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{ "a_id": [ "c6vb50x", "c6vbj33", "c6vfq9z", "c6vg3dh", "c6vhr4o" ], "score": [ 5, 18, 17, 4, 4 ], "text": [ "Disclaimer: this is lay person experience \n\n > Vice-versa, which countries despise America for their role?\n\nI don't know if you went in or not but the military museum in Belgrade has a section on the 99 Kosovo Crisis at the end proudly showing part of a US bomber along with images of wounded Serbian civilians and a detailed map of NATO bombings and which countries allowed their airspace to be used, that came across as very resentful to the point that you would think that Serbia was happily sat by itself when NATO came to bomb it for no reason. But otherwise everyone was very friendly to me too (UK so also NATO) and there was no signs of such feeling anywhere else.", "1. Why did the US/NATO chose the sides they did?\n\nYou had a well equipped army/force (various kinds of armored vehicles, artillery, even a small airforce, etc) on one side, the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS), which were essentially the units of the previous state force, the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA), in which Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina served, against lightly armed Bosniaks and Croats, who in the beginning didn't even have real defence forces. Now the VRS was able to conquer about 70% of the whole of Bosnia in the course of several months. The VRS conducted ethnic cleansing, genocide and various other crimes against humanity on their territorry against Croats and Bosniaks. The pressure for the western governments to intervent grew over the course of the war. In 1995 they had finally to do something in Bosnia (in this year there were several big massacres which got a lot of publicity in the western media e. g. Srebrenica with 8000 civilians dead). So they helped the recently formed Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniak and Croat forces) with a bombing campaign.\n\n2. Why does Kosovo not join Albania?\n\nWell for the moment this is impossible, because Serbia views it still as a rebellious province. And culturally/religiously Kosovo was an important serbian region, with the oldest churches and monasteries. Maybe at some point in the future Kosovo will join Albania, but that's just speculation.\n\n3. Why does not the same happen in the US?\n\nWell the situation is completely different. Yugoslavia was a multinational/ -ethnic/ -religious state that was only held together through the charisma of Tito and nothing else. It was not really a natural construct and every now and then bloody wars were fought in the Balkans between the ethnic groups and the nations (1912, 1913, 1914-1918, 1942-1945 and finally 1991-1999). Now as soon as Tito died in 1980, the problems came to the surface and it started to break apart.", "I am a political scientist and this is my regional specialty. As such, I am not a historian but I think I can help. \n\nFirst, many Americans treat the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo as all one war. The first three arguably could be, but Kosovo is a very different situation. If you want to get into why, let me know and I will elaborate. This is an important distinction for many of these questions. \n\n1. Kosovo is the only formed country that feels completely that way, however the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) are quite happy with the US, as evidenced by the response Secretary Clinton got there just this week. Interestingly though, that sentiment in Kosovo is waning as they feel they were promised independence, and in practice, they are not all the way there yet. \n\n2. No one despises America for their role as a country. The Republika Srpska (Serb part of Bosnia) would probably be the most likely to despise the US, but most of the displeasure I have heard is with the international response post-conflict. The Serbs were consistently called the \"bad guys\" in the conflict and in both conflicts, Croats/Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians did some pretty nasty stuff to Serbs as well. However, there are some infamous war criminals (especially Croatians and Kosovo Albanians) who managed to not got prosecuted and this has lead to resentment towards the international community for demonizing one side in the wars. \n\n3. The EU did not see this as an opportunity to expand. Instead, the only EU foreign policy inducement tool they have is dangling the carrot of EU ascension. As such, they have since tried to get major political reform (working in Croatia, Slovenia, arguably in Macedonia), but not working too well in Bosnia and Serbia. If they could get these countries to reform how they want without offering ascension, I think they would. \n\n4. The EU/NATO/US would have never allowed it. There has been a constant concern about greater Balkans rhetoric, and if Kosovo joined with Albania to create greater Albania, the worry was that Serbia and Croatia would split up Bosnia, Greece may grab Macedonia, Bulgaria may grab some territory etc... Even if they want to, I doubt they would ever be allowed to in the foreseeable future with such an international presence there. \n\n5. That is a very simplistic view of the conflict and not why it started at all. In the Balkans, religion was simply a proxy used for ethnic identity. There are many different theories about why the wars occurred and if you have specific questions about the two different conflicts I can answer. \n\nEdit: This is my personal favorite book that explains the events in the 80s that lead to the situations we are discussing. I think understanding what happened in the 80s with the insurgency in Kosovo, the rise of Milosevic, and other factors is important in understanding all the questions you ask. _URL_0_", "The breakup of Yugoslavia is not an easy topic. Basically Yugoslavia was a federation consisting of several different regions and population. Although ethnic and language similarities those regions had sometimes very different histories. I don't want to go into details but the region was largely ruled by foreign countries with a major influence from the Ottomans, Austrian, Hungarians. Especially the long and slowly fading rule of the Ottomans had a lasting influence. While Slovenia and Croatia ended up under Austrian influence. That's why Slovenia and Croatia are largely Catholics and Serbs are largely Orthodox.\n\nBut to make matters worse there were rarely strict boundaries and people not only moved but maybe a village refused to switch religion. Croatia has large parts with a Serbian minority. Bosnia was an even more complicated situation with Bosnians (Muslim), Croats (Catholic), Serbs (Orthodox).\n\nWhile Tito ruled Yugoslavia it all held together. But after his death Yugoslavia declined and nationalism was growing.\n\nSlovenia and Croatia were the first to declare independence in June 1991. But the Yugoslavian government wanted to use force to prevent it. This resulted in a short war in Slovenia (10 days war). Ironically the first casualty was a Slovenian pilot in the Yugoslav army killed when his helicopter was shot down by the Slovenian military. The war was quickly over because Slovenia was ethnically much more homogeneous. The situation in Croatia was much more dramatic. The Serbian minority in Croatia in turn declared themselves independent (Serbian Krajina). In 1992 Bosnia declared independence. The Croats declared themselves independent from Bosnia as the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Serbs declared themselves independent as Republika Srpska.\n\nAll of the new republics wanted to create ethnic homogeneous regions in such a highly mixed place. This resulted in the so called 'ethnic cleansing'. Former neighbours started to do really evil things to each other. The Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs all started operating concentration camps and committing atrocities.\n\nInitially the Serbs had the upper hand because the Yugoslav military was leaving them their heavy weapons. But the Croats were supported mainly by the US and Western Europe (Germany was a major contributor) and the Bosnians were also heavily supported by Arab countries and Mujahideen. The Croatian army eventually broke the Serbian resistance and occupied the Serbian Krajina.\n\nNATO intervened eventually with air strikes in Bosnia. Forcing all sides to negotiate. This resulted in the Dayton Agreement. Bosnia now consists of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Croat and Bosnian parts) and Republika Srpska (Serb part). There is still a Representative from the EU in place who's allowed to veto political decisions.\n\nTo answer why the US decided to support the Bosnians and Croats is not so easy. Some claim because of the human right violations committed by the Serbs. But then again the Bosnians and Croats committed human right violations on their own. Others of course claim that the US had an interest in destroying socialist Yugoslavia. But then again the US first favoured the status quo in Yugoslavia and was reluctant to support the independence.\n\n > Are there any newly formed countries, as a result of the war, that admire America the way Kosovo does?\n\nWell \"admiration\"... But Croats and Bosnians are of course grateful for US support. This does not mean that everyone will love you because you are an American. Last year a Kosovar shot at US soldiers in Frankfurt and killed two of them. There were Mujahideen fighting in Bosnia which are now considered to be close to Al Qaeda. And on the other hand just because a person is a Serb doesn't mean he'll hate you. The large majority of the people there are very decent and it doesn't really matter what their or your ethnicity is.\n", " > Why does not the same happen in the US?\n\nNationalism directed at the country as a whole, rather than along ethnic lines. Also, \"protestantism\" in the United States refers to a number of distinct groups. There's about as much in common between a Baptist and a Lutheran as there is between a Methodist and a Catholic.\n\nRemember that our army is sworn to defend the country as a whole, and that the thought process behind our military (especially the National Guard) is geared toward the concept of the \"citizen soldier\". Soldiers are an extension of the people of our country, not a separate group in their own right, and no single group dominates our military." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce9135n", "ce91iog", "ce93g3b" ], "score": [ 14, 8, 11 ], "text": [ "In 1972 the USSR bought 440 million bushels of wheat from the US, with more purchases in following years. Here's a paper from the St Louis Fed -\n_URL_0_ . I'll never find the link, but in the late 80s/early 90s The Economist made an editorial comment about Russia being in the grain market again, due to \"70 years of worse-than-expected winter weather in the Ukraine.\"", "Tacking on another question: I've heard that we had to buy titanium from Russia through intermediaries to build the SR-71. Is that true?", "I don't have a general answer to your question, but I can relate some specific details about how the USSR was part of the global trading system. \n\nI work in trade law, and there is an important case, Georgetown Steel Corp v. United States, from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal in the context of anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations. The decision was from 1987 if I'm not mistaken. \n\nBefore explaining the decision, I'll explain those terms. In trade, you sometimes have goods that are being imported at low prices and this is harming the domestic industry of the country, either because exporters are \"dumping\" goods because of excess supply, to gain market share, etc; or because the goods are subsidized unfairly by the government of the exporting country. (There are rules about what exactly is \"unfair\" subsidizing that I won't get into.) The remedy to these types of unfair trading practices is for the customs agency of the importing country to conduct an investigation into whether there is dumping and/or subsidizing and then impose anti-dumping duties or countervailing (anti-subsidy) duties on the specific type of goods under investigation (usually it's a very narrow range of goods) to counteract the injurious effect of the low-priced imports. All these rules existed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the predecessor to the World Trade Organization (which was created in 1995).\n\nNow, in the Georgetown case, the context was a subsidy investigation against steel imported from Czechoslovakia. The court mentioned that there had been anti-dumping investigations against goods imported from the USSR and other so-called \"non-market economies\" - one I can remember off the top of my head, since you asked specifically about the USSR, is potash - however a subsidy investigation against such a country was new territory. \n\nThe court ultimately decided that the US couldn't conduct subsidy investigations against non-market economies since it was impossible to determine what constituted a subsidy in a centrally planned economy. \n\nAll that is to say that there was at least some normal trade going on between the US and eastern bloc countries, including the USSR. " ] }

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[ [ "http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/73/10/Russian_Oct1973.pdf" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0w4vwi" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "The biggest change, militarily speaking, was in the size of militaries involved before the Wars of the French Revolution and after. To give you an example, the British army, on the eve of the American Revolution in 1775 was something like 48,000 soldiers over its entire empire. For a sense of comparison, Wellington had about 30,000 British soldiers (Not counting allied soldiers) just for the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the [Battle of Leipzig](_URL_1_) in 1813, the French army alone suffered more casualties than soldiers existed in the British army only a few decades prior. The French concept was called the [levee en masse](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically, war on this scale was completely unprecedented in history, and the necessity of raising such large military forces required changes in the states that supported them. In Britain, you see more influence going to the House of Commons along with greater governmental centralization. Soldiers also had to be supplied, so you needed vastly increased industrial output to produce the weapons, ammunition, clothing, and so on that they all required. \n\nAll in all, I've always thought that the Napoleonic Wars did away with the last real vestiges of European feudalism, at least in Great Britain, and after 1815, we see something approaching what we could consider the modern centralized state." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwtd15p", "cwtxb9a" ], "score": [ 34, 5 ], "text": [ "Could you specify what time period you're thinking of? It would vary a lot from civilization to civilization, and era.\n\nThere were a lot of things that could be used to distinguish people that would not have been easily replicated. Certain insignia like a signet ring, sceptre, or crown. Or official papers bearing the seal of their government, monarch, or whatever. Other times the size of a person's retinue would make it clear that they were a person of note.\n\nNow adays a diplomat presents his credentials to the other country's head of state, who then acknowledges them and accepts that diplomat as an emissary.", "Before the invention of the steam ship and the railroad, travel was rather limited and it was mostly the upper classes that did it, bar some special circumstances such as going on the hajj, a pilgrimage or a military campaign or crusade.\n\nAn upper class person would travel in style, often with a large following, and people mostly trusted the claim that they were who they said they were.\n\nThe upper classes often travelled to their own estates or to allies, relatives or friends, who would be informed beforehand and prepared to recieve them - and be able to vouch for the arriving guests in case anyone thought to challenge them." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "covammf" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "This is a very tricky question because it's not clear which royal family you're discussing. The last time the dynasty changed by foreign invasion was in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and there was a *very* widespread effort among the elites in England, especially the Whig faction, to invite in the House of Orange and conspire against the Stuarts. Stuart loyalists, or Jacobites, were the main group that thought of the House of Orange and, later, the House of Hanover as foreign, but the Jacobites were deeply limited in their support due to the House of Stuart's association with A. Catholicism and B. Scottish nationalism and C. the French monarchy (the Bourbons were *very* close cousins to the Stuarts and Louis XIV would become the Stuarts' biggest sponsors), which meant that even the English Tories that might have had closet sympathy with them would find the sort of people that backed the Stuarts very difficult to work with. The House of Hanover, which inherited the throne after Queen Anne died childless, was not very popular at first: George I barely spoke English and had little interest in this distant island.\n\nBoth France and Spain continued to recognize James II's son \"James III\" as the rightful king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and James \"The Old Pretender\" attempted an invasion of Scotland in 1715 to reclaim the throne, but was swiftly driven off. During the reign of George II, James's son Charles, or \"Bonnie Prince Charlie\" or \"The Young Pretender,\" attempted his own somewhat more credible invasion in 1745 that attracted support from disaffected Scottish people and Catholics across the United Kingdom, but they were decisively smashed at the Battle of Culloden. After Culloden in 1745 the idea of a Jacobite Stuart restoration became utterly implausible and the House of Hanover was clearly not going anywhere. There were still sympathetic old Jacobites, and there are even a few today, but there hasn't been a serious prospect of a restoration of the Stuart monarchy since 1745 (and, more realistically, since 1689)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7bv1vg", "d7c0n91" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The main problem is the difficulties inherent in gunsmithing. You need some very precise metallurgy and engineering to produce a semi-automatic firearm, and mass-production requires a very advanced level of machining and metalwork to produce something that won't explode in your hand.\n\nDuring the heyday of black-powder firearms, double-barrelled weapons were often used, and some manufacturers experimented with even more barrels, producing things like the Nock Volley Gun. However, these were expensive and required careful manufacture, which made them impractical as military firearms. Similarly, breech-loading mechanisms were developed, but they generally required hand-crafting and were delicate, meaning that they also could not be mass-produced. Further, black powder produces a great amount of byproduct, in the form of thick smoke and leftovers that can foul the workings of a firearm. \n\nThat byproduct was the main point preventing the development of semi-automatic weaponry after the widespread adoption of practical breech-loading rifles, although many models were produced. The development of 'smokeless' propellants around the close of the 19th century which produced a much smaller amount of fouling allowed the development of the mechanisms for practical semiautomatic firearms on a mass scale.", "Self loading rifles (firearms callable of firing a round, extracting and loading a new one by itself) are a very complex mechanical enterprise that requires high tolerances and advanced knowledge of metallurgy. There are a few thing you need for a self loader. Firstly you need a method of loading the next round which the nature of muzzle loading muskets made this task impossible, plus powder had to be loaded in separately from the round adding additional complexity to self loading. A magazine with a spring-loaded follower may seem obvious to you but this took time to develop. Many repeater rifles used tubular magazines in the gun which prevented the use of pointed bullets.\n\nAnother must is a strong receiver that can withstand high pressures. One shot produces a lot of pressure but automatic or even semi-automatic fire prevents the pressure in the chamber from having time to lower. This is why modern rifles use intermediate cartridges (7.62x39, 5.45x39, 5.56x45) and not the large beefy rifle cartridges of older rifles like the Mosin or Lee-Enfeild (7.62x54, .303); those cartridges produce pressure that too high for controllable, useful automatic fire. \n\nAnother reason independent from mechanical problems was the beliefs of most armed forces until The First World War. It was a common belief that soldiers with access to magazine fed bolt action rifles would fire wildly and waste ammunition. Now try to convince them that soldiers with weapons that load rounds by themselves are a good idea. Self loaders may seem like the obvious way to go but their development took a lot more then the simple idea of rapid fire weapons.\n\nSources\nT.L. McNaugher \"M-16 Controversy\":\nSkennerton, Ian \"Small Arms Identification Series\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e00krq0" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I don't know when people started snorting cocaine. In the late 19th century, the drug would either be taken orally, or injected intravenously. Think Sherlock Holmes, with this famous scene from the Sign of Four:\n\n > Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel\\-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt\\-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture\\-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet\\-lined arm\\-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.\n\nThis is the famous \"seven percent solution,\" though a three percent solution became preferred as it was thought to have fewer side effects.\n\nSigmund Freud was one of cocaine's most ardent popularizers. Freud himself did not snort the drug, but rather drank it in a solution. Freud's famous essay is called Über Coca, and he's very explicit about how he took the drug. From section V \\(the Effect of Coca on the Healthy Human Body\\):\n\n > The first time I took 0.05cg. of *cocaïnum muriaticum* in a 1 & #37; water solution was when I was feeling slightly out of sorts from fatigue. This solution is rather viscous, somewhat opalescent, and has a strange aromatic smell. At first it has a bitter taste, which yields afterwards to a series of very pleasant aromatic flavors. Dry cocaine salt has the same smell and taste, but to a more concentrated degree.\n\nHe notes that later in the essay, higher concentrations cause some stomach upset, so he dissolved his cocaine in soda water.\n\nI should not that experimenting with medications on yourself in this period was not unusual \\-\\- John Snow would regularly inhale his own anesthetics and mark their effects \\(which likely led to his early death\\), and to make another Holmes connection, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first academic publication was in the BMJ on self\\-poisoning with escalating doses of gelsemium.\n\nCocaine was purified in the 1850s, and in the first half century of its existence, there was considerable excitement about its effects \\(and lack of side effects\\). It was thought to be particularly useful to treat morphine addiction \\(think William Halstead, who basically switched from morphine to cocaine\\). Cocaine was found in a number of over\\-the\\-counter products, most notably coca cola." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8ddyxq", "c8dh09o" ], "score": [ 11, 2 ], "text": [ "Not a historian, but a homebrewer and history enthusiast. The water is boiled in the process of making beer so this is why it was safer to drink than the water as any nasties in the water would be killed during this process. As for being drunk/dehydrated all the time this didn't happen because most of the beer consumed daily would have been small beer which would have been of a much lower alcohol content. It would have been made from the second or possibly third runnings from the grains. The first runnings would extract the largest amount of sugars from the grains and would have been used for making beer for export or special occasions (Belgian Tripel, Imperial Stouts, etc.). The grains would then be mashed again and the runnings from this would contain significantly less sugar. The amount of sugar in your wort is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol in you finished beer as this is what the yeast will eat and produce alcohol and CO2 as waste products. With the lower sugar content you end up with a much lower alcohol content suitable for everyday drinking without becoming too inebriated or dehydrated.", "Here's a pretty thorough discussion about alcohol/drunkenness and beer from a few months back:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nLike FrictionGnome mentions, beer then wasn't what we think of as beer now." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14fvf8/if_beer_was_the_standard_drink_in_northern_europe/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d5i4g9z" ], "score": [ 62 ], "text": [ "Vincent Bugliosi (former prosecutor in the Charles Manson trial, author of a careful, skeptical book about the Kennedy assassination), writes:\n\n > Whatever the CIA's short laundry list of dissatisfactions (some merely illusory, some real) with Kennedy, as I discuss later in the anti-Castro Cuban exile section of this book, Kennedy was highly disturbed with the CIA for its incompetence and its having misled him on the probable success of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Perhaps the most famous alleged quote from Kennedy about his animus toward the CIA after the Bay of Pigs debacle was that he wanted \"to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.\" But in the two and a half years after the attempted invasion he never did anything remotely close to this, and it is not known to whom he supposedly said these words. The New York Times only said that Kennedy made this statement \"to one of the highest officials of his administration.\"\n \nVincent Bugliosi, _Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy_, page 1189.\n\nThe New York Times article in question is: \"[C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?](_URL_0_)\", New York Times (April 25, 1966). It is on the second page of the article, under the heading of \"Kennedy's bitterness,\" and the specific quote there is \"splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.\" \n\nThis appears to be the original source of the quote in print? In any case, it is an interesting round-about: the article is really about public perceptions of the CIA, and how they get blamed for lots of things there isn't any evidence for. Not entirely ironic that this quote is most used by people trying to establish a CIA motivation for killing JFK.\n\nWhich is to say: the quote's origins appear to be an anonymous source in the New York Times in 1966, which credits it (without saying whether it is direct or indirect credit) to a high-level administration official. It's not entirely implausible. But it's got a lot of gauze around it, as far as quotes go." ] }

