegid" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "My copy of Amber Books' *The Essential Aircraft Identification Guide: Aircraft of WWI* gives numbers in August 1918 as being:\n\n* France: 34% fighter, 51% observer, 15% bomber\n* Britain: 55%, 23%, 22%\n* Italy: 46%, 45%, 9%\n* USA: 46.5%, 46.5%, 7%\n* Germany: 42%, 50%, 8%\n* Austria-Hungary: 63%, 28%, 9%\n\nhope that helps!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmx0sjt", "dmx6d9s" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "I don't have a substantive answer for you but I would suggest reading David Howarth's 1066: Year of the Invasion because he goes over a lot of the details of the medieval English social and political structure and documents changes after the Norman take over. It may have some of the answers you are looking for.", "I have not heard any specific English form of tenancies, but tenant farming followed was broadly similar across Europe. That is not to say to say that European farming was similar everywhere, rather that tenant farming was just one of many different forms of farming. \n\nSo, tenant farming was the practice where landowners who owned more land than they themselves could cultivate, but did not legally control other people to do the farming for them (no slaves or serfs). So the hired tenant freemen are given parcels of the land to cultivate, and then pay the landowner with a part of the harvest, the land rent. The tenants would live and work at the farms all year round. And their pay would have been the rest of the agrarian surplus they were not obligated to pay their landowner or taxed away, which they then lived off of for the rest of the year. As for off season work, there was always work to be done at a farm, but winter was undoubtedly the low-intensity season. But it was then that the animals were butchered, wood collected from the forest, and most of the agricultural equipment maintained for the new year (fences, ploughs, etc)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "deiaegg" ], "score": [ 260 ], "text": [ "A combination of factors.\n\na) Right after leaving byzantine territory, the crusading armies found themselves on the brink of disaster. At Dorylaeum (July, 1097), the vanguard was surrounded by the Turks and only lived another day thanks to the quick judgement of Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, who arrived with the main host in the nick of time. The green troops of 1097 had become by 1099 a hardened force: most of the troops had adjusted to a life of self-sufficiency in food, equipment and horses and took at heart the communitarian, militant, religious character of the enterprise. Feudal loyalties gave way to military necessities - Godfrey of Bouillon began the campaign as head of the Lotharingian hosts - he ended it as leader of all northern french troops, a sign that his leadership had succeeded in creating a true esprit de corps.\n\nb) When crusaders arrived from the West, they were profficient in what historians call \"the charge and skirmish\" type of warfare. They quickly discovered that Easterners did it differently, by employing light cavalry (usually mounted archers) and the rapid tactics of the feint and ambush. By 1098 they were able to successfully counter such tactics; by 1099 they were using them successfully in the march towards Jerusalem.\n\nc) The political situation was a key factor in their success. After the death of Malik-Shah, the Seljuk dominion had fractured beyond repair. Tutush, the emir of Damascus, had taken all of Syria in 1094; in 1095 his realm split between his two sons, that were more interested in fighting each other than making an united front against the invading armies. Worse yet, the Fatimids took Jerusalem in 1098, even by going as far as offering the Crusaders an alliance. A perfect storm.\n\nd) I would add a fourth reason: true religious fervor. While good, cynical opportunists like Baldwin or Bohemond preferred to maintain power over the realms that they had obtained in 1098 (Edessa and Antioch), the rest of the army took down Jerusalem in a haze of religious symbolism and imagery. \"Army of God\", \"Blessed Journey\", \"Dead Martyrs\" were some of the phrases you can find in the letters that participants sent back home. This militant piety, enforced by pope Urban and their past victories, had achieved wonders at the siege of Antioch and would prove invaluable at Jerusalem.\n\nSource: \"God's War\" (Christopher Tyerman)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cp86645" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I don't know too much about the Danes, but my impression is that they were pretty much overrun before they had time to react.\n\nIn Norway, the government had time to get out of Oslo before the Germans could capture them. One thing I believe was important was the attitude of Haakon VI, king of Norway. He refused to cooperate with the Germans or capitulate.\n\nIt might also be a factor that the battle for Norway was still on for a couple of months before the military capitulation.\n\nAs far as I know, the major difference was simply that the Norwegian government had the opportunity to flee while the Danish did not." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3uqrxa", "c3uz1bu" ], "score": [ 29, 2 ], "text": [ "Simple answer: emergence of routinized labor in a factory. Call it Taylorization, [division of labor,](_URL_0_) or whatever you like, it was the change from craft control of labor to factory-based production that ended most guilds. \n\nLonger answer is *very* long. Involves immigration, changes in technology, populism, anti-unionism, \"robber-barons,\" and a whole dissertation's worth of stuff. \n\nThere are some professions that still resemble guilds: medicine, academia, and the legal profession maintain near-complete control over their own work. They select, train, employ and regulate their professional members, much as guilds did.\n\nEDIT: Missed the last part of your question. Strengths of the system depend on whose point of view. From the worker's POV, they could control their output, regulate the price for that output, control entry to the profession, and control the conditions of their work. For example, a cigar roller's daily \"stint\" was to roll X cigars. If he rolled fewer, he was a poor worker. If he rolled more, he was a poor union/guild member. Rolling too many would mean that fewer people would be employed. From the point of view of a shop owner, the guilds guaranteed quality (usually,) and that there would always be a certain number of workers available. Shop owner laments would include: resistance to change, more-or-less fixed labor costs (not always bad,) and a complicated hiring system. ", "Most guilds died out in the Early Modern Period, and not because of routinized labor in a factory, as Cosmic-Charlie claims. In the sixteenth century a few things happend that triggered the Commercial Expansion. These are the steady population growth, the slow gradual inflation and the rise of long-distance trade. In the old guild system there was little profit, little risk or loss and not much innovation. All this changed with the widening of the trading area or market. The rising amount of long-distance trade, where goods were produced to be sold at some time in the future, in faraway places, to persons unknown, the local guildmaster could not manage this operation. He lacked the money and knowlegde for this proces. In this long-distance business new kinds of entrepreneurs bacame promient in the European commercial life. They usually started out as merchants and ended up as bankers, like the german Fuggers.\n\nOther dealers in cloth broke away from the town-and-guild framework in other ways. In the fiftheenth century certain English entrepreneurs began to develop the spinning, weaving and dyeing of wool in England. To avoid the restrictive practices of the towns and guilds they 'put out' the work to people in the country, providing them with looms and other equipment for this process. This putting out system spread very widely outside the guild system and by the early modern period this typically depended on a gendered division of labor. This proved to be a start for the division of labor as we see in the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century.\nAnother aspect of the commercial revolution was mercantilism. Rulers were hard pressed for money and needed more of it as it fell in value. \n\nThe New Monarchs started building up a strong and self-sufficient system. The means adopted was to set the poor on work, to turn the country into a hive of industry, to discourage idleness, begging, vagabondage and unemployment. This went along nicely with the idea of the entrepreneurs, who put the poor on the countryside to work. Mercantilists frowned upon the localistic and conservatite outlook of the guilds. In 1563 England broke with the guildsystem, regulating with the Statute of Artificers the admission to apprenticeship and level of wages in various trades. In France the guilds lost influence and importance aswell. In both countries the government assisted merchants who wished to set up domestic or cottage industry in the country, against the protests of the town guilds, which in their heyday had forbidden rural people to engage in crafts. Government tried to suppres idleness to increase taxincome. " ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dj9d6s8", "dj9jnnu" ], "score": [ 76, 1422 ], "text": [ "Hello everyone, \n\nIf you are a first time visitor, welcome! This thread is trending high right now and getting a lot of attention, but it's important to remember that those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and [it can often take time for a good answer to be written](_URL_6_). The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with **in-depth and comprehensive responses**, and our [rules](_URL_4_) are intended to facilitate that purpose. *We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy*. We also remove them when they misunderstand the question, so please note: **the OP asked about the stereotype of incestuousness, not other stereotypes relating to southern America.** So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the [rules](_URL_4_), as we don't want to have to warn you further. (Making comments asking about the removed comments will simply compound this issue, so please don't do that either.) \n\nOf course, we know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your frontpage or /r/all and see only *[removed]*, but we ask for your patience and understanding. Great content is produced on this subreddit every day though, and we hope that while you wait, you will check out places they are featured, including [Twitter](_URL_1_), the [Sunday Digest](_URL_2_), the [Monthly \"Best Of\"](_URL_9_) feature, and now, [Facebook](_URL_3_). It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a [Private Message](_URL_7_!) to the [Remind-Me bot](_URL_0_), and it will ensure you don't!\n\nFinally, while we always appreciate feedback, it would be unfair to the OP to derail this thread with META conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_5_), or a [META thread](_URL_8_[META]). Thank you!", "The word \"hillbilly\" had spread far enough to make its first known appearance in print in 1900, though perhaps not quite far enough that it didn't need defining:\n\n > A hill-billie is a free and untrammelled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.\n\nThis is useful for two reasons. First, it sets out 1900 as the point by which the image of the hillbilly/redneck/poor white southerner had gelled in the American imagination (the quote is from a New York publication). Second, it focuses our attention on a particular sub-region of the American South, that is, on [Appalachia](_URL_1_) (and as John Otto points out, the oft-overlooked/morphed into 'western Appalachia' [Ozarks](_URL_0_)). The place of Appalachia in American settlement and economic history, and its function in 19th century literature, roll into the stereotypes we know today--including the myth of rampant incest.\n\nAlready by the early 19th century, Appalachia was developing a reputation as the \"backwoods\" of America from the eastern seaboard. Part of this was emotional: as white Americans geared up to force Native Americans further and further west, the backwoods served as a buffer zone or no man's land of protection. Part of this was geographic: duh. But part of this was economic, and on its way to becoming an enduring culture.\n\nScholars following Otto use the term \"plain folk\", and sometimes \"plain folk agriculture\" to stress its economic origins. Characteristics included small-scale farming in forest clearings, free-ranging pastoralism, and geographically isolated homesteads. But not socially isolated:\n\n > Each farmstead\n belonged to a dispersed rural neighborhood, or community, whose members\n were united by friendship, marriage, and kinship. Though dispersed over\n several square miles, the members of a community called on their friends,\n relatives, and in-laws for aid in clearing land, gathering crops, shucking corn,\n collecting livestock, slaughtering animals, and building log houses. \n\n > Frequently, a church was the focus of a community, and many communities adopted such Biblical place names as Pisgah, Hebron, and Gilead. The county seat towns, the churches, the schools, and the rural\n neighborhoods were the physical setting for social and recreational life. The\n simple pleasures of court sessions, church meetings, and neighborly socializ-\n ing did much to overcome the spartan material conditions of life. Folks owned\n modest amounts of property and pursued a self-sufficient life style which left\n little room for material luxuries. They fashioned their own agricultural tools,\n household furnishings, and clothing, and they bought little more than salt, ammunition, ironware, and the occasional book.\n\nThis is rather a vision or a version of the \"yeoman farmer\" stereotype, almost pioneer-like, and before the Civil War its presence was hardly limited to Appalachia (and, again, the Ozarks). But by 1820, eastern writers were recognizing that the urbanizing North and turn towards plantations in the south were crafting a divide. As Anne Newport Royall, editor of the Maryland proto-feminist magazine *The Huntress* wrote in 1826:\n\n > On the bosom of this vast mass of mountains . . . of Virginia . . . there is as much difference between the people of the western states and those in the east as there is between any two people in the union...these present a district republic of their own, every way different from any people.\n\nThe impression of difference was being communicated eastward by the pens of travelers, but even more so by the propaganda of revivalist missionaries seeing the backwoods as fertile ground for evangelization. As America spiraled towards civil war, too, northern antislavery writers crafted an view of Appalachia as a bastion of white abolitionism. Not entirely unrooted in reality, at least through the 1830s, this highly charged image depended on Appalachians as poor white people either victimized by slavery or opposed to it with fiery religious zeal. (To say nothing of, you know, black Appalachians and slave-owning whites...)\n\nAround and after the Civil War, two economic developments isolated the Appalachian backwoods both physically and culturally. First, the construction of railroads created, you might say, \"winners and losers\" out of Appalachian towns. Where the tracks went, David Hsiung argues, residents stayed both economically and *emotionally* connected to both Northern and deeper-Southern culture. In the deeper South, plain folk agriculture evaporated with the evolution into larger cotton-farming \"post-plantation\" plantations, essentially. But the *mountains* of Appalachia are not conducive to that pattern of planting. Plain folk agriculture *and the society/culture that accompanied it*, described above, lived on in the mountains.\n\nThe over 100 known accounts of outsiders Describing And Defining Appalachia from before the Civil War show their influence in the fiction of the day, and even the titles are revealing: *Wooing and Warring in the Wilderness*, *Fallen Pink, or a Mountain Girl’s Love*, *Sut Lovingood’s Yarns.* By 1860, writers are already trafficking quite profitably in the uneducated, backwoods, raw, yokel stereotype.\n\nOne thing that almost never comes up on AskHistorians is the impact of the Civil War on American *culture*. In fact, the expanding rift leading up to the war and then the war itself caused Americans to pretty seriously reassess what \"America\" was in all its (white) diversity and regional cultural pride. (You can tie this into the broader nationalist-imperialist movements in the late 19th century west, too). Literary scholars call one result of this, awesomely, the \"Local Color\" body of literature; Mark Twain is probably the most famous writer who gets retroactively caught in this net, but you can also think of all the pioneer literature, too. *Sut Lovingood's Yarns* and its ilk paved the way for the particularly Appalachian vein of Local Color.\n\nJohn Fox and Mary Murfree (writing, of course, as Charles Egbert Craddock; a *lot* of Local Color authors are women writing under men's names) were two of the major names driving home the culture of backwoods Appalachia at the end of the 19th century. In 1800, plain folk and their isolated homesteads with a strong central community had been somewhat distinctive but also normal. By 1900, railroads and changing economy had not only made the way of life an aberration, but had highlighted the *isolation* of it all. Geographically (railroads bypassed; terrain hard to travel), economically, and culturally isolated from the rest of the US...which focused even more attention on the isolation of individual farmsteads from each other. Fox's enormously popular body of work, in particular, highlighted the effects of this isolation enduring over time: depravity, drunkenness, slovenly personal hygiene, and incest.\n\nWriters told stories of large, isolated families struggling through romanticized but dire poverty that audiences across the rest of the U.S. ate right up. Allen Batteau's *The Invention of Appalachia*, sees this time period--leading up to that first mention of \"hillbilly\" in eastern print--as the rest of America using the (white) poverty, perceived simplicity, and lack of morality in backwoods Appalachia to define itself against: *this is what we don't want to be*.\n\nThe evolution of Appalachia and the Ozarks into the internal white American other was long in the making. And once fully formed, it managed to revitalize with each generation. 1910s-30s scholarship on the folklore, religion, lifestyle that painted Appalachia as almost a foreign land sometimes. The resulting Depression-era turn to Appalachian music, arts and crafts, dancing, old women's wisdom, as America's \"old-fashioned, original\" folk tradition that modernity had wiped away elsewhere. Complaints about white migrants' \"strangeness,\" their too-tight family ties and inability to integrate into wider communities, and their inability to understand laws and how to follow them arose with major migration north after World War II. The war on poverty from the late 1960s highlighted the \"white working class\" of Appalachia as its balance on the \"inner city.\" In the early 1970s, CBS had the sterling lineup of Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Hee-Haw to communicate the (more family-friendly) stereotypes of Appalachia to audiences on an unprecedented scale. \n\nBy the 1990s, Anne Shelby argues, the descent of the Appalachian stereotype (including that *other* type of \"family friendly\") into mass-comedy derived its staying appeal both inside and outside Appalachia from four basic points:\n\n* It's okay to be a redneck\n* I used to be a redneck and thank goodness I'm not anymore\n* I'm okay because I'm not like *those* rednecks\n* At least someone is worse off than me\n* \"If it wasn't funny, it would be scary as hell\"\n\nAnd so the stereotypes consolidated in the late 19th century of backwoods Appalachia as isolated, poor, too-close families live on as the nonexistent white America that makes actual white America feel a little bit better." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cap516w", "cap9sxu", "capcesu" ], "score": [ 8, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "1000CE to 1500CE was an exceptionally formative period for the rise of the nation-state, especially emerging out of the destablization and fragmentation of the Byzantine (Late Roman) Empire. Byzantium is an excellent example of the condition of empires and states at the time. From approximately the 7th century CE to the 10th century CE, the Byzantines had been consumed by conflict concerning interpretation of Christianity: Trinitarians of the Western Church clashed extensively with Monophysites of the Eastern Church-- the former being foundational to the modern Catholic Church and the latter the Eastern Orthodox. \n\n\nOne of the biggest problems with this protracted religious conflict within Byzantium was its effect on taxation, particularly as pertaining to taxation because of religion. In the 11th CE, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus instituted a tax system called \"pronoairios,\" designed to avail himself and his emperorship to the largely Monophysite landowners in the Eastern part of what was left of the Empire. (It was [greatly reduced] (_URL_0_) by 1000 from its size during the rule of Constantine.) Essentially, landowners had the sole ability to tax the peasants who worked their land; the Emperor sold lifelong \"passes\" which enabled the owner to be tax-emept for the duration of his life, but not his descendants'. Landowners got a discount, but they were free to tax their \"employees\" with impunity-- which wasn't terribly popular among the peasants for obvious reasons. Conversely, Muslim rulers emerging out of Syria and Egypt charged all non-Muslim Christians and Jews, peasant or not, a flat 10% as \"people of the book.\" As a result many Byzantine lands were lost through the 11th century, not through war but through deliberate selection. \n\n\nWhile his lands shrunk continuously, the Byzantine Emperor had absolute authority over his empire... At least in theory. Increasingly, the Byzantine Emperor was unable to hold power outside of Constantinople, the capital, and perhaps Adrianople. The other communities remaining in the Empire were rural and didn't see much imperial influence, if at all.\n\n\nMeanwhile, the Venetian merchant city-state (The Most Serene Republic of Venice) was rising to prominence in the wake of the formative constitution and its near-singular grip on trade. Venice was governed by an elected figure called a \"Doge.\" He was given power of governance over the city-state until his death. Initially, at the establishment of the position at the inception of the Republic in 697CE, the Doge was a representative of Byzantium; by 1000CE, he was completely divorced from the Empire, as was Venice. It was a completely, or at least largely, independent state. It was about as centralized as a European state would be, its trade providing it with leverage enough for independence, even though its navy was mostly mercantile and not militarized. The Most Serene Republic existed largely unchanged constitutionally for a full 1000 years, and began a model for the European city-state, and later the secular state in general.\n\n\nIts fleet of ships transported goods across both the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Caliphates of the [Fatimids] (_URL_1_) from the 10th through 12th centuries and the Mamluks from the 13th to 16th centuries. These Caliphates functioned somewhat like empires, and acted as the predecessors to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region from the 16th century to the 20th.\n\n\nThere were also some fascinating things occurring in Eastern Europe, with the establishment of the Russians following the downfall of the Slavs and the emergence of Christianity, but unfortunately I am not an expert in this area. I would recommend that you look up Rastislav of Moravia and Photius for the relationship between Russia and the Byzantine Empire. In Western Europe the rise of feudal kingdoms was noteworthy too, but unfortunately that is not my area of expertise either! Only Byzantium, hahaha.\n\n\nSo, the long and short of your question: those five centuries were integral to two historical processes-- the downfall of the Western Empire and the rise of the Western City-State, the spiritual and political predecessor to the state. There was regional variance, but during this period both types of political structures existed across Europe and Central Asia/North Africa. \n\n\nSOURCES:\n\n* Anna Comnena, The Alexiad (contemporary text: 11th c)\n\n* Alexander Kazhdan, “Latins and Franks in Byzantine perception and reality from the 11th to the 12th century” in Angeliki Laiou & Roy Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks (1997): 83-100\n\n* James Howard Johnston, “The two great powers in late antiquity: a comparison” in Averil Cameron (ed.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East III: States, Resources, Armies, Princeton: Princeton UP (1995): 157-226\n\nEDIT: Fixed formatting", "From Maurice Keen, The Pelican History of Medieval Europe (1968), p. 106: [Sicily and England were] the most highly organized governments in the west.... Their precocious development owed much to the fact that both their ruling dynasties established themselves by conquest in the eleventh century. Thei vassals, owing their authority to the same conquests, did not enjoy the same entrenched independence as those of, say, the king of France.", "European countries were feudal and decentralized during this period. Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, western Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium) and northern Italy were part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was technically a confederation of member states, but these same members were often at odds with one another and very irregular. England was probably the most centralized kingdom during this time, partly because of reorganizations under the Anglo-Saxon Kings and partly because of consolidation efforts by the Norman conquerors. \n\nFrance was a larger kingdom than England (and Paris considerably larger than London at this time), which would normally provide strong impetus for centralization, but nobles had considerable autonomy, most prominently in the case of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England. Although William the Conqueror owed fealty to the French King as a French Duke, he became the King of England through his own means, which really muddied the waters. I think it's telling that the French monarchy did not attempt to exert authority in England, although the sovereign of England was a French vassal, until Charles the IV, with the disastrous result of the 100 Years War.\n\nThere are other examples of English centralization that don't exist elsewhere in medieval Europe. The Domesday Book is effectively an accounting of all taxable properties and goods that was created after the Norman Conquest so William could account for all of his new holdings. To be able to attempt such a feat required an extensive bureaucracy capable of accounting for the different domains and estates. I think most telling of the kind of centralization going on in England that isn't present elsewhere is the division of England into administratives Shires rather than solely into noble estates. Sherriffs and their administrative domain, a Shire or Sherriffdom, had existed under the Anglo-Saxons, but gained additional prominence under the Normans as a means of establishing control over the conquered territories." ] }

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[ [ "http://crusadinghistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/Byzantine_Empire_1000-1100.jpg/166501839/Byzantine_Empire_1000-1100.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Fatimid_Islamic_Caliphate.png" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czlylkg" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > But that got me thinking, was there any benefits to him going to war with The USSR that helped his efforts on the western fronts and semi-neglected the loss of manpower?\n\nNo, not really. Hitler's arrangement with the Soviet Union provided Germany with valuable oil and raw materials, allowing Germany to bypass the Blockade of the continent. With the Invasion of the USSR, the Blockade was now truly effective. There were certainly resources in the USSR worth taking, but what little industry and agricultural produce came into German hands was hardly compensation for the losses in manpower, and the tightening of the Blockade, as well as steadily declining strategic options from 1941 onwards. \n\nDavid Stahel's books on the Battles of Moscow and Kiev, and Operations Bagration and Typhoon are good reads. Alexander Hill also has a document reader on the Great Patriotic War, which is valuable as a concise account of the Eastern Front. For economic, Adam Tooze's *Wages of Destruction* is the best book I'm aware of.\n\n > no I do not wish that the Germans won WWII, WWI maybe, but not WWII\n\nFrankly, history is better off that they lost both\n\nEDIT:\n\n > Like, if Hitler ignored the east and focused on the west, do you think he could've won or at the very least faired better\n\nIt's hard to imagine Hitler 'ignoring' the East; it was the center piece of his aims, the lebensraum for the Aryan race and the source of the resources that would allow Germany to achieve autarky and challenge Britain and America. With the Royal Navy still very much in control of Britain's territorial waters at least, and with RAF Fighter Command preventing the Luftwaffe from attaining the control of the air needed to launch Operation Sea Lion (to say nothing of how ersatz German preparations were for that invasion), there was nowhere else to look. North Africa was Italy's sphere, and Rommel was only sent there to assist the Italians in retaining their positions in Libya. After the defeat of France, the Soviet Union was the next logical (using that term relatively) step in Hitler's \"programme\" as Andreas Hillgruber or Gerhard Weinberg would put it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dczcl5o" ], "score": [ 63 ], "text": [ "[Try this digital exhibit from Yale, a collection of materials from Christian missionaries who witnessed the Rape of Nanking.](_URL_0_) \n\nFor the future: If you're trying to find primary sources with Google, don't use the term \"primary sources,\" this is a \"schoolroom\" history phrase and it's not used outside of teaching settings. Sometimes if you google \"thing primary resources\" they will turn up, but usually because a teacher has already gathered them and labeled them that. Some search terms you can try are \"[subject] + archives,\" \"[subject] + digital collections,\" \"[subject] + oral history\" or \"[subject] + interviews.\" Also try different words for the subject - for instance, Rape of Nanking is also called the Nanking Massacre. It depends on what the topic is, but in general try to think what people would title the things you're looking for if they were listing them in a library catalog, and try lots and lots of different searches. \n\nGood luck with your paper. :) " ] }

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[ [ "http://web.library.yale.edu/divinity/nanking" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "di588bp" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Not to discourage other answers, but you might be interested in this post:\n\n[How did Belorussians and Ukrainians evolve as distinct national identities from Russia?](_URL_0_) with the top answer from /u/cheapwowgold4u.\n\nIt's an older post from when AskHistorians allowed wikipedia as a source, but it's a well thought out answer. I'd link more posts but I'm on mobile, but if you search 'Belarus' in the search bar, a good amount of relevant posts come up. Hope that helps!" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bkr46/how_did_belorussians_and_ukrainians_evolve_as/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "daegm7p" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "In mythology Jimmu was a descendant of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu. Ugayafukiaezu no Mikoto, a Kami (a god) is his father. Considering that both of these people are gods, it is unlikely that he was a real person. But that's the short answer. The long answer is a bit more in depth:\n\nThe Japanese migrated to the Japanese Islands, that much is known but it's not known when or from where (though probably from Korea and that region). Largely the Japanese were concentrated in the south and seem to have been organized in small villages during what is known as the Yayoi and Kofun Periods. During the end of the Kofun and the beginning of the Asuka Period, the villages became more fortified and larger, and local leaders developed into clans known in Japanese as Uji. \n\nOfficially, the Uji are unified under the Yamato Family by the eight century C.E. As the Yamato claim descent from the Sun Goddess, this is probably where the idea of Jimmu comes from. The Japanese State seems to just sort of...happened, and like all states that seem to come out of nowhere, they invented a mythological history for themselves as an easy way to explain what was most likely a convoluted series of wars and deals for Yamato hegemony. Rather than recalling all the conflict that undoubtedly took place, Jimmu becomes an easy way to explain unification. Who established the armies? Jimmu. Who unified the clans? Jimmu. See where I'm going with this?\n\nIn all reality though, what the myth of Jimmu represents is a case where mythology has preserved actual history (we see this in cases like Romulus, and Hercules, indeed if you live in America Washington seems to very very slowly be moving towards this). A local strongman may have had enough strength and guile to begin unification, who was then mythologized as Jimmu. Or perhaps he, like Prince Yamato, is an example of a blending of various stock characters in order to explain the past. \n\nI hope this helped answer your question!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9btt34" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This is basically directly taken from Ian Morris' *Why the West Rules for Now* which I highly recommend. Its a great read. \n\nThere were a few reasons why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did. Technology continued to accumulate over centuries and centuries making a breakthrough to industrialization possible, something earlier Empires did not have the luxury to rely on. Due to this increase in technology countries were more able to protect themselves with the invention of guns and other military equipment. This prevented empires from being overrun by enemy migration allowing them to focus on other concerns. Also ships could now sail virtually anywhere creating an economy that the world had never seen before. The Industrial Revolution was more easily instituted in Britain because of their massive economy, weaker monarchs (compared to other European powers), freer merchants, coal mines,more open institutions, and also dumb luck. \n\nAgain Ian Morris covers most of this in his book and does much better than I can, but none the less I hope this brief response helps somewhat. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e693jtw", "e6a37zt" ], "score": [ 5, 21 ], "text": [ "Follow up question/example: When I was at Herculaneum, which in the famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD was destroyed and preserved, I remember seeing adverts as you describe. I remember it was an advert in big red script outside of a street cafe or bakery of some sort. This might be a good example to use if someone could provide further context of what and how it was advertising the sponsor.", "Aha! What a fun topic! For me, this one is gonna go back....well, a couple of millenia, but I hope you'll be alright with that. I can't speak much to advertisement later than the Roman period, but advertisement in the Roman city is a wonderful thing in itself!\n\nSome notes before we start: Shorthand in the Latin quotes. Parentheses () indicate that I'm expanding on a shorthand - so if I have a D M, I'll expand it to D(is) M(anibus). Brackets [] are letters that are no longer extant, but we know ought to be there. \n\nObviously, as you might imagine, we don't have much of that left. What we do have is generally categorized in a field called \"epigraphy\" - the study of stuff that's written on stuff. The absolute most common unit of study here is [the generic gravestone](_URL_6_). For an easy example of this, there's an [online database of Latin inscription](_URL_5_) (not 100% complete, but not bad!) that's mostly only browsable if you're reasonably fluent in Latin. There are also mistakes here and there, but again - only a big issue if you're in the field. The above reads:\n\n > D(is) M(anibus) / T(ito) Fl(avio) Vero Aug(usti) / lib(erto) tab(ulario) rat(ionis) / aquarior(um) co(n)/iugi bene me/renti Octa/via Thetis fecit\n\nwhich translates toooo\n\n > To the departed spirits, Octavia Thetis made this for her well deserving husband, Titus Flavius Vero, freedman of Augustus, scribe of the regulation of the water supply. \n\nBut that's a tangent I'll address later. For now, let's go to specific shop signs, 'cause that's what it looks like you're looking for! Luckily, there are a couple that are extant that are *very* clear as to what they're doing. [They say so!](_URL_2_) Now, if you'll do me a favour and follow that link, it'll show you a picture of a page from a book that's on my desk^1 ~~that I'm supposed to be actively reading right now instead of browsing reddit~~. The page is mostly self explanatory: the inscription, written in both Latin and Greek, has a large, bold, eye catching note at the top, which in both Greek and Latin translates directly to: \"INSCRIPTIONS HERE.\" The rest of the details follow in close order (and in smaller text, since we already have your attention). The grammar and spelling is....imperfect at best, but you definitely know what's going on inside and how nice they can make things (that stone is OLD and it still looks good). [Here's another one, from Rome this time!](_URL_3_). That one employs another cheeky way of grabbing the eye. See the DM at the top? That's the universal marker for \"gravestone\" (see above, the Dis Manibus/To the departed spirits). So that'd catch the eye, and following up it says:\n\n > D M / titulos scri/bendos vel/ si quid o[pe]/ris marmor/ari opus fu/erit hic ha/bes\n\nor, in translation...\n\n > To the departed spirits! You can get inscriptions written here or any other sort of marble work you need done! \n\nNice and blatant there ;) Regarding other shop signs, there's one that *might* be [a shop sign for poultry from Ostia](_URL_0_), but the issue is that there's no text there - it could just as easily be a funerary inscription. We're not entirely sure. \n\nOn to other forms of advertisement, known as the *programmata*! These generally take the form of things like graffiti and pottery stamps. This general category of epigraphy is heavily focused on Pompeii/Herculaneum, mostly because of preservation.^2 Oftentimes, these were related to elections and generally consist of the candidate's name (or initials) and the office for which he's running. This is followed by a bunch of abbreviations, such as OVF (*oro vos faciatis* - I ask that you make [insert name] a [insert office]), VB (*virum bonum* - \"good dude\"), or DRP (*dignum rei publicae* - worthy of the republic). Sometimes these have the supporter who sponsored said *programmata*, sometimes not. Generally, they take a format that looks something like this:\n\n > L(ucium) P(opidium) S(ecundum) Aed(ilem) O(ro) V(os) F(aciatis) D(ignum) R(ei) P(ublicae) Successa Rog(at) | *CIL 4.1062*\n\nor...