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[ [ "http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9400E4DB1639E63BBC4D51DFB266838D679EDE" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c33n9ih", "c33sgbj", "c33uei3", "c33n9ih", "c33sgbj", "c33uei3" ], "score": [ 10, 3, 3, 10, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Disclaimer: I'm a history student, but probably not much more knowledgeable about this subject than a layman. Anyway, I'm not sure whether this answers your question exactly, but hopefully you'll find it interesting. \n\nWhat differentiates academic study during the enlightenment from the middle ages, is the abandonment of universities in favor of a decentralized community of scholars, often called [the republic of letters.](_URL_0_) The \"natural philosophers\" found in Stephenson's book lived during the heyday of this intellectual community. \n\nMy understanding is that the republic of letters emerged because people became dissatisfied with how things worked at the universities. During the middle ages (from the 12th century or so), universities starting popping up all over Europe. These universities organized subjects into *trivium* and *quadrivium*, terms taken from Roman times. Trivium consisted of grammar, logic and rhetoric, whilst quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music. These subjects were studied by all students, similarly to how all American university students study liberal arts today. After the introductory studies, students would go on to study either medicine, law or theology. Universities largely became institutions for educating civil servants and the clergy. \n\nIn addition, a academic tradition developed at the medieval universities, which is known as scholasticism, with representatives like Thomas Aquinas. They basically studied authors like Aristotle, and tried to fit the texts into an orthodox christian perspective. \n\nAs you see, there wasn't much room for actual scientific thought, and this explains why enlightenment scholars established themselves outside of the established universities. In regards to information about the republic of letters, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article I linked, as it seems pretty good. \n\n\n", "Not exactly what you asked, but relevant enough I think.\n\n[This article](_URL_0_) discussing the google book agreements a couple of years ago deals with the republic of letters, the use and abuse of copyright stemming from this, and knowledge for the public good in the digital world. It is *very* long. \n\nWhile the article is very cautious about it, I do think there is something in the comparison between the revolutionary utopian idealism of enlightenment in the 18th Century, and the idealism of the power of the internet.\n\n > The eighteenth century imagined the Republic of Letters as a realm with no police, no boundaries, and no inequalities other than those determined by talent. Anyone could join it by exercising the two main attributes of citizenship, writing and reading. Writers formulated ideas, and readers judged them. Thanks to the power of the printed word, the judgments spread in widening circles, and the strongest arguments won.\n\n > The word also spread by written letters, for the eighteenth century was a great era of epistolary exchange. Read through the correspondence of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson—each filling about fifty volumes—and you can watch the Republic of Letters in operation. All four writers debated all the issues of their day in a steady stream of letters, which crisscrossed Europe and America in a transatlantic information network.\n\n...\n\n > You cannot legislate Enlightenment, but you can set rules of the game to protect the public interest. Libraries represent the public good. They are not businesses, but they must cover their costs. They need a business plan. Think of the old motto of Con Edison when it had to tear up New York’s streets in order to get at the infrastructure beneath them: “Dig we must.” Libraries say, “Digitize we must.” But not on any terms. We must do it in the interest of the public, and that means holding the digitizers responsible to the citizenry.\n\n > It would be naive to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good.\n", "I should be doing a history essay right now, so this response will be short, but I just thought I'd stop by to suggest an author that you might find interesting.\n\n[Steven Shapin](_URL_1_)\n\nHe is an academic who has taken a sociological approach to the study of how scientific knowledge is formed. He's written a number of things, his last publication was [last year.](_URL_0_)\n\nSome of it can appear fairly polemical, but this is largely his response to arguments he manages to get into with scientists who misunderstand him and think he is discrediting their work. He isn't. And the points he raises do serve to challenge your understanding of what exactly 'science' and 'learning' actually are. \n\nSorry I don't have time to go into it more myself, but I hope you find this as interesting as I do.\n\n[edit] I just realised, this comment may seem off topic - he talks often about the Enlightenment and the transmission of knowledge - books, etc. - so, relevant in that sense. Hope that helps.", "Disclaimer: I'm a history student, but probably not much more knowledgeable about this subject than a layman. Anyway, I'm not sure whether this answers your question exactly, but hopefully you'll find it interesting. \n\nWhat differentiates academic study during the enlightenment from the middle ages, is the abandonment of universities in favor of a decentralized community of scholars, often called [the republic of letters.](_URL_0_) The \"natural philosophers\" found in Stephenson's book lived during the heyday of this intellectual community. \n\nMy understanding is that the republic of letters emerged because people became dissatisfied with how things worked at the universities. During the middle ages (from the 12th century or so), universities starting popping up all over Europe. These universities organized subjects into *trivium* and *quadrivium*, terms taken from Roman times. Trivium consisted of grammar, logic and rhetoric, whilst quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music. These subjects were studied by all students, similarly to how all American university students study liberal arts today. After the introductory studies, students would go on to study either medicine, law or theology. Universities largely became institutions for educating civil servants and the clergy. \n\nIn addition, a academic tradition developed at the medieval universities, which is known as scholasticism, with representatives like Thomas Aquinas. They basically studied authors like Aristotle, and tried to fit the texts into an orthodox christian perspective. \n\nAs you see, there wasn't much room for actual scientific thought, and this explains why enlightenment scholars established themselves outside of the established universities. In regards to information about the republic of letters, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article I linked, as it seems pretty good. \n\n\n", "Not exactly what you asked, but relevant enough I think.\n\n[This article](_URL_0_) discussing the google book agreements a couple of years ago deals with the republic of letters, the use and abuse of copyright stemming from this, and knowledge for the public good in the digital world. It is *very* long. \n\nWhile the article is very cautious about it, I do think there is something in the comparison between the revolutionary utopian idealism of enlightenment in the 18th Century, and the idealism of the power of the internet.\n\n > The eighteenth century imagined the Republic of Letters as a realm with no police, no boundaries, and no inequalities other than those determined by talent. Anyone could join it by exercising the two main attributes of citizenship, writing and reading. Writers formulated ideas, and readers judged them. Thanks to the power of the printed word, the judgments spread in widening circles, and the strongest arguments won.\n\n > The word also spread by written letters, for the eighteenth century was a great era of epistolary exchange. Read through the correspondence of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson—each filling about fifty volumes—and you can watch the Republic of Letters in operation. All four writers debated all the issues of their day in a steady stream of letters, which crisscrossed Europe and America in a transatlantic information network.\n\n...\n\n > You cannot legislate Enlightenment, but you can set rules of the game to protect the public interest. Libraries represent the public good. They are not businesses, but they must cover their costs. They need a business plan. Think of the old motto of Con Edison when it had to tear up New York’s streets in order to get at the infrastructure beneath them: “Dig we must.” Libraries say, “Digitize we must.” But not on any terms. We must do it in the interest of the public, and that means holding the digitizers responsible to the citizenry.\n\n > It would be naive to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good.\n", "I should be doing a history essay right now, so this response will be short, but I just thought I'd stop by to suggest an author that you might find interesting.\n\n[Steven Shapin](_URL_1_)\n\nHe is an academic who has taken a sociological approach to the study of how scientific knowledge is formed. He's written a number of things, his last publication was [last year.](_URL_0_)\n\nSome of it can appear fairly polemical, but this is largely his response to arguments he manages to get into with scientists who misunderstand him and think he is discrediting their work. He isn't. And the points he raises do serve to challenge your understanding of what exactly 'science' and 'learning' actually are. \n\nSorry I don't have time to go into it more myself, but I hope you find this as interesting as I do.\n\n[edit] I just realised, this comment may seem off topic - he talks often about the Enlightenment and the transmission of knowledge - books, etc. - so, relevant in that sense. Hope that helps." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Letters" ], [ "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/feb/12/google-the-future-of-books/?pagination=false" ], [ "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QB3Ag08CdtwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=steve+shapin+never+pure&hl=en&ei=WH7VTo_qBMO98gOL4cmtAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=steve%20shapin%20never%20pure&f=false", "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oa0aBTHQ_LIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=steve+shapin&hl=en&ei=I3zVTvzMD8u58gP9udWOAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=steve%20shapin&f=false" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Letters" ], [ "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/feb/12/google-the-future-of-books/?pagination=false" ], [ "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QB3Ag08CdtwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=steve+shapin+never+pure&hl=en&ei=WH7VTo_qBMO98gOL4cmtAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=steve%20shapin%20never%20pure&f=false", "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oa0aBTHQ_LIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=steve+shapin&hl=en&ei=I3zVTvzMD8u58gP9udWOAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=steve%20shapin&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnol594", "cnoqp15" ], "score": [ 10, 4 ], "text": [ "What exactly do you mean by Christendom forbidding slavery? Do you mean as in a bible verse, a decree from the Pope, or what? \n\nI'm asking because there are arguably pretty late instances of individual Christians practicing slavery (in the United States for example), and I don't know if they considered it to be forbidden at the time. ", "I can only speak of Catholicism and slavery.\n\nThe first Pope to publicly condemn slavery was Benedict XIV in 1741. That being said, the church did not come down hard on slavery until Pius VII in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.\n\nWell into the 16th century the Church publicly supported slavery. Pope Paul III authorized the purchase of Muslim slaves in 1548. \n\nFrom a religious standpoint, 1839 is generally considered the year the slavery was \"banned\" by the Catholic Church. Gregory XVI's *In Supremo Apostolatus* was a papal bull officially condemning slavery. It was followed by the Church working to end colonial slavery, most famously in Brazil." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4vjwav" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "His death was quite mysterious and there are many conspiracy theories, but he died in 1886 and the unification was already accomplished in 1871." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cknn7ny", "cknwr9n", "cknxupf" ], "score": [ 9, 2, 8 ], "text": [ "You may also be interested in reading some of the answers in this fairly recent [AMA on Pre-Islamic Arabia](_URL_0_).", "I asked a very similar [question](_URL_0_) recently, that received some informative responses.", "Pre-Islamic Arabia was a mix of a few religions at this time. The main religions in this region were Judaism, Christianity, and a form of Pagan tribal religion. While there is some evidence to suggest that some of the Pagan people believed that there was only one God, most believed in multiple deities and had a personal/family deity that that individually worshipped. Overall the Pagan people were non-Abrahamic and polytheistic. Other traits of theirs would be incorporated into Islam but not their polytheistic traditions.\n\nWhen you examine early Islam it is important to remember that Muhammed saw himself as worshipping the same God as Jews and Christians but that they had gone astray and God talked to him to show these people how they had gone astray. The reason why you see many similarities with Judaism and Christianity is that Islam believes that these religions were founded by the same God that talked to Muhammed." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28n21d/ama_preislamic_arabia/" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b423q/why_did_islam_model_itself_after_judaism_what/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cj0olxj", "cj0qv77" ], "score": [ 4, 3 ], "text": [ "hi! Could you specify which region/culture you're interested in - e.g. Greece, Nepal, the Maya, etc. That will help the appropriate historian(s) provide a meaningful response. Thanks!", "Bees were kept, but not like today. Today, bees are kept in movable-comb beehives, which enables harvesting the honey without harming the bee colony. In ancient times, bees were kept in immovable-comb beehives, which were simply appropriately-sized vessels where the bees would build they comb naturally, and harvesting the honey would often mean destruction of the entire colony.\n\nAlso, before honey extractors were invented, people would eat comb honey, or honey would be pressed out from the comb." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4gay9t", "c4gb8qq", "c4gbe47", "c4gby70", "c4gci0f" ], "score": [ 3, 3, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The trouble is that there are very few survey histories which aren't textbooks. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is [A Concise History of Modern Europe](_URL_1_), but I can't vouch for its quality since I haven't actually read it myself (one of my friends did).\n\nMy history classes often use readers from the [Bedford Series of History & Culture](_URL_0_) - they have a lot of selected documents from the period and varying amounts of commentary about the events. You can usually find them on Amazon, and they're really, really cool if you're into primary documents.\n\nIf you'd like recommendations for any specific periods in modern Europe, though, I'm happy to help! And also, your username has me intrigued.", "[Postwar](_URL_0_), by Tony Judt, is the definitive guide to Europe after 1945. It's over 900 pages, but he has a wonderfully readable and sometimes entertaining style. I can't recommend it enough... even if you don't read every page, it will definitely keep you interested in history. \n\n", "Robert Palmer's *A History of the Modern World* is an old classic which is not especially textbook-ish, though night-hawks is absolutely right that any survey of so broad a topic will be more textbook than not. You're better off, I think, finding more specific topics an getting into them more deeply. Wikipedia can fill in the big picture stuff as well as anything.", "Mark Mazower's [Dark Continent](_URL_0_) provides a very unique look at European history, it is a bit dry in places, but overall I found it incredibly stimulating. ", "*Europe: A History* by Norman Davies is a very good overview, although it's quite long. And I second the suggestion of *Dark Continent*." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/Catalog/discipline/History/TheBedfordSeriesinHistoryCulture/European", "http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Modern-Europe-Solidarity/dp/1442205342/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335329025&sr=1-5" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/0143037757/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335330834&sr=8-1" ], [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Continent-Europes-Twentieth-Century/dp/067975704X" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6hw4r6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "If you're looking into US history I strongly recommend you examine Andrew Jackson's contest with the [Second Bank of the United States](_URL_0_)." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "cu40fj4" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It was lost again.\n\nIn Italy the war with the Ostrogoths lasted for decades and devastated the country. Some historians hold this war to be the true end of antiquity. As Goldsworthy puts it, it \"probably destroyed many aspects of Roman culture and society that had survived the collapse of the Western Empire.\"\n\nAlthough the Byzantines eventually defeated the Ostrogoths and took control of the whole of Italy, the Lombards (Or Longobards, i.e. Longbeards. Another German tribe) invaded Italy very soon after Justinian's death, and took over most of the interior. The Byzantines held on to coastal cities and Sicily, and over the centuries afterwards would sometimes regain parts of Italy, but they never got anywhere close to achieving Justinian's territorial ambitions. They fought over it as late as the reign of Manuel Komnenos, who tried to regain control over the southern ports there in the 12th century.\n\nThe Spanish possessions were contested by the Visigoths, and though the Byzantines held on for some decades, and even made some temporary gains by exploiting Visigothic dynastic conflict, they lost all their mainland possessions in the 7th century even before the Muslims invaded. (They held on to the Balearic islands for a bit longer.)\n\nAfrica remained a Roman possession for several generations, until it fell to the Arab invasion along with Egypt and Syria later in the 7th century.\n\nThe bubonic plague that devastated the empire shortly after the start of the Ostrogothic wars likely had something to do with the empire's inability to hold on to its conquests, but Justinian's projects had also been opportunistic and ended up opening up several new fronts in an empire already struggling to defend its existing possessions from attack. Hardly anybody considers the loss of the new conquests surprising. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7qmsk8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Mozart traveled [A LOT, even for the standards of our time](_URL_0_). He also published his music, he was known in many countries.\n\nBeethoven's works were also published in different countries. His 9th symphony was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London in 1817. [He was known even across the Atlantic](_URL_1_).\n\nMost of Bach's music was not published during his life. He was nowhere near as famous as Mozart or Beethoven. \n\nMusicians did travel during the Baroque period, and there were some super stars touring all over the big cities. Publishing was a good way for music to spread, and we find music traveling across Europe even before the Baroque, but it was nowhere close what was seen during the 19th century. \n\nMusicians did come in contact with music from other countries, and even traveled to pick up some things and use them in their own music. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.mozartways.com/content.php?m=2&lang=en&m_id=1290&id=1290", "http://americanbeethovensociety.org/exhibits/americasbeethoven/newspapers.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dzc2n6q" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The Iberian Peninsula was inhabited long before the Romans occupied it, and the PaleoHispanic people's had lived in northern and Western Iberia since the Stone Age (35-40,000 BCE). Modern Spanish are descended from a rich mixture of Roman, Visigoth, Vandal, Muslim, Celtic and the PaleoHispanic, but all of these ratios are different depending on where you go in Spain to look at the population. Portugal is rich in Muslim and Roman influence because of the importance of the region for trade, whereas the North in places like Basque remained pretty culturally and linguistically solid even through Roman and Muslim occupation. Besides that, in the South East there's even influence from the Greeks and Phoenecians. So ultimately the peoples of Spain have many different origins, so it really depends on where you want to focus on." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "coc4m4s", "cocmgpx" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "My knowledge of this is pure historiography, so maybe a historian of the period can elaborate, but the answer is no. Leopold von Ranke is largely credited with creating the discipline of history itself, so for much of his career he was unassailable. Late in his life there were some critics of his methods, but he was, for his day, pretty revolutionary.\n\nI'm not sure what kind of criticism you're seeing in your department, but I don't know if I would categorize modern historiography's take on Ranke as 'harsh'. The discipline has grown and evolved, mostly for the better, and Ranke is an important figure even if his ideas are no longer applicable.\n\nSource: Any historiography book ever. I referenced *From Historical Methods* by Powell and Prevenier because that's what I have on the shelf next to me.", "Historicism is closely tied to the general thought and ideas of the 19th century. After world war 2 we didn't only start to see its flaws, but also \"lost\" the fundament on what it was built.\n\nMaybe that's why it seems strange to you." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9vh9uk", "c9vklyp", "c9vlsz6" ], "score": [ 9, 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Well, certainly you can use period literature to provide evidence for a lot of things -- social norms, changing attitudes, the values and morals of the time, as well as a great source of linguistic data for language evolution. \n\nBut if you try to use say, a Mary Renault novel as evidence of Alexander's campaigns, you're probably going to have a bad time. ", "This is a contentious area, to be sure. It gets deep into historical epistemologies and is a major source of contention in some faculties. \n\nThe problem is one of reliability of source material. This gets into questions of memory, post-modern inclusion, basic democracy in history, and many other things.\n\nFor example, let's say you wanted to research rice field slaves in the early 18th century. Typical sources might include things like purchase receipts, slaveowners' documents/diaries, some newspaper accounts, and other typical sources. (See Walter Johnson's fantastic *Soul by Soul* for a solid example of the use of these sorts of documents.) \n\nBut this is a history provided and lived by the slave owner. Any information gleaned here with respect to the slaves themselves will be imposed upon them; it will not be their own story. \n\nHow do we then \"get to\" the slaves' own story? Here is where it gets very messy. Sure, there are a few slave narratives out there (some of dubious genealogy,) but those are almost certainly the exception -- not many slaves made it out of those hell holes, much less wrote about the experience. \n\nSo what then? How do you get to the lives of those who did not produce documents in the most-known sense? The only way is to go thru oral histories, shared stories, and yes, some novels. \n\nThis then open up massive questions. Most folks will agree that over time, details in oral histories get embellished, forgotten, romanticized, demonized, etc., depending on the story. How does a historian reconcile this with the (supposed) quest for some sort of objectivity, some sort of \"factual\" basis for the conclusions the historian draws? \n\nFor some, there is no reconciliation. Certain schools of thought simply do not allow for the use of non-\"empirical\" sources. I don't mean to imply any sort of racism or hegemonic behavior, it's just that some folks can't wrap their collective heads around a definition of truth that is as variable as the winds. \n\nOthers, focused (often) on subaltern or antipodean cultures, embrace this challenge and see it as a way to allow previously unstudied peoples to be included in the grand historical narrative. Those who allow for these sorts of non-traditional sources are moving the historical authority from the narrowly-defined source to a very open-ended source base that ends, finally, at the beginning: the person for whom the material matters. These folks will argue that perceived truth is what matters, not the received truth that originates with the educational hegemon. They would argue that because truth varies from person-to-person, what we learn in history classes is just an agreed-upon-fiction. That is, more simply put, they would argue that the story Toni Morrison tells in *Beloved* is as real to those who lived the lives described by the characters as a bill of sale describing the purchase of a slave. \n\nI hope this rambly response makes some sense. There are a number of fine works out there that get into this sort of question. Many books on racial formation and race theory have fantastic explanatory introductions. Among them are Thelma Foote, *Black and White Manhattan,* Bruce Dain, *A Hideous Monster of the Mind,* and Tiya Miles *The Ties that Bind.*\n\nSome perhaps less theoretically-laden books include James Epstein, *In Practice,* James F Brooks, *Captives and Cousins,* and Claudio Saunt, *A New Order of Things.* \n\nMost of these works are underpinned by a strong current of post-modern (post-structural,) philosophy, relying on, among others, the work of Foucault, Derrida, and Bourdieu. \n\n", "This is a major concern of the relatively new/resurgent subfield of travel history, which has been rising since the early 90s but has really taken off in the past 10-15 years. Travel accounts are plentiful and diverse going back centuries but straddle the line between literature and historical accounts. On the one hand many (but not all) travel accounts depict real encounters and real journeys, but they also display undeniable literary qualities that often get them compared with things like novels, which fall much more solidly on the literature side of things.\n\nGranted I'm no Mary Louise Pratt (hugely influential historian in the travel field and beyond) but I see the whole process as an extra sensitive exercise in careful source criticism. Take a travel account and you have to perform many of the same checks as other sources. How accurate is the account compared with external sources, what are the intentions/biases of the author, who is the intended audience, can the events be verified, and so on. But travel accounts also require additional literary categories of analysis, taking into account the use of metaphors and plot devices, treatment of the accounts \"characters\" (people not the author or narrator), contemporary writing conventions, publishing practices, etc. It can be an extremely complex process but it can also yield extremely interesting results given that travel accounts are intimate portrayals of cultural exchange and perceptions. Monumental authors like Pratt and Edward Said both relied heavily on travel accounts to produce great research on power negotiation between imperialists and colonized peoples, and numerous scholars since them have sought to expand on this type of work.\n\nWhere I'm going with this is that like travel accounts (which resemble literature in several ways), novels and similar works of intentionally fictional writing can serve historians quite well when treated correctly. Though not nearly as simple as I'm about to make it sound, this process involves incorporating not only historical but literary methods of deconstruction. What's more, though, I think the use of such sources serves as an important reminder to historians of just how tricky their sources can be, and not just the literary ones. As Cosmic_Charlie mentioned in his post, \"typical\" sources can too often be thought of as unproblematic, implicitly if not explicitly. Not only does this make historians complacent but it also leads to the casual dismissal of more blatantly problematic sources like travel accounts. Not that long ago the default position for historians was to dismiss all travel sources as either fictional, as told by inexpert fools or liars, as lesser history, or all of the above. As if unproblematic and pure sources existed. To me, novels and literature, like travel accounts, are highly useful but temperamental, requiring a cautious and strict style of analysis that keeps the greater historical community on their toes." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwccaeh" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ " > I'm just talking about hard science facts\n\nThis only works if you believe science is an accumulation of facts. Instead, it might be useful to think of science as a project to model nature ([see Thomas Kuhn](_URL_0_)). For instance, Newtonian physics is a model that has retained much of its predictive power even as its assumptions about the nature of reality have been questioned by subsequent physicists.\n\nOn that understanding of science, Aristotle offered some models that were very useful until more precise and predictive models came along. For instance, the idea of elements with inherent tendencies can be useful. It makes sense of fire reaching upward, water settling into holes, and the incredibly regular motion of heavenly bodies. Ultimately, every Aristotelian model of nature that I'm familiar with has been replaced by more precise models with very different assumptions about the nature of things." ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=3eP5Y_OOuzwC&printsec=frontcover" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdww09t" ], "score": [ 36 ], "text": [ "Probably the most influential names invented by Shakespeare were (and are) Jessica and Olivia. The following is from *The Merchant of Venice* (Arden Shakespeare, 3rd Series) Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 19-20:\n\n > LORENZO:\n\n > Hold here--take this, tell gentle Jessica\n\n > I will not fail her; speak it privately.\n\n\nWhat you just read is the earliest known appearance of the name Jessica with its modern spelling. Jessica was the most popular name for girls in the United States in the 1980's and 1990's and was the United Kingdom's most popular name of 2005.\n\nHere is the first appearance of the name Olivia in *Twelfth Night*:\n\n > DUKE ORSINO:\n\n > ...\n\n > O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,\n\n > Methought she purged the air of pestilence!\n\n-TN, 1.1.19-20 (Arden, 2nd Series)\n\nOlivia became very popular throughout the English-speaking world in the 1990's and chances are pretty good that you've met one.\n\nBut that doesn't completely answer your question. You asked about Shakespeare's influence on naming trends in his own time and in the years following his death.\n\nShakespeare began his career as an actor some time in the 1580s. His debut as a playwright came some time between 1589 and 1591. In 1594 - 1595 a string of popular hits begin to make Shakespeare's career take off and by ~1599 - 1606 (what used to be called his \"great\" period) he was a minor celebrity and the plays of the Lord Chamberlain's Men were in very high demand.\n\nSo let's look at the most popular names for girls in England from 1600 to 1630. I'll be using [Names and Naming Patterns in England, 1538-1700](_URL_0_) by Scott Smith-Bannister, Oxford University Press, 1997:\n\nThe top four were (in order of descending popularity) Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, and Margaret. Alice, Jane, Joan, Agnes, Susanna, and Catherine round out the top ten. All of these were very common in the late 1500s as well, so Shakespearean names didn't crack the top ten until a few decades after he died.\n\n**However**, *Much Ado About Nothing* opened (supposedly) in the fall - winter of 1599 and was very popular in its first run. The name Beatrice appears in the top 20 English baby names in 1600-1610 for the first time in many years and then drops off again until 1680. This correlation of the debut of *Much Ado* with the spike in the popularity of Beatrice suggests (but does not necessarily prove) that Shakespeare did indeed influence naming trends in his own time." ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books/about/Names_and_Naming_Patterns_in_England_153.html?id=UoFY4ahN0u8C" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e2r8a89" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Roosevelt's biggest contribution to American politics was the establishment of the New Deal Coalition. Roosevelt united the traditional Democratic base (conservative Southerners, northern immigrants and Catholics, liberal northerners) along with expanding into traditionally Republican groups (such as blacks and Midwesterners) by promising an end to the Great Depression. The New Deal brought electricity, modernization, jobs, and most importantly, hope, to the South, the Midwest, and America at large. Basically, Roosevelt created common cause by improving people's lives across the board. \n\nThe tradition of the South voting Democrat (no matter what) for most of the party's history, boosted by the New Deal Coalition, made it so Southerners kept voting Democrat as long as they held a prominent position in the Democratic Party, and as long as those northeastern elites turned a blind eye to race relations. Despite being a New Yorker, Roosevelt was still 'their guy,' in the same way the northeastern elitist Mitt Romney was 'the guy' for the South in 2012.\n\nThe differences began when Kennedy *didn't* turn a blind eye. He didn't promise total desgregation or anything, but he discussed civil rights enough that it made the Southern base upset. It's somewhat inaccurate to compare Roosevelt and Kennedy for relations with the South, as in 1960, Kennedy had one of the worst performances of a Democrat in the Southern states, losing Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee to Nixon, and Alabama and Mississippi to Dixiecrats." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7o7htd", "c7o91b3" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "This is one of the most hotly debated issues that I've ever encountered. A lot of people blame Ghandi for effectively bringing back the caste system. Honestly I'm not well read enough on the subject to go into much on the subject though. Hopefully a specialist will chime in on this one, as I'd like to hear what they have to say myself.", "It's complicated; if you're not already aware of it there's a three hour long three part [BBC Documentary on Gandhi](_URL_0_) that covers a lot of his life and legacy. while it doesn't attempt a final judgement it does show various sides to the man and his actions.\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n7sf1" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ct56srl" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Early on the bombs were mostly homemade using Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser. While the process is simple it does take skill to get it right and there were several people who specialised in it. The explosives were often made in ordinary houses or sheds.\n\nThe provision of Semtex from Libya in the 1980s gave the IRA a lot of flexibility as it is more powerful and useful.\n\nRichard English, *Armed Struggle* is probably the best history of the IRA. You could also look at James Bowyer Bell or Tim Pat Coogan. Coogan is a journalist with good sources but his historical analysis is very poor so be warned." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4c1qei", "c4c3zil", "c4c7l0b", "c4cm183" ], "score": [ 5, 14, 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Apparently they helped [prevent global warming](_URL_0_). That's a cool fact.", "Pierre Le Grand (_URL_0_ Legendary Pirate who captured a Spanish treasure galleon with 28 men and a leaky boat.\n\nL'Olonnais(_URL_6_) - Allegedly ate a man's beating heart out of his chest to intimidate prisoners.\n\nDu Pointis - _URL_2_ captured 20 million Livres and defeated one of the greatest forts in the Carribean.\n\nGrace O'Malley (_URL_1_) - Irish queen and pirate.\n\nJean Bart (_URL_5_) Born a fisherman's son, died an admiral.\n\nBlack Bart (_URL_3_) captured 470 ships.\n\nWoods Rodgers (_URL_4_) started off as a legitimate businessman, became a pirate, and later broke the back of the Golden Age Pirates as governor of the Bahamas.\n\n\nThese are some of the lesser known among most people pirates who were actually pretty bad ass and more successful than the likes of Blackbeard and Kidd. I'm a bit tired, so I may come back later and add some more here.", "That's a pretty broad question, especially considering the scope of piracy. If you're looking for a good comprehensive book, I (and my prof who studies pirates for a living) recommend Peter Earle's *Pirate Wars*. \n\nOther than that, feel free to ask me anything and I will do my best to answer. ", "It's interesting to look into the East India Company, there's a lot of articles arguing that were just licensed pirates of the English government." ] }