\n\n > Successa asks that you make Lucius Popidius Secundus, worthy of the Republic, an aedile. **nota bene: the Latin is ten ways of hilariously messy here, but this is what it's saying. Essentially.**\n\nThe graffiti would have just been written on walls in various locations, while pottery stamps would have been put on...well....pottery. Bowls, cups, plates, roof tiles, amphorae...you get the idea. If someone could pay a tiny bit to get their candidate's name out there, it was gonna happen.\n\nFinally! A form of advertisement that you might not have been intending, but that I feel like rambling about anyway ;) Inscriptions that were put out as announcements! Advertisements that you might not think of as such, but...well...advertise to the people what's up. One fun such piece is actually a glorious pain in the ass to read because it's so damn old: [the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus.](_URL_4_) Nope, I'm not translating the whole thing (again x.x) because it's hella long, but it essentially is a decree from the Senate banning the Bacchanalia throughout all of Italy. It's a pretty gigantic step to snuff out any hint of this kinda stuff, which is pretty interesting because the next time such a stance was taken with regards to religion was with respect to some crucified sophist in Palestine. \n\nThe other fantastic piece of advertisement (besides [the inevitable signatures of \"I made this\" on every piece of Roman architecture ever)](_URL_1_), that I love to talk about is Augustus' *Res Gestae*, the only surviving copies of which were written, first on massive bronze columns outside his tomb (lost), and then all over the temples of the Roman Empire. It's a hilariously self-promoting piece, obviously exaggerates, very specifically skips over anything negative that he did, and, in short, makes him out to be practically perfect in every way. You heard it here, Gussie = Mary Poppins. And if you don't think that's advertisement, then I'm disappointed. \n\nHope this helps you out!\n\n1. Said book is the *Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy*, edited by Christer Bruun and Jonathan Edmondson. I VERY highly recommend this if you're interested in Roman epigraphy, as the price tag is actually manageable for such a tome. Or you could just use the library, that works too. \n\n2. This quick intro on *programmata* is taken from *Women and elections in Pompeii* by Liisa Savunen." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://imgur.com/a/W2arnnq", "http://www.romecabs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Pantheon-front.jpg", "https://imgur.com/a/a7unC8i", "https://imgur.com/gallery/3pAYc90", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_de_Bacchanalibus", "http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epi.php?s_sprache=en", "http://cil.bbaw.de/dateien/cil_view.php?KO=KO0014046" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctzq9oh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "It's not really possible to know. These programs were not scientifically rigorous or adequately controlled, and the sheer number of factors that may or may not impact how individual people or entire societies develop means that it cannot be said with any degree of confidence whether or not eugenics programs worked." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6etmvy" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I assume you have looked at the anti-federalist papers?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dune5z3" ], "score": [ 43 ], "text": [ "A journalist on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's main news and current affairs show *The 7:30 Report*, said on May 9th, 1996, that \"Australian massacres have a dulling familiarity. Public shock and outrage is soothed by assurances of tougher gun laws. But as public outcry dissipates, often so does political will in the face of the gun lobby.\"\n\nThe journalist was speaking less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, in which Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded several others; this was the deadliest mass shooting in Australian history since the Frontier Wars between white Australians and indigenous peoples. As the journalist implies, Martin Bryant was not the only mass shooting in recent memory; there were mass shootings in 1984, 1987, 1991, and 1993.\n\nHowever, change was in the air. The day after the Port Arthur massacre, Prime Minister John Howard announced sweeping changes to gun laws, and May 10th was to be a meeting of the state and Federal governments to enact these sweeping changes (which is likely what Frank McGuire on the *7:30 Report* was editorialising about. \n\nHoward had been in the job for a couple of months after decisively winning the 1996 election against the then-rather-disliked Labor PM Paul Keating; the Coalition between the Liberal Party and the National Party had won 94 seats to Labor's 49. Paul Keating had described Howard as \"Lazarus with a triple bypass\", referring to Howard's never-say-die attitude to politics; 1996 was his second attempt at gaining the position of Prime Minister, after losing the 1987 election and then losing the leadership of the party in 1989. \n\nHoward came from the conservative wing of the Liberal Party (who, it should be said, were *economically* liberal in a free-trade way, and had been put together as something of a centre-right party). For American readers, Howard's political instincts circa 1996 were somewhere between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. There was a belief that Howard had followers amongst a sort of Nixon-esque silent majority styled 'Howard's battlers' who were meant to represent the 'real Australia', and Howard had positioned himself as a someone moderate conservative in the 1996 election, trying to convince everyone that he had changed and that he had become something of a moderate. \n\nWith such a recent and large electoral win, Howard had political capital to burn, and he seems to have seen gun control as something that would consolidate his 1995-1996 stance as a moderate conservative (something that there was some suspicion about given how he campaigned in 1987). The sheer amount of seats in Parliament also helped; what conservative MPs with ties to the gun lobby were in the Liberal and National parties would probably not have been numerous enough to block the legislation had Labor not supported it (Labor supported it).\n\nAccording to [Simon Chapman, in his 1998 book *Over Our Dead Bodies*](_URL_0_) about the debate in the three months following the Port Arthur massacre:\n\n > Port Arthur made gun control almost undeniable as a political response because the preceding years of advocacy for gun law reformhad succeeded in positioning them as sensible, easily understood and above all the course that any decent society committed to public safety should adopt. When Port Arthur occurred, the seeds sown during these years of advocacy erupted out of an angry community who made it plain they would countenance no more of the political equivocation that had characterised gun control in the past. \n\nChapman, as a public health professor, was a prominent advocate of gun control, and he says in the book that his experience in the three months following the massacre was that:\n\n > In the three months after the massacre, the volume of anger against the gun lobby remained so intense that whenever a gun lobby initiative needed a response, the public was more than obliging. This response included everything from ordinary people expressing their heartfelt, untutored reactions to gun lobby rhetoric, to those who had particular personal experiences relevant to the argument. On many occasions we read and heard arguments, analogies, and factual perspectives on gun control from people who had no connection with the NCGC. Frequently, we recognised these as identical to arguments and analogies that we and others in gun control had sown in the media in preceding years on issues like gun registration, safe storage and international comparisons. Our past media advocacy efforts were bearing fruit in the form of articulate and informed public comment.\n\nGun control advocates and the media also successfully made the gun lobby appear unhinged, and media coverage did not favour the gun lobby. Perhaps the most prominent media event in the time period related to the gun lobby was a gun rally in Sale in rural Victoria on June 15th that attracted 3000 protesters. John Howard was on a tour of country regions to sell his reforms, and he gave a speech at this rally, while protesters shouted 'Nazi' and 'Heil Hitler!' at him. It became known that Howard had worn a bulletproof vest at the rally, on the advice of security. This was not good publicity for the gun lobby. Despite the generally rural nature of opposition to gun control, Howard's popularity in polling had risen to 66% in country regions in a poll released the weekend of the Victorian rally.\n\nChapman is not the most unbiased voice here, of course, but opinion polls from the time, however, suggest that the gun control lobby very clearly represented mainstream Australian views on gun control. Most notably, at that May 10th meeting, when a couple of states threatened to walk away from the deal to control guns, Howard threatened to call a referendum on the topic (which presumably would have enshrined gun control into the Australian constitution, in an interesting reversal to the rights in the American amendment). The ministers from those states at the meeting folded; they decided they'd rather sign this legislation rather than have to deal with the binding vote of a referendum that almost certainly would have been won.\n\nAn opinion poll in July 1995, less than a year *before* the Port Arthur massacre, found that 82% of people either supported or strongly supported 'laws that make it more difficult to buy guns in NSW'. In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, an opinion poll was conducted in early May, which found that 91% of city people and 88% of rural people supported a ban on all automatic and semi-automatic guns. In Tasmania, where the Port Arthur massacre had occurred, this was as high as 95%.\n\nIn June, once the legislation was enacted, a national poll found that 80% agreed with the gun laws, while 18% disagreed - something of a drop compared to the initial revulsion after Port Arthur. However, only 4% would vote against a political candidate based on the word of a gun group (which is likely a good representation of the amount of Australians who strongly disagreed with the legislation, rather than just disagreed). \nIn a (normal) Australian Federal election, six Senators are elected for each state, and the maths work out to a party needing ~14% of votes (which in Australia are not necessarily just first votes, because of the preferential voting system); this feels like an achievable goal to some minor parties and interest groups. However, after the gun control legislation there was not much political will amongst the gun lobby to run candidates for the Senate. The Shooters Party in NSW, which had gotten 1.8% of the (Federal) Senate vote in 1993, and 2% in 1996, did not run in 1998, despite that you'd expect the increase in their profile to translate into more votes. While they had run candidates in other states in 1998 (who were not as successful as the NSW candidates in 1993 and 1996), the party did not run in the Senate in 2001 and degistered in 2004. \n\nFinally, Howard's 'net satisfaction' rating in the polls was never higher than it was in the immediate wake of the Port Arthur massacre, and in the wake of several scandals and unpopular decisions following that poll, it still took him two years after that poll to fall into negative territory." ] }

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[ [ "https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/8938/1/Over-our-dead-bodies_Chapman.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cz06h66", "cz0i3yd" ], "score": [ 27, 16 ], "text": [ "I can give you a brief answer, copied from an earlier question I answered on this sub. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can step in to supplement:\n\nAn incident occurred in the 1820s that sparked a wave of anti-masonry. A man claimed he was going to publish the masonic \"secrets\" (rites and symbols) ...and then went missing. Some blamed the masons for his death. This spark was fanned both by religious groups who just so happened to be going through a massive religious revival, and an anti-Jacksonite political party (as Jackson was a mason) who were running non-masonic candidates. The sentiment and political party largely diminished after a few years.\n\n \n & nbsp;\n\n^(Edit: I just noticed that you said '17th century America' ... I'm assuming that's a simple typo, as the political party was formed in the early 19th century / 1800s.)", "Finally a question here that I can help answer!\n\ntl;dr: A local scandal provided the catalyst for a regionally-successful political party. Its success was likely due to a variety of factors, including political and economic disenfranchisement, religion, and some genuine concern over the role that a secret society was taking in the young American Republic.\n\nAs other posters have noted, the event that formally gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party was the 1824 disappearance of William Morgan, an itinerant (literal) stonemason who broke from his Masonic Lodge and wrote an expose on Masonic rituals. The State of New York, under pressure from Gov. DeWitt Clinton, indicted dozens of Masons in Morgan's disappearance. The trial ended with a handful of convictions for misdemeanor kidnapping. Within a matter of months, local outrage over Morgan's disappearance and the handling of the subsequent trial gelled into a successful regional political party that also tried to play at the national level with an 1832 presidential candidate.\n\nOf course, the Morgan incident by itself does not explain why the Anti-Masonic Party grew as quickly and successfully as it did. Nor was anti-Masonic sentiment a new concept in America, though it had not previously reached the cohesion necessary for a political party. Also interesting about the Anti-Masonic Party is that it drew members from a number of social strata (for example, farmers, merchants, professionals) and attracted members who were drawn to political/religious activism and later went on to join Evangelical, Sabbatarian, Temperance, and Abolition movements. \n\nThe serious historiographical study of the Anti-Masonic Party began at the tail-end of McCarthyism in America, for reasons that are not entirely surprising. The historians Richard Hofstadter and Lorman Ratner attributed Anti-Masonry's success to the same characteristics in the American psyche that drove social movements like McCarthyism, Know Nothingism, and anti-Mormonism. As Hofstadter's fascinating 1964 article terms it, this is the \"Paranoid Style in American Politics.\" (_URL_0_). These views, while in my opinion not completely wrong, are subject to criticism for viewing taking a simplistic view of these social movements in a vacuum.\n\nThe next wave of study, for example, William Preston Vaughn’s The Antimasonic Party in the United States (1983) (for what it's worth, Vaughn was himself a very active Freemason), looked to social factors and not just major trends in American politics. Vaughn focuses on the evangelical Christian membership of the Anti-Masonic Party. Many prominent party members were evangelical ministers, and much of the public concern over Masonry was its supposed embrace of mysticism. Vaughn also identifies \"political\" members, who were more concerned over Masonry's role in the American Republic (i.e., as a secret society with politically-prominent members) than its impact on religion. In his view, Anti-Masonry's eventual failure is largely driven by its inability to reconcile these groups of members.\n\nPaul Goodman's Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826-1836, provides another view. Per Goodman, Freemasonry was a private and exclusive association that appeared to influence the public spheres of politics and religion. This created inevitable social tension that led to anti-Masonry and the Anti-Masonic Party, whose members perceived themselves as the guardians of Christian Republicanism. Paul Goodman's archive for this book is available for inspection at UC Davis and is a wonderful source for people interested in this period of American history.\n\nFinally, as some others posting here have suggested, Anti-Masonry was able to take advantage of existing translocal political structures in a politically- and religiously-active area of the country. For example, so-called Anti-Masonic Conventions were fairly regular, and the Anti-Masonic Party had reasonably successful regional/state-level organization. This cohesion allowed the party to broker deals and play the margin between established political parties in order to \"punch above its weight.\" By way of example, the Anti-Masonic Party never polled above 15% in Rhode Island, but was still able to push through legislature revoking Masonic charters and banning Masonic oaths. This kind of dealmaking ultimately backfired and helped lead to the downfall of the party, causing contemporaries to observe that “Anti-Masons are doing precisely what they condemn in the Masonic fraternity; namely, an attempt to engross power and office.” (Calvin Philleo, “Calvin Philleo’s Light on Masonry, and Anti-Masonry, and a Renunciation of Both” (Providence: H.H. Brown, 1831).)\n\nedit: typos and clarification\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdzsn03", "cdzw49h", "ce02inm", "ce03g2f" ], "score": [ 46, 25, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I wrote about this partly in my undergraduate thesis. \n\nSimilar to the colonization of America, settlers in the Antipodes experienced a lifestyle hugely different from what they or their parents had experienced in Europe. Australian/American/Canadian/New Zealand (to an extent) evolved as a response to their new environment and a different understanding of their role as settlers and within the Empire. Dealing with (often) hostile natives in an unhospitable environment changes the character of the individual and society as a whole. The 'frontier' played a pivotal role in shaping the idea of white settler national identity, and the heros of the frontier (explorers, outlaws etc.) remain an important aspect of national mythology. Essentially these societies grew outside or even against the traditional notion of state authority, so individuals who defied the oppression of the state were idolized and subsequently hold a vital place in their national histories (Lewis & Clark, Ned Kelly).\n\nHowever, Australia, New Zealand and Canada remained strongholds of the British Empire even as they gradually gained increasing amounts of political and economic sovereignty throughout the 19th century as they transitioned towards 'Dominion' status. Settlers from Britain and other European countries continued to arrive so there is no doubt that the societies being created were 'European' societies at the base level. \n\nThe 'heroic' fairytale idea is that Australian and New Zealand identity was born after the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. As a part of the Empire, ANZAC forces were under the command of British generals and suffered huge losses in the poorly-planned and orchestrated campaign against the Ottomans. Many historians have played up the significance of Gallipoli in identity construction because it is picturesque and allows them to point to a specific point in history.