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[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_le_Grand_(pirate)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A1inne_O%27Malley", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Cartagena_(1697)", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Roberts", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodes_Rogers", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bart", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_l%27Olonnais" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dawl2rt" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Potentially better follow up: Do historians actually view anyone as villains? I had got the impression that the more general sociocultural factors were being considered instead of individuals in good historical work. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cj89yd9" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "\"AVG SACR\" is short for \"AUGusto SACRum\"; \"SILVANO\" was a woodland deity. Basically it's dedicated/sacred to Silvanus and Augustus.\n\nSource: Silvanus in Salona p161 _URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://imgur.com/CtWLkmH,F4Cp7Nz#1", "http://imgur.com/CtWLkmH,F4Cp7Nz#0" ]

[ [ "http://www.scribd.com/doc/151878038/Silvan-u-Saloni-S-Bekavac" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg2puv8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " > First, I am going to assume that \"our culture\" refers to western culture. But this is a dangerous assumption to make, so please be sure to avoid such generalizations in the future. This is an important distinction to make because the reception of the Persians in the West is much, much different from the reception of the Persians in, for example, modern Iran. These are just two extremes in a the wide spectrum of modern societies that have studied and analyzed materials and documents from Achaemenid Persia.\n\n > All that being said, I want to point out just one major document that has impacted Western culture: the Cyrus Cylinder. Since its discovery in the 19th century in Babylon, the Cyrus Cylinder has often been heralded as a document of peace, magnanimity, and the universal tolerance of mankind. It has been argued that in the document, King Cyrus the Great guaranteed the freedoms and liberties of all citizens of the Persian Empire.\n\n > Of course, reality is much different (and less exciting). The document was merely a dedication to the gods of the rebuilding of a sacred temple in the city of Babylon. In the text, Cyrus stated numerous platitudes about being destined to be king, and to protect these gods of Babylon, and to do the bidding of the gods, etc. But there is no \"universal charter of mankind\" in this document.\nNonetheless, scholarship in the early 20th century focused heavily on this early interpretation of the text, and Cyrus was aggrandized into an ancient guardian of liberty and freedom. The modern state of Iran has also developed and furthered this legend, even placing an image of the Cyrus Cylinder on some official documents and currency. Of course, there are also the biblical connections, with Cyrus being tied to the return of the Jews to Israel. Of course, the Cyrus Cylinder itself is silent on the Israelites, but his supposed magnanimity and his mention in the book of Isaiah 45 tied the Cyrus Cylinder to this growing legend of Cyrus 'the Great.'\n\n > For further reading, I recommend Irving Finkel's The Cyrus Cylinder, which has compiled all of the most recent research and thinking on the document and its history and reception. \n\nThis is from [my previous comment on the topic](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yx5ie/what_was_the_scientific_and_cultural_legacy_of/cg2n6c9" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cab416d", "cab9om9" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "I dabbled in nuclear strategy, tactics, and the general science of nuclear warfare a few years back, so let me try to answer.\n\nI'm going to assume based on your comments and questions that you're exclusively asking about the United States, but this probably applies to most nuclear weapons states with significant conventional forces.\n\nNuclear weapons are tremendously powerful, but lack granularity and staying power. They are fine as strategic deterrents and powerful battlefield weapons, but their utility largely ends there. Modern conventional militaries allow nations to engage in (comparatively) more subtle military actions such as invasion and occupation of non-nuclear states, anti-piracy efforts, gunboat diplomacy and showing the flag, and as aid during disasters. Many nuclear powers are also major conventional powers because they have an interest in these missions, and generally in possessing more subtle forms of power projection than a nuclear strike.\n\nAnother major reason is probably a political one - not only is a professional army seen as mandatory for a nation-state by the general public, but disbanding a large military would be unpopular among unemployed bureaucrats and soldiers. When you examine how many citizens are employed by the PLA or DoD, it becomes clear that the elimination of those agencies would be controversial to say the least.\n\nBut you have realized something important - the nuclear weapon is a potentially liberating tool from the need to support a massive defensive establishment due to the unacceptable political cost (not to mention damage) of being struck by one. States like North Korea and Israel clearly agree, as shown by their actions.", "In the years immediately after World War II, it was imagined that the United States would be able to slash its conventional military budget considerably and rely on nukes alone as a means of deterring Soviet aggression. The idea was that the US would more or less go back to a \"peaceful\" footing as it did before WWII.\n\nThis was politically popular until the detonation of the first Soviet bomb. At this point it became fairly clear that nukes alone did not present the flexibility required for a modern military force, even in strict deterrence situations like that between the USA and the USSR. That is, if your only option is \"start a full-flung nuclear war,\" then you appreciate having some intermediary steps, because otherwise it becomes a game of \"how much does it take before you decide to lose a major city?\" Yes, a full-flung Soviet invasion or preemptive attack, but what about a Berlin blockade? What about a rigged election? What about a small incursion through proxy forces? \n\nIt quickly became clear to American policymakers — though this was not necessarily obvious from the beginning — that nukes _couldn't_ be used. This is the case even without the fear of retaliation. If the USA had used nukes in Korea, for example, there would have been little likelihood of the Soviet Union nuking the USA. But the political costs would have been immense: the USA would have lost its UN sanction, it would have lost its allies, and the Soviets would have gained from that arrangement. Furthermore, if the nukes didn't provide victory — and it wasn't at all clear that they could — then all of that would have been for very little in the end. \n\nFrom the 1960s onwards the US military sought to make a variety of nuclear options that would still increase variability without necessarily leading to all-out nuclear war (tactical nuclear weapons, for example), but the opinion has always been mixed about whether such conflicts would escalate, and whether such weapons would actually be worth the political penalties that would come from their use.\n\nLastly, the United States is a heavily interventionist state. It attempts to establish spheres of influence and regional hegemonies. It invades other nations on a regular basis. You cannot do these things with nukes; you need \"feet on the ground\" to project real force." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgg5fbd" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Yikes, those are the tricky ones.\n\nOkay gov't documents, you sort of cite it like any other books, but you usually include the volumes. Let's look at the gov't docs I used for my own research from the Pennsylvania Archives\n\nPennsylvanian, Commonwealth of. *Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania.* 10 vols. Philadelphia and Harrisburg: Theophilius Fenn & Co., 1852.\n\nThe author here is the state (since there isn't a given author), according the latest edition of Chicago. Include the title and series name. Volume number. Publisher, etc.\n\nNow, the other ones. If I understand you correctly, if you're using a quoted source within another source, then you need to state that you're using an indirect quote. \n\nName, of Author, \"Their Letter,\" in *Encyclopedia* and then give the rest of the citation for the encyclopedia. Repeat as needed. I think [this](_URL_0_) page might be of some service to you.\n\nI think you can do that for the last one too, but I'm wary of suggesting that as I'm pretty sure it's kind of frowned upon to quote three different sources. Is this for an exercise?\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://library.menloschool.org/content.php?pid=262726&sid=2298716" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ek7klod" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Expanded from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_3_)\n\nThe actions of Kurita at Samar are still somewhat controversial among naval historians. Kurita in theory should have acted with daring given that the *Sho* plan called for a fight to the death, but he vacillated throughout the engagement. On a more tactical level, there is the question of why did *Yamato* and *Nagato* turn northwards at ca. 0755 which pulled the ship away from Taffy 3 and the carriers when the two battleships were relatively undamaged. Second, there is the Kurita's overall withdrawal for the IJN forces at 0920 away from the American escort carriers and transports. Both decisions by Kurita earned him a degree of opprobrium at the time and in the postwar period with one common metaphor employed casting Kurita as Hamlet unable to make a decision until after the die had been cast. \n\nOf the two decisions, the *Yamato* turn is the more explicable. Lookouts had sighted torpedoes from an earlier torpedo attack and Kurita's battleships faced two choices to \"fan the torpedoes\", a turn to port (north) or starboard (south). The starboard turn would have kept the fleet into contact with Taffy 3 but posed two disadvantages. Firstly, it would have been steaming into the torpedo line, risking a hit. Second, it meant that both battleships were in serious danger of colliding with the battleship *Haruna*, which had been steaming in a line parallel to Kurita's division. This particular aspect of the division's decision is one that only very recently become apparent. Older historiography on Samar such as Morrison tended to place *Haruna* in a different location than more recent work like Robert Lundgren or John Prados which triangulates the battleline more closely using surviving Japanese and American accounts (and note, this still is reasonable conjecture, but still a hypothesis). The officers in charge of the ships' maneuvering instinctively chose the course that minimized damage, with the result that the two most powerful surface units at Samar were now seven miles out of position and its commander lacked even more situational awareness. \n\nThis uncertainty shines some light onto Kurita's second turn away from battle. When the US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) interviewed some of the surviving Japanese naval officers, they gave some inkling that they knew after the battle that the opposing naval force was much smaller than they first thought at the start of the engagement. [*USSBS NO. 170 The Battle off Samar*'s interrogation of Commander Otani Tonosuke](_URL_2_), Operations Officer on the Staff of CinC Second Fleet has a very instructive portion on this very issue and how Japan's lack of air cover contributed to the fog of war:\n\n > Q. What type of carriers did you believe they were?\n\n > A. We gave that question much consideration, but never fully made up our minds. We found ourselves perplexed by your carriers because they did not correspond to their photographs, and first we thought that they were regular carriers; but after the battle, we decided that they were auxiliary or converted carriers. Also we received word from the tops that there was another formation, and at that time we wondered if we were not confronted by 12 or 13 carriers in all; but this was not ascertained on the bridge.\n\n > Q. Was there any attempt to engage in battle with the second group?\n\n > A. First, we would encounter the first group, and then take on the second.\n\n > Q. What damage did you inflict upon the first group you engaged?\n\n > A. One carrier sunk, one light cruiser, one heavy cruiser and one destroyer. There was some confusion between the high gunnery control platform and the bridge. There may have been a repeat report which was understood as two carriers sunk; the bridge concluded that one carrier was sunk. Again from later reports which may have contained duplication, we concluded that we had sunk four carriers, two or three cruisers and two or three destroyers. That was the total result of the day. I now think this is rather accurate, and from a report of search planes at about 1100, we received information that one battleship was severely damaged and dead in the water.\n\nAs Commander Otani's interrogation made clear, the IJN's attempt to ascertain the reality of the combat situation was made difficult by the reliance upon visual sightings from surface ships and the constant Allied air attacks on Kurita's fleet. [Kurita's USSBS interview](_URL_0_) likewise suggested that visual surface sightings were inadequate to give the IJN admiral a proper estimate of the situation:\n\n > Q. What type of aircraft carriers were the American carriers present? Were they the ESSEX or ENTERPRISE class? Did you recognize them?\n\n > A. I don't remember. Starboard bridge structure was all I could tell. There wasn't enough visibility nor adequate reports from the scouting planes.\n\nAlthough he was not available for a USSBS interview because of his foolhardy Kamikaze mission. Admiral Ugaki Matome's diary entries for the Leyte battles also notes that Allied air attacks and poor Japanese reconnaissance doomed Japan's efforts to throw back the Leyte invasion. Although Ukagi's diary took Kurita to task for confusing orders, he placed a good deal of blame for Japan's defeat on the inability of the Philippine's airbases to provide the surface fleet any form of cover or information. His 24 October entry noted that:\n\n > Unless we get enough cooperation from our base air forces, we can do nothing about [concentrated American air attacks], and all of our fighting strength will be reduced to nothing at the end. In such case we should perish by fighting an air battle, hoping it to be a decisive one. \n\nOnce the gravity of the defeat off of Samar sank in, Ugaki's 25 October entry pinned responsibility for failure \"in some respect to [the operation's] planning, [but] mostly to the extreme inactivity of the base air forces. Probably hindered by bad weather.\" One of the themes of Ugaki's remaining entries for October and November was lambasting Japan's lackluster efforts to produce as many aircraft as possible to turn back the Allied tide. \n\nAlthough Kurita asserted in his interview that he did not expect air cover from land-based aircraft, Ugaki's diary entry indicates that at least some IJN officers expected an effort to be made by land-based planes. Otani placed a great deal of onus on the *Sho* operation's failure to poor coordination between Kurita and Japanese air assets:\n\n > Q. Where do you think this whole operation broke down? Why did it fail?\n\n > A. I feel that from the very beginning that the cooperation between the Task Force (OZAWA) and the Surface Force (KURITA) and the land-based Air Force was bad from the beginning.\n\n > Q. What do you feel caused this poor coordination?\n\n > A. Coordination between the Surface Force and the (carrier) Task Force was almost impossible due to the restrictions on communication and the need for radio silence; therefore, the plans for cooperation were not carried out. This lack of information from OZAWA was one of the main factors in the failure of the operation, but perhaps the biggest factor was the lack of protection from our land-based air against your (carrier) Task Force. I feel also that the original plan was too complex and inflexible to work properly. \n\nIn this context, Japanese commanders focused much less on the small size of Sprague's CVEs and instead more on the number of failures of Japanese planning and execution as the reasons for defeat. The effectiveness of the CVE's air attacks, which Otani observed were some of the most effective air strikes despite their small size, further underscored the disadvantages of surface ships operating in an environment where the enemy held complete air superiority. Combined Fleet CinC Admiral Toyoda Soemu's [USSBS interview](_URL_1_) defended Kurita's actions to retire because of this material disparity:\n\n > Q. Under the circumstances as they are now known, in your opinion what that decision of KURITA to turn back a correct one?\n\n > A. Looking back on it now, I think that withdrawal was not a mistake. At the time I did not have and Combined Fleet Headquarters did not have information regarding the details of the engagement. Later, when we learned that Admiral HALSEY's Task Force was further south than we thought it was, I believe that Admiral KURITA then would have been within the range of air attack from your Task Force, so that it was not unwise for him to have turned back at that time.\n\n > Q. You would not criticize his action now in turning back?\n\n > A. I would not criticize. \n\nWhile some zealots like Ugaki saw defeat as an urgent reminder for Japan to redouble her war efforts to achieve victory (upon hearing of Hiroshima his 7 August entry expressed a wish that Japan should develop an atomic bomb of her own), other IJN officers adapted a more fatalistic attitude towards the war. " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/IJO/IJO-9.html", "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/IJO/IJO-75.html", "http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/IJO/IJO-41.html", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4mxjpi/what_was_the_japanese_reaction_to_the_defeat_at/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cw6jgmb" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "A search brought up [this](_URL_0_) post, which mentions the importance of gunpowder and speaks of \"superiority of Ottoman weaponry\". Could someone elaborate on that? How advanced were the Ottomans in the field of weaponry, how big of a role did that play and why did it not matter at later lost battles like Vienna?" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33esbq/how_did_the_ottoman_empire_become_from_the_most/cqkc21y" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckt1spa" ], "score": [ 19 ], "text": [ "Although this question is likely violating the 20 year, the WWI centennial has caused some focus on the expressions of commemorations and historical memory. NPR had a good report, [*The Shifting Legacy Of The Man Who Shot Franz Ferdinand*](_URL_1_) and *Smithsonian* magazine had an article in 2000 [\"Searching for Gavrilo Princip](_URL_0_) that takes a long view of Princip's legacy. " ] }

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[ [ "http://beacon.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdf_his102/princips.pdf", "http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/06/27/326164157/the-shifting-legacy-of-the-man-who-shot-franz-ferdinand" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "elsheuv" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "I'm just going to respond regarding Somalia, since I'm not as well read regarding Libya and other Italian colonial territories.\n\nThe short answer to your question is that Italy's footprint in Somalia was light for most of its colonial history, and just as the Italians were ramping up assimilation efforts, WWII came along and stripped the colony from them.\n\nThe area became a protectorate of Italy in 1888 when Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid of the Majeerteen Sultanate signed a treaty with Italy. Kenadid's rival and neighbor, Sultan Boqor Osman Mahamuud of the Sultanate of Hobyo, signed a similar deal the next year, forming a continuous territory.\n\nIt was not, in some ways, a traditional colony at first in that the Italians had limited interest in most of the arid Somalian landscape - they were mostly interested in the strategically important ports on the shore, which gave them access to the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden.\n\nThe Italians provided arms and money to the sultans in return for this protectorate status, but they held little direct control beyond their coastal strip. Even here, the Italian population was mostly military officers and colonial officials, with few settlers.\n\nIt wasn't until the early 1930s that a two successive Italian Governors - Guido Corni and Maurizio Rava - started actively trying to assimilate the Somalis into Italian culture. The Italians began to build out hospitals and schools around the capital, Mogadishu, around this time, and more Italians began to arrive as permanent settlers. By 1930, there were 22,000 Italians living in Mogadishu and its immediate surrounding territory, but they were still a light footprint on the ground.\n\nBy 1935 that number had grown to 50,000 Italians settlers, 20,000 of who lived in Mogadishu, representing just under half of the city's population. Over the course of the colonial governance of the territory, the succession of sultans which controlled much of the inland territory occasionally proved disloyal, and over time the Italians started taking more and more direct control of the hinterlands of the territory as a way of ensuring better control. \n\nIf things had continued like this for a few more decades it's very likely that Italian language and culture would have become inculcated, at least around the coastal areas where Italian presence was heaviest, but Italy joined the Axis during WWII. They lost Somalia to a British attack in the spring of 1941. After the war the UN made the colony a trusteeship, and it was granted independence in the 1960s.\n\nWhen Siad Barre became president of Somalia in 1969, he enforced a policy of promoting the Somali language and enforcing it in government use. He adopted a new Latin alphabet for the language. Somali was the only language allowed to be taught in schools. His stated reason was to erase the gap between those who fluently spoke Italian and English and those who did not, as well as to help foster a thriving Somali culture.\n\nAs to the Italian colonists, some started leaving after WWII, but the exodus picked up after independence. There were several anti-Italian riots in Mogadishu around this time in which multiple Italians were killed. Many returned to Italy or migrated to the US, though there was still a small Italian population in the city through the 1990s.\n\n**Sources:**\n\n* Barrington, Lowell, After Independence: \"Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States.\"\n* Baker, Bruce. \"Escape from Domination in Africa: Political Disengagement & Its Consequences.\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "casjx5o", "caskjap", "casoxlf", "casplj1" ], "score": [ 8, 7, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "I know there are some excellent 'asia-specialists' on here who can probably answer your question more completely, but I figured I'd just get things started. \n\nI believe the social structure in China prevented the widespread use of the printed word. In China there was a far bigger devision between poor workers/farmers and the governing elite. There was no 'middle class' which was developing in Europe at the time printing was on the rise there. \n\nThis means there were less people to produce books (middle class people produced books on fasion, etiquette, the best ways to trade, make clothing etc) and less people to produce books for. (simply not enough people who can read.\n\nI would also add the fact that right at the time when printing was coming up in Europe, the reformation happened, which was the biggest religious conflict the continent has ever seen. Both sides used print as a weapon, which made sure that a lot of texts were produced. \n\n(source: Europe, a cultural history by Peter Rietbergen.)\n\nEdit: As one of you correctly pointed out. I misrepresented my source. The source I mentioned describes in great detail the development of print in Europe. The comment about Chinese social structure is not from this work. My apologies for the inaccurateness.", "Ease of use, primarily. Remember the Latin alphabet only has about 26 characters. \n\nFrom the producer's point of view, the benefits of movable type are compounded when you can create any word using just 26 print shapes. \n\nFrom the consumer's point of view, the opportunity cost of learning how to read (as opposed to working to earn a living) is significantly lower if the system can be learned in a short amount of time and with little effort. This lower opportunity cost compounds the reduced cost of the product itself (i.e. the book) which is the result of mechanised printing.", "This thread seems a bit geared towards China when it comes to the printing press, but what would it be like in Korea with the creation of Hangul? I'd imagine as a true alphabet, Hangul would be a natural choice for a printing press. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?", "So, we are hung up a bit on the importance of movable type over the importance of any printing mechanism. Printing is the key here, and it took off tremendously in China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan. \nSo, let's deal with movable type - by the time it was invented, in the 11th century, the first major book culture revolution was already over 100 years old. It was based on the highly effective carved woodblock system. Movable type was indeed less useful than the woodblocks because the 1000's of individual characters required several skills to re-arrange, and for these other reasons: \n1. literacy and organization - whomever was managing the machine must have a pretty serious organization system to locate and properly place the words. In addition, this person must be literate. Woodblock cutters, by contrast, could be talented copyists without being literate. \n2. massive printing runs - the numbers were immense by the 11th century. Having ready made blocks for these printings runs was essential. The books could then be re-run without the hassle of re-arranging 1000's of characters. \nThat's pretty much it, there was no economic reason to switch to movable type, because the boom was already on, and woodblocks were extremely effective. \nThe ideas that literacy was lower, and that the middle class was smaller are demonstrably false. Literacy was ridiculously high in the 11th-12th centuries compared to everywhere else on earth (conservatively 20-30%) at the time. Additionally, the merchant class was absolutely booming, with a burgeoning middle class in all areas. Much of this was based on the mobility that literacy could provide. There are texts on all manner of quotidian things - local gazeteers for tourists, simplified law-books for pettitfoggers, simplified religious texts for lower level (not buddhist or daoist affiliate) practitioners. all sorts of DIY guidebooks for building boats, furniture, etc etc etc. \nSo, the answer is: printing took off just as much if not more than in europe 500 years later, but not movable type as the mechanism. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cquuba5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "So this period is the most documented in Roman history. The primary sources are vast. Plutarch's Life of Pompey's already been mentioned, but Pompey comes up in several Lives. Cicero discusses Pompey in numerous letters, and gave several speeches specifically addressing Pompey (De Imperio, for instance). Caesar wrote a history of his war against Pompey. After that, the imperial historians chime in - Appian's *Civil Wars*, Cassius Dio, the fragments of Diodorus Siculus. All of these are free in English on the internet if you look for them. You could make a career of studying the primary sources for Pompey.\n\nAnd then there's the legacy. His son Sextus was a pain in the ass for Octavian for quite a while. He gets a good reception in Virgil, and I'm sure there's more out there. Depending how far you want to take it you might get as far as Shakespeare.\n\nGood luck!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7npcu6", "c7nu9i4", "c7nuxyv", "c7o2cbx" ], "score": [ 2720, 8, 39, 3 ], "text": [ "We actually don't have to speculate too much about it. While we don't have access to everything that's been written or published within North Korea, South Korea has a ministry that collects North Korean publications and media, and both Korean and Western scholars have been able to establish what the dominant narrative in North Korean culture has become. While it's frustrating not to have every detail, it's fairly obvious how and why that narrative has come to exist.