\n\nWhen the Second World War broke out and the British surrendered their Empire in South-East Asia to the Japanese, it became clear to Australians and Kiwis that they could not rely on the British for military protection and instead found another willing and capable ally across the Pacific in the USA. The Australians and New Zealanders were finally asserting their political and military sovereignty and the ANZUS treaty which resulted form their wartime alliance with the USA has been a vital aspect of Australian foreign relations throughout C20 and up until today.\n\nSo to answer your question. There is no specific date when a distinct national identity emerged but it gradually developed due to a variety of environmental, political and economic factors over the course of centuries. Let me know if you have any questions as I have only provided a very simplified overview of 200 years of Antipodean political history", "There was no single point at which “Australian” superseded “British” to become the primary identity of people living in Australia. The process of Australian-isation started as early as the 1820s, and continued well into the 1970s (it’s possibly still going, according to some people!).\n\nI’ll mention a few key milestones along the way. And, you’ll notice that, while some of them are movements towards asserting an independent Australian identity, others reinforce Australia’s identity as an offshoot of Britain. These two threads ran through most of our history, alongside each other.\n\n* As early as the 1820s, the native-born Australians were starting to make themselves known. Around this time, the term “currency lads (and lasses)” arose to describe these native-born Australians. The British immigrants – even the convicts – were seen as “sterling”, the real deal. Meanwhile, the native-born Australians were seen as inferior copies: “currency”. Less than 40 years after the first convicts arrived, there was already a separation between the British immigrants and the locally born Australians. There are also references to them resenting the fact that immigrants from Britain were given free land as settlers ahead of native-born people.\n\n* The Australasian Anti-Transportation League, active in the 1840s and 1850s, was formed by locals to stop the transportation of convicts to colonies in Australia. The document ‘The Aims of the Anti-Transportation League’ contains the phrase “And Whereas the native Australasians are entitled to all the rights and privileges of British subjects” – another minor instance recognising the locally born people. The League itself was an example of local Australians exerting their independence from the British, by telling the British to stop sending convicts. (The British did stop sending convicts in the 1850s, but more because gold was discovered in Victoria than anything else – how can you be considered to be punishing someone when you’re transporting them *for free* to a destination that thousands of other people were desperate to get to?)\n\n* In 1871 the Victorian Natives’ Association was founded; the following year, it expanded to the other colonies and became the Australian Natives’ Association. Membership was restricted to white men *born in Australia*. The ANA was a major supporter of Federation. (Although it left the political arena when Federation was achieved in 1901, the ANA remained an independent mutual society and health insurance company until 1993, when it merged with Manchester Unity to form Australian Unity.)\n\n* By the 1890s, locally born Australians outnumbered British-born Australians for the first time. Around this time, we see a couple of other watershed movements.\n\n* The colonists started pushing for Federation in the 1880s and more strongly in the 1890s. However, it’s worth noting that this was not seen as a way to gain full independence from Britain, but merely to give Australia the ability to stand proudly as a British land in Asia and the Pacific. On the other hand, one of the reasons to federate was mutual defence of the colonies – this became especially important after... well, I’ll let Alfred Deakin tell you in his own words: “they [the Australasian Colonies] were asked [by the British government] to surrender the New Hebrides as of little commercial value and in the next breath were told that the French set the greatest store by them for commercial development. [The French’s] interest in Australasia were spoken of as large, while ours which were incomparably larger were brushed aside as of no account. [...] We were assured that our alarm as to French intentions was groundless but we should never forget that it was while relying on a similar assurance from the Colonial Office, our trust had been betrayed by a surrender of part of New Guinea to Germany.” In short, the British gave away territories to the French and the Germans that the Australians saw as *theirs*. So, here we see the beginnings of a Australian foreign policy (and identity) which is different to that of Britain’s.\n\n* The 1890s & 1900s saw the first flourishing of a local Australian literary identity, with such works as: ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ by Banjo Patterson; ‘The Man From Snowy River’ by Banjo Patterson; ‘Waltzing Matilda’ by Banjo Patterson; ‘The Drover’s Wife’ by Henry Lawson; ‘Seven Little Australians’ by Ethel Turner; ‘My Brilliant Career’ by Miles Franklin; ‘Such is Life’ by Joseph Furphy; ‘My Country’ (“I love a sunburnt country...”) by Dorothea McKellar. At a time when Australians were more likely to be living in urban environments than in rural environments, the stereotypical Aussie outback identity was being written about and idealised.\n\n* When Australia became a country, one of the first acts of the new Commonwealth government was to create what became known as the White Australia Policy. This enforced the idea that Australians were merely British people living in a southern land.\n\n* At the start of World War I, then Prime Minister Andrew Fisher said Australia would “stand beside our own to help and defend Britain to the last man and the last shilling.”\n\n* I won’t write much about the Gallipoli invasion of 1915. Suffice to say that this has become romanticised as “The Birth of a Nation”.\n\n* During World War II, Australia yet again sent soldiers overseas to fight for “the mother country”. However, when the chips were down, and Japan tried to invade Australia... the Brits were nowhere to be seen. The Australian government then turned to the Americans for mutual help and defence, asserting its own independent foreign policy once and for all. This led to the ANZUS treaty in 1951, where Australia, New Zealand, and the United States agreed to come to each other’s mutual defence if necessary.\n\n* Australian citizenship existed for the first time in 1949. Until this time, all Australians had been British citizens.\n\n* During the 1950s, the Australian Prime Minister was an ardent defender of the British Empire (even though it was now the British Commonwealth), and of the personification of that Empire, the young Queen Elizabeth II. When Elizabeth became the first reigning British monarch to visit Australia, in 1954, Menzies positively gushed over her: “I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die.”\n\n* During the post-war period, from 1945 to 1969, the “ten-pound Pom” scheme was in place, giving subsidised fares to any British people wishing to emigrate to Australia. Over one million British immigrants arrived during that time: a whole new generation of Australians who referred to Britian as “home” and “the mother country”.\n\n* The White Australia policy was finally dismantled in the 1960s/1970s. The Holt government in 1966 introduced a Migration Act which removed the requirement for migrants to speak a European language to gain entry (this test had been used to prevent undesireables from entering) and assessed migrants on their skills rather than their origins. The Whitlam government in 1973 put the final nails in the White Australia policy’s coffin by disabling all the racial aspects of immigration law, and signing international treaties and agreements relating to immigration and race. This was when “multiculturalism” became a buzz-word.\n\nMany of these turning-points could be deemed that point when Australians began to consider themselves as distinct from the British: “currency lads”; the ANA; the failure to hold on to the New Hebrides; “I love a sunburnt country...”; Gallipoli; Australian citizenship; ANZUS; multiculturalism; the Australia Act. However, at the same time, Australia has held on to its British heritage: White Australia policy; “the last man and the last shilling”; Gallipoli; WWII; “I did but see her passing by...”; ten-pound Poms.\n\nWhen did Australians begin to see themselves as distinct from the British? 1820s. 1850s. 1890s. 1915. 1951. 1966. 1973. 1988. Take your pick! Some people would say we *still* don’t have our own identity, because we share the same monarch as Britain. Others would say we *lost* our identity when we started on the path of multiculturalism. The “Australian identity” is a very contentious issue.\n\n", "From a purely legal perspective, the High Court said in [Sue v Hill (1999)](_URL_1_) that the UK could now be considered a \"foreign power\" for the purposes of Constitutional Law (the case was about voting rights). \n\nHowever, the [Australia Act 1986 (Cth)](_URL_0_) was the legislation which severed the last remaining legal ties with the UK, finally ending appeals Australian to the Privy Council. ", "It is worth noting that it was not.until the passage of the Australia Acts in 1986 that Australia became an independent state. Before that, Westminster could have passed an act amending our constitution, or indeed, doing anything it wanted. There were also appeals available to the Privy council from State Courts and technically from the Supreme Court of Australia (called the High Court). \n\nThis wasn't mere legal technicality either. Our constitution provides that you can't be in parliament if you are the subject of a forgiegn power. Before '86 you could be a British citizen but in our parliament. After 86 no longer. There was a case about this but the name escapes me. There was also cases that went to the privy counsel from time to time from state supreme courts. \n\n" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Act_1986", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_v_Hill#Australian_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e55ldx5" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "As I mention [in this post](_URL_0_) to almost the same question, the initial Buddhist literary response to Islam was highly negative. I'd welcome other perspectives, of course, especially from the Muslim side and on a more subaltern level." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/678jny/what_did_buddhists_think_of_early_islam/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dyee46z", "dyf5g7o" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The best book on the topic (and the only sufficient treatment I'm aware of) is John France's *Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages.* I'm afraid it's become dreadfully expensive, but perhaps you can acquire a copy through a local library.", "Absolutely try to find a copy of David Parrott’s *The Business of War.* It’s also a massive book, and it’s more focused on the late medieval and early modern periods. BUT it does contain a very useful introduction that will give you an idea of the way mercenaries have been written about in European history. It also contains a little information in the first chapter that’s kinda high/late medieval. I imagine the bibliography and footnotes would give you some further reading as well. See what you think of the price and if it’s too hefty, try to find it at a library.\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "clm9s1v", "clmg3pi", "clmi60o", "clmjafx", "clmm5k9", "cln9pcj" ], "score": [ 59, 3, 5, 17, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "New Jersey was so named because the land it encompasses was an award from the King Charles II to Sir George Cartalet for his loyalty during the English Civil War. Sir Goerge was both originally born on the isle of Jersey and served as a governor there, so the land was eventually renamed, in his honor, by the Duke of York as \"New Jersey\".\n\nSo, in the case of New Jersey, it seems to be the latter.\n\nSource: [Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09](_URL_0_)\n\nEDIT - Just found my book on Scottish colonialism to confirm: Nova Scotia (Latin for New Scotland) was so named because while originally settled by the French and called a different name, it was eventually taken over by Scotland, which was technically a separate kingdom at the time of settlement, and renamed.\n\nSource: [The Scottish Empire, Michael Fry](_URL_1_)", "There were many people from Lincolnshire involved in exploring Australia. Matthew Flinders and George Bass were from there and they were involved in mapping the coast of the continent [Official Australian Government site](_URL_0_). The land of their home area is very different but they named places after familiar towns and villages. Near Adelaide there are Lincoln, Boston, Tumby, Sibsey, Spilsby, Donington etc", "Sweden had a colony in the Americas in what is now Delaware that they named New Sweden. The area does not resemble Sweden at all; it's flat, humid, and much sunnier and warmer than Sweden.", "In the case of New South Wales, it was named because the landscape was judged to be similar to South Wales.\n\nSince Cook didn't go very far ashore, he had no idea that it was, in reality, very very different.", "The latter. New York, for example, was founded as New Amsterdam by Dutch colonists, and renamed when it was captured by the British.", "In response to this question I see a lot of interesting stories relating individuals or teams of \"explorers\" to their homelands, but not going any further into the territoriality of these figures. I want to reference back to a section from Benedict Anderson's *Imagined Communities*, which explores, in part, how conceptions of time in history have changed alongside how we identify with others, specifically at a \"national level\", and directly relevant to the question:\n\n > It was not that, in general, the naming of political or religious sites as \"new\" was in itself so new. In Southeast Asia, for example one finds towns of reasonable antiquity whose names also include a term for novelty: Chiangmai (New City), Kota Bahru (New Town), Pekenbaru (New Market). But in these names 'new' invariably has the meaning of 'successor' to, or 'inheritor' of, something vanished. 'New' and 'old' are aligned diachronically, and the former appears always to invoke an ambiguous blessing from the dead. What is startling in the American namings of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is that 'new' and 'old' were understood synchronically, coexisting within homogenous, empty time. [...] This new synchronic novelty could arise historically only when substantial groups of people were in a position to think of themselves as living lives parallel to those of other substantial groups of people- if never meeting, yet certainly proceeding along the same trajectory.\n\nThe parallelism between groups with similar cultural cohesion, especially ones (like in the Americas) with such a rapidly growing (emigrant) population, brought forth a special set of political consequences which included but was not limited to a *local* \"political ascendancy\", changes in cartography and navigation, and shared languages of state (aided by print-capitalism). These communities were uniquely seen as privileged continuations of already existing, distant empires, and were relied upon for the benefit of the imperial state.\n\nSources: Anderson, *Imagined Communities*, Storey, *Territories*\n\n\nTL;DR: \"New\" toponyms of pre-existing places arose with a changing consciousness of simultaneity and shared history, arguably unique to European colonialism. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Carteret,_George_%28DNB00%29", "http://books.google.com/books?id=_pwNAAAACAAJ&dq=184158259X&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uNRPVKHCLZOjyAS1o4KABA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA" ], [ "http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/mapping-australias-coastline" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbj0xh8", "cbj7ieg", "cbj7l23" ], "score": [ 2, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "In the Arabian Penninsula and parts of Africa, [khat](_URL_0_) was (and is) sometimes used. it's a leaf that you can chew, and is a stimulant. it's quite common in yemen. while it's not used widely, it's a very common stimulant in the areas where it's been grown historically.", "A similar question was asked about a month ago. You will find somewhat relevant answers in the comments.\n\n[Did the Ancient Romans have their own version of a \"cup of coffee\"? by which I mean a mild stimulant they would have used on a daily basis](_URL_0_)", "Incas had coca leaves which they chew and use to make coca tea, which has a stimulant effect similar to coffee. Still used in the Andes region today widely. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hhvv3/did_the_ancient_romans_have_their_own_version_of/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f9ug5eg" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Standard fighting equipment for a post-Marian legionnaire was the gladius, pilum, pugio, scutum, galea, and some sort of body armor, either the lorica squamata, lorica hamata, or, mainly imperial, lorica segmentata. This profile rarely if ever changed in any meaningful way, whether fighting naked Britons or Parthian horse-archers or perfumed Egyptians or other Romans legions. This changes in Late Antiquity, when we start to see specialized units, but in your period specialized forces would always be auxiliaries.\n\nYour focus on [weapon type] effective against [protection type] is mostly a modern construction. The vast majority of casualties in an ancient battle happened after a side broke and fled. Ancient battles were much more about maneuvering, positioning, and maintaining morale rather than inflicting damage to combatants along the line of battle. Casualties were incidental to those three, and killing blows often the consequence of an injury unrelated to body armor (like taking a *tragula* through an exposed thigh at twenty meters, or going down with a sprained ankle in the push).\n\nYou should also not discount the gladius. It was a vicious, versatile weapon, and the legionnaire treated it like a tool. Gladius, shovel, wooden stake. Its tapered point made it a sturdy puncturing weapon as much as a slasher, and with the force of a thrust, it was more than enough to push through the weakpoint of a lorica hamata or the joint of a lorica segmentata. The hilt design was intended to help transfer force to a thrust attack in this way." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cv4nemc", "cv4s6dg", "cv4sgdy", "cv4t3fn", "cv4t656", "cv4tvmf", "cv4y5o8", "cv54knj", "cv57w24", "cv5q26p" ], "score": [ 17, 9, 79, 2, 10, 10, 3, 3, 2, 4 ], "text": [ "A good start is to look at the sources used. A respectable work will have pages and pages of works cited at the end. That's not a guarantee, but it is a helpful place to start looking. ", "It's difficult for the layman to determine good vs. bad sources sometimes. A few indicators, though not guarantees, of good sources will be:\n\n1) They are published with a reputable press. Be wary of anything published with a press that sounds like it's run out of the author's garage, because it probably is. University presses aren't going to publish terrible books on the whole. \n\n2) They are not an \"independent scholar.