\n\n**What the North Koreans are told:** Kim il-Sung and his band of freedom fighters bravely forced the Japanese to relinquish the Korean peninsula, conducting brilliant attacks from a secret base on the sacred Mount Paektu. During the struggle, the future Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il was born, and he fired at retreating Japanese as early as age three. Sometime in the middle of all this, the freedom fighters also found the time to carve predictions of Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il's eventual greatness into 13,000 trees in the forest surrounding Paektu. The secret base, chairs, cups, and trenches used by Kim il-Sung were miraculously preserved and are available for tour by appointment. When he had time off from slaughtering the Japanese, Kim also wrote several revolutionary operas that are performed in North Korean theaters to this day.\n\nForeign visitors tend to have problems keeping a straight face on the rare occasions when they're taken to these sites. Some of the more obvious \"slogan trees\" referenced above were also quietly removed in the late 1990s when a visiting Japanese arborist asked how it was possible for 60-year old carvings to exist on 30-year old trees.\n\n**What actually happened:** This narrative is really only accurate in the sense that Kim il-Sung fought against the Japanese, but I have yet to find any historian -- Korean, Russian, Chinese, or otherwise -- who's argued that he was anything other than a fairly minor figure in a widespread anti-colonial struggle. In fact, he didn't fight in Korea at all, but rather Jiandao province in Manchuria (the northeast portion of China that has a sizable Korean-speaking minority), leading companies and battalions of the Second Corps in what became known as the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. While not the highest-ranked officer in the Corps, he seems to have been competent, and by 1935 the Japanese had put a price on this head. At that point he'd been harassing them for about 4-5 years, and he lasted another 4-5 before things got too hot and he had to run for it. He sat out World War II and the rest of the fight against the Japanese occupation in a Red Army camp in Siberia. Kim Jong-Il was actually born there in 1942, and not in Korea at all.\n\n**Small interjection:** Most of what we know of this period has been constructed from old Soviet, Chinese, and Japanese records, and Kim wasn't sufficiently important to merit mention at every turn. By necessity, there's some guesswork involved, and we don't have as much information as we'd like about Kim's actual record in (X) battle, or when Kim left Manchuria, etc.\n\nBy the time Kim returned to Korea with the Red Army in 1945, he'd been out of the country for something like 20 years and spoke Chinese much better than Korean. He was tasked with giving a speech in Pyongyang -- the Soviets were on the lookout for someone they could install in local government to help control the peninsula, and he seemed like a good prospect because he took orders well and had credibility as an anti-Japanese fighter -- and Soviet Koreans not only wrote the speech for him but had to coach him on pronunciation. This was only the first of many speeches he gave, and both these and the initial run of propaganda (again, largely written by other Soviet Koreans) were heavy on gratitude to the Soviets for their assistance in driving the Japanese off the peninsula and the Chinese for having supported the anti-colonial movement.\n\n**How and when this changed (i.e., we have always been at war with Eurasia):** Now, the most interesting thing about North Korean propaganda is tracing how and when it changes (subtly or otherwise) to reflect contemporary political needs. As far as the NK government is concerned, their history is flexible and can be made to serve whatever ideology they need to push at a given time. This has even extended to archaeologists going on the hunt for ancient tombs in central Pyongyang in order to prove the city's classical importance. But that's not really what you're asking about.\n\nAnyway:\n\n - **During the early 1960s and Khrushchev's tenure in Moscow, references to Soviet aid before and during World War II start to vanish from both North Korean history books and records of Kim's speeches.** Why? Because Khrushchev was trying to reform both the Soviet Union and its client states away from the Stalinist model (something to which North Korea was heavily wedded), and he also ridiculed both Mao and Kim's personality cults. While Kim had always been the figure of primary importance in the North Korean narrative concerning World War II, he changed from being the beneficiary of Soviet generosity who used resources wisely to being someone who struggled without any serious help from other nations.\n - **References to Chinese aid wax and wane too.** To the best of my knowledge, they, too, have largely vanished from the North Korean narrative of World War II, and they are definitely not acknowledged as the people who were really running the army in which Kim was an officer.\n - **Nothing is said of American or Allied involvement in the fight against Japan in the Pacific.** Unfortunately, I don't know what, if anything, is said about the European theater.\n - **References to the *juche* doctrine start appearing in Kim il-Sung's speeches about 15-20 years after they were actually given.** IIRC, Kim's actual mention of the doctrine dates to 1961 at the earliest, but *juche* starts showing up everywhere in the mid-1960s to early 1970s. Why? Because Kim Jong-Il was starting to build a power base for himself in the government, and needed a concrete contribution with which to be identified; they couldn't really pass him off as a major freedom fighter when he'd been all of 3 as the war ended. So *juche* was it. The actual architect of the policy was Hwang Jang-Yop, who defected to South Korea in 1997, but Kim Jong-Il expanded on it, wrote papers, essays, and books (or, just as likely, had someone write them for him), and *juche* mysteriously started being peppered in speeches Kim il-Sung had given two decades earlier in order to establish an unbroken line of thought concerning North Korea's need for economic self-reliance. *Juche* is not the only idea to have been given this treatment; in fact, scholars \"mined\" Kim il-Sung's speeches for pro-capitalist sentiments when the government needed a way to justify its tolerance of private markets in the 1990s and 2000s.\n\nI'm trying and failing to remember if there's anything else that jumps out about North Korean education on World War II, but I think that addresses the most important stuff. \n\n**As a TL:DR,** North Koreans are told that Kim il-Sung conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign from a secret base on a sacred Korean mountain and that he sent the Japanese packing off the peninsula. They aren't told that he wasn't really a significant figure in the anti-colonial resistance, they aren't told that he never fought in Korea itself, they aren't told that he sat out World War II in Siberia, and whatever they do know about Soviet or Chinese (much less Allied) involvement is severely underplayed where it exists at all. Overall, the North Korean narrative of its own history is whatever the government wants it to be in order to serve a contemporary political need.", "From what I've read on the propaganda available, much attention is focused on the anti-Japanese partisan struggle led by Kim Il Sung, so much so that you would think the whole war depended on it. Japanese rule over Korea is demonized as one of the greatest atrocities of human history aside from the American invasion of North Korea. Kim Il Sung is the main focus and he is portrayed as the great leader always brave, tireless, and paternal to his soldiers. What we would consider minor skirmeshes such as at Pochonbo are descibed as epic great battles with Kim leading the fore although many of them do take place along the border with northwest China. There are some mention of Chinese help but there is no mention of Soviet intervention at all, the Soviet Union is mentioned as destroying Hitlerlite fascism at Stalingrad and America's fight against Japan is immediatley glossed over with the mention of the atomic bombings. At the end of the war, the occupying Japanese villians are just replaced with Americans ruling over South Korea.", "This thread got bestofed and as a consequence is attracting many new readers. I would like to take this opportunity to direct all new users to our [rules](_URL_0_). Please have a look at them before posting.\n\nContentless comments are being and will continue to be removed. ", "great question. this and more is covered in the book \"history lessons\", which takes other nations' history books and covers the major events in US history from their perspective. fascinating reading. the NorK view of WW2 is just one example.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nhighly worthwhile reading. " ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/historians_what_do_you_think_the_north_korean/c7nuxyv", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/History-Lessons-Textbooks-Around-Portray/dp/1595580824/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d542jc1" ], "score": [ 36 ], "text": [ "Well, first of all, we must wave away fiction (as we sadly often have to do...) when it comes to history. The idea of women fainting at the sight of terrible things or even their mention is not as old as history. We have no suggestions (to my knowledge) of medieval French women, ancient Egypt women or Mayan Mesoamerican women fainting at the sight of blood, spiders or hearing that the priest has seduced a local teenager. \n\nIndeed, this occurrence took place mainly in the Victorian area and was a combination of several different things. For it is true, women did feint at regular and irregular occasions during these years but the reasons aren't simply as vague as \"the female mind\".\n\nLet us start with corsets.\n\nIn the nineteenth century (and other time periods) the corset was extremely popular among women who could afford choking and being immobile to look pretty. As such, this was primarily something for bourgeois women and upwards, as female farmers, factory-workers, nurses and what not would find it impossible to work in the corsets of the 19:th century.\n\nWorn around the chest (and thus the lungs and the intestines) corsets were often made out of wool or leather, tightly woven and supported to so called \"boning\", which were vertically placed \"ribs\" of a sort made out of whale-bone, ivory or in the cheaper kind, wood. The purpose of the corset has varied, sometimes it's produce a curvier look, sometimes it's to suppress said curvier look. During the Victorian era it was definitely the former.\n\nGirls did not start wearing corsets as they became women (which might seem logical, because that's when you start getting curves) but rather girls started wearing them at a -very- young age. As in, pre-teen age. Take a look at this [nifty commercial](_URL_0_) from the time-period.\n\nSo, what happens if you wear something that presses on your chest in general and your ribs in particular for a great part of your life, including growing up when you form said rib-cage? Well, they get permanently displaced, that's what happens. As a result, lungs get compressed, intestines get shoved around, hearts struggle to function properly as the body struggles to function properly.\n\nEating disorders followed, as there simply wasn't enough room to eat anything but the mere minimal.\n\n------------------------------\n\nWith that said, it's highly likely that a lot of the swooning and fainting was put on display. It was simply a fad, it was lady-like, it was proper and it was considered nice. A lady that did not feint and swoon was no lady at all. Finer houses all included a so called 'feint-room', which was a pretty neatly set up room in some distant, silent corner of the big house. It had a feinting couch, soothing light, probably a bit to drink and so on and so forth. It was a social retreat where you could bring one or two friends with you while excusing yourself for a moment.\n\nAdditionally, -some- of the wealthier houses could afford a midwife or a doctor to help treat 'hysteria' which was a very common diagnosis at the time. In 1859, physician George Taylor for instance made the claim that 25% of all women suffered from hysteria. Hysteria had several treatments, including high pressure cold showers and other shock-therapies... But the most commonly accepted one was that it stemmed from sexual desire. As such, midwives or doctors could be working around the clock in these \"fainting-rooms\", offering pelvic massages to women who needed to take a break. As such, there was a pretty decent incentive to suddenly feel a need to feint and withdraw to hang out with your two best friends, have a cup of wine and get some... massage. There are reports of doctors filing complaints of pained wrists and fingers due to having to work with as many patients as they did (once again to underline here, this really was NOT a problem for poor people, who could not afford fainting rooms or doctors to staff them). \n\nThe sexual treatment of hysteria lead up to the development and invention of the vibrator who at first required medical personnel to handle but sooner rather than later (to the doctor's great lament!) became hand-held and easy to use on their own. The fad eventually grew out of fashion and the corsets of today are quite comfortable and women seldom feel the need to feint when watching the SAW movies. A more commonly accepted behavior is to gasp or simply avert your eyes when you encounter something shocking.\n\nSources: *Tystnadens historia* (History of Silence) - Peter Englund (2005) \n\nEDIT: Before we go bananas on corsets, I'd like to underline that 21:th century corsets are fine, even comfortable at times." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czzei6x", "czzifdm", "czziuoq" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Could you clarify what you mean, do you mean in the sense of any peasant class individual participating in a war or do you mean armed mobs with no training at all?", "In Mughal North India, peasants were used as infantry, they were the cannon fodder in battle, many also worked supporting roles such as coolies, carriers, cooks, servants, etc. The main warriors were from kshtriya castes, professional soldiers who were officers, cavalry, elephant riders, general's, etc.\n\n\nUnder Akhbar the Great there was the Mansabdari system, every government official was expected to maintain an small army according to his rank, peasants, mercenaries etc were hired or conscripted and trained. The Mughlas were Turks and not Indians, so not a lot of them trusted locals, so they brought in adventurers and mercs from Persia and Central Asia. Akhbar however made alliances with the Rajputs, a tribe of ass kicking war lords belonging to Kshtriya Caste. Their society was a war like one, every able bodied man was expected to go to war. Thus since most of the armies at the time were composed of professional soldiers, peasants usually played a supporting role, unless there was a shortage of men. \n\nI'll look for sources later.", "For high and late medieval Western Europe, I think the definition of 'peasant' is important, because Medieval social structures had multiple de facto (and de jure) classes of untitled people, who could have very different material circumstances.\n\nIf by peasants, you mean 'the lower classes of serfs/villeins/tenant farmers, u/MI13 deals with their (non) use in the later middle ages [here](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4248f4/if_peasant_conscripts_made_up_the_bulk_of_armies/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgr7649" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Hi, that's a very interesting question, I have never questioned the 'why' in that way before. The answer goes back to Julius Caesar, the persona and the events around his death. \n\n > \"He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked amongst the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the vulgar. For during the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated to his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o'clock; and it was supposed to be the soul of Caesar, now received into heaven: for which reason, likewise, he is represented on his statue with a star on his brow.\" (Suet. Jul. 88) \n\n > \"They afterwards erected in the Forum a column of Numidian marble, formed of one stone nearly twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it these words, TO THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. At this column they continued for a long time to offer sacrifices, make vows, and decide controversies, in which they swore by Caesar.\" (Suet. Jul. 85) \n\nAnd a tad too long to quote, [this section](_URL_0_), which shows how popular Julius Caesar was among to common people. \n\nLooking at the above quotes, we can tell that Julius Caesar was divinized because the people wanted it and because of certain divine circumstances following his death. Starting with the comet, an understanding of the superstition of the Romans is necessary. I made a quick search on the subreddit and [this](_URL_2_) discussion shows upon the problems with using the term 'superstition', so I'm not going to analyze that further. What I wanted to say though is that the Romans were very aware of things such as birds in the sky, comets, how healty animals were, and so on. A comet showing in the sky for seven days following the death of such an important man as Julius Caesar, that's got to be important, and Suetonius shows us that. \n\nSecondly, having cults around a person was by no means a new invention. Scipio Africanus was said to have had a cult created around him in Iberia following his successes in the Second Punic War (Polybios, 10, 40). Cults around the Persian kings, the Egyptian Pharaohs and even Alexander the Great, had also been well established before this time. What was new here was the political situation. Caesar had won the civil war and had the people on his side. When he was murdered chaos ensued and one of Marcus Antonius (Mark Anthony) moves was to suggest that Caesar was to be divinized. \n\nSo, this is a bit of the background to why Julius Caesar was divinized, let's get into the deeper parts of your queries. The Romans were fans of continuity. As you can see above, Caesar's divination wasn't something completely new because it had been done before (in a way) with Scipio Africanus, except Scipio only had a cult, he wasn't divinized. This continuity along with the legal adoption of Gaius Octavius (henceforth Augustus) meant that it wasn't questioned whether or not Augustus was a *divi filius* (son of a god) or not. Because Julius Caesar became *divus* Julius after his death it was obvious that Augustus must be *divus* Augustus *divi* Julius. \n\nNow, if you look at the book titles [here](_URL_1_.), you can see that far from all emperors were in fact divinized. Suetonius died early in the 2nd century AD so there are a few divinized emperors missing there, but as you can see there are a lot of missing *divus* titles. \n\nStarting with Augustus, all emperors were actually titled *divus* < name > during their lives. Supposedly also the empresses considering the Livia was divinized in 27 AD and thus became *diva* Augusta, but that's the only example and thus hard to tell. Anyway, looking at the structure of the Imperial Cult, we can deduce that living emperors had the title *divus* (except Tiberius who refused to be seen as divine), which became *divi* after their deaths. However, just like with the case of Julius Caesar, the *divi* appointment actually had to be voted after the emperor's death. Meaning that just because you were a *divus*, which can be explained as a-god-to-be, there was no guarantee that you'd in fact be divinized after you died. You had to deserve to be made a god. \n\nThe last part of course sounds really strange to us. That also begs the question of what kind of god the emperors actually became. During my own research of the subject I created three categories of gods to separate them. The first category was the great gods like Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, etc., Olympian gods with unquestionable powers. The second category was smaller gods, such as Roma (the personification or Rome) or Mithras, gods that weren't omnipotent. The third category is then where the emperors fit, along with ruler kings and such. As far as I have seen, we don't have a single source explaining what kind of powers the emperors had after they died, which is why the above categorization is necessary. \n\nHowever, the emperor had a unique trait, the *numen* on top of the *genius* that everyone had. I wrote this a little while ago so I'll just copy-paste: \n*Numen*: The emperor's life spirit. Only the current living emperor had a *numen* as far as I've understood it. Meaning no one else than the emperor even had a *numen*. Genius: Today we like to describe it as the soul. However that's a really easy explanation and isn't quite correct. Soul is a christian term. Everyone had a *genius*, but what made the emperor special was that he had both a *genius* and a *numen* and they were both worshipped differently. \n\nSo, on to the last part of your queries (unless I have missed something, feel free to ask) - \"what did that mean to the surviving population\". This is something that might be rather hard to tell since we don't have writings from the general population about it. We do however have inscriptions on tombstones of dead priests in the Imperial Cult. Those tombstones show us that the cult of a dead emperor was abandoned or neglected as soon as a new emperor was divinized. This was, the divinzed emperor was a sort of god after his death and they weren't un-divinized, but when there was a newer divinzed emperor, whom the living were more familiar with, they turned to him instead. There is one exception to this. Because of the short life-span of Titus (he was only emperor for 2 years), the cult around *divi* Vespasianus stayed strong a lot longer than might have been expected when Titus also was divinized. \n\nAn ending note is that the Imperial Cult wasn't just a religion, it was politics and propaganda. Therefore it follows that the older the divinization of an emperor is the less it's worth in current times, for the current Imperial family. The Flavian family had no reason to keep the Augustan Imperial cult alive and likewise the adoptive emperors (Nerva-Pertinax) didn't strengthen the Flavian cult, especially after Domitianus reign. This explains in part why the cult of a previous emperor died out as soon as there was a newer one. \n\nSources: \nSuetonius, *The Lives of the Caesars*, translated by Alexander Thomson. \nPolybios, *Histories*, translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. \nTaylor (1931), *The Divinity of the Roman Emperor*. \nFishwick (2002), *The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire*, III 1, III 2. \nFishwick (2004), *The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire*, III 3." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0132%3Alife%3Djul.%3Achapter%3D84", "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0061%3alife%3djul", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mklxr/why_were_the_romans_so_fearful_of_forests/ccabr3m" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyk54ya", "cyl4dp7" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I can't comment on Islam, but I can explain why Chinese christianity did not last to the modern day (of course, there are plenty of Christians now, but they only date back to European missionary activity).\n\nFirst, about its origins. My source for the first part of this is a tablet in a museum in Xian (or rather, the internet translation of this: I couldn't actually read it, it's too decayed and in ancient Chinese, which I can't read anyway). \nThe tablet was written by Persian (Nestorian*) missionaries. It described the last 200 years of Chinese Christian activity, setting up churches, evangelising, etc. However, from what it said, they don't seem to have made a huge number of converts.\n\nAccording to a Chinese Christians I've discussed this with, the mainstream view of Chinese Christian scholars** is that the early churches were \"very Buddhistic\". What this means is, they became more and more similar to Buddhist practices, and eventually faded away as a strongly defined entity. In a German museum, there is a piece of art of Tang-dynasty Christians celebrating palm Sunday; other than the palms, they do not seem very different from Buddhist worshippers.\nA number of modern Chinese Christian leaders (read about the recent issues in Wenzhou and this will come up) have expressed reluctance to the Chinese governments aims of sinicising Christianity, because they believe that this could cause Christianity to lose any unique characteristics and thus fade away, as it did before.\n\nNow, Nestorian Christianity returned to China in the Yuan dynasty, as it was the religion of certain Mongol tribes. However, it wasn't given government support, and being associated with foreign conquerers, again didn't make many converts. When the Mongols were expelled by the Ming, as with Tengrism, it was seen as a foreign Mongol religion, that should be expelled from China.\n\nAs I said, I don't know why Islam managed to create a strong community (I assume you are referring to Huizi; with the Uighers it's the same way it spread to central Asia generally, though the silk road), only why Christianity didn't.\nI'd be curious if anyone knows the history of the Huizi?\n\n*Bear in mind that the \"Nestorian Church\" probably wasn't actually Nestorian in doctrine, they just tolerated Nestorians while the European churches didn't.\n\n**As I said, this is (I believe) the mainstream view of Chinese Christian scholars. I feel it's important to point out that it is used as a narrative of resisting the government; it's possible therefore that this view is unreliable. I don't know of any non-Christian, Chinese historians who study the history of Christianity in China, to compare it to. It seems like a reasonable hypothesis, but I feel I should point this out.", "So, I've done a bit more looking around on this topic, and discovered something I did not know (and I find it very interesting that no Chinese Christians have ever told me this).\nWhen Emperor Wuzong made Buddhism illegal in the great Anti-Buddhist Persecution of 845AD, he also banished all Zorastrians and Christians. \"As for the Tai-Ch’in and Muh-hu forms of worship, since Buddhism has already been cast out, these heresies alone must not be allowed to survive. People belonging to these also are to be compelled to return to the world, belong again to their own districts, and become tax payers. As for foreigners, let them be returned to their own countries, there to suffer restraint.\"\nTai-Ch'in (or Da Qin as modern Pinyin would say it) means Roman, and Christians were generally referred to as Romans (well, actually by this time it generally referred to Syria specifically).\nYou can read the pronouncement here: _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1553&amp;C=1363" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "carx4qe", "carxjti", "carypfq", "caryph1", "cas00g5", "cas2m4z" ], "score": [ 5, 2, 4, 3, 20, 2 ], "text": [ "A contemporary source would be Historia Augusta, but dont expect to find that many details. Chapter 11, part 3-4 in [Historia Augusta](_URL_1_) (Hadrian) ; *He removed from office Septicius Clarus, the prefect of the guard, and Suetonius Tranquillus, the imperial secretary, and many others besides, because without his consent they had been conducting themselves toward his wife, Sabina, in a more informal fashion than the etiquette of the court demanded. And, as he was himself wont to say, he would have sent away his wife too, on the ground of ill-temper and irritability, had he been merely a private citizen. Moreover, his vigilance was not confined to his own household but extended to those of his friends, and by means of his private agents he even pried into all their secrets, and so skilfully that they were never aware that the Emperor was acquainted with their private lives until he revealed it himself.*\n\nI have read a description of [Ammian](_URL_0_) that describes him as an roman agent or spy.. cant find it now but he did write a [Res Gestae](_URL_2_) which is available online. Happy reading!", "The Trojan War records espionage in ancient cultures. From WP, \"Sinon, an Achaean spy, signaled the fleet stationed at Tenedos when 'it was midnight and the clear moon was rising'\"", "You may find the answers in this thread fruitful:\n\n_URL_0_", "I have no clue about the extent/organisation of espionage in those civilizations, but I *do* know that Julius Caesar often coded his messages to his generals. One of those encryption techniques is named after him, and is called the \"Caesar cipher\". You can read more about this [here](_URL_0_) , although I can't vouch for its accuracy.\n\n", "Yes, quite extensively. Rose Mary Sheldon, professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, has written [a number of publications](_URL_8_) on Roman intelligence (broadly construed, and thus not always including what we would think of as espionage). [Here](_URL_10_)'s an article of hers that cites many examples, including: \n\n* a list of conspirators delivered to Julius Caesar shortly before his death^1\n* the use of disguise by Roman soldiers investigating the fearsome Ciminian Forest, under Etruscan control at the time ([cited in Livy](_URL_6_))\n* Hannibal's extensive use of spies against Rome during the Punic Wars (for example at the [Battle of the Trebia](_URL_9_)\\), and Scipio Africanus's eventual use of retaliatory espionage (for example at the [Battle of Utica](_URL_4_)\\)^2\n* the [frumentarii](_URL_7_) (domestic spies).\n\nSheldon argues that Rome had no state intelligence service because of the predominance of private intelligence networks employed by senators to carry out personal intrigues in the midst of complex senatorial politics; few records survive of these machinations. \"Every Roman aristocrat had his private network of business associates, informers, clansmen, slaves, or agents (male or female) who could keep him informed on the latest happenings in the Senate or his own home,\" she writes.\n\n[Here](_URL_3_) (PDF warning) is an article by Sheldon on the Byzantine intelligence service, and [here](_URL_0_) is the Google Books preview of her book *Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome.* \n\nedit: formatting\n\n---- \n\n^1 Curiously, her first example seems to have the least historical evidence, at least that I can find. I think she's confusing the Shakespeare character [Artemidorus](_URL_5_) with a real person? Nicolaus of Damascus's [account](_URL_1_) mentions that \"[Caesar's] friends were alarmed at certain rumors and tried to stop him going to the Senate-house,\" but Brutus successfully dismissed these as \"the idle gossip of stupid men.\" \n^2 See also Terry Crowdy's *[The Enemy Within](_URL_2_)*, chapter 2.", "Absolutely, in fact, the Caesar cipher is among the best known substitution codes in the world and we have surviving literary records detailing its use by Julius Caesar in his military campaigns.\n\nEncryption is a great indicator of a need to keep secrets not just physically secure but informationally secure to boot. In other words; only exists if you think someone else is able to capture your correspondence and make use of it. It's a form of counter-espionage in its own right and proof positive of at least a rudimentary awareness of the same in the opposing force. " ] }