\" Some times, though not always, this means that this person is under qualified or has wacky theories that have kept them out of the academy.\n\n3) If you have access to academic journals, read a few book reviews on the book. If other scholars in the field are engaging with it, that's a good sign. If they all hate it, that's probably not a good sign. ", "I tell my students to start with a Google of the author. Is s/he affiliated with a university? With a think tank? NGO? Each of these will have differing goals in publishing, and you need to weigh them when considering a source. \n\nThen read her/his CV, paying attention to what has been published and in which journals. Is the author publishing stuff in the *Journal of American History?* If so, probably reliable. Is the author publishing stuff in the *Journal of Crazy Conspiracy Theories?* If so, maybe not as reliable.\n\nIs the book published by an academic press (University of Somewhere You've Heard Of Press, etc.?) If so, it has most likely gone thru a pretty rigorous peer-review process. That doesn't guarantee a good book, but it does mean that at least a few people think it's probably OK. \n\nThumb thru the citations. By itself, footnoting doesn't mean anything. Heck, I can cite Phil Foner all day, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Are the footnotes citing someone reputable? Are the notes to works that are as describes above (academic presses, solid journals, etc.?) Do the notes include historiographic discussion? (nb: historians, if allowed by a publisher, would probably write a 5000 word article with a 25000 word set of footnotes politely bashing or congratulating their colleagues.) \n\nThis list is far from exhaustive, but should give you a fair footing.\n\nCheers and keep reading. ", "Jumping in with a related question, what's the best way to tell how reliable a primary source is? I hear all the time about how this or that historian of antiquity was exaggerating or had an axe to grind, and obviously historians have done a great job correlating or debunking a lot of it, but how does a layperson tell?", "Sadly there's no hard-and-fast rule, or database for reliable sources. Every source carries with it some degree of bias or inaccuracy, and it's part of the historians job to work out the degree to which this exists. \n\nYour question seems to be referring to works of history as opposed to primary sources (i.e. first-hand data, records, images etc.). The only way to tell if the information they are providing is accurate is by checking these original sources. It's likely that if you are reading from widely-available or academically published texts that the sources they are using are reliable (or at least accepted as useful by the historical community) and if they are good historians they will discuss the problems that arose from the sources they've used. For a period such as Rome it is very hard to find source material that doesn't have significant problems in it's provenance, so most reputable historians should be taking these into account with their analysis.\n\nI think what you're getting at is whether their analysis and the conclusions they are drawing are up-to-date, and again this is a bit of a nuanced question. For instance, Bryan Ward-Perkins' argues in *The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization* that the traditional view of the fall of Rome, (that it did mark a serious material and societal decline) argued by Gibbon et al still holds true, but not for the reasons Gibbon put forward. Therefore Ward-Perkins is arguing that while he is rightfully 'debunked', his points still stand. Post-modern and Marxist historians would most likely disagree. What is accepted by some as a good interpretation of events will inevitably be rejected by others. For this it's useful to read (or listen) to works discussing the **historiography** of a period, which will hopefully give you an impression of what is still worth reading, but at the end of the day you have to choose who to believe. No-one has a monopoly on historical knowledge, although you will find that the more obscure the subject area the smaller the pool of 'strong' works of history exist. As for Rome there are many reputable historians and works of history which are worth reading, and I really recommend Ward-Perkins if you're interested in that period. ", "[We did a Monday Methods thread](_URL_0_) on critical reading that you might find helpful! ", "Another thing that hasn't been said by now: Critical reading. Is the author making claims he possibly can't know? (Like Napoleon at a secret meeting said:\"...\"). Does it feel like the author makes statements with dubious claims? Both of those often happen in biographies.\n\nDoes it read like a novel? This isn't inherently wrong, but often it is indicative of less than rigorous argumentation.", "I would add that once you have read a few established historians you should be perfectly capable of coming to your own opinions on how trustworthy a source is. Any historian can find bones to pick with any other historian. That's how we keep the field alive.\n\nSo here's a quick list to help any budding Roman historian get a good grounding:\n\nRoman society:\n\nSuper readable: Mary Beard's book on Pompeii\n\nScholarly: Claud Nicolet's *World of the Citizen in Ancient Rome* (I would use it as a reference. Might be hard to find outside a university)\n\nPrimary Sources: Pompeii, Catullus, Cicero, etc.\n\n\nRoman Republic\n\nSuper readable: What the heck, go for Robert Harris's *Imperium*. It's historical fiction about Cicero but does a good job. I've never met a historian who hated it. Also HBO's *Rome*. Skip the second season if you aren't totally enthralled.\n\nScholarly: Erich Gruens *Last Generation of the Roman Republic*. Once you make it through that, you're practically ready for your comprehensive exams.\n\nPrimary Sources: Polybius (esp. Book 6), Livy, Appian, Caesar\n\n\nRoman Empire\n\nSuper Readable: *I, Claudius*, though it is a little too conspiracy driven. There are a ton of biographies for the emperors. Yale did a series, so look for Yale University Press.\n\nScholarly: Yale UP books are scholarly but also mostly narrative. \n\nPrimary: Tacitus, Suetonius, The Augustan Histories/Lives of the Later Caesars, Ammianus Marcellinus\n", "Some academic search engines will show how many articles cite an article you pull up there. Obviously if it's new work you need to discount it a bit, but if you pull up a decade old paper that's been cited 5 times and isn't on a super narrow topic, that should set off warning bells.", "It gets easier the more good history you read.\n\nIf you were to go to graduate school, you'd spend the first two (or more) years reading a lot of books and articles and discussing how their arguments were put together, how they used their evidence, whether their methods were credible and convincing, what they did wrong (etc). At first, it's hellishly difficult because - as you know - it's very hard to evaluate the quality of an argument when you're still learning the basic story (which the author often assumes you already know). If you have to stop and look up every single source to see if it's being cited properly, it's veeery slow going. But after you've read a few good books on the same subject by different authors, you start to see how they fit together because - especially when you study something like the Roman empire - they're talking about the same primary sources, referencing the same important books by other (modern) historians, and actually having a conversation with each other. Once you've read enough to understand how that conversation fits together, you'll quickly see when a book does something different; bad of fringe history is usually very easy to recognize once you're steeped in enough good history.\n\nSo to start, I'd recommend reading through a list of known, trustworthy books about the Roman empire - we have a [book list here](_URL_0_) with some great recommendations, and we'd be very happy to point you toward other good books on specific topics that might interest you if you ask us.\n\nAs you read these vetted books, look at how they back up their arguments with evidence. What sources do they use to support their arguments? If one source keeps coming up again and again, consider looking it up and reading it (many of the sources Roman historians use have been translated into English, and are available free online). What are the ways they use these sources, and what are the ways they *don't* (lots of pop historians read original documents from Rome as though they were ripped from a modern newspaper, but real historians are much more careful to read sources in their own context - and good historians will often explain why they choose to read a particular source in one way and not another)? After a while, you'll start to get a feel for how real academic historians write and use our evidence, and it will begin to be very obvious when something fails to pass muster.\n\nWe also have a few professional shortcuts for tracking down good books. We rely very heavily on reviews by other academics, and - for ancient history - you can find a lot of these for free online. The [Bryn Mawr Classical Review](_URL_1_) is a fantastic place to see in-depth reviews by qualified experts of most of the latest books on the Roman empire, and you can subscribe to their email list to stay on top of the best recent publications. As a general rule, if a book you want to read hasn't been reviewed by BMCR, and wasn't published by a university press (or another press that you see all the good historians you've read citing all the time), it might be suspect." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nxsli/monday_methods_critical_reading_and_criticism/" ], [], [], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books", "http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e8es0cx" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This thread has a pretty good compilation of threads on the religion of the khazars\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBy /u/gingerkid1234" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2sj7wo/how_was_judaism_introduced_to_the_khazars_how_did/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/92owbf/did_the_khazars_really_convert_to_judaism/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f7y1w8c" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Emilio Gentile (whose works have the additional quality of being, some times, available in an English translation) has spent a good portion of his career analyzing the early stages of the ambiguous definition of a \"fascist ideology\" within the environment of what he has defined \"national radicalism\". \n\nHis early works that focus especially on this process - *Le origini dell'ideologia fascista (1918-25)* [1975, 1996] and *Il mito dello stato nuovo dall'antigiolittismo al fascismo* [1982, 1999] - provide a good insight into the context of the transition from the ideas of the Italian liberal state to those advocating for a new, albeit often ill defined, political system. Since both are somewhat technical in their perspective, I would suggest pairing them with a general overview of Italian politics during Giolitti's age and the Great War (for instance Bosworth's), unless one is already familiar with the period.\n\nStill with Gentile, and for additional context, his early work on *La Voce* - *Mussolini e La Voce* [1976], especially for the influence of Prezzolini's newspaper on Mussolini's (tenuous) attempts at developing his own revisionist approach to Marxism - *La Grande Italia* [1997] for the affirmation of a new sentiment of *Italianismo* during the early XX Century - *\"La nostra sfida alle stelle\", Futuristi in politica* [2009] for the origins and relative impact of Italian Futurism as a political formation - *Mussolini contro Lenin* [2017] for a review of Mussolini's \"anti-Bolshevism\" during 1917-22, mostly taken from the pages of his *Popolo d'Italia* and for an attempt at a critical examination of how Mussolini's \"revolutionarism\", or instinct for a national renovation, could adjust to the impact of the Bolshevik revolution.\n\n\nFor a more detailed coverage of Mussolini's relations with the internal currents of early fascism, and for the illustration of the traditional distinction between \"party\" and \"movement\", one should check De Felice's *Mussolini*, especially vol. 1-2-3. As well as De Felice's additional works on the relations between Mussolini, De Ambris and D'Annunzio centered around the \"Fiume endeavor\" (for context on the latter, one should check Alatri, P. *Nitti,D'Annunzio e la questione Adriatica*)\n\n\nIn more recent years, specific works have attempted to cover Mussolini's experience as a more or less prominent figure of Italian socialism and his eventual transition to revolutionary interventionism and then to \"national\" interventionism. \n\nDi Scala, E. ; Gentile, E. - *Mussolini 1883-1915, Triumph and transformation of a revolutionary socialist* [2016]\n\n\nFor a comprehensive examination of the ongoing social and political landscape across the Great War, I would nonetheless recommend Vivarelli, R. - *Storia delle origini del Fascismo* and his *Il fallimento del liberalismo* - the latter especially more focused on the elements of weakness of the Italian liberal system. In English, but much shorter and with a different (and far more \"British\") perspective on Italian liberalism, Seton-Watson C. - *Italy, from liberalism to Fascism, 1870-1925* [1967]." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9ao2hv", "c9ao9a3", "c9at90s" ], "score": [ 13, 6, 8 ], "text": [ "The pose is quite common in period paintings: \n\nDirectly bearing on the \"hand-in\" posture, and underpinning Nivelon's description of it as \"manly boldness tempered with modesty,\" is Bulwer's \"Sixth Canon for Rhetoricians,\" which claims that \"the hand restrained and kept in is an argument of modesty, and frugal pronunciation, a still and quiet action suitable to a mild and remiss declamation.\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n", "I can't say for certain why Napoleon used that pose, but I do study fashion history so I'm going to stick with that part of your question. \n\nThe vest is just unbuttoned. There is no special pocket there. Or at least, probably not. It wouldn't be unheard of for a tailor to add a special pocket by request, but it would certainly be atypical. The vest is meant to sit close to the body, so a large pocket isn't particularly useful inside of it. That's why coats have all the pockets - they're meant to fit more loosely. \n\nI checked to see if there were any sources citing a specific military or social reason for using one hand or the other in addition to tailoring tradition, so I'm pretty sure that the use of the right hand is related to how clothes were made at the time. Menswear closures traditionally function with the left side on top: the right side has the buttons, the left has the buttonholes, so when closed the left side sits on top of the right. Take a second to try out lapping left over right on whatever top you're wearing. The opening is oriented so the right hand slides in easily, while the left would have to turn the corner. Womenswear has historically been made to close in the opposite direction, if you're curious, though the distinction has been disappearing since jeans became popular.", "There have been a few ideas on why Napoleon was posed as he was, and theories include that he had a stomach ulcer, he was winding his watch, he had an itchy skin disease, that in his era it was impolite to put your hands in your pockets, he had breast cancer, he had a deformed hand, he kept a perfumed sachet in his vest that he'd sniff surreptitiously, and that painters don't like to paint hands. Most of these, especially the more gruesome/demeaning of them, were no doubt some form of anti-Napoleonic propaganda of some kind inserted to make the man seem slightly repulsive. A simpler and more elegant theory is contained in an article entitled, \"Re-Dressing Classical Statuary: The Eighteenth-Century 'Hand-in-Waistcoat' Portrait.\" by Arline Miller. Art Bulletin (College Art Association of America), Vol. 77, No.2, March 1995, p.45-64. Miller points out that the 'hand-in' portrait type appeared with \"relentless frequency\" during the eighteenth century and became almost a cliched pose in portrait painting. The pose was used so often by portraitists that one was even accused of not knowing how to paint hands. \"In real life,\" Miller observes, \"the 'hand-held-in' was a common stance for men of breeding.\" Miller goes on to give many examples of this posture in painted portraits dating from the early and middle 1700s, well before Napoleon's birth. In 1738 Francois Nivelon published A Book Of Genteel Behavior describing the \"hand-in-waistcoat\" posture as signifying \"manly boldness tempered with modesty.\"" ] }

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[ "http://historyonyx.blogspot.com/2011/09/napoleon-and-reshaping-of-europe.html" ]