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[ [ "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ammian/Introduction*.html", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/home.html", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ammian/" ], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19pstl/did_ancient_empires_have_intelligence_agencies/" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher" ], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=qAmtMo1M8MgC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false", "http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/caesar2.htm", "http://books.google.com/books?id=jSC7GccDRtsC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;q&amp;f=false#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false", "http://www.vmi.edu/uploadedFiles/Faculty_Webs/HIST/SheldonRM/Courses/Restricted/Dvornik%203.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Utica_(203_BC\\)#Peace_negotiations", "http://www.playshakespeare.com/julius-caesar/scenes/361-act-ii-scene-3", "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0026%3Abook%3D9%3Achapter%3D36", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frumentarii", "http://www.vmi.edu/fswebs.aspx?tid=26499&amp;id=26519", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trebia#Mago.27s_ambush", "http://www.historynet.com/espionage-in-ancient-rome.htm" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dsvnl5s" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "You might enjoy /u/PapiriusCursor's answer to [Ancient Greek men thought the ideal male body possessed a small penis. Do we have any idea what Greek women thought?](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/513rl2/ancient_greek_men_thought_the_ideal_male_body/d794kh4/?utm_content=permalink&amp;utm_medium=front&amp;utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_name=AskHistorians" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cqlx2k8" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "My reference point is pre-Christian, which has it's own problems, but can shed some light on your question. Ancient Greek religion is largely understood in the socio-cultural terms that /u/Fireproofspider has already referred to. \"Belief\" isn't a term that really enters the religious equation until Christian times. Also, there were no sacred texts, no clergy or any explicit ten commandment like prohibitions. So, it's a really good context in which to explore your question, it's the ultimate \"practiced\" religion. The question of whether the average Greek person believed in their mythology, like the labours of Hercules or Orpheus' trip to the underworld, is for the most part anachronistic. Individual cities had their own special gods and myths, but could also refer to the pantheon of gods to participate in the wider Hellenic community. These stories, and the ritual sacrifices and burials associated with them, were the language with which people engaged each other and with things beyond their control. Festivals were their weekends, sacrifices their BBQs, festival performances their cinemas and Dionysiac revels their frat parties. Religion was more ingrained in their lives than we can easily imagine.\n\nThis isn't to say that the same social dynamics (Homer vs. Ned) didn't exist. We have great sources from people like Plutarch and Theophrastus who give us each a characterisation of the overly superstitious man. This Ned like figure goes to the temple constantly and consults oracles as to what he should have for lunch, and the audience are clearly having a laugh at his expense. We've also got radicals like Plato who question the very existence of god. So we can imagine some kind of spectrum of religiosity, but the middle is very thick and the extremes are very thin.\n\nSo, my take on your questions is that the two aren't mutually exclusive (in this context at least). Maybe people did begrudge losing their best stuff in burial rites, but at the same time we can't extend that all the way to our modern cynicism." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckk9id4", "ckkd4xx", "ckkh5zs" ], "score": [ 4, 4, 7 ], "text": [ "You could try Charles Carrington's A Subaltern's War or Guy Chapman's A Passionate Prodigality or Robert Graves Goodnight To All That.\n\nI'm afraid these are British (and may be hard to come by), I don't know of any French ones.\n\nAlso, since its the centenary, quite a lot of diaries have been uploaded to sites like this, some of which are quite interesting:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs to Remarque - Its worth bearing in mind that Remarque was a sapper and only saw a couple of weeks action on the front. \n\nAll is Quiet on the Western Front is by no means a memoir or a biography, it is a novel and an anti-war polemic. \n\nIts worth contrasting Remarque with the books of actual \"front line\" soldiers who served in the German army for most of the war - Rommel's Infantry Attacks and Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel are good examples and quite readily available.\n\nBon Chance.", "I really enjoyed [this book] (_URL_0_). Read a Dutch translation about 10 years ago but i am reading it again.\n\nLouis Barthas, the writer, was called up in 1914 and survived the entire war. He fought at Verdun, the Somme, Champagne and The Argonne. \n\nAnyway, great read. The reviews on amazon should tell you enough. ", "[*Under Fire*](_URL_0_) was a novel written by the Frenchman Henri Barbusse, and was actually published *during* the War, in 1916. *Under Fire* is technically not a memoir, but rather, is a work of fiction, with an unnamed narrator. However, it is pretty clearly influenced by Barbusse's time on the frontline. Barbusse's political biases (he was a Communist) also can shine through, but overall it is a rather short read that is definitely quite interesting. Regardless of how true the events in *Under Fire* actually are, the stories in it do lineup with accounts of the Great War that I've read from British and German sources and if nothing else the novel itself is worth reading because it is such an anomaly, being an anti-war novel published as the War was still going on. Basically, it shouldn't be taken as straight history, but it is of historical value." ] }

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[ [ "http://firstworldwar.com/diaries/index.htm" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Poilu-Notebooks-Corporal-Barrelmaker-1914-1918/dp/0300191596" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Under-Penguin-Classics-Henri-Barbusse/dp/0143039040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1410920186&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=under+fire+barbusse" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8ce9gu" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I can't talk about the Rothschilds or the like, but I certainly can talk about [the Tudors](_URL_5_) and [the Plantagenets](_URL_1_) and the like. \n\nHenry Tudor, who became King Henry VII of England, of the House of Tudor, was the victor of the [the Wars of the Roses](_URL_3_) between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, who both claimed to be legitimate heirs to the throne. He was *already* in a powerful family - he was just in one branch of it (Lancaster), and defeated the other branch (York). He then married a York woman, combining the two families, and ended the conflict that way.\n\nAnd, the Houses of Lancaster and York were both descendants of the Plantagenets. And, the Plantagenets were just descendants of William the Conqueror, who defeated the King of England in 1066, and declared himself King. \n\nBut, even then, William was already in a powerful family - he was Duke of Normandy, which was a [noble role created by King Charles III of France](_URL_4_). And, the kings of France trace their power back to [the Merovingian kings](_URL_0_), who started out by [conquering some tribes around them](_URL_2_).\n\nMost monarchs trace their origins of power back to an original warrior or chieftain who simply overpowered the people around him and took charge. They became leaders by force. All subsequent conflicts and transfers of power were traceable back to that original chief who took charge. There have been very few monarchs who didn't get their power either by conquest, or by being descended from (or *claiming* to be descended from) conquerors.\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_monarchs#Merovingian_Dynasty_.28428.E2.80.93751.29", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16i7z3/a_question_on_the_ruling_houses_of_england/c7wcu6w?context=3", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian#Origins", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Normandy", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17wzda/is_the_house_of_windsor_related_to_the_house_of/c89lglq" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6s7vhn", "d6sh74b" ], "score": [ 28, 20 ], "text": [ "Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman is a good read. It's directed at laymen and thus is less dry than most strictly academic works. I can only answer for what Freeman's work says, so if he was wrong, I hope someone can post a correction. \n\n1. Yes, according to the sources we have he fought in all the major engagements of his army during his famous campaign eastward. \n\n2. It wasn't *common*, for example Darius (leader of Persian Empire) did not fight with his troops. However among smaller, more tribal states such as the Scythians, the leader would fight with the rest of the troops. According to Freeman Alexander's participation was often crucial to morale. Alexander's army won battles in which they were outnumbered by absurd margins (such as at Gaugamela), as well as won offensive sieges by force on cities that seemed basically unconquerable (Tyre and Gaza). Freeman says that Alexanders gusto and personal participation was what kept morale from breaking when his army stood up against immensely larger forces or extremely impressive/legendary fortresses. Overall though it's certain that it was seen as an act worthy of respect, honor, and greatness. The sources (likely) exaggerate some of the stories in an attempt to embellish Alexander, so it was certainly seen as a positive thing to have bravery and battle prowess in a leader, as opposed to someone like Darius who watched comfortably from the rear. There is something innate in people, especially soldiers, to want to follow the leader charging the enemy king instead of the helpless leader running away.\n\n3. He was trained extensively in horsemanship and fighting, as well as general education, from a young age by his father Philip. His father had access to excellent teachers from the kingdom he had built around Macedon during his life and Alexander is said to have had a host of tutors, Aristotle among them. It's reasonable to assume that he would have been an excellent fighter, and surviving sources of course wouldn't say otherwise. \n\n4. Don't know more about this than the average person. \n\n5. Besides Freeman there are countless academic works. However I would recommend just reading A Life of Alexander by Plutarch, a prominent ancient source, or [this](_URL_0_) compilation of ancient sources. \n", " > Was it expected of generals of the time? What did other commanders and soldiers think of him throwing himself into the gray time and time again? What was he trying to prove by doing it?\n\nAlexander was the product of a tradition - both Greek and Macedonian - of leading warriors by example. In Greek city-states, this was the only recourse for citizens elected to the generalship to prove that they were worthy of the position; among the Macedonians, rather, it fit into older notions of leisure-class competitive display, in which the man who claimed the right to lead had to prove that he had what it took to deserve the leadership. The outcome was the same. All generals were obliged to lead from the front. It was the best way to inspire the men and to get them to do what they had to do. Indeed, Alexander's alleged obsession with Achilles would have encouraged him to behave in the fashion of Homeric heroes, who were constantly trying to outdo one another in acts of bravery and feats of arms in order to justify and secure their high social status.\n\nEven though the Greeks were aware that the loss of a general could be fatal for an army, even military thinkers still recommended that generals lead from the front, aware that a general who was perceived as cowardly would not be able to get anything done. Greek warriors' preference for the \"soldier's general\", who shared in the hardships of the men and led by example, resulted in a staggering casualty rate for Greek commanders. It's often been remarked that Alexander's survival despite mutliple wounds received in close combat was little short of miraculous. Only in the later Hellenistic period do we see generals (starting with Pyrrhos of Epiros) taking a more managerial approach to battle command.\n\n > Since his time, have generals attempted to emulate his style of 'heroic' leadership by leading from the front?\n\nAs noted above, his style wasn't new; it was the norm for all generals in the Greek world, from elected Boiotians to Spartan kings. However, if anything, Alexander's example made the trend worse. Since the men who filled the power vaccuum after his death derived their status primarily from their military prowess, and the chief way to prove one's military credentials was to emulate the greatest commander ever - Alexander - a lot of the so-called *diadochoi* (Successors) shared the same reckless habit of leading from the front.\n\nPlutarch discusses the matter in detail in the introduction to his *Life of Pelopidas*, a fourth-century Greek general who died in battle:\n\n > For if, as Iphikrates analyzed the matter, the light-armed troops are like the hands, the cavalry like the feet, the hoplites like chest and cuirass, and the general like the head, then he, in taking undue risks and being over bold, would seem to neglect not himself, but everyone, inasmuch as their safety depends on him, and their destruction too. \n\n > Therefore Kallikratidas, although otherwise he was a great man, did not make a good answer to the seer who begged him to be careful, since the sacrificial omens foretold his death; ‘Sparta,’ said he, ‘does not depend upon one man.’ For when fighting, or sailing, or marching under orders, Kallikratidas was ‘one man’; but as general, he comprised in himself the strength and power of all, so that he was not ‘one man,’ when such numbers perished with him. \n\n > Better was the speech of old Antigonos as he was about to fight a sea-fight off Andros, and someone told him that the enemy's ships were far more numerous than his: ‘But what of myself,’ said he, ‘how many ships will you count me?’ implying that the worth of the commander is a great thing, as it is in fact, when allied with experience and valour, and his first duty is to save the one who saves everything else.\n\n > Therefore Timotheos was right when Chares was once showing the Athenians some wounds he had received, and his shield pierced by a spear, in saying: ‘But I, how greatly ashamed I was, at the siege of Samos, because a catapult bolt fell near me; I thought I was behaving more like an impetuous youth than like a general in command of so large a force.’\n\n > For where the whole issue is greatly furthered by the general's exposing himself to danger, there he must employ hand and body unsparingly, ignoring those who say that a good general should die, if not of old age, at least in old age; but where the advantage to be derived from his success is small, and the whole cause perishes with him if he fails, no one demands that a general should risk his life in fighting like a common soldier. \n\nOne of the most interesting works on Greek command is E.L. Wheeler's 'The General as Hoplite', in V.D. Hanson (ed.) *Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience* (1991).\n\nEdit: added Plutarch quoting me" ] }

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[ [ "https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=IvP_tHPTZfkC&amp;source=productsearch&amp;utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&amp;utm_medium=SEM&amp;utm_campaign=PLA&amp;pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&amp;gl=US&amp;gclid=CLGI3IPY1c4CFYxlNwodPngEAw&amp;gclsrc=ds" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca5xt3b", "ca5zf4h" ], "score": [ 4, 6 ], "text": [ "Depending on how you define left/right American politics really aren't that far right. In America the far right is usually classified as being small government. Reagan's quote, \"Government isn't the solution to the problem. Government **IS** the problem.\" encapsulates this well. If that is an accepted definition the far right isn't fascism as many people claim, splitting the left and right extremes as Communism and Fascism. The far right would be the exact opposite of these, Anarchism, which is the complete lack of a state or government.\n\nThe Democratic Party and Republican Party are in fact both left wing parties. They both support government re-distribution of wealth through taxation and welfare, the central control of the economy through money control and centralized banking, and the growth of the power of the central government. They both also support expanding international wars to justify much of their control assumption. To someone on the actual far right both of these parties fit very well on the American Left political spectrum. ", "I would say that a lot of it comes down to the First Red Scare. In the early 20th century, the Industrial Workers of the World (an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary labor union) was growing large and the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs was getting around 7% in U.S. elections, with hundreds of mayors, state representatives, and a few congressmen. During the First Red Scare, during and following World War I, the IWW was repressed, and socialist and anarchist leaders like Eugene Debs and Ricardo Flores Magón (a Mexican anarchist revolutionary and IWW member who had been in exile in the U.S.) were imprisoned, where many would die. Thousands of striking workers would be repressed, with public justifications citing socialism, communism, and anarchism.\n\nI know less about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s, but it's my understanding that there were a number of socialists and communists in the leadership of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) that were purged." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e3lkicx" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The short answer to this is \"No\". There wasn't a comparable weapon - an aircraft designed for heavy, air-to-ground fire over long durations - to the AC-130 gunship during World War II. The AC-130's predecessor, the AC-47 \"Spooky\", or more popularly, \"Puff the Magic Dragon\", while using the C-47 as its platform - an aircraft available in WWII - was a product of the 1960s. *Now*, that said, the AC-47 was not born out of thin air, and does exist in a long line of ideas and prototypes that were in existence during World War II, and even before.\n\nWhile putting a bunch of machine guns in a plane for strafing predated WWII - way back in the '20s the US Army's first designated 'Attack\" aircraft, the A-2, carried 2 .30 cals and 4 more in the wings - bigger guns started rolling out during the conflict. The brainchild of Maj. Paul I. “Pappy” Gunn, testing of heavily armed B-25s with 8 .50 cals replacing in the nose, principally in the Pacific against Japanese shipping, proved to be quite successful. Further testing with even bigger guns resulted several interesting variants which were designed to bring massive amounts of firepower to bear during their strafing runs. The B-25G and B-25H included a number of .50 cal machine guns and a massive 75mm cannon which could tear into just about anything - mainly envisioned for ships, tanks, and fortifications - while the B-25J ditched the cannon to just rely on the firepower of the machine guns. With 8 in the nose, 4 'blisters' on the side, and the top turret facing forward with 2 more, even without a cannon, 14 .50s were nothing to laugh at, being the most 'forward firepower' of any Allied attack plane . The 'gunship' models still carried a conventional bomb-load of several thousand pounds for additional 'umph' (lacking the cannon, the 'J' could of course carry more than the 'G' and 'H'). Some would also see service with the Marines, designated the PBJ-1H. \n\nSimilarly, the A-26B was built to mount 6, 8, or even 10 .50 cals in the nose depending on the sub-model, and later modifications, some which only saw action in Vietnam, also allowed 8 rockets or 6 more .30 cals on the wing, or replacement of the .50s with 4 20mm cannons. A purpose built platform for the 75mm (and early drafts actually envisioned it as a bomber killer, not an attack aircraft), the XA-38 Grizzly, was also built mounting a 75mm cannon and 6 .50 cals. The first model rolled out in May, 1944, and performed well, but far too late for the war. The second prototype was built, but the war was already seen as nearing an end, and further, as it shared an engine with the B-29 which had priority, production was never ordered.\n\nWith that many guns though, in all cases the emphasis was on only a few overwhelming strafing runs. In the case of the cannon, the obvious slow rate of fire required a fairly stressful low, slow, and steady approach to line up a shot. As for the massive banks of machine guns, well, ammunition ain't light, and even with 400+ rounds per gun, it meant only a few seconds of actual firing. Depending on the mission too, guns might be stripped to allow more bomb load, which further illustrates that these were still, in the end, not quite the gunship you have in mind.\n\nTo be sure, all of these configurations were based on the idea that the planes would be performing CAS duties or shipping interdiction, coming in low for strafing runs of the target, not circling far up in the sky keeping fire pinpointed, but they do fit into the broader idea of gunship support. The US Army had toyed with the idea in the interwar years, even running a successful test in 1926 by 1LT Fred Nelson of side-firing machine guns on a DH-4, but nothing ever came out of that during peacetime. During the war, it wasn't really revisited, as there was really just one guy who was beating the drum for this, 1LT G.C. MacDonald, and he was mostly ignored. He submitted a proposal in 1942 for side-firing machine guns, and in 1945, upped the ante with a proposal for bazookas mounted on spotter planes, but was ignored. 'On the ground' modifications did result in a handful of C-47s being fitted with waist-mounted .50 cals to provide support in Burma but this was an entirely off-the limited addition that was not imitated elsewhere, nor even particularly known about.\n\nAs a Lt. Col. in 1961, MacDonald would again submit his proposal to a Tactical Air Command panel looking at solutions for defending the 'Strategic Hamlets' in Vietnam, but was ignored again. It was only a chance meeting that MacDonald had later that year with Ralph Flexman, an engineer with Bell doing active reserve duty who had also been pondering a similar idea, that would see the project gain wings, eventually resulting in the AC-47.\n\n**Further Reading**\n\n Development and Employment of Fixed-Wing Gunships 1962-1972 by Jack S. Ballard\n American Attack Aircraft since 1926 by E.R. Johnson.\n Beech Aircraft and their Predecessors by AJ Pelletier\n Gunships: A Pictorial History of Spooky by Larry Davis\n B-25 Mitchell Units of the MTO by Steve Pace\n A-26 Invader Units of World War II by Jim Roeder\n The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Combat Air by Bill Gunston\n PBJ Mitchell Units of the Pacific War by Jerry Scutts\n\nEdit: Oh! I almost forgot one other thing to mention. Obviously, this is just the US. I'm familiar with several of the CAS aircraft they used in this mold, so that is what I focused on. *But* there is the Soviet Tupolev Tu-2Sh. I can't say much about it as, well, I don't have too much on it, but it is touched on briefly in \"Twin-Engined Fighters Attack Aircraft and Bombers\" by Yefiim Gordon and Tupolev Aircraft Since 1922 by Bill Gunston, which I'm drawing on here.\n\nBasically, the Soviets made several test versions of this, but never went into production with any of them. One was not unlike the American planes above. A big 75mm gun in the nose for taking down big targets. A similar version, tried post-war, went a bit more varied with two 45mm cannons, two 37mm cannons, and the usual two 20mm cannons on the wings, plus a 12.7mm turret on top. A version with a 57mm cannon mounted from the bomb bay and the two 20mms also was tested. However, these were all, well, the *practical* tests. The original test was quite the monster, with 88 PPSh-41 submachine guns crammed into the fuselage, angled downwards to fire at infantry as it flew above them. Technically it worked but reloading in the air was such a problem that they didn't continue with the project. Even with the big 72-round drum magazine, it was just too short a firing window to be worth bothering, I guess, and they instead went with the more conventional tests above. Still though, it is possibly the closest thing to the Spooky or AC-130 built in World War II." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgc805q" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Technically speaking, every religion have mythology (a set of myths and stories), but in common use, the word *mythology* is typically used for the myths of religions which have no more active followers. So in short, Norse religion became mythology when the Norse became Christianized.\n\nA living religion consists of much more that the myths and stories - it may have traditions, rituals, festivals, institutions, perhaps some kind of priesthood. But when a religion dies out, the rituals and institutions cease to exist. What remains is the mythology, at least if it was written down and preserved. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf7uw0f", "cf7wee3", "cf7z3kb", "cf7zwwe" ], "score": [ 70, 453, 743, 4 ], "text": [ "If I may ask a question in this thread relevant to the main question -\n\nDid any of the holy orders have people trained to fulfill the roles of assassins/spys during the medieval period?\n", "I think I can probably answer the question by answering a slightly different question. It hedges on vioating the 20 year rule, but this is really just illustrative. \n\nSuppose you were to ask the question, \"Do professional assassins exist in the present day?\" \n\nThe answer to this question depends on how you mean \"assassin.\" In the terms that you seem to be asking, the answer is almost certainly no. There are certainly soldiers trained to a high level of skill etc. and while I have little doubt there are some people who kill for criminal organizations, these are by and large people that do not keep records of the sort that a historian might ever find, except for those that get caught. A group of \"professional assassins\" that is known could not openly survive for long. Criminal \"assassins\" are usually far closer to thugs than \"professionals\" in any case. Usually it's find an excuse to get close, then open up with a pistol, going down in the process. \n\nRather, what you find is that when \"assassinations\" happen in the modern world, it's usually a lone gunman or bomber who is not particularly \"professional,\" and dies in the attempt. Sometimes it's a whole team of operatives, but then they're distinctly military or paramilitary rather than some covert group. (see. e.g. Benazir Bhutto's assassination). \n\nEven though the historical context changes dramatically, I think you can compare modern times to historical times in this regard. Most assassinations in the historical record were not performed by someone you would describe as a \"professional.\" \n\nFor proof, take a look at [european assassinations](_URL_4_) \n\n[Louis, Duke of Orleans 1407 ](_URL_5_) - subterfuge lures the duke out into the open where 15 masked thugs stab and beat him. \n\n[Henry III, King of France, 1575](_URL_0_) - A domnican friar, Jaque Clement, gains admittance to the king's presence with documents, saying he has a message for the king. He stabs the king once and is killed on the spot by the guards. the king later dies of the wound. \n\n[Henry IV, King of France, 1610](_URL_1_) A catholic fanatic Francois Revellec waits until the king's carriage is stopped by a traffic blockage (possibly arranged by compatriots) climbs into the carriage and stabs the king. He is immidiately arrested, tried and executed. \n\n[Phillip v Hohenstauffen \"King of the Germans\" and Prince of Swabia 1208 - ](_URL_6_) - the king granted an audience to another noble, Otto VIII v. Wittlesbach, who drew his sword and stabbed the king in the neck. (Apparently over a dispute caused by a broken wedding engagement). Wittlesbach fled and then was tracked down and killed. \n\n[Guliano de'Medici, Duke of Florence, 1478](_URL_2_) was killed in the \"pazzi conspiracy\" - a plot to remove the Medici family as the rulers of Milan, Bernardo Bandi and Francesco de' Pazzi, themselves italian nobility, wait until Guliano d'Medici is attending church, attack him and stab him 19 times. \n\n\n[William I of Orange, 1584](_URL_3_) - After William gained independance for the Netherlands, Philllip II of spain declared him an outlaw and promised a bounty of 25,000 Crowns. Balthasar Gerard, a catholic frenchman, made an appointment with William, gained an audience, shot William in the chest at close range with a wheel lock pistol, then fled. \n\n\nWhile that's not exhaustive, I think that gives a pretty good selection of medieval era assassinations. By and large they're not all that different than you might expect an assassination to be today. It's far more likely to be some crazy with a knife or a gun, dying in the attempt, than some highly trained operative who kills and vanishes. \n\nEdit: fixed various spelling and grammatical errors. Thanks to /u/Sparadise for the correction. ", "In the sense of the blade-wielding master of espionage who could plow through a dozen guard single-handedly? No. That, unfortunately, is something that only exists in the realm of legends and [entertainment media](_URL_7_).\n\nThe word \"assassin,\" as you might already know, entered into many European languages via the Crusades as a bastardization of the Arabic حشاشين‎ (_hashishiyyin_), referring to a sect of Nizari Isma’ilis in present-day northern Iran who orchestrated a series of political assassinations in the 1100s. The name is supposed to be a derogatory term meaning “hashish-consumers,” deriving from the belief that Nizari _fida’is_ (devotees) were worked into a frenzy through the consumption of the drug. However, most scholars recognize that there is no proof of this. The story comes from Marco Polo’s writings, specifically a section entitled “Concerning the Old Man of the Mountain” (Book 1, Chapter 23), where he claimed he heard from some natives that an old man in Mulehet drugged his followers and secluded them in a garden to trick them into believing they could enter Paradise:\n\n > He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from 12 to 20 years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering, and to these he used to tell tales about Paradise, just as Mahommet had been wont to do, and they believed in him just as the Saracens believe in Mahommet. Then he would introduce them into his garden, some four, or six, or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke, they found themselves in the Garden.\n\nThere haven’t been any other sources to substantiate this. Historians even disagree on the etymology of the word _hashishiyyin_. [Farhad Daftary](_URL_4_), for example, claims that the word, though used pejoratively, had no true connection to the drug hashish. It was simply a derogatory word used by Nizaris for other Muslims that the Crusaders picked up in the Levant, and the assassin myths sprang up along with a number of rumors regarding secret practices of the Nizari Isma’ilis (10-11). The word picked up the connotation of professional killer around the mid-14th century. Dante, for example, spoke of \"_Le perfido assassin_\" in the _Inferno_. “Assassin” up to that point was exclusively associated with Muslims, and even after it was often [used in the plural](_URL_13_) by Orientalists.\n\n**So to return to the original question** - whether there were types of trained killers, mythic or otherwise, in the medieval European context - it doesn’t seem likely. The most effective assassins are those who can get close to their targets without arousing suspicion and kill him/her with as little risk to themselves as possible. In other words, you didn’t need to be trained as sword-wielding acrobat with a devil-may-care attitude to be an effective assassin. \n\nInstead of death by cold steel, **the most common method of assassination in medieval Europe by far was poisoning**. Poisons were cheap and relatively easy to obtain, and poisoning is a clever way to conceal assassination as an illness (most poisons wouldn’t cause you to drop dead on the spot - at least not if the perpetrator was doing it right). There were many herbal poisons readily available (e.g. [Nightshade](_URL_5_), [Water Hemlock](_URL_0_), [Laburnum](_URL_9_), or [Black Hellbore](_URL_1_)), but there were also more deadly chemicals such as [arsenic powder](_URL_14_). Deliberate poisoning of food was common enough in Europe that it was often widely believed to be the cause of many royal deaths, whether or not it was true. When King John of England died in 1216 of dysentery, for example, numerous rumors began almost immediately that he had been poisoned by a monk. There were many visual images of this poisoning that circulated for years to come, both in [prints](_URL_6_) and in [illuminated](_URL_11_) [manuscripts](_URL_10_). There were so many rumors about Lucrezia Borgia and her brother Cesare poisoning their enemies that they were said to own [rings with secret compartments](_URL_12_) used to casually slip poison unnoticed into glasses. There isn’t much evidence to link them directly to this, but it shows the extent to which the idea of assassination was linked to poison. And yes, some affluent individuals [did employ food-testers](_URL_8_) as a deterrent against this kind of risk.\n\nAnyone who had extensive knowledge of poisons, then, might be considered a potential assassin (or at least able to aid a potential one). With the printing press, pharmacology manuals detailing poisons became more widely available; Magister Santes de Ardoynis’s _The Book of Venoms_ (1424) was probably the most popular. However, before then most major cities contained apothecary guilds comprising a large number of tradesmen knowledgeable in poisons. Apothecaries, of course, were not simply poison-sellers, but rather served as both pharmacist and general medical practitioner in the Middle Ages. In many ways, [apothecaries were a vital resource](_URL_2_) for medicine in medieval Europe. So this raises a question: why did apothecaries sell poisons at all? Well, in their view they didn’t. It was a long-standing belief in many parts of Europe that certain plant extracts which were poisonous in large doses were beneficial to one’s health in smaller doses. For example, Henbane - the poison Claudius uses to murder the former king in Shakespeare’s [_Hamlet_](_URL_3_) - was sometimes recommended in small doses as a sleeping agent or as a sedative for hysteria. The same items could be used as a form of pest control. Mix Aconite with animal fat and/or honey and you have an effective way to kill a wolf or a fox threatening your livestock.\n\nAll of these concoctions, then, had designated uses other than murdering human beings and were sold as medical remedies. But they could be used to commit murder in large doses. The trick was knowing what the right dose was to induce death without making it obvious that the victim had been poisoned.\n\n**EDIT**: fixed a broken link and a typo.\n\n", "I have a follow-up question of sorts: I know a little (very little; dangerously little) about ninja in medieval Japan and their counterparts in China -- they were basically groups for hire, \"muscle\" if you will, but trained for the job. That's as far as my knowledge goes, and it could be totally wrong. \n\nThe question (other than hoping for any clarification on the above), is, were there any comparable groups in medieval Europe? Mercenary groups that trained independently of militaries for the purpose of hiring services out. I'm hoping this question makes any sense at all. " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III_of_France#Assassination", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France#Assassination", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_di_Piero_de%27_Medici", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_I_of_Orange", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Louis_I,_Duke_of_Orl%C3%A9ans", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_von_Hohenstaufen" ], [ "http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/d/drophe21.html", "http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/h/helbla14.html", "http://books.google.com/books?id=K3fv-0iophEC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=mary+lindemann+medicine&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=7qjyUpKxGqasyAHtuYHIAg&amp;ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=mary%20lindemann%20medicine&amp;f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=kjQJAAAAQAAJ&amp;pg=PA245&amp;dq=shakespeare+henbane&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=NKLyUoSCOZKCyAGF64GABQ&amp;ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;q=shakespeare%20henbane&amp;f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=cSO9zh61AGEC&amp;dq=The+Ismailis:+Their+history+and+doctrines&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s", "http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/n/nighde05.html", "http://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/25024/P00004.jpeg?sequence=1", "http://blogs-images.forbes.com/carolpinchefsky/files/2012/10/AssassinsCreed.jpg", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u7gwr/are_there_many_cases_of_a_food_taster_actually/", "http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/l/labrun02.html", "http://streetsofsalem.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/poison-cup-socrates.jpg?w=490&amp;h=606", "http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/548136/530wm/C0179189-King_John_is_offered_poison-SPL.jpg", "http://www.eclecticvintage.com/pics/r50402.florturqring2.jpg", "http://books.google.com/books?id=q1sOAAAAQAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false", "http://books.google.com/books?id=L6Ahq0FuVK8C&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=The+Arsenic+Century&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=-5zyUt37E83YyAHclIGQDg&amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=The%20Arsenic%20Century&amp;f=false" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjv13gc", "cjv3zaw", "cjve4l3" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "There was quite a sizeable battle in Verdun in 1792. \nA better example might be Metz where there was a big battle in both the Franco Prussian war and the second world war. \nBesides that, it wouldn't be too hard to find battlefields in Belgium or northern France whereseveral battles could have taken places. ", "The Ardennes forest in France saw substantial battles in both world wars. \n\n[WWI](_URL_2_)\n\n[WWII](_URL_0_)\n\nAs did the city of [Amiens](_URL_1_)\n\n\n", "Perhaps the battle of Thermopylae in April 1941 would be of interest, when the ANZACs tried to hold the pass against the German forces. There were five Australian and three New Zealand battalions involved. The ANZAC forces took up their position on 15 April, but the battle didn't begin in earnest until the 21st. The Germans had complete air superiority, and could easily have used artillery on Euboia to blow the defenders to shreds. But late on the same day, the Allied forces decided to withdraw from Greece altogether, so the battle was short-lived. The ANZACs were evacuated by the end of the 24th." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens#The_First_World_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ardennes" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "darhxm6" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Jazz at this time was *the* thing to do for nightlife, and Shanghai was the centre of jazz in China.\n\nJazz was introduced to the city through the foreign concessions in the 19-teens. The International Settlement and the French Concession both regularly had jazz musicians, often coming from the United States. The interest in jazz spread to the Chinese population shortly after. It survived well into the 1940s there. It stopped primarily as a result of being banned by the Communists around 1949.\n\nPrior to that, big bands and jazz orchestras were quite common at the jazz cabarets throughout the foreign concessions. The reception among members of Chinese society was also generally positive toward the style. Shanghai in the 1920s was a place you went to experience something new, usually directly a result from the mix of cultures to be found there. Modernising and urbanising means adopting the latest trends, and Shanghai at this time was right in line with the trends found in bigger cities in the West.\n\nThese were also some of the few places that foreign residents of the concessions and native Chinese could actually co-mingle. They not only offered an outlet for the residents of the city, but were also a profitable front for the various gangs that managed much of the city at the time. One of the larger gangs, the [Green Gang](_URL_1_), even put together the first jazz band made entirely of Chinese musicians in 1934. Called the Breeze Dance Band, also translated as Clear Wind Jazz Band (清风舞乐队), it was originally pushed for by [Dù Yuèshēng 杜月笙](_URL_2_), one of the most prominent mobsters of the period, and led by [Lí Jǐnhuī 黎錦暉](_URL_0_). Lí became a hugely important person in 20th century Chinese music, and was an active proponent of the modern development of Chinese culture.\n\nAdditionally as part of the cabarets, gambling and prostitution adapted to the cabarets and it was not uncommon to find \"dance hostesses\", women who, for a price, would dance and drink with clients for the night. This obviously also resulted in prostitution, but not always.\n\nEven government officials were in on the craze, and Chiang Kai Shek himself had a jazz orchestra playing at his wedding to Soong May-ling.\n\nYou can actually find a lot of archival footage of [jazz clubs](_URL_3_) if you dig around a bit. \n\nIf you're interested in the topic I highly recommend Andrew Field's work, below.\n\n**References**\n\n* Andrew Field's *Shanghai's Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954*\n\n* James Farrer & Andrew Field. *Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City*\n\n**See also**\n\n* This [audio interview](_URL_4_) with Andrew Field where he talks about some of the above/\n\n---\n\nSomeone asked a similar question some months back. This answer is based largely on my answer from then.\n\nalso cc /u/origamitiger, because RemindMe won't work in /r/AskHistorians" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Jinhui", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Gang", "https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%9C%E6%9C%88%E7%AC%99", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3rbLyeYiJU", "http://newbooksnetwork.com/andrew-field-shanghais-dancing-world-cabaret-culture-and-urban-politics-1919-1954-the-chinese-university-press-2010/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d3kfsoi" ], "score": [ 25 ], "text": [ "Scipio's not exactly the only Roman aristocrat to be prosecuted following great service to the state. Actually, it's kind of common. The Roman aristocracy relied on the individual magistrate or promagistrate to get anything done, but was highly suspicious of the individual standing head-and-shoulders above his peers. The individual of unusual *dignitas* and *auctoritas* through his actions was expected to retire from public duties, or voluntarily accept an advisory role for the next generation. This of course did not happen in practice often, even in Scipio's lifetime. Scipio was the political enemy of Marcus Cato, who constantly opposed him at the end of his life, with his characteristic persistence. Part of this was because the nobility, suspicious as usual, did not look kindly on his enormous prestige. Scipio really did have extraordinary *dignitas* following Zama--there built up around him soon after the \"Scipionic Legend,\" in which Scipio was said to have performed various miraculous deeds and to have been the son of a god (usually Jupiter). For example, Livy says that there was a story that Scipio was conceived when his mother was visited by a giant snake--Livy thinks the story is ridiculous, and points out that it was already being told of Alexander, but certainly that gives an idea of the sort of legend that was built up around Scipio within only a short time. Besides the rather unwelcome influence of the growing Scipionic Legend the senatorial class did in fact have some reason to feel insecure about Scipio. Scipio's later career was relatively unremarkable, but not really for want of trying. He held the censorship in 199 and was *princeps senatus* twice in 194 and 189, both somewhat expected of a consular, though Scipio wasn't exactly an ordinary consular. Scipio was, however, consul for a second time in 194, and lobbied for the right to command the war against Antiochus III, a motion which was knocked down in the senate. Scipio did not fight at Magnesia, but he volunteered against Antiochus as legate under his brother in 190. It's not hard to see why Scipio, the quite literally legendary victor over Hannibal and recent consul for the second time, might be suspected by the senatorial class of really being the one pulling the strings in the war, especially when it was Scipio who arranged the peace with Antiochus. Certainly the senatorial class was uncomfortable with the freedom with which Scipio threw his reputation around, and they were not totally unjustified, as Scipio's behavior was not very in character with the expectations of a member of the senatorial class. Following his return from the war against Antiochus Scipio (and his brother) were both attacked by Marcus Cato in the courts--clearly the conduct of this war, and the suspicions of misconduct during it, were the last straw, so to speak." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg0cjxg" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "World War I had some pretty big consequences for Eastern Europe in all sectors of life, including the economy, culture, and politics. I'll focus on the most obvious consequence: the redrawing of borders in Eastern Europe. The dissolution of the of the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires allowed the Allies to pursue a policy of self-determination for national minorities as laid out in [Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points](_URL_1_).\n\nHere is a [map of Europe in 1914](_URL_3_).\n\nAnd here is [Europe five years later](_URL_6_), after the war was concluded.\n\nThe three main treaties we're going to be looking at here are [Versailles](_URL_0_), [Saint-Germain-en-Laye](_URL_2_), and [Trianon](_URL_5_), which redrew the borders of [Germany](_URL_4_), [Austria, and Hungary](_URL_7_), respectively. \n\nIn the new map, we can see the emergence of several new nations, including: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and the Free City of Danzig. Additionally, we see a greatly enlarged Romania and a slightly smaller Bulgaria, whose path to the Aegean now firmly in the hands of Greece. This map is, however, a little bit misleading as it implies that the USSR at this time is firmly established, when in reality it was in the midst of the Russian Civil War (which is its own big can of worms). I'll try to give those countries a quick mention too. I think the easiest way to go about this is to examine each country really quickly, looking at where its territory came from and because of what treaties. Obviously people can go into more detail about specific countries; this is just a brief(ish) overview.\n\nEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: Formed from territory of Russia and Germany\n\nRussia formally pulled out of World War I under Bolshevik leadership with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in early 1918. Originally the Germans had planned to establish puppet governments under the control of Baltic Germans (who owned most of the land), but obviously Versailles halted those plans. With the retreat of most German forces from the region, the Bolsheviks moved in in an attempted to reassert their claim to the lands that they had so recently surrendered, and thus the Baltic states became a part of the Russian Civil War. In general, the nationalists of these countries sided with the Whites (anti-communist forces), through not without some issues. Eventually, the Bolsheviks came to realize that holding on to the region was simply too difficult, thanks in large part to Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian troops using supplies from the Western Allies.\n\nPoland: Formed from territory of Germany, Russia, Austria, Hungary\n\nPoland emerged from the war with territory from all the major empires. Like its counterparts in the Balkans, it too was drawn into the Russian Civil War, during which Poland allied with the Whites. After initial success in Ukraine, the Poles were eventually beaten back by the Soviets, all the way to Warsaw. Fortunately for Poland, the Red Army was decisively defeated at Warsaw in August of 1920. The Polish government also got into a squabble with Lithuania over Vilnius, which it held throughout the inter-war period. The question would not be settled until 1939 when the Soviets returned Vilnius to Lithuania after they invaded Poland. Germany's borders with Poland were set in Article 27 of Versailles. It should be noted that the creation of the “Polish Corridor” between Germany and East Prussia was one of the main problems the Nazis had with the treaty.\n\nCzechoslovakia: Formed from territory of Austria, Hungary, and a little bit of Germany\n\nThe Czechs and Slovaks are two distinct ethnic groups, but after the Pittsburgh Agreement (yay, hometown!) leaders from both communities agreed on the formation of an independent Czechoslovakia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unlike the previous countries, Czechoslovakia was not involved in the Russian Civil War and its independence did not involve significant conflict beyond the First World War itself. Czechoslovakia was officially recognized with Saint-Germain.\n\nRomania: Romania's loyalty to the Allies earned them a sizable chunk from Hungary, as a result of Trianon. This eventually led to problems due to ethnic Hungarians being stuck in Romania. Hungary swiped some of their old territory back during WW2, but that was eventually returned, and it remains that way today.\n\nYugoslavia: I'm unfortunately not all that well-versed in what went on in Yugoslavia at the time. I can tell you that it was the culmination of the efforts of the Pan-Slavic movement, and that it included former territories of Austria-Hungary and Serbia, but that's about it. It was a monarchy, with a Serbian king.\n\nI just want to point out, that for all the crap Versailles gets for being harsh on the Germans, everyone seems to forget that Austria and Hungary were *gutted* by their treaties. Following WW1, both Austria and Hungary ceased to be major powers, and the industrial heartland of the empire, Bohemia, was now part of Czechoslovakia. \n\nI'm sorry if I've forgotten anything, but I think I got most of the points.\n\nDavies, Norman. *Europe: A History*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.\n\nDziewanowski, M. K.. *Russia in the Twentieth Century*. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/versailles_menu.asp", "http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp", "http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1920/3.html", "http://www.emersonkent.com/images/europe_1914.jpg", "http://www.johndclare.net/images/Versaillesmap_USHMMger71020.gif", "http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Treaty_of_Trianon", "http://www.emersonkent.com/images/europe_1919.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Dissolution_of_Austria-Hungary.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwpf1hd", "cwpjvza", "cwpjwpk" ], "score": [ 18, 4, 11 ], "text": [ "The Byzantines used Horse Archers as well as Cataphracts. They adapted their armies to be very Calvary based due to their fighting with the Sassanids.\n\nThat said horses were very expensive to buy and maintain and horse archers were not all that effective in the heavily wooded German regions. Horse archers need a lot of room to maneuver to be effective, so they were usually beaten when their amazing mobility could be restricted.\n\nTactics to reduce the mobility of horses and horse archers at least in the early medieval period would have been trenches dug that would be covered by the dust created by an army.", "A fairly good example of a battle won by medieval European armies against horses archers would be the battle of Dorylaeum (1097) fought by the armies of the first crusade against the Turks led by Kilij Arslan.\n\nThe battle was described in the Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (\"The deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem\"), whose author was a first-hand witness serving in the army of Bohemond of Taranto and is available here: _URL_0_\n\n\nThe vanguard of the crusader army was attacked by an important turkish force of horse archers. Taken by surprise, the crusaders were unable to engage the opponent skirmishers (although their heavy armors protected the knights from most arrows, their horses and less armoured foot soldiers were not as lucky), and Bohemond of Taranto had to organize a somewhat desperate defense. \n\nAs the day went on, the Turks became more agressive, trying to press their advantage in order to break their opponents morale. However, in doing so, they became vulnerable to a surprise attack: the rear guard of the first Crusade, led by Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy , made it into the battlefield at this moment and managed to close the gap with the bulk of the turkish force. \n\nIn melee combat, the average french or norman knight was extremely favoured against the lightly armoured horse archers. By outflanking the turkish troops, the crusaders won the battle and opened the road to Antioch. Proper use of terrain and the element of surprise were the key factors to most victories the first crusaders won against forces using large amounts of horse archers.\n\n\n\nSources: \n\n**Z.Oldenbourg**, *Les Croisades*, Gallimard, 1965, p 147-151\n\n**Louis Bréhier**, *Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum*, 1964. French translation.\n\n**R. C. Smail**, *Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193*, Cambridge University Press,‎ 1995", "In the Battle of Jaffa, during the 3rd Crusade, crossbowmen proved very effective against Saladin's horse archers.\n\nSaladin had taken the town of Jaffa from the Crusaders, but the citadel held out. Richard the Lionheart attacked the town from the sea and drove the Saracens out. \n\nSaladin then attempted a battle with his horse archers to retake the town. The clash between the two armies took place in the fields outside the walls of the town.\n\nRichard's army consisted of about 54 knights, a few hundred infantry armed with spears, and 2,000 Genoese crossbowmen.\n\nThe crossbows shot the horse archers to pieces. Saladin was said to have lost 700 men and 1500 horses. Crusader casualties were two men.\n\nIt was this victory which led to the peace which concluded the Third Crusade." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gesta-cde.asp#dory" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "czn1ol0", "czn3tus", "czn9gug" ], "score": [ 15, 7, 5 ], "text": [ "Not OP, but to qualify the question:\n\nAt least in the United States, teachers at early \"public\" schools seem to have been mostly male. At the very least, this is how 19th century writers like Hawthorne depicted their 18th-century ancestors. By the mid-19th century the \"schoolmarm\" stereotype appears in contemporary fiction by authors like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. \n\nYet my the late 20th century, there had developed a persistant sterotype that teaching, especially in primary schools, was a \"feminine\" profession.\n\nHow and why did this gendered understanding of teaching come to be in American cultural life?", "In [this](_URL_0_) article there is a table (Table 2) that shows the percentage of male teachers by decade (roughly). There is also a historical summary on page 4 which says it better than I can. However, here is the money quote:\n > Defining teaching as women’s work could be interpreted as a remarkably clever marketing tool used by educational reformers to meet the demand for teachers. The vacuum created by the exodus of men to the factory floor — complicated by the proliferation of new teaching positions — had to be filled by someone.", "Just to preface this, this is not a deep response crossing multiple countries. It looks only at the case of Australia. However, Australia's education system does (apparently) have similar trends to much of the western world/other OECD countries.\n\nFirstly, this would depend on country, what type of school we're talking about (primary/elementary vs. secondary) and subject (I won't be delving into subject as it gets even more complicated, but basically stem is still male dominated, languages/arts is female in secondary). For example, within Australia (where my data is from), female primary school teachers heavily outweigh male primary school teachers with a ratio of approximately 4:1, whilst for secondary schools, the gender balance is much more equal^1 . Another thing to note from that source is that even within the same state, there was up to an 8.4% difference in the number of male primary teachers, depending on location. Taking this into account, an actual answer to this can get a bit tricky.\n\nFrom the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1982 there were 2.4 female primary teachers to every male, which went up to 3.8 in 2002. Now, this isn't the most helpful in determining an answer in terms of primary school teachers, but does give guidance to at least pre-1982. What interesting information is given, however, is that in 1982, there were only 0.8 female secondary teachers, meaning males still dominated in this market, and in 2002, this had raised to 1.2. Assuming the rate had changed linearly, it would be assumed gender balance occurred around 1992 for secondary teachers^2 .\n\nFrom a QLD government publication, \"In 1969, females, for the first time since 1933, constituted a majority of the teaching force, and by 1983 the percentage of females employed (60 per cent) was approaching the highest ever (61 per cent) reached between 1918 and 1920.\"^3 So, it would seem women outnumbered men around 1918-1920, however, the tables turned and men again became the majority. It took ~49 years for women to take back the majority share. Again, showing the complexity of the issue and not just a simpler \"well, in *x* year!\" This document also goes further into depth about why this happened and whatnot.\n\n\nWhilst I haven't been able to 100% answer this question, and can only provide insight into one place, I hope this is of some help.\n\n\n\n1. _URL_0_ Note: although this is for NSW, the rest of Australia has very similar statistics.\n\n2. _URL_4_\n\n3. _URL_2_\n\n\nOf possible interest: \nThis World Bank site allows you to see the percentage of female primary teachers across all countries, with data from 1981-2015 (note: some data is missing). _URL_3_ \nThere is also this UNSECO one that allows you to look at female teacher percentage from 1999 onwards across a range of different educational settings, from pre-primary to tertiary. _URL_1_" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://ceep.indiana.edu/projects/PDF/PB_V6N4_Winter_2008_EPB.pdf" ], [ "https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/about-us/statistics-and-research/key-statistics-and-reports/staff-information/male-school-teachers.pdf", "http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=178", "http://education.qld.gov.au/library/docs/edhistory/female/female-1940.pdf", "http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS", "http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/459c3882fad473a2ca2570eb0083be84!OpenDocument" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ca94ud1", "ca952ux" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "If you mean going beyond the war itself you end up with decades of US soldiers being stationed in mainland Europe. Without Operation Overlord (DDay actually means the day on which a campaign starts and was not the name for the invasion of Europe) it's possible that the Soviets would have overrun a lot more of Europe than they did. \n\nSo Overlord meant that the Cold War was more stable due to both spheres of influence having control over segments of Europe where neither appeared to have one up on the other to any large degree enough to make war worth it.", "That's a good question. Part of me wants to say that it helped keep France out of the Soviet sphere of influence, but then again, there's no telling if Germany would've surrendered with the fall of Berlin. Resistance cells would've likely risen up and pushed the remaining troops out of France, given that Germany would've been able to pull more troops out of France to stem the tide of the Russians.\n\nIt's also possible that there would be two separate states, the \"Free France\" state and the Vichy State, because said resistance cells (now turned into a formal militia) may not have been able to overtake those French troops...I'm going to just stop here because this isn't /r/HistoricalWhatIf and there's no need for further speculation. \n\nTl;dr: We will never know because of the massive impact it had in \"saving\" BeNeLux, Denmark, and Italy; there are too many variables to take into account." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csrdt8g", "csrdyiq" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "What does advanced mean objectively? Or to you?\n", "Very hard to say. \n\nThere are significant gaps in almost all the celtic histories and entire cultural groups like the picts who we know almost nothing about. \n\nIn addition the few \"histories\" we do have like the tain and the book of invasions are so heavily mythologized that it's difficult to say what they were even based on. \n\nSorry this isn't more help - an archaeologist might be able to help more. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d0w5arg", "d0w5n2t" ], "score": [ 5, 3 ], "text": [ "Do you want first person accounts or the oldest accounts? I doubt those two are going to be the same.\n\nSome of the oldest sources will be saints' lives, usually written by biographers/hagiographers long after the saints were dead. See for example Adamnan's Life of St. Columba for Scotland: _URL_0_ ", "I am not completely certain in regard to personal accounts, but I know that the oldest Danish chronicler is Saxo Grammaticus who wrote Gesta Danorum during the reign of Valdemar the first. In regards to England, if that is considered Northern Europe, you might be interested in William of Malmesbury who wrote about William of Normandy and his sons in their time. One more you could be interested in would be Bede, the \"father of English history\" who wrote the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (one I know little about personally). Lastly you might be interested in the Icelandic Sagas such as Egils saga, but there really is a lot of them. \n\n\nThese are a few suggestions and there are plenty more, but what you exactly need is unclear to me in regard of exact place and time period. Moreover the 'first hand account' part is a little problematic since only few were able to write and read and therefore the chroniclers sometimes got the material for their stories from other scholars or chronicles. " ] }