[ [ "http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-17011388/re-dressing-classical-statuary.html" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dt8ra92" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This question comes up from time to time. My answer in [this thread](_URL_0_) gives the specific context for how the Gold Coast colony came to be named Ghana. Also, [this post from last month](_URL_1_) provides additional context about the oral traditions that Danquah was drawing on to justify the connections." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pve7m/why_is_the_empire_of_ghana_so_far_away_from_the/cwapzxm/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ld3ri/why_ghana_empire_isnt_in_ghana/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfl7ft3", "cfla1hx", "cflfulo" ], "score": [ 7, 14, 7 ], "text": [ "You have to remember that portraiture is a very formal event. It takes hours for an artist to paint a portrait and they were quite expensive. People would dress up in their finest clothing to pose for the portrait and put on their most serious expressions (smiling was not considered professional). For this reason, when looking at old portraits though our modern cultural eyes, we see them as serious and almost Orwellian, though this may not be the case. ", "I don't think this is universally true; if you look at the portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger for example it starts to become very obvious that these people all look different. Some people have rather large noses, some people have rather wide or round or skinny cheekbones, some people have the most absurd tiny eyes, and so on and so forth. This is most obvious when you look at his male portraits; it's a little less visible in his female portraits but it's present. Bear in mind also that all these people are wearing very similar clothing and formal robes; because we are used to using very visible differences in clothing habits, hairstyles and dress to tell people apart(think about how recognizable some of your friends are simply by their haircut or the way they dress) and strongly expect old portraits to be idealized(not that they weren't; but a greater or lesser degree of idealization is always a intentional choice on the part of the artist) we might also be less sensitive to subtle distinctions in their appearance. Indeed, once we look more closely at the portraits of his wives in sequence, salient differences emerge in the length of their faces, their noses, how deep-set their eyes are, the prominence of their chin and so on and so forth. A useful point of comparison is the rather nasty racist joke that 'all Asians look alike\"; in the same way we tend to mentally categorize all people in 16th century paintings as looking alike. This extends to the clothing; the fact is that a typical modern viewer is going to be less sensitive to the vagaries of 16th century fashion and less sensitive(in a world where virtually everyone wears cheap and affordable comfortable cotton or synthetic fabrics on a regular basis) to the different textures and qualities of linen, silk, taffeta, velvet, or brocade is probably going to not recognize subtle differences in dress that would be glaringly visible to a 16th century viewer-look at for example how the portrait of Jane Seymour you probably saw shows a much wider collar than the portrait of Anne of Cleves, or how much more loosely and widely cut and fabric-intensive the clothes of Anne of Cleves look.", "So I'm not an art historian — I should say that up front. But you're not the only one to notice that this is the case. The artist David Hockney has wondered this himself, as both a practitioner and a viewer of art. Hockney has noted that there is an apparently huge jump in portrait quality — that for hundreds of years it is as you described, not very distinct, not very detailed, not very photo-realistic. And then out of nowhere comes a school of very very realistic painting (e.g. Jan van Eyck, Caravaggio, Velázquez) that looks totally different — [damned near photographic](_URL_0_). \n\nHockney, with the assistance of a physicist named Charles Falco, has put forward a theory that this change came about through the use of optical technologies, including lenses and mirrors, that allowed these masters to aid their painting by projecting the image of their subject onto the canvas. In other words, they \"traced\" some of it. He has found a lot of interesting evidence in favor of it, including distortions in paintings that are exactly the kinds of distortions you'd get if you were using lenses or mirrors, and by looking at the original sketches he says you can see evidence that they were tracing as opposed to free-handing (the strokes have a very different character to them). He also, as an artist himself, took pains to try and replicate these technologies. He would be the first to emphasize that this is not \"easy\" work — but it can help you anchor a much more realistic portrait than without it. \n\nI found Hockney's argument somewhat compelling from a history of technology standpoint — the idea that they _wouldn't_ have used these kinds of tools seems idealistic to me, and the fact that they would keep these sorts of things secret also is in line with other early modern optical practices (e.g. Galileo). \n\nThe book on this is David Hockney's _Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters_. It's a beautiful, fascinating, unusual book. It's a coffee table book size but it's making a real scholarly argument — it just needs the visual space to do it. \n\n(There's a movie that just came out, _Tim's Vermeer_, which is along very similar lines. I haven't seen it yet and can't speak to it.)\n\nMy understanding is that most art historians are not interested in these arguments, but how much of that is because there is genuine dispute about the Hockney thesis, or because it disrupts their standard modes of analysis a bit too much, I don't know. I found it pretty interesting, though, and I suspect that in a few more \"generations\" of art historians there will be more acknowledgment about these kinds of possibilities. I think Hockney feels that the present discipline of art history is too invested in the idea of these guys being \"pure\" painters and is just unwilling to even talk about this sort of thing. Again, I'm an historian of science and technology, not art, so I can't speak to the latter with any authority. But I do find the argument interesting." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Retrato_del_Papa_Inocencio_X._Roma%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f4shu2b" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Based on your drawing the first one is from the period of the Daoguang 道光 Emperor, the 8th Qing emperor who ruled from 1820 to 1850. The second is from the reign of the Shunzhi 順治 Emperor, who was the third Qing emperor, ruling from 1644 to 1661. The side with Chinese characters just says the name of the empepror and that it's money (通寶).\n\nThe other side is written in Manchu and says \"Ministry of Revenue\" on both coins. That's the minting authority, which in this case was in the province of Chihli, which no longer exists today as a modern administrative division. Basically Beijing, though.\n\nChances are these are not authentic. A lot of these are made as tourist trinkets and you can get them for literal pennies. If they look to be very similar in condition and material, then it's almost certain that they are knock-offs, since if they were authentic you'd expect the 200 years differnce of when they would have been minted (if authentic) to leave different patterns of ware. Even if they are authentic, the Daoguang one isn't going to make you rich. Neither is the Shunzhi though it might arguably be worth more. You'd obviously need them authenticated by a collector to really know, though.\n\nAlso your red is pretty darn accurate. Well done!" ] }

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[ "https://imgur.com/a/JQmuBGR" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "d3c8duj" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I think this depends entirely on what era you're looking at.\n\nSo far as I am aware, there wasn't an institution in Rome that said \"Ok, everyone, amicus is a second declension noun, not a fourth declension one!\" I'm not sure how linguists would approach this issue, so I can't speak to how everyone agreed that it should be \"amicus, amici.\" There doesn't seem to be the same variation of dialects that you get with ancient Greek writings. \n\nHowever, the educational curriculum was extremely conservative insofar as people studied the same Latin texts regardless of where they were in the empire. By the late antique period, people studied Vergil and Cicero (and a few others), and being able to write like them was considered the gold standard of Latin writing. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctng1v2", "ctmva71", "ctmzuxx", "ctn2ve3", "ctn988d" ], "score": [ 3, 30, 14, 7, 4 ], "text": [ "To supplement what has already been said by u/farquier and others, the script is [Hebrew Cursive](_URL_1_), which was used to write Yiddish before modern Hebrew became popular. It's still used today, both to write Yiddish and Hebrew, and is basically what all handwritten Hebrew is today. You can even see it on modern signs and advertising, much like English cursive is sometimes used as a design choice. [Here is Hebrew cursive being used in the Coca-Cola logo](_URL_0_).", "This is almost certainly Yiddish(essentially late medieval German in Hebrew script). I do not myself read Yiddish but /r/Judaism and /r/Yiddish would be able to help here.", "/u/farquier is correct. What we have here is cursive Hebrew script which is why it looks so different from the writing on top. You may want ro journey over to /r/linguistics or /r/yiddish and see what they can do.", "I don't have the time now for a full translation. The first letter is addressed to a Uncle Josef, and both the writer and the addressee are related to Nathan (grandson and great-grandson). /u/farquier is correct in that the text is mostly Yiddish, but it also contains some Hebrew words and phrases.", "Thanks for all the responses! I'll give those other subs a shot." ] }

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[ "http://imgur.com/xDij8c9", "http://imgur.com/rQpC0Y7", "http://imgur.com/OGOuxC0" ]

[ [ "http://www.blatner.com/adam/scriptology/1-Intro/cocacola.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_Hebrew" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f5pegsr" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "Looks like an ancient french version of the actual « cuillère » (\"spoon\").\n\nSource : french and historian" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dkfel6k" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The desert fathers emerge toward the end of the fourth century as Christianity transitioned from a fringe cult to an accepted community in the pantheon of faiths. While earlier Christian communities had faced persecution and martyrdom, in this new period asceticism became the hallmark of true commitment to the faith. Thus some Christians sought to lead a life marked by exceptional ascetic rigor while pursuing constant prayer and fighting the temptation to return to the world. These figures spent their time alone in caves, atop pillars, or in the ruins of old roman structures now reclaimed by the wilderness and often gained a reputation for sanctity and holiness in their local community, becoming—ironically—something of an attraction and public figure. St. Anthony, whom historians consider to be the first of these \"Desert fathers,\" retreated to the desert sometime in the late third century after giving away a large inheritance he had recieved from his parents. As a hermit living in an old military outpost, his commitment to prayer and the memorization of the bible attracted a number of followers that he organized into a informal monastic community that continued until his death in probably 356.\n\nSome later emulators took Anthony's message of retreating from the world a little too seriously. My favorite example is [Saint Symeon the Stylite](_URL_0_), who, frustrated at the incessant visitors who came to him for prayers, placed himself atop a pillar to escape their pleas.\n\nThe communities that formed around these Desert Fathers became the earliest monasteries, ordering themselves around a communal set of principles. These \"Rules\" by which they lived their life formed the backbone of the monastic movement as it spread across the Late Antique world, although the earliest focused on physical work and communal prayer, not the intellectual work and reading that later monasticism would become known for.\n\nThis is merely a cursory sketch of the very large question you have outlined. I might suggest some further reading if you feel interested. [Peter Brown's The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity (1971)](_URL_1_) remains the fundamental text for understanding the growth and social importance of these figures. For a more general overview, I would still recommend Peter Brown. His World of Late Antiquity is now in its Third Edition, and has an excellent chapter on the desert fathers and the growth of monasticism.\n\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Stylites", "https://faculty.washington.edu/brownj9/LifeoftheProphet/The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Holy%20Man%20-%20Brown.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgjrg17" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "In the memoir of Taiwanese author [Chiung Yao](_URL_0_), she said because her father was an intellectual and easily found another professor job, her family received a Japanese style house the size of twenty [\"tatami\"](_URL_1_) from the university. Her family was still extremely poor despite being better off than most refugees. \n\nAnother Taiwanese author named Liu Hsia wrote in her memoir that a family of fellow refugees could barely survive on the father's army pension with five kids. The author's father wanted to help them out so he resorted to forging a letter of recommendation and found a nurse position for the mother. \n\nThe less fortunate ones with fewer resources and connection would live in what they call \"Military dependents' Village\" consists of very poorly built houses similar to slums. They were originally intended to be temporary housing built with organic materials, but eventually the buildings were replaced with more permanent structures. In recent years those communities were demolished and replaced by low cost high rise apartment buildings. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiung_Yao", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cno8pk5", "cnoe9gn" ], "score": [ 2, 21 ], "text": [ "If I may add a tangent to this question - what rewards did the Tlaxcalans receive from the Spanish after the Aztecs were defeated? ", "There's two big misconceptions that are commonly held about post-Conquest Mexico: that Hispanicization progressed rapidly and the native population faced discrimination equally. I covered in a [previous post](_URL_2_) how life in Mesoamerica basically continued on with business as usual for almost a generation after the fall of Tenochtitlan. This was doubly true for the Tlaxcalans since they were not only granted great leniency in \"New Spain\" in maintaining independent governance, but also the end of what was basically an Aztec embargo on trade. \n\nThe point made again and again is that, when the Spanish arrived, the Tlaxcalans had neither salt nor cotton, those two items standing in for a whole range of trade for not only luxury, but staple goods that the Aztec encirclement had cut off. Hassig, in *Aztec Warfare* makes the point that the *xochiyaoyotl* (flower wars) which had typified conflicts between the Aztecs and Tlaxcalans had, in the years leading up to the Spanish arrival, been becoming more intense, more bloody, more vicious, and more territorial. The whole idea of the Tlaxcalans manipulating the Spanish into the Cholula Massacre was that it had recently flipped from being sympathetic to the Tlaxcalans to shifting allegiances to the Aztecs. Since Cholula sat on the doorstep of Tlaxcala, this was a major blow to their state security.\n\nThus, after the Tlaxcalans and Spanish spent a few rounds beating the crap out of each other, they eyed each other up and entered into a mutually beneficial alliance. To suggest that the Tlaxcalans manipulated the Spanish to their own gain is, well, to understand the political landscape of Postclassic central Mexico. To suggest that the Tlaxcalan goal was the conquest of the Aztec states is to misunderstand the restricted role they were in. Fighting the Aztecs was a much a matter of survival for the Tlaxcalans as it was for the Spanish, more so even, since the actual existence of the Tlaxcalan nation was on the line.\n\nThere are numerous instances in the Spanish texts and even in the *Historia de Tlaxcala*, written in the 16th Century by a Tlaxcalan-Spanish chronicler, Diego Camargo, supporting the idea that this was a mutual alliance that was highly valued on both sides. For instance, after the deal was struck, Cortés said that they should destroy their \"idols,\" to which the Tlaxcalans basically said, \"no thanks.\" \n\nGomara's biography of Cortés actually deals directly with this in a chapter titled \"The Tlaxcalans Defend Their Idols\" wherein the response of the Spanish to the Tlaxcalans rejecting Christianity is thus:\n\n > Cortés answered them, promising that he would send someone to teach and indoctrinate them, when they would see the improvement and the very great profit and pleasure they would have by following his friendly advice; but that at the moment he could not do so because of his haste to get to Mexico.\n\nYeah, his \"haste to get to Mexico.\" \n\nCortés, who spent weeks on the Gulf Coast casting down idols and messing with local politics before trekking inland through unknown and hostile lands, is suddenly in a huge rush to get to Tenochtitlan. Just in cast the sarcasm isn't coming through, the modern interpretation of this is that Cortés looked around, saw he had zero chance of forcing conversions without alienating the only friends he had, and opted to table the whole Jesus-thing for a later date.\n\nOther notable events include the famous joint \"Tlaxcala! Castile!\" cheer and the fact that a powerful noble, the son of one of the Tlaxcalan rulers (like the Aztecs, Tlaxcala was not a singular state but a confederation of *altepetli* tied together by custom and marriage), was put to death for his agitation against the Spanish following their expulsion from the Valley of Mexico after La Noche Triste. Here is Bernal Díaz del Castillo's account of a speech given by Maxixca condemning the noble in question, Xicotencatl the Younger:\n\n > I ask you, do you yourselves think, or have you ever heard others say that such riches or so much prosperity was ever known for the last hundred years in the land of Tlascalla as since the time these teules *[the Spanish]* have appeared among us? Were we ever so much respected by all our neighbours? It is only since their arrival we possess abundance of gold and cotton stuffs; it is since that time only we eat salt again, of which we had been deprived for such a length of time. Wherever our troops have shown themselves with these teules, they have been treated with the utmost respect; and if many of our countrymen have lately perished in Mexico, they certainly fared no worse than the teules themselves. All of you must likewise bear in mind the ancient tradition handed down to us by our forefathers, that, at some period or other, a people would come from where the sun rises, to whom the dominion of these countries was destined. How dare Xicotencatl, taking all this into consideration, contemplate this horrible treachery, from which nothing can flow but war and our destruction? Is this not a crime which ought not to be pardoned? Is it not exactly in accordance with the evil designs with which this man's head always runs full? Now that misfortune has led these teules to us for protection, and that we may assist them with our troops to renew the war with Mexico, are we to act treacherously to these our friends? ([Lockhart trans.](_URL_1_))\n\nYou can see the lines about having access to salt and other goods again, but also the idea that \"we are in this together,\" which really does permeate a lot of how the Tlaxcalans and Spanish come off during this period. At the end of the war with the Mexica (in which the Tlaxcalans are noted as engaging in a bit of looting), this paid off in being relatively unbothered by the new Spanish regime. It was a return to normalcy. As Lockhart notes in *Nahuas After the Conquest*, the fact that Tlaxcala was saved from the ravages of war meant that it was also the best organized state in the region, and thus provided a great deal of officials, like traveling judge-governors, throughout central Mexico. Groups of Tlaxcalans also moved north with Spanish/Aztec forces in the pacification of the Gran Chichimeca to establish towns in what are now San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, and Zacatecas. They essentially had an independent state which, while denied tributary domination over the nations in the Valley of Mexico, nonetheless benefited from no longer being under siege and branching outward.\n\nSo why didn't the Tlaxcalans end up establishing dominance over the Valley of Mexico. The easy answer is that the Spanish moved very quickly to recognize Mexica nobility and re-establish them in their roles. Descendants of Motecuhzoma II continued to rule Tenochtitlan for decades after the \"conquest,\" and there is in fact a [Spanish ducal title held by his direct descendants](_URL_3_). This lazy ethnocentric answer fails to take into account that, with the surrender of Cuauhtemoc, the Spanish/Tlaxcalans no longer had any cause to press the war further. Despite beating the Mexica back, the idea that Spanish/Tlaxcalan/Etc. forces would completely remove the Mexica from power would have meant a kind of total war that was really outside the discourse. Within the framework of Mesoamerica, the Spanish had made the Mexica a tributary state and the Tlaxcalans had removed the Mexica as a threat. It was win/win.