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[ [ "http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/columba-e.asp" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cciost0" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "There is a strong connection, almost complete correspondence in fact, between religion and nationality in Bosnia (and Croatia, Serbia, etc.). Usually nations were defined not so much by what they have in common, as by how they are different than others. In this case, language couldn't be the differentiation factor, so religion took the role. \n\nHowever, neither Croat nor Serb nationalist recognized Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) as a nation, but considered them as islamicized Croats or Serbs. Adding them to either of the two nations would make that nation clearly a majority in Bosnia and Hercegovina. I don't know where is that wikipedia reference coming from, but the separation of nationhood and religion does not fit the time described. It would hardly fit today. Do you know the old joke about the Troubles in Ireland ending with \"Yeah, but are you a protestant atheist or catholic atheist\"? Change the denominations, and it fits perfectly. \n\nSo, Ustaše wanted a ethnically homogeneous state. Muslims were proclaimed to be Croats. But both Croatia proper and Bosnia and Hercegovina had large native Serbian population. Therefore Ustaše had an unofficial (not written down but consistently implemented) policy to expel one third of the Serbs, to kill one third and to convert one third. \n\nSoon all those came to their limitations. As both \"Independent State of Croatia\" (NDH) and Nedić's Serbia were German quisling states, expulsions into Serbia destabilized it, so Germans ordered Ustaše to stop it. And killing in NDH itself resulted in a determined resistance. Establishment of Croatian Orthodox church was an attempt to both pacify some Serbs, and more importantly for Ustaše to disconnect them from the common religious center. \n\nAs for conversions of Serbs from Orthodox to Catholic, it was by no means a guarantee of safety. Many were killed after conversion, and some of the most brutal atrocities (not by the number of victims, but by the method) were done in fact after an invitation to convert. For example in Glina, with significant Serb population, they were invited on two occasions to convert. First group was gathered in the Orthodox church in Glina, trucked to nearby woods and killed. Second group was closed in the church, that was than burned down. \n\nThe topic is still controversial in respect to the relations between Catholic church and Ustaše. Some claim that conversion were mostly done sort of with fingers crossed behind the back, just to save the people who would return to original religion after the war, and that clergy didn't seek benefit in that way from Ustaše regime. Undoubtedly there were some clergy who did so, even saying as much openly to Serbs and stating that Christians no matter the denomination, can't be christened again. But those were minority. Some claim on the other hand that church supported the Ustaše all out, and used an opportunity for a sort of Catholic crusade in Bosnia. Many did, especially among Bosnian Franciscans, but again not all. There are however examples of priest condoning, even personally leading the massacres. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dnjv6j4" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ " > How would they have travelled to Germany? \n\nPotentially by train; the Luftwaffe wanted to get prisoners to their Dulag Luft interrogation centre at Oberusel rapidly to extract information so captured airmen would often travel under guard on civilian trains. Around the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, though, when large numbers of Allied troops had been taken prisoner (about 40,000 British) a pilot might well have been in the columns of prisoners forced to march hundreds of miles towards Germany followed by transport in terrible conditions on overcrowded trains or barges (though officers didn't have it quite as bad as other ranks). After interrogation at Dulag Luft RAF prisoners would be moved on to one of the Stalag Luft camps.\n\n > Would they likely have survived, and stayed put in the camp for the duration of the war? \n\nProbably; relatively few British POWs died in captivity. There was some movement between camps as things were reorganised (e.g. Sergeant \"Dixie\" Deans was moved from Stalag Luft I to III to VI over the course of the war), and towards the end of the war extended marches as Allied and Soviet advances approached camps.\n\n > Were there any Allied rescue attempts, or many successful escapees?\n\nNot rescue attempts, there wasn't a safe way of freeing prisoners deep in enemy territory (a raid on Amiens Prison in 1944, Operation Jericho, killed around 100 prisoners and few managed to escape for good). There were escape attempts, though not many successes; less than 30 out of 10,000 Air Force prisoners escaped and made it to Britain or neutral territory according to Aidan Crawley's *Escape from Germany*. The best chance was in evading capture in the first place, then escaping during transit to a prison camp, it was much more difficult once behind wire. To take a couple of examples of pilots captured around the time of *Dunkirk* Wing Commander Basil Embry was shot down on May 27th 1940, but slipped away from the column of prisoners as he was marched towards Germany and, over two months, managed to make his way across France to Gibraltar and back to Britain. Squadron Leader Roger Bushell was shot down and captured on May 23rd just before the Dunkirk evacuation; he later masterminded perhaps the most famous of attempts, The Great Escape, in which 76 airmen tunneled out of Stalag Luft III. Only three made it to freedom, though, 73 were recaptured, and 50 of those including Bushell himself were murdered.\n\nStories of camp life, particularly escape attempts and focused on Colditz Castle, Oflag IVC, became rather popular in 1950s Britain. *The Colditz Myth : British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany* by S. P. MacKenzie takes a wider view, pointing out that perhaps only 5% of POWs were really fanatical about escaping, though larger numbers were involved in supporting escape attempts. It's very accessible, and a good overview of the situation as a whole.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cd5rtit" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I don't really know about any internal rebellions against the Imperial system, rather than an individual emperor, but I'll try to answer your question. (Note that I'm in no way a historian.)\n\nRome was first ruled by Kings. Romulus is fabled to have founded Rome and was her first King. It had several kings until [Tarquinius Superbus](_URL_2_) got exciled and Rome turned into a Republic. In this case you could say it was against a system in which one man held power (though a King, rather than emperor). \n\nAt the end of the Republic, it became clear that the current system could no longer reign in the ambitions of several men, including Gaius Julius Caesar. He got murdered for, well, being a dictator and destroying the Republic. Again, this was done in fear of Caesar keeping all the power, so they plotters definitely would have objected to an Imperial system that emerged a bit later.\n\n\nAfter Caesar, there was a civil war, after which Augustus came to power as the first emperor. He ruled for 40 years and the Republic wasn't functioning quite well beforehand, so after his death, there weren't a lot of people who remembered the glory-days of the Republic and who had lived most of their lives in the [Pax Augusta](_URL_3_), whereas the last days of the Republic were those of continuous civil war. I doubt many *wanted* back to those days. Since Tiberius (Augustus successor) was doing okay and the transition between Augustus and Tiberius was smooth, few objected to him either. Nero, though, is a very different story.\n\n\n\nBesides, we must realize that being emperor must appeal to a lot of ambitious men, so most wouldn't have objected against the institution, rather the current emperor. So I don't think a substantial group wanted to move back to the old system, where they would have to share power with another consul, and could only be a consul for 1 year. There are, however, some important notes I have to make on this:\n\n* The Christians were prosecuted at first for not recognizing the divinity of the emperor. I don't think they really objected to having an emperor or a single ruler per se, especially since they had no problems with the emperors whatsoever once they turned Christian. \n* The Roman Empire was once split into two and ruled by four people: a [Tetrarchy](_URL_1_). Again, not really against the imperial system, as Diocletian (emperor who installed it) simply realized the empire had become to big and complicated for one man to rule. \n\nThere have been a lot of revolts against emperors in the Imperial period, but most simply resulted in a new emperor who was a bit more careful in keeping the people happy. These were not really revolts from recently conquered people, but really the people within the Roman Empire, and especially the people in Rome, as they would notice first when an Emperor was becoming too tyrannical. \nIf you want to know more about the revolts against all the emperors (or which emperors were actually really loved by their subjects) I recommend reading Fik Meijer's [Emperors don't die in bed](_URL_0_). " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emperors-Dont-Die-Bed-Meijer/dp/0415312027/ref=la_B001HCVZ9U_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383493663&amp;sr=1-2", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Tarquinius_Superbus", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Romana" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c83jsu4", "c83m804" ], "score": [ 14, 11 ], "text": [ "Well, to be fair, the terms \"gladiator\" and \"soldier\" are really meaningless terms and describe a very wide variety of persons. For instance, the majority of \"gladiators\" if we are referring to people that fought in the gladiator games, were just slaves that were sold to whomever happened to be putting on the festivities; ergo, given equivalent equipment, they would likely lose in a duel with a trained soldier. On the other hand, the term “soldier” can also refer to a broad spectrum ranging from the members of the Praetorian Guard down to, again, conscripts that were little more than slaves.\n\nNow to answer the question in the way that I assume that you intended it, yes the gladiators portrayed in the series, highly unrealistic as they are, would likely be able to outmatch the average legionnaire. Bear in mind that Spartacus was an actual historical figure that fought in the Third Servile War in which they actually did fight Roman legion troops and stood their ground for a few battles. On the other hand, no they were not like super-soldiers and the show can be thought of as akin to the film, 300 in terms of historicity; in that, while based on historical events, the actual historical versions of the persons portrayed did not kill hundreds of people single-handedly. Hope that answers your question!\n\nEDIT: syntax\n", "There is some evidence to suggest that gladiators and soldiers trained in very similar ways using similar equipment (JCN Coulston wrote an article comparing the two if you're interested). The primary difference was that gladiators were trained only in single combat whereas military training went further to emphasize fighting in groups. As BeneonTrotsky notes Spartacus was a historical figure who was a key part of a slave revolt. Appian describes the Roman initial attitude toward the rebellion as minor annoyance and severely underestimates the viability of Spartacus and his band as a viable fighting force. As a result, the initial group of untrained Roman conscripts sent to put down the revolt is routed. It would eventually take the use of 8 well trained Roman legions to stop Spartacus. From this, we can conclude that a well trained gladiator existed somewhere between an untrained conscript and a battle tested legionnaire on the hierarchy of military skill. That, in times of need gladiators were sometimes used to train green recruits should further strengthen this notion (ex Rutilius Rufus in 105 BC). Hopes this answers your question, let me know if you have any others (I wrote my senior thesis on the relationship between the gladiatorial games and the roman military) " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "di3cxst" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "Hi, not to discourage further discussion, but you may be interested in this answer from a past question that deals directly with your question! \n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bj4nm/were_people_punished_to_time_in_the_stockspillory/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "en5u05x" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "I don't see how the sale of commissions could be related to the decline of British military power: purchase of commissions was abolished in 1871 by William Gladstone's Liberal government under the Cardwell Reforms, largely as a response to the debacles of the Crimean War (in particular the Charge of the Light Brigade). The British Empire didn't reach its territorial peak until 1921, and militarily it was arguably at its strongest in 1918.\n\nPrior to the abolition of purchase, the assumption was that a \"gentleman\" of proper education and birth would be fit to lead troops without much additional training: though the Royal Military Colleges at Sandhurst and Woolwich already existed, attendance at Sandhurst was optional and Woolwich was more of a technical college for the Artillery and Engineers. This expectation was not entirely unfounded: cowardice could easily lead to social disgrace, and so most gentlemen officers demonstrated extraordinary bravery on the battlefield. High officer casualties during the Napoleonic Wars discouraged true incompetents and dilettantes from purchasing commissions.\n\nThe real rot set in during the long peace after 1815: as the British Empire grew, so did the Army (peaking at 109 infantry regiments, plus the Brigade of Guards and Rifle Brigade, and 31 regiments of cavalry), and with it the numbers of officers required to lead. Purchase had originally been designed to ensure politically-reliable officers, i.e., moneyed men who had an interest in defending the status quo and would not lead the Army in revolution. However, as the Army grew, it became increasingly difficult for the Military Secretary to vet potential applicants, and so instead, the technically-illegal practice of selling commissions for higher than their paper value was tolerated. Officers' pay was also allowed to stagnate, while \"smart\" regiments like the Cavalry and Guards squeezed out the less-wealthy by requiring huge numbers of extravagantly-tailored uniforms, sometimes changing the uniform pattern twice a year or more. The effect was that as the Army's social prestige grew, with royals lending their patronage to regiments, all-but the upper class was priced out and the officer corps was largely restricted to those with a private income from land or business.\n\nEven at the nadir of the purchase system, the Crimean War, it was not entirely ineffective: it is easily forgotten that the Earl of Cardigan actually led the Charge of the Light Brigade from the front and never looked back, reaching the Russian guns and surviving the fight. However, what Cardigan did next was emblematic of many of the problems the British Army experienced with its officer corps: after the charge, he went back to his yacht moored in Balaclava harbour and enjoyed a champagne dinner. For all their bravery and however well-intentioned they may be, the man-management skills of British officers were appalling, and many spent the winter in the fleet offshore while their men froze on the Crimean Peninsula. Purchase died a death soon afterwards and was replaced by compulsory attendance at Sandhurst with a rigorous entrance exam.\n\nRather amusingly, Gladstone's abolition of purchase was not, as commonly thought, to open the officer corps to young men of the middle classes. It was because the younger sons of wealthy middle class families that had come up from trade and industry were now able to afford commissions and were pricing out the gentry. The abolition of purchase gave men from \"traditional\" military backgrounds the chance to compete with the newcomers.\n\nSources:\n\nRichard Holmes, *Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket*\n\nRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst, *The Queen's Commission: A Junior Officer's Guide*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck62v1g" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I can not answer for the Jesus of Christianity, /u/husky54 or /u/koine_lingua might be able to help with that part and their answers should (hopefully) at least to some degree correspond with what I can tell you about the historical Jesus. \n\nJesus is usually said to have been a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, this is however not entirely correct. Jesus was actually the son of a τέκτων(tekton) (Mathew 13:55, Mark 6:3 etc). A tekton *can* be a carpenter but he doesn't have to be. The root word for tekton is the same one that words like technology, technician etc comes from and usually includes a broader range of craftsman that might, for lack of a better word, have been considered the engineers of the ancient world. Professions usually included in the word tekton are things like builders, masons, carpenters, metal workers etc. In either case, Jesus and Joseph were considered skilled craftsmen. \n\nSo what does that mean in the region at the time? Well, truth be told we can't even say for certain that Nazareth existed at the time, we do however know a little bit about the surrounding area. Nazareth was not far from Sepphoris, a significant town at the time. Right around the time of Jesus birth, Sepphoris had a bit of a misunderstanding with Roman authority and the town was destroyed (how is a little unclear, Josephus says it was burnt down but that is probably not true as archeological evidence does not support it). What we do know is that the town was rebuilt and that this was done in a time when skilled craftsmen were relatively rare in the region. These two pieces, when put together, means that Joseph was probably not poor. Work for a tekton would have been relatively abundant, even more so with the reconstruction of Sepphoris going on only an hours walk away.\n\nWas Joseph, and through him Jesus, poor? Historically speaking, no, probably not. \n\n\n*Jesus the Galilean: soundings in a first century life* - David A. Fiensy\n\n*Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence* - Jonathan L. Reed \n\n*The Archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine* - Ariel Lewin" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csr6kia" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "This is truly an excellent question. One that could actually take pages and chapters to answer (which many have done and I will cite below) but I will do my best to try and help answer it briefly. I have also answered similar questions to this in the past, so I hope you don’t mind if I copy and paste some of my past answers into this thread and just prune it to answer your question.\n\nRight off the back, it can be safely argued that Jesus was pretty unpopular around the time of his death (which we can safely argue was probably around the year 30, plus/minus 5 years) but he would have had to have had at least a somewhat sizeable number of people for his teachings to gain followers. Why do we know that? Well there are a few things that make us think this way.\n\nFirst, the first person to start writing about Jesus was Paul, who started writing sometime around the year 50. Now it’s important to recognize that Paul never met Jesus while he was alive, so he never writes about many things Jesus did or said. Historian Bart Ehrman actually wrote about this in his book last year: [How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee](_URL_2_) Where in it, Ehrman explains:\n\n > The problems with Paul are that he didn’t actually know Jesus personally and that he doesn’t tell us very much about Jesus’s teachings, activities, or experiences. I sometimes give my students an assignment to read through all of Paul’s writings and list everything Paul indicates Jesus said and did. My students are surprised to find that they don’t even need a three-by-five card to list them. — (Page 88).\n\nIt is important to note that it is widely believed that other Christians had started writing about Jesus prior to this period, but that their work no longer exists.\n\nSo why do I mention this about Paul? Well, it’s because it shows that Jesus’ followers had started to pick up by this time period (20 years after his death). It also shows that by the time Paul started writing, there had to have been a sizable and somewhat diverse group of people who started following Jesus’ message. The writings of Paul are quite well-written (for their time) and the Gospells (which would be written in the following few decades) are even more professionally written for their time (Mark being the least well-written and Luke being the best). This does suggest that in order to get a sizable amount of well-educated people to write down these stories, regardless of their errors, there had to have been a decent size following or their population would have faded away (like many other cults during this time period.)\n\nI will say though, that his followings couldn’t have been too large. I argue this because there isn't a whole lot about Jesus written by non-Jewish/non-Christians (I use this last term loosely when applying it to the first century CE) prior to the second century. As some people may note, the first person to write about Jesus and his followers who was **not a Jesus follower** was the Jewish historian Josephus, who would only briefly mention Jesus in his twenty plus volume history of the Jewish people called The Antiquities of the Jews. Here Josephus discussed the execution of a man named James, whom Josephus described as “the brother of Jesus who is called the messiah” (Ant. 20.9.1) (I’d also like to note that Josephus never believed in Jesus being the Messiah, he was merely stating what others had said). He does also discuss Jesus again, but I won’t bore you with ancient quotes that would take me far too long put into context.\n\nLong story short: Followers of Jesus would have had to have had a decent number behind them by the time Josephus left the Levant (area near present day Israel) in order for him to have mentioned them at all, but due to the fact that he barely says more than a paragraph about him in all his writings suggest that Christianity (as it would soon be called) was not too popular. \n\nTL;DR: It’s likely that Jesus was not too well-known at the time of his death (the average Jewish peasant was unlike to have heard of him had they not lived un Judea), but his following would have had to have been sizeable enough to spread the stories of his life by oral tradition in order to gain such a noticeable following by the second half of the first century CE. It’s also worth reading John Dominic Crossan’s book: [The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant ](_URL_1_) to gain more information about this very topic. \n\n\n**EDIT to add one more source** Another great book that actually deals with the very people we are talking about (early Christians in the immediate aftermath of Jesus' death) was done by an excellent historian named John Dominic Crossan, who wrote a book called: [The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus](_URL_0_) . This is definitely worth a read for anyone who is interested in this topic. I'm ashamed I didn't remember it earlier. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Christianity-Discovering-Immediately-Execution/dp/0060616601/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=&amp;qid=", "http://www.amazon.com/The-Historical-Jesus-Mediterranean-Peasant/dp/0060616296", "http://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation/dp/0061778192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1435944758&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+did+jesus+become+god" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d56moy1" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "Hi there! The thing to keep in mind about your question is that, properly used, the term \"Viking\" refers to an *occupation*, not an ethnic group or proto-nation or whatever. That is, \"vikings\" were people who participated in viking activity: seafaring raiding, banditry and piracy along the coasts and even far inland in Europe during the \"viking age.\" The term in English has been used more loosely to denote the group of people who produced viking raiders, that is the Norse population of Scandinavia, since the mid-18th century, gaining popularity in connection with the various Scandinavian nationalist movements of the 19th century. So asking how \"Vikings\" were built is a bit like asking how, for example US Marines are built -- they are people who self-selected for a military or militaristic lifestyle. \n\nThat said, as you await more answers, some of these older questions/answers might be relevant to you. \n\n[How \"big\" was the average Viking warrior? How would they compare to average people today? What about Roman or Spartan warriors?](_URL_2_)\n\n[Very interested in an Historian's perspective on an Icelandic myth, and if one of you could comment on whether or not it was possible for humans 1000 years ago to compete with the competitive strongmen of today](_URL_0_)\n\n\n[How strong/muscular were ancient warriors? Did they know enough about muscle growth to be the same build as many athletes/bodybuilders now? When did humans start becoming adept at bodybuilding?](_URL_1_?)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uq6ly/very_interested_in_an_historians_perspective_on/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1huqtq/how_strongmuscular_were_ancient_warriors_did_they/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2qexcq/how_big_was_the_average_viking_warrior_how_would/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cca8vdh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "You may be interested in some of the past questions collected in our section on [How were other minorities treated during the period of racial segregation in America?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/us_history#wiki_how_were_other_minorities_treated_during_the_period_of_racial_segregation_in_america.3F" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dhpl9uy" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "You might find [this post](_URL_0_) I made a few weeks ago useful. To expand on it, I do think there's too much distinction made between heavy and light cavalry within a western European context, and indeed between infantry and cavalry. Reality was messier than that. \n\nLet's start with a brief primer on what John Gillingham calls Vegetian warfare. Medieval military thinkers, probably influenced by the late Roman writer Vegetius, generally tried to avoid risky pitched battles. A wholly defeated army was at best very difficult to replace, and at worst an irrecoverable catastrophe. Nor did they generally aim to wholly defeat their opponents, in the way Clausewitz would understand it. Instead, medieval rulers fought limited wars with limited forces and the goal of minimizing risk. \n\nThis meant, essentially, positional warfare, built around holding - and contesting - key fortified points which both controlled the countryside and served as bases for offensive action. In order to weaken these fortifications, medieval rulers struck at the land. When a raiding party burned and plundered, it struck its opponent twice, weakening him economically and harming his reputation. Depending on the stakes, this might be enough to resolve the conflict. When, or if, the time came to strike directly at a fortification, further plundering (euphemistically foraging) supported the army on the march, which with few exceptions was dependent on mass theft to stay in the field. In this situation, the defender would take advantage of his better logistics, keep his force concentrated, and try to drive in the foraging parties; if the invading army couldn't pillage, it had to retreat or give battle.\n\nSo, this is the small beer of medieval warfare: an awful lot of raiding and skirmishing. In this context, mounted soldiers, regardless of their skill as cavalry, had an advantage in mobility over any infantrymen. A *lot* of what are commonly called light cavalry were basically just mounted infantry who expected to dismount to fight. And, indeed, knights and men at arms were not averse to fighting on their own two legs. Regardless of how horsemen fought, they could get where they needed to be quicker and in better shape than walking men.\n\nLet me reiterate that knights and later men at arms were not limited to fighting in any one particular style. They did not depend on the couched lance charge to secure victory - full stop. All indications are they took a full and active part in the \"irregular\" warfare that dominated in the Middle Ages. My personal opinion is that the heavy horsemen probably occupied a reserve role, standing by and waiting for an enemy force to sortie against the raid." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66o74v/how_did_a_medieval_european_raid_work/dgkd3bb/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgehf6m" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I wrote this historical analysis of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flags if that will help:\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.dropbox.com/s/70hdem5w4h7gzo7/Analysis%20of%20Assassins%20Creed%204%2C%20Black%20Flag.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djco8jy" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "There is always more to be said, but you may be interested in this answer by /u/iphikrates:\n\n[Did the people in the front lines of ancient armies basically know they are going to die?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/48pumt/did_the_people_in_the_front_lines_of_ancient/d0ly1na/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "co9xln1" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The concept that it's just a lease appears to have originated as a plot element in the novel A Matter of Honour by Jefffrey Archer.