\n\nLet's take a moment, however, and consider another, more speculative reason why the Tlaxcalans did not press for more substantial spoils of war. Well, one reason is that the lands that served as the buffer between Tlaxcala and the Aztecs, Huexotzinco and Cholula, both allied with the Tlaxcalan-Spanish (albeit after the aforementioned massacre at the the latter altepetl). Then there's the fact that the eastern side of the Valley of Mexico and the 2nd most important state in the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Acolhua, flipped to the Spanish early on. Thus, the Tlaxcalans could not exactly demand that land. Other groups in the region, like the Xochimilca, also turned against the Mexica, if not exactly jumping on the Tlaxcalan-Spanish bandwagon. Thus those groups were also not considered to be in conflict with the Tlaxcalan-Spanish forces, which again put them off-limits for punitive measures according to the custom of war in both cultures.\n\nA more speculative view is that, following the 1520 smallpox epidemic, the Tlaxcalan leadership was devastated and unable to effectively press their claims. Accounts generally credit Xicotencatl the Elder and Maxixca as the most important leaders. Xicotencatl most likely died either at the tail end of the conquest or shortly afterwards, while Maxixca is said to have died in the smallpox outbreak leaving some sons which are generally unnamed in the sources as successors, or at least what the Spanish recognized as successors. There's a [passage in Torquemada](_URL_0_) (start at the top of pg. 63) which gives clues to the kind of chaos of succession that followed the death of Maxixca. So one interpretation would be that there was no effective leader to press Tlaxcalans claims post-Conquest, and that by the time there was, the epidemics of 1540s and 1570s would devastate the native population, setting the stage for Spanish control.\n" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2qjnyo/should_it_mexico_accept_the_historical_record/" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/publicadigital/monarquia/volumen/04/mi_4/02Libro%20Undecimo/miv4025.pdf", "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm#CHAPTER_CXXIX", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25y5j0/what_was_daily_life_like_for_the_indigenous/chmcx1y", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cptwkdp" ], "score": [ 19 ], "text": [ "Egypt was under the control of the Arabs directly for six consecutive centuries, and then under the control of people who likely used Arabic for government functions due to the varied origins of the Mamluks themselves. So, in short, for almost a thousand years it was under the control of administrators who spoke Arabic, right in the middle of a large empire where Arabic was the main lingua franca. That is a huge time frame for the language to filter down to the general populace.\n\nAs to the second claim, the 'Arabization' of North Africa was mostly a cultural exchange rather than a replacement of peoples. Recent studies suggest that the average Egyptian can likely trace their heritage back thousands of years, and of course, clearly Berbers are a wholely distinct people from the Arabs. The Fertile crescent and Syria is a bit more, but there would have been Arabs and other Semitic peoples there before the Muslim invasions. The truth is that outside of a few isolated points in time, large scale population transfers just weren't that common. While the elites might be replaced, and the language of government and administration might change to reflect that, the change in the general population is generally going to reflect the cultural pressure from above rather than wholesale replacement of populations. This is not to say that some population transfers didn't take place in the Caliphate, but that they are almost certainly a minor component of the over-all Arabization of the Middle-East and North Africa." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn5fc3c" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Going off that, of the assassinations done by either CIA or military was it widely known who did it or did people think it was different countries? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d8au75i", "d8b42ar" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "This is a complicated question because when people see that the brothers had such a large sum they automatically assume the same thing you did. That wealth typically creates more wealth. The trouble is no one takes into account the time value of money. Which states that money today is more valuable than money tomorrow or a year from now. He was once valued at 336 billion but that was for at that time in history. The value of money decreases over time, plus the brothers were worth that much. Since their deaths it has been split between 200 family members. The fact that they are still able to be wealthy at this day and age is more what we're use to. In that families that are wealthy usually remain wealthy. The Rockefellers actually made some smart investments. They owned Chase Manhattan bank and were large investors in Apple, so their wealth has accrued but the world will never see the same as in the Gilded age. When there was The Rockefellers, JP. Morgan, Carnegie and So on. ", "Estate and death taxes removed some of the wealth. Splitting it between 200 people who each have their own households and expenses did away with more of the money." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "curw7j9" ], "score": [ 30 ], "text": [ "Japan's entry into the First World War was a highly measured response. Japan acted against German interests in the Pacific, most notably invading the German concession at Tsingtao. Japan did not put its economy on a wartime footing and only after repeated entreaties by the British did she send some military force into the European theater in 1917, a small destroyer force engaged in ASW operations in the Mediterranean. Japan justified entry into the war on the grounds of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, an accord that had its origins in the two countries' concerns with defense issues in the Pacific at the turn of the century. \n\nThe Anglo-Japanese Alliance had really begun to fracture significantly by the outbreak of the First World War over differing strategic priorities. The initial orientation of the alliance when it was signed in 1902 was as mutual security pact against Russian intervention within the East Asia. The British conceptualized the pact as a means to guarantee imperial defense within India. For their part, the Japanese saw this alliance as a means to gain access to British naval technology and as a means to ensure a friendly Britain in the event of war with Russia. Japan's victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and the latter's subsequent strategic retreat from East Asia because of the Revolution of 1905 changed this strategic calculus. But the ardor for alliance had cooled somewhat even before the Russo-Japanese War. Prior to 1902, London's understanding of the balance of power was that by helping prop up Japan, they would have prevented Russia from capitalizing upon Japan's perceived weakness and expanding into Korea and Manchuria. This strengthened Russia could then pose an even bigger threat to India. In the run-up to the war, Balfour declared of the alliance that:\n\n > If we interpret the Japanese Alliance as one requiring us to help Japan whenever she gets to loggerheads with Russia, it is absurdly one-sided. Japan certainly would not help us to prevent Amsterdam from falling into the hands of the French, or Holland falling into the hands of the Germans. Nor would she involve herself in any quarrel we might have over the northwest frontier of India. \n\nRussia's defeat altered this strategic equation. The negotiations over the alliance's renewal in 1911 illustrated these new strains. Although the Anglo-Japanese diplomatic negotiations were successful and led to a renewal of the alliance for ten years, there was a clear tension between the two nations. Japan had sought British guarantees for support in case Japan went to war with the United States, and London steadfastly refused. Instead, Article IV of the renewed treaty stated:\n\n > Should either High Contracting Party conclude a treaty of general \narbitration with a third Power, it is agreed that nothing in this Agreement shall entail upon such Contracting Party an obligation to go to war with the Power with whom such treaty of arbitration is in force. \n\nAlthough Article IV does not explicitly mention the US, London had already begun the long process of signing just such an arbitration treaty with the United States that would culminate in the Peace Commissions Treaty of 1914. Renewing the treaty helped forestall any other alliance Japan might make with another power and kept a modicum of security for imperial defense. \n\nFor their part, the opinion of the alliance within Japanese elite circles had dimmed considerably by 1911. Katō Takaaki, the Anglophile foreign minister in 1914, was a strong proponent of the alliance and saw fulfilling it as a means to enhance Japanese power and the strength of the foreign ministry. Yet Katō's opinion of the alliance was increasingly a minority one. One of Japan's senior statesmen, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo saw Article IV as proof that Japan would have to stand alone in the coming conflict over Asia and the state would have to double its defense burden. The Japanese Navy had already designated the US as Japan's main hypothetical enemy in its budgetary plans by 1907 and had begun a program of naval expansion, the eight-eight fleet. \n\nWithin this context, Japan's entry into the war and Britain's reluctance over Japan's belligerence makes more sense. The alliance gave Japan a pretext to enter the war, but on Japan's own terms. Factionalism within the Japanese government and ruling elite meant that Japan's leadership was divided upon what Japan's goals should take. Yamagata Aritomo saw the war as a means to create a rapprochement with Russia and help orient Japan towards an Asian-based land power, undercutting the increasingly expensive naval arms build-up. Katō saw the war as a means to cement Japan's status as an imperial power and take its place with its fellow empire, Britain. Other pan-Asianists within the government saw the power-vacuum created by the war as an opportunity to institute an Asian Monroe Doctrine with Japan as its main enforcer. \n\nGiven the Japanese use of the treaty, Britain did not really exert too much effort in renewing it in the aftermath of the First World War. Although Britain initially proposed a tripartite Anglo-Japanese-American pact to keep the Pacific status quo, the US was reluctant to enter into this arrangement. The Washington Conference of 1921 proved the last gasp of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty as British negotiators used the threat of its renewal if the Washington Conference fell apart or was otherwise unfavorable to Britain. The resulting Four-Power Treaty assuring the status quo in the Pacific proved the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but both the strategic vision of both Japan and Britain had parted ways well before 1921.\n\n*Sources*\n\nDickinson, Frederick R. *War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914-1919*. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999. \n\n_. *World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919-1930*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.\n\nO'Brien, Phillips Payson. *The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922*. London: Routledge, 2004. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccypg6r", "ccyqi4n", "ccyu9r0" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "The bubonic epidemic no one ever hears about: [The Plague of Justinian](_URL_0_). \n\nIt is estimated to have killed over twenty-five million people, only 25% of the casualties caused by the Black Death, but the PoJ was the first recorded instance of a (confirmed) Yersinia pestis epidemic. ", "Everyone knows about the mortality following infectious diseases brought by Europeans to the New World, but not many people seem to know about a likely home-grown epidemic of what appears to be a viral hemorrhagic fever referred to as cocoliztli. In 1545 and 1576 the two epidemics of this pathogen killed twice as many people as the 1519-20 smallpox epidemic in the Aztec homeland.\n\nThe smallpox epidemic of the 1519-1520 decimated the population of Mexico. Estimates vary, but perhaps 5 to 8 million people perished in the epidemic. Less than a generation later, an epidemic of [cocoliztli](_URL_2_) burned through the Aztec heartland, followed by another in in 1576. We have only rough estimates of the death toll, but conservative figures put the tally for the two epidemics at 10-15 million people. \n\nThe infection was quick onset, with mortality occurring in a matter of days, and was highly contagious. Victims had high fevers, abdominal and chest pains, dysentery, seizures, and blood flowing from the ears and nose. These symptoms differ from smallpox, and doctors at the time were careful to distinguish it from the earlier epidemic. Today, the consensus is a viral hemorrhagic disease, perhaps similar to [Hantavirus](_URL_1_), was the cause of cocoliztli. Researchers have linked [climatic patterns](_URL_0_), notably a drought followed by extreme wet periods, to the timing of the epidemics, and think a population explosion of the rat host accounts for the spread, and ferocity, of the two catastrohpic cocoliztli epidemics.", "This question is too broad for this subreddit, falling under the [no \"Throughout history\" questions](_URL_0_). However, it would be a good topic for a Tuesday Trivia feature post, so if you're interested in seeing it used that way (and credited to you), please message the mod responsible, /u/caffarelli. Thank you." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian" ], [ "http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/08/01/climate-not-spaniards-brought-diseases-that-killed-aztecs/#.UmlMpxBmQdU", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hantavirus", "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730237/" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22in_your_era.22_or_.22throughout_history.22_questions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dv4anl3" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "The simple answer is no.\n\nApocryphal sources exist but are universally pretty late. Even the length of Jesus' ministry isn't exactly known. We assume it was a three year ministry because of the Gospel of John, but the interesting point there is that the Gospel of John isn't a common source for information concerning the historical Jesus -- it's just too different from the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). But the synoptics do not specify how long Jesus was active. Gospel of John provides a clear time frame while the other Gospels do not. \n\nBut even the seem to disagree a lot about Jesus before his ministry. Mark has no infancy narrative, and while Matthew and Luke do both diverge in pretty significant ways. Luke's narrative include a story about Jesus as a child at the Temple while Matthew's infancy narrative is more concerned with Joseph than anything else. \n\nThe epistles are directed to communities who we can presume were already told the story of Jesus by whichever evangelist founded the community so those are more concerned with the theological implications of history. In general there's not a whole of history about Jesus there. \n\nDocuments like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the Protoevangelium of James do exist, but they're all later and, while interesting reads, do not appear to be historical accounts. Outside of Christian texts, when Jesus is mentioned by ancient historians Jesus is not really the focus -- there's more concern for Christians than for Christ." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfg48ce", "cfhex0e" ], "score": [ 26, 6 ], "text": [ "I think the contention that feudalism was a heavy contributor to socialism is a pretty weak one. What is Lipset's evidence for that assertion? I think the rise of socialism is a heck of a lot more complex than \"the struggle against feudalism and the ravages of industrialization took on a class conscious character in a relatively homogeneous population\".\n\n\nIf we don't accept that as true, we have to look for other reasons that African-Americans didn't turn to socialism as an answer. On the other hand, it must also be remembered that the socialist movement in the United States was heavily involved in the civil rights struggle (and one of the justifications of the heavy handed FBI surveillance and infiltration of those civil rights movements).\n\n", "Please do not ignore population density. It is such a huge factor that I don't understand how it always gets ignored.\n\nThe whole concept of social mobility or lack of a class system in the US rested or maybe still does on cheap land or homesteading, meaning theat people did not feel they are \"condemned\" to a life of being working-class employees and never starting their own business. I can't quote directly but I have heard Lincoln saying something like that the absence of a permanent working class makes American democracy possible, because after a few years of being a wage-earner people pack up and go on the frontier and become independent. What he may have meant with it, that democracy tends towards socialism in the sense that the poor will often vote to confiscating the property of the rich, but when they can just homestead land for themselves then not.\n\nEurope was basically... \"full\" for a long, long time. Sometimes wars depopulated a territory, e.g. the Ottomans parts of Hungary which means the Habsburgs brought in German settlers to repopulate those regions, but in general there was more of the indeed semi-feudal attitude that class barriers are fixed and born into because land was taken, so if your family had no property what could you do? No wealth, hardly any education meant you are working class forever. If you look at the British comedy You Rang Milord, you get the impression that it is somehow the same thing to be a Lord and own a factory. And it suggests that a working class person could not develop an own workshop into a factory because he would not have that style and dress and taste to be considered a classy gentleman, so it would be inappropriate for him to be a businessman. Working-class American millionaries who did not have gentlemanly styles and tastes and upbringing were often ridiculed in Europe up to say first decades of the 20th century, there was this stereotype of the crass Californian soap king who has money yet he talks like a working class person . So yes European capitalism was at least partially based on aristocratic elements at least in style and taste being gentlemanly.\n\nThe point I am making is simply that the lack of rigid classes in the US largely comes from low population density and thus free or cheap land, because anyone who did not want to work for others could as well become an independent farmer, a mini-agrobusinessman. In Europe if you are born working class, pretty much all the arable land is already taken, population density is so high that you could not walk 10km in a German forest without hitting a village, so you are probably staying working class.\n\nI was asking the same question as yourself from the exactly opposite angle: how is it possible that one simply cannot sell a right-libertarian, pro-capitalist political philosophy in Europe? And my answer was that due to high population densities, people do not feel independent enough, it is hard to own land, to own a house, they often feel they are stuck as employees and renters, thus the whole sense of independence needed for libertarian thinking does not appear, they think they are stuck with the boss and the landlord forever so they want them to be regulated.\n\nConsider the following. Victor David Hanson wrote a nice elegy about how his California Swedish ancestors were the perfect libertarians who always worked hard and never asked for government handouts. He just missed one, **crucially** important detail: they worked on their own land which they got back when it wa free or almost so. Why did those guys even have to move from Sweden to California and why did their relatives who stayed home probably became social democrats? In my opinion the evidence is very clear that it was population density, so free or cheap land that did the trick. They were condemned to be perpetual wage laborers in Sweden because all the good land was taken, which predisposes one towards socialism, they could find cheap or free land in California so basically they could work their own land, farm it and become middle-class, independent agri-businessmen, so for them accepting libertarian values was easy." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ej2j3q3" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Short answer: ethnicity and language (both in place well before the 19th century), plus some negative experiences with other nationalities (mostly in the 19th-20th centuries, triggering the rise of Turkish nationalism.) When you read the memoirs of the future political and military leaders of Turkey, at one point almost all of them mention a story like this:\n\nThe young X (the future leader) enters an elite Ottoman school/military academy. There he meets others from different parts of the Empire. He witnesses how Albanians, Arabs (insert any other nationality here) create societies and promote their national culture. Yet he does not belong to any of these groups, and often he insists on the shared Ottoman identity. He feels alienated. At some stage, he thinks this does not work anymore (1912 Albanian independence and the Arabic revolt during WW1 being primary turning points for many, apparently) and he becomes more Turkish than Ottoman. This general story is repeated so many times that it is fair to say the Turkish identity resurfaced in the late 19th-early 20th century as a negative reaction to other nationalisms.\n\nWhat Turkish culture is probably a question too deep for me to delve into here. The native tongues seem to have played a vital role in reinforcing unity among ethnic groups in the Empire, so Turkish as your native tongue (which often even though not always meant you are ethnically Turkish) plus undergoing experiences similar to the story I told made people Turks. A reminder though: it is simply a mistake to suppose that such individuals and modern states created the national identity of Turkishness. There are several much older occasions in which people spoke of themselves as \"Turks\" and clearly regarded others as non-Turkic/Turkish \"others.\" A 15th century Ottoman chronicle by Mehmed Neşrî Efendi, for example, describes how Murad I of the Ottoman Empire said he ached to showcase “the Turkish manliness” against the Serbian Army, in the 14th century! So what we are talking here about is the Turkishness as understood from the late 19th century onwards but “Turkishness” itself has deeper roots in history. \n\nFinally, I do not think that most ordinary Turks felt failed or ignored by the Ottomans. They did not really think of the Ottomans as someone else either, it seems. There was a time following the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 when the state sought to instill such a mentality (now largely exaggerated for modern political purposes). Indeed, there are speeches by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in which he criticizes how the Ottoman conquests were merely for the benefit of the Palace and the Sultan but at the cost of much Turkish blood. The Ottoman past was often used as a yardstick to demonstrate the success of the Republic, one success being the more clear expression of Turkishness in the Republican era. But at the end of the day, I highly doubt even the elites regarded the Ottoman Empire as an enemy per se. The confrontation with the Ottoman past in the Republic of Turkey never reached levels witnessed in the French Revolution or in the Soviet Union. It was never an issue of nationality alone anyway since the Ottoman past was often criticized also for not being secular, modern and independent enough too.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5iy8y5", "c5j3fw3", "c5j6kcj", "c5j6kom", "c5j8621" ], "score": [ 12, 7, 3, 3, 5 ], "text": [ "Off the top of my head:\n\nAge of Empires 3 is completely made up.\n\n* Specifically, there were no Ottomans in the New World and no Russians except on the Pacific Coast\n\n* The Ottomans did [invade](_URL_1_) Malta in 1565. New Brunswick is a real place.\n\n* The [Sepoy Rebellion](_URL_2_) really did happen, and I remember some of the reasons for it being depicted accurately in the game. The campaign ends before getting to the bloody bad ending, though.\n\n* The China campaign is based on fanciful [speculation](_URL_0_) \n\nAge of Empires 2 used more real history in its campaigns, but took significant liberties as well. I think most of the battles really happened but were nothing like as depicted in the games, such as the [siege of Acre](_URL_3_)\n\nAs far as I know the weapons, units, buildings, and nations in the games are mostly real. Though in Age of Empires III most of the national leaders were not alive at the same time.\n", "Playing Age of Empires to figure out history is like playing Warcraft to figure out the plot of Lord of the Rings.", "The encyclopedia in AoE2 was really solid, taught me much the younger version of me would never have learbed otherwise. ", "It has been a very long time since I played, but I remember the stories surrounding the campaign modes being fairly accurate.\n\nAll the factions were real and existed at some point. Often they did not exist simultaneously--AOE is the most egregious offender, with the Shang and the Romans--the game sometimes uses weird names (like Saracens and Tuetons).", "\"So! You have come to hear the tale of Frederick Barbarossa?\"\nI can't tell you that these games are particularly accurate, but they helped plant the seeds which created a love of history for me." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Malta_%281565%29", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sepoy_Rebellion", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Acre_%281189%E2%80%931191%29" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg9p4kk" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "The Nazis did not nationalize all off industry; now they forced Jews to sell their businesses for peanuts to non-Jewish owners, under the policy of Aryanization/Arisierung - that was in 1938.\n\nHowever they placed limited on what owners could do with their property, effectively the nazi state managed an increasing part of the economy - this tendency began in 1936 (the Nazi's had a four year plan between 1936-40); from 1939 this the economy switched to war economy and between 1942-45 most of the economy was managed directly by the state.\n\nFor instance farmers would be told what they should plant (they also did price fixing), and factories would be told what to produce; however the old manager was still in charge, provided he was not Jewish. \n\nMuch of the free market was gradually abolished; by 1936 prices and salaries were fixed; the central bank lost its independence; etc.\n\nMuch of the prewar years was based on deficit spending; actually the Bruehning government started this, but because of Versaille/Young plan he was not allowed to finance these measure by inflation. The measures were efficient at stopping unemployment; however the planning body was a mess of different interest and priorities, the office of the four year plan (Goehring) would quarrel with leader of war economy (Schacht) vs. Wehrmacht officials, etc.\n\nAlso deficit spending had the result that there were no currency reserves left by 1939.\nSo it is correct to say that eventually the business plan of the Nazi system was war, also planning went for war in 1939; the second four year plan would have ended early in 1940, the object of the plan was to create a self sufficient economy/decrease dependence on imported raw materials and to prepare for war.\n\n----\n\"Deutsche Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik 1914 - 1945\" Prof. Dr. Rainer Goemmel\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_carry_\\(World_War_II\\)" ]

[ [ "http://www-wiwi.uni-regensburg.de/images/institute/angegliedert/goemmel/Deutsche_Wirtschaft_und_Wirtschaftspolitik_1914-1945-komplette_Vorlesung.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck0ajjb", "ck0m7qe", "ck0yvbb" ], "score": [ 45, 9, 2 ], "text": [ "Short answer. Because that's what they had on hand. \n\nShort answer number 2. Because nobody had bothered developing the M1 as a sniper platform until late in the war.\n\nLong answer. Well, nobody was bothering with the M1 until late in the war. Seriously, that's about the gist of it. None of this mess about \"Semi autos being inherently inaccurate compared to bolt rifles\" (The Russians would like to introduce you to the SVT 40, and some of the lovely and lethal ladies who used it to great effect on the Eastern Front) or pinging clips and such. \n\nWhen the US entered WWII they didn't even have enough M1 Garands to go around yet, famously the Marines started the war with a large quantity of 03 Springfields on hand, as they had yet to fully transition to the M1. The first priority was getting standard M1's out to all the troops, and ramping up production of them to match the needs of the rapidly growing armed forces.\n\nSo, when a sniper rifle was needed, it was simpler to use the existing 03 Springfield platform to use as sniper rifles. They had been built in sniper configurations before, the tech was all worked out, there was a ton of civilian knowledge on how to turn them into scoped rifles. It was easy, simple and straightforward. The M1C and D rifles didn't make an appearance until 1944 and beyond, because of the need to first focus on getting standard rifles to the troops, and the fact that an entire program of turning the M1 into a sniper rifle had to be started up. \n\nThe M1 C and D were standard sniper rifles during the Korean War, and served quite well there, which should settle the myth of the weakness of a semi auto platform as a sniper rifle. You can also see the Russians have fielded many successful semi auto sniper rifles, such as the SVT 40, and the famous Dragonuv. The M1 was not a standard sniper platform in WWII, because it had not been developed as such yet, nothing more, nothing less. \n\nAre bolt guns more inherently accurate? On off the shelf rack grade units? Probably. But when you start building match grade semi auto and bolt action rifles, I don't think it really matters anymore. Modern out of the box AR 15's get exceptional accuracy, and it's not uncommon to find or build sub MOA units for competition or varmint hunting. It's not the action of the gun, as much as it is the way it is built. ", "Here is a [good article](_URL_0_) on the development of the M1 Garand sniper rifle. Note that it wasn't until 1943 that they even thought about developing one as a sniper. The first prototype was rejected because it was an unsatisfactory attempt to use existing off the shelf components that were largely incompatible with how the Garand operated. After the first prototype, the Army developed a series of guidelines specifying how the scope was to be placed, and how the weapon should function in terms of adjusting eye relief of the scope, use of iron sights and ability to easily insert a fresh clip. The ultimate end result were the M1C and D snipers used late in the war and in Korea. ", "Aside from some of the excellent info already listed here, I've seen no mention of the nature of the Garand receiver's method of loading compared to the Springfield.\n\nThe Garand loaded from the top in an 8 round en-bloc clip, which meant that any optic mounted on its receiver had to either sit significantly forward of the action or off to one side. Neither of these is conducive to accuracy, even if an experienced shooter on another platform may be able to adapt to it with practice.\n\nThe Garand's direct descendent, the M14, was much better suited to a sniper role (and has filled this role from Vietnam to the present day in US service). It is fed from a 20 round box magazine underneath the receiver rather than on top, so any optic mounted to it can sit in a more conventional location. Two highly accurized versions, the M21 and M25 feature heavily in long range lore, with the name Carlos Hathcock coming up often.\n\nWhile it's now possible to make a semi-auto rifle as accurate as a bolt gun, there aren't a lot of people who would doubt that a bolt gun can be fitted to a sniper role for a lot less money than a semi-auto. It's worth looking into the M24 program, which didn't come around until the late 1980s, and was based on the Remington 700 bolt action rather than the large reserves of M14 receivers that the DOD already had in inventory. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.nramuseum.org/media/940657/sniper%20garands.pdf" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "evu5m7o" ], "score": [ 22 ], "text": [ "The Indo-Aryan migration is absolutely true, insofar as Indo-Aryan - a branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, which itself is a branch of the Indo-European family, which originated somewhere in the Pontic Steppe (around modern Ukraine, Crimea, and southern Russia) - is not indigenous to India. Anyone who claims that it was, including anyone who references the Indus Valley civilisation as an Indo-European one, is participating in nationalist pseudoscience. We know this from the method of [comparative reconstruction](_URL_3_), which shows that Proto-Indo-European, or the common ancestor to all Indo-European languages, had words relating to the material culture and natural environment of the Pontic steppe (for example, “salmon”, “birch tree”, and a whole host of words relating to horse domestication), but few or none indicating a culture that might have arisen in modern Pakistan (“elephant”, “lion”, and notably any words to do with the urban life that the Indus Valley people lived); those words were innovated or borrowed within Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan, and therefore don’t share any common ancestor with their equivalents in other Indo-European languages. With the addition of material archaeology, we can us the Indo-Europeans as being, or at least being related to, the [Yamnaya culture](_URL_1_), and thus certainly not related to the contemporaneous Indus Valley culture or any other culture of the Indian Subcontinent. This conclusively shows that the original speakers of Indo-Iranian, and thus their descendants the Indo-Aryans, migrated into Central Asia, then Iran and the Subcontinent at some point. The Indus Valley people, for their part, have been connected to the indigenous [Dravidian](_URL_0_) or (for a fringe hypothesis) [Munda](_URL_2_) peoples, but the relatively slim evidence doesn’t allow us to make a firm conclusion either or neither way; what’s certain is that originally, or at the time we generally associate them with, they weren’t Indo-Aryan.\n\nThe question that follows - and here the mainstream historical perspective differs from both the conflict-based Anglo-German colonial narrative *and* the unitarian Indian nationalist one - is what kind of migration this was: was it, as nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European historians generally assumed, a mass migration with violent conquest and population replacement, or a gradual, mostly-peaceful assimilation from a relatively small founding group based on trade and intermarriage? This is an important point, because the migration in general is a complex facet of human history - the Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain and the Slavic migration into Southeastern Europe are disputed along similar lines - and one we don’t have a complete answer to. Certainly it appears that the Indus Valley civilisation had a gradual but eventually total decline in the first half of the second millennium BC (from about 1900 to 1600), which coincides with the rise of the Indo-Aryan language family in the area. But whether the Indo-Aryan presence was a *cause* of the Indus Valley’s decline, or an *effect* of a decline caused by a more fundamental ecological or political collapse, is very much disputed. Modern history tends more toward the latter, as it does with the analogous but much later Anglo-Saxon and Slavic migrations, and some kind of synthesis between the two seems like the most plausible account of the period.\n\nAs for *why* Anglo-German historians preferred the idea of a violent migration over a gradual dispersal, the cause is not as fundamentally propagandistic as Indian nationalist historians assume; their arguments were based (for the most part) not in an effort to keep the various Indian peoples disunited and in conflict, but rather on a faulty scholarship that valued textual sources and those who produced them (i.e. the Vedas and Brahmins) over concerns of how, when, and why those texts were produced, leading to the impression of a united and distinct “Aryan” people - who supposedly neatly coincided with Brahmins themselves - opposed to a vague mass of *mleccha* indigenes. This, of course, was thoroughly amplified by the “scientific” racism of the time, and encouraged Anglo-German historians to interpret Indian history as one of Indo-Europeans (to whom they conveniently belonged) as a conquering people who subjugated the indigenous peoples of the Indian Subcontinent. The connection with race ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is obvious, and still colours Indian history from both European and Indian perspectives to this day.\n\nOverall, both the nationalist idea that the Indo-Aryan language family and early Hinduism were always indigenous to India and the Anglo-German colonial idea that Indo-Aryan represented a sudden and violent population shift are fundamentally discredited. The real answer lies not somewhere between the two, but through a subtler and more historically comprehensive understanding of “migration”.\n\nA good layman’s source for the Indo-European migrations is David W. Anthony’s *The Horse, the Wheel, and Language*. Additionally, the [Wikipedia article](_URL_4_) on the Indo-Aryan migration is surprisingly and gratifyingly comprehensive, so I’d recommend it at least over the Internet." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munda_languages", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_method", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dbnsrgm" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "We really can't know the answer to complex hypotheticals like that. Smaller \"What ifs\" can sometimes be productive. But \"what if the strategic situation of the world was totally different?\" isn't something that historians can readily answer.\n\nWhat they can do is point out that, 1) the Cold War was plenty \"hot\" if you lived in one of the places consumed by proxy war or state interference; 2) \"mutually assured destruction\" as a condition did not really apply until the 1960s, arguably the 1970s, because the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities were far undermatched against the USA's, though the question of whether deterrence broadly (which is not the same thing as MAD) mattered is still up for grabs; and 3) there is evidence that there is more than nuclear deterrence that kept the Soviets from initially pressing westward in the 1940s, and there is clearly more than deterrence with the US lack of interest in engaging the Soviets militarily (or with nuclear arms) prior to the Soviets having a truly compelling nuclear force (e.g. before the mid-1950s if you care primarily about Europe, the 1960s or 1970s if you care more globally). The \"nuclear taboo\" — lack of use of nuclear weapons — has applied even in non-deterrent, definitely non-MAD, situations." ] }

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