\n\nThis theory has no basis in reality and the Alaska purchase of 1867 was just that - a purchase." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmh6sih" ], "score": [ 95 ], "text": [ "Adapted from an old answer of mine:\n\nThe influence of Michael Collins and the pre-Irish Civil War IRA on post-1920s guerrilla campaigns is low and reached its peak in the late 1940s. Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the Stern gang (or more officially, Lehi) and Vladimir Jabotinsky (who founded Irgun) were both influenced by Michael Collins in their campaigns against the British. However, this made perfect sense for Shamir and Jabotinsky (and, without any solid confirmation, Menachem Begin) since he too was fighting a war of anti-British colonialism. Shamir and Jabotinsky are not the only examples. Subhas Chandra Bose urged his followers to study the IRA. Irish texts were even translated into Burmese during the 1930s and were read by men like Ba Maw.\n\nThe truth of the matter is that there was nothing that particularly special or groundbreaking about the campaign carried out by the IRA. Collins himself was a student of and clearly influenced by the Boer commandos during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and in particularly of the Boer general Christiaan de Wet, which he based the IRA flying columns on. There are some who claim that he 'invented' urban guerrilla warfare, overlooking the fact that theories had been printed on this since the late 19th century. The main reason for his influence, as we can see above, is that he fought a relatively successful guerrilla war against the British and was involved in anti-British activities. This clearly brought him and his methods to the attention of those also looking to combat the British, but certainly not all of them. It is interesting to note that the guerrilla campaigns during the Irish War of Independence also influenced the creation of the Special Operation Executive during WWII, which makes sense since this would have been the most accessible and recent guerrilla warfare campaign to be studied by the British. \n\nBy the 1950s, his influence appears to have vanished as insurgents the world over searched for and adapted to new theories. These theories, ranging from Mao Zedong's theory on guerilla warfare to the Guevara Foco theory, were only the basics for insurgents who adapted their strategies to a world of mass media and international discourses that the IRA of the late 1910s and early 1920s wouldn't have been able to predict." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctcl6io", "ctcu3tt", "ctcv03x", "ctda6yq" ], "score": [ 9, 2, 4, 4 ], "text": [ "Judicial duels in Russia known for a long time. According said the Arab writers, X century Amin Razi and Mukaddezi depicting tradition Russes, \"when the king decides to dispute between two litigants, and they remain unhappy with his decision, then he says to them sort it out with their swords - whose sharp, that and win.\" The Slavs duel was called \"field\".\n\nThe first mention of the field in the Russian sources refer to XI-XII century. According to one version of the chronicle evidence of war sometimes, resolved single combat of two elected from different parties. The competition is going to mean both enemy armies. Outcome it was taken to be an immutable verdict of the divine will, which is equal to obeyed and those on whose share remained victory, and those that had to has pleaded convicted.\n\n", "In Japan, never. Possibly before the Muromachi period, but I've never seen any account of it happening. Duels happened, but something where 'champions' were sent out from rival armies to settle a large scale conflict (we're talking tens of thousands of soldiers on each side), never. It would have been a huge gamble to take, especially during the Sengoku period, where you had so many soldiers on each side - remember as well that, during this period of civil conflict, daimyo were raising armies from peasant conscripts, so a justification to save many lives just wasn't logical. \n\nIt could be possible that minor conflicts, such as small land disputes between small retainers, could be resolved (should the ruling daimyo wish) by a duel, though these duels would have been relegated to non-lethal fights.", "I'm not a historian by any means, but there is an example from Livy that I read while studying Latin about a battle between Rome and Alba Longa where this occurred. According to Livy, the Horatii (Rome) and the Curiatii (Alba Longa) were sent forth, each a set of triplets, to battle each other to decide the outcome of the battle. There might be a classicist here that can give you some better background, but here's a link to a translation of Livy. I hope that's helpful!\n\n_URL_0_", "I believe in Ancient Greece, Sparta and Argos were at war and instead of going to a full blown war they each sent 100 champions to fight it out and decide the outcome. At the end, 2 champions from Argos left the field thinking all the Spartans were dead. However some of them were only wounded and on these grounds Sparta contested Argos' claimed victory. So then they went to all out war anyway." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Liv.%201.24&amp;lang=original" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cuakxpr", "cuaoqlz", "cuaphbj", "cuapxt8", "cuavurq", "cuazzcd", "cubhu23" ], "score": [ 358, 283, 112, 10, 8, 4, 3 ], "text": [ "I can't speak to Finland and Sweden, but in Ireland, English was pretty heavily enforced as a language by the British colonists. Irish was prohibited in British National Schools, and the famines hit the rural areas, where Irish was a majority language, much harder than urban areas where English was more popular. There's also the fact that English naturally presented more opportunities as a high-esteem language. \n\nReligion pretty much was adopted from Britain in Ireland. Roman Catholics brought it over in the 5th century. The English reformation was just much harder to enforce later on, as Catholicism had become a large part of the Irish identity. It's much harder to convert people when they don't speak your language, and while many English speakers in Dublin (and obviously Ulster) were Protestants, Irish speakers remained Catholic. \n\nDaniel O'Connell is a pretty famous Irish historical figure who championed Catholic Emancipation during the 19th century. He founded the Catholic Association which campaigned for and succeeded in getting the Catholic Relief Act passed in 1829. The act allowed Roman Catholics to sit in Westminster and generally signalled the turn of public opinion against the persecution of Catholics in previous centuries. ", "As a Finn, I am going to have to point out that we did in fact adopt the swedish language. Of course, the common peasant would still speak finnish, but the language used in government, legislation and such was exclusively swedish for several hundred years. To this day it remains by law our second domestic language, which means every child has to learn it in school and all government services have to also be available in swedish. Even today over 5% of the population of Finland (mostly on the southwest coast) speak swedish as their primary language. \n\nAlso, any attempts from Sweden to further solidify their language's position in Finland were thwarted in 1809 when what is today Finland was taken over by the Russian Empire. They in turn later attempted to assimilate Finland and force Finland to adopt their language and religion, but these attempts weren't very effective, in no small part because at that time Russia was already heading into the October revolution.", "Michael C. Coleman examines this very question in an article titled \"‘You Might All Be Speaking Swedish Today’: language change in 19th century Finland and Ireland\" in the Scandinavian Journal of History.\n\nIn it, he makes the case that these two factors are indeed linked. A central idea in Lutheranism is that everyone should be able to read the Bible, and in the Swedish Realm, the clergy would routinely inspect that their parishioners were able to read the Bible. He notes that thanks to the religious literature widely available in Finnish, even ordinary peasants were able to read in Finnish by the 18th century, although Swedish had the status of the language of the elite, of the bureaucracy, and of higher education.\n\nHe contrasts this situation to Ireland where the language used for Catholic liturgy was Latin. Although half of the island's population spoke Irish by the beginning of the 19th century, only a very small percentage of the speakers were literate in it. The national schools that were established in Ireland to teach the peasants only taught in English, which was also crucial for literature in Irish never becoming widespread. When Irish nationalist movements arose, even they would use English to publish their views.\n\nFinnish-language literature and newspapers on the other hand played important roles in spreading the ideas of the Fennoman movement that tried to elevate the position of Finnish from a \"language of the peasants\" to a language of higher learning. The 1835 publication of \"Kalevala\" in Finnish is regarded as an important milestone in firmly establishing Finnish as part of the Finnish cultural identity. The movement was successful, and by the time of Finland's independence, Finnish had supplanted Swedish as the dominant language in higher learning.", "The relationship between Sweden and Finland has its roots in the Christianization of Northern Europe during the 12th century. As the Kingdom of Sweden began to form a distinct common cultural identity, the early Swedish kings embarked on a number of regional conquests ostensibly in the name of a crusade. By the late 14th century, Finland had become entrenched in the Swedish Realm with its own nobility, representation and government. After the fall of the Kalmar Union under Gustav Vasa, Finland began to drift closer to Sweden by mirroring its cultural and religious practices.\n\nThe real change in culture came during the Finnish War of 1809 when Gustav IV was forced to cede Finland to Alexander I of Russia. Alexander I used Finland as a testing ground of sorts and called the Diet of Porvoo in order to summon the Finns to pledge their allegiance. At Porvoo, Alexander I promised to allow the Finns the right to worship freely thereby resulting in a Lutheran Finland.\n\nAfter the annexation of Finland into Russia, the language of administration became German in an attempt to culturally shift Finland away from Sweden and to avoid using the language of their enemy. Translators were soon employed and the number of Russian civil servants grew as St. Petersburg tried to consolidate its conquest. Since German wasn't the local tongue and Russian too hard to teach in such a short time, the administration eventually decided to encourage the use of Finnish -- then a peasant language -- throughout the country. Finnish was therefore arguably revived and standardized in Finland while the religion of the people remained the same.\n\nEdit: For a source, please see this post [here.](_URL_0_)", "One major difference that shouldn't be overlooked is that Christianity was introduced to Ireland already in the 5th century, whereas in Finland the earliest Christian items can be placed to the 9th century from grave sites at that time and on historical records it can be said to have been introduced earliest at the 11th century.\n\nFrom this it could be said that Ireland didn't adopt Anglican Protestantism because Catholicism already had strong roots, whereas the time period of Catholicism being the major religion in the whole of Finland was relatively short as Kingdom of Sweden ruled only the Southern parts of Finland. Most of the Northern Finland wasn't part of the Swedish rule, for instance Northern Karelia started to have significant habitation only in the 16th century and by that time Sweden also became Lutheran.\n\nBeing the one of the last countries Continental Europe to be converted into Christianity old pre-Christian religious habits in Finland were difficult to get rid of completely. Pagan beliefs and rites in one form or another remained relatively strong in one form or another still in the 16th century during and after Lutheran reform, Mikael Agricola the Bishop of Turku publishing a list of pagan deities the people in Häme and Karelia still worshiped at that time.\n\nSo in one way, Finland didn't exactly adopt the religion of Sweden or the language, both were practiced more by the Swedish people who had settled into Southern Finland, but as both belonged to the customs of the ruling class, they were learned to a degree. Even still, religious practices were partially only paid lip-service, and the majority of the common people never adopted the language enough to forget Finnish.", "England too was Catholic when it took over Ireland. Irish missionaries had even been engaged in restoring Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England centuries before. So some northern parts of England adopted the religion of Ireland while the south took its lead directly from Rome. ", "Not sure if anyone has noted this or not but the English outlawed the Irish language which certainly didn't help the native tongue. In the Western parts of Ireland one can find areas where it is used almost exclusively. \n\nSorry if I'm late to the party." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3htwvq/how_come_ireland_adopted_the_language_of_england/cuhpyko" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4httab" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Hi, not discouraging other contributions here, but you might be interested in some earlier answers\n\n* /u/xRathke provides an overview of medical thought in [What did pre-germ theory people think was going on when a cut got infected?](_URL_2_)\n\n\n* /u/staples11 in [During the buccaneering era of piracy (1650-1680), was pistol use commonplace for pirates? If one was shot during a seabattle, could the ship surgeon really do much to heal you back to full health after, or would you generally be considered a goner?](_URL_0_)\n\n\n* /u/jhd3nm steps through later advances in battlefield treatment in [US Military History: I made it back alive, but I've been shot in the thigh. What sort of medical attention do I receive and what are my chances for survival in 1862, 1917, 1944, 1968, and 1991?](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vrgav/during_the_buccaneering_era_of_piracy_16501680/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eau3f/us_military_history_i_made_it_back_alive_but_ive/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/885svl/what_did_pregerm_theory_people_think_was_going_on/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dkpu958" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "Whale oil itself will not mold or rot and even is fairly resistant to rancidity (more so even than most vegetable oils). This shouldn't be too surprising as it exists naturally in large volumes inside the whale and if it required a lot of upkeep or immune activity to maintain it would be very biologically costly. Typically a whaling vessel would process whales not long after they were killed and either extract the oil (from sperm wales) or butcher the whale and render the blubber into oil where it was then stored in a vessel in the ship. For blue whales the whalebone was kept as well as the oil, otherwise the rest of the carcass was left abandoned. One of the major selling points of whale oil was precisely its incredible stability in a variety of temperatures and its resistance to spoilage.\n\nFor other kinds of organic products from other sources the typical methods of preservation were used: salting, drying, and curing meat; use of stable foods like olive oil and honey; use of fermented or preserved foods like cheese, wine, dried fruits, etc." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7fgc5a", "c7fh5pz", "c7fh9p8" ], "score": [ 7, 8, 3 ], "text": [ "Editing to not be an asshole to the OP. \n\nYou noted that he was perceived as incompetent. His competency or lack thereof is difficult to gauge from outside historical context. What we do know is the result of his reign. The Russian Empire and Monarchy collapsed under his management. Despite the fact that he saw the British and American systems at work, he never entertained the notion to transfer governance to his subjects, but he did not plunge himself into work either. Another of his biggest failures was failing to understand how he and his rule are perceived by his people, and failing to manage these perceptions. \n\nA horrible stampede occurred during his coronation and related festivities. The coronation festivities for the people took place in a field in Moscow. Massive crowds gathered for the free food and drink, without enough police for crowd control. A stampede occurred, killing about 2000 people. Nicholas was scheduled to attend a diplomatic dinner. Back to failing to gauge and manage perceptions, he did attend the dinner instead of publicly mourning the stampede (he did spend time visiting the victims and the Crown took care of the families, but it was not enough). So, not a good way to start off your reign. \n\nThe next big failure was the Russo-Japanese war. Russia was the first Western Power to be defeated by an Asian power in some time, which greatly reduced the international standing of Russia and negatively impacted the image of the Emperor at home. Also, the nearly complete loss of the Baltic Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima completely destroyed any prestige of the Russian Navy and severely hampered any force projection that the Russian Empire had. \n\nDuring the war, there was unrest at home. On Sunday, January 22 1905, a peaceful demonstration to petition the Emperor at his palace was fired upon by the Imperial Guards. Depending on estimates there were around a 1000 casualties. Again, not something that resulted from Nicholas's policies of governance, but something that was blamed on him. The resulting social unrest and the military failures forced Nicholas to seek peace with Japan. \n\nDuring all this, nationwide unrest and violence are taking place. This became known as the Revolution of 1905. The results were a constitution and a sort of a representative government, while Nicholas retained absolute veto power and control of all military matters. So, he gave up some power, but not enough to be absolved of blame for governance and domestic problems. He was still on the hook for anything that went wrong. \n\nAnd finally, we come to World War I, which was disastrous for Russia. No need for me to go into the gory details, but the war resulted in food shortages and inflation of the Russian currency, while the social issues that were not resolved by the changes in 1905 continues to fester. The government weakened further while support for the various revolutionary factions grew. Nicholas went off to the front to nominally manage the war effort, but it didn't help. And then the collapse happened in March of 1917, when the provisional government assumed power and Nicholas abdicated. A few months later, in November, because the provisional government was determined to continue the war effort, the Bolsheviks managed to overthrow the provisional government. \n\nNicholas and his family were executed about a year later. \n", "Like most topics in history, its a multi-faceted issue:\n\nAs /u/RyanGlavin stated below, he was seen as an incompetent military ruler. Not only was there the debacle with the Russo-Japanese war, but there was also his insistence to join the war effort personally as grand marshal of the troops.This was a horrible idea for two reasons: first, good ol' Nick was lacking as a strategist. Secondly, but arguably more importantly, by joining the war effort, he made himself personally responsible for the outcome of battles. Whereas other heads of state could simply scapegoat generals for the failures of a war, Nicolas II was now liable for every set back.\n\nAlso, there is the private nature of his lifestyle. Whereas other monarchs understood that one of the many roles as head of state was to fraternize with the public, Tsar Nic and his wife the Grand Duchess Alexandra led very private lives. The heir to the throne was extremely sick with hemophilia and yet the Tsarist family tried their best to hide this issue.\n\nHowever, this is not to say that there havent been incompetent rulers in Russia`s past at all.. Monarchist Russia has survived poor rulers before. However, the case with Tsar Nicolas II is one that is a bad mix of a incompetent ruler, poor advisers and a time of turmoil and anxiety where Russia needed neither of the above two..", "There is an extensive amount of research and historians opinions out there on this subject, one of the biggest reasons was that he took command of the Imperial Army in the first world war as it was getting battered to improve the moral of his men, it did not work and many blamed him for the military failures. His wife was left in charge, she was a German and was not trusted by the people. Other than that you are going to have to research it, I did this question for my A levels and sounds suspiciously like an essay question." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgq6c1f" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I would say Chile's geographic isolation had a key role. Have a desert in the north and a frozen wasteland to the south tends to place the heart of the populace in the center. That eliminates the problem of regionalism that other countries at the time had. Chile never really had a caudillo problem because of that too. That allowed a more \"conservative\" regime to have more control by the 1830s and for decades afterward. Argentina was one of the more wealthy colonies, Chile never shined 'til after independence, so less attention was placed on them during the colonial times. \n\nI'm not sure what you mean by an \"inferiority complex\" though?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dse3uat", "dse4hsf", "dsea2bq" ], "score": [ 52, 29, 18 ], "text": [ "The development and testing of the m16 is one fraught with bureaucracy and was generally mishandled by people who either: 1) had little experience with small arms design (ie generals) and 2)Those that simply wanted a rifle similar to the m1 garand with full power rifle ammo. Much of this story goes back to the initial trials and the formation of NATO. The idea was that this newly formed cooperative military organization would have a standard rifle with standard ammo for all nations involved. Many were hoping to see an intermediate caliber rifle fielded after noting the effectiveness of the \"Sturmgewehr\" assault rifle the German's developed toward the end of WWII. \n\nThis was an opinion held in Europe, but many in the US also saw this as the way forward. The majority (or perhaps, those with the most internal authority) within the US military, however, still wanted a full rifle caliber rifle, particularly one that was very similar to the m1 garand. This sets the tone of the environment the m16 was to be birthed in. Rifles of the time were still steel and wood, firing something that's very similar to a typical hunting caliber. The m16 was made of aluminum and plastics and was also very light, with the m16a1 weighing about 6lbs, so it's toy like feel and appearance likely didn't help. An early prototype's barrel also blew up in a an officer's hands, but essentially it was a very new and radical design. One of the earliest adopters of the rifle was the us airforce, which allowed the design to get it's foot in the door for further military procurement. The earliest adopters of the m16 were military advisers and other special forces troops who enjoyed the lighter weight and better ergonomics of the m16 along with its lighter and lighter recoiling ammo. \n\nOk, so lets get into the issues now that we have the backstory. The main cause of the m16's issues was the army's switch to a different powder type. Not to get into too much technical detail, but a gas operated firearm needs the proper mount of force when cycling the weapon to ensure proper feeding and, more importantly to this topic, must not be so intense that it causes premature wear on parts. This is essentially what occurred with the m16 as is discussed by it's lead designer, [James Sullivan](_URL_0_) . In addition, there were other reasons for less than reliable initial performance, namely a lack of chrome plating on the internal parts. Many soldiers in the field were also not properly instructed on the new weapon when the army replaced the m14 and cleaning kits were often not issued. Chrome is very slick and corrosion resistant which would help immensely in a jungle environment. The m16 was, and is a precision made, modern firearm. I sourced this information from an author and expert on the subject, [Chris Bartocci](_URL_1_) . \n\nYour second assertion I would have to disagree with simply on a technical point. A firearm with an open action, like the m14, will be inherently more exposed to the elements than one that is sealed, such as the m16. This open action often makes them less reliable. The m16 family as a whole tends to be more inherently reliable than the m14 family. \n\n*edits for bad content and grammar and added small additional bits of info on it's reception/development ", "First off, the M16 was not a bad rifle. It was a competently designed gun, with space age materials like aluminium and polymers that made the gun lighter. The fact that the US army and many of its allies use some variant of the M16 50 years later after dozens of attempts to replace it is a testament to this. The reasons why the M16 had such a poor reputation include: \n\na) The gun was incorrectly labelled as \"self-cleaning\", when it needed regular maintenance just like any other gun\n\nb) The ammunition that was issued was not to the same spec as was first given to the manufacturers who designed the trials guns\n\nc) Troops in general are pretty poor judges of their own equipment, especially firearms. \n\nThe reason why the US switched to the M16 in the first place goes back to late WWII. The Germans designed the MP-43/MP-44/Stg-44, which were the first mass-fielded assault rifles and the basis for every standard infantry rifle in modern armies. Indeed, it gave us the word assault rifle (sturm: to storm, as in to assault a trench, gewehr: rifle). The assault rifle was a select-fire infantry rifle that fired intermediate cartridges, because the Germans (and basically everyone except the Americans soon after WWII) realised that most combat took place in under 400m, and the battle rifles of the day were too powerful; the recoil made battle rifles inaccurate and impractical in full auto, training times were longer, and the targets weren't far enough to justify rounds that big. The Russians followed suit by designing the Kalashnikov line of rifles which are still in use today. \n\nAs an aside, the 7.62x39mm round that the AK used at the time was not more energetic than the 5.56 either. It used a heavier bullet at a lower velocity, but in the gun world, they are both considered the same class of cartridge. Additionally, the Russians switched from 7.62 to 5.45mm in 1974, which is very similar in specs to the M16's 5.56mm. \n\nThe Americans, on the other hand, stuck with the full-sized.308 because of army culture, and basically strong-armed the fledgling NATO into adopting it too, even though most of the other major players such as the British were coming up with intermediate cartridge rifles. The M16 was pretty much when the US military complex realised that they needed to get on with the times and design an actually modern rifle. It is claimed that the M16's poor performance early on was no less than sabotage by the more conservative elements in the army sabotaging the new program. \n\nSo, in summation, the M14 was outdated the day it was conceived, the M16 was better than its reputation and was possibly sabotaged.", "The background for the weapons have already been discussed fairly well. I'm just going to include some more context:\n\nJust to recap, the M16 was ultimately a good weapon undercut by a poor fielding and teething issues. It's worth keeping in mind the Vietnam field trials with the AR-15 went very well with rave reviews for the weapon, and the 5.56 round. \n\nThe early run M16s (or more broadly, the XM16E1s) did not go well, again for reasons listed by other posters (namely the lack of chrome coating for the chamber, the choice in ammo, and the frankly astounding failure to include maintenance and care training in the initial fielding). When these issues were ironed out in the M16A1, and an improved training regime instituted for the weapon, the weapon became quite reliable.\n\nWhile not \"proof\" as someone who's put a few thousand rounds through M16A2s and M4s, the only reliability issues I had related to worn out magazines, and blank rounds do not work as well on the M4.\n\nSome other factors to consider too:\n\n1. The M14 is heavy, and so are it's rounds. For a dismounted soldier, weight is a very big consideration. With the lighter M16, a solider could carry more rounds or more equipment at the same sized load. \n\n2. For mounted soldiers (air cavalry, mechanized troops, cavalry scouts, truck drives etc) the M14 is large and unwieldy in tight quarters. The M16 did not suffer this problem.\n\n3. Much like all 7.62X51 rifles, the full automatic option was of dubious utility (it's a lot of recoil for a fairly small package). The 5.56 was much better suited for rapid/accurate fire. \n\nBasically in summary, the XM16E1 was a bad gun paired with a very poor fielding plan and training. The M16A1 was a solid rifle and there's a reason the M16 family is still going strong decades later vs the M14 which had the shortest service life of any combat rifle in US use (for it's intended use, specialist marksmen or ceremonial use notwithstanding) " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.forgottenweapons.com/jim-sullivan-on-the-m16-in-vietnam/", "http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=1735" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cig5fb2", "cigqd1y" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "Da Vinci's The Last Supper is a special portrayal of the biblical event because it was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, to be placed in the dining hall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery, which the Duke had recently had renovated. The reason this makes it special is because Sforza requested that the scene be painted as if the monks, whom would be eating beneath this painting daily, were dining with Jesus and his apostles, which is why they are all portrayed to be sitting on the same side of the table. \n\nIn real life, this would be a very awkward way to set a dining table, as it would be hard to make conversation with those at the far end of the tables. In portraying the dinner in this awkward way, Da Vinci was able to make the monks feel as if they were truly dining with Jesus and his apostles, as well as easily paint every member of the dinner with such striking detail that, even after the painting fell to ruin in ten years due to a failed experiment by Leonardo, who, instead of painting in the fresco method of painting on wet plaster, painted directly onto the wall, the details were still sharp and discernible, allowing them to survive to this day. \n\nHow this differs from what people at the time would have visualized the last supper as being, of course depends on the person. The bible provides little detail as to the setting of the supper, and rather focuses on the dialogue and intrigue of the dinner. However, as we can see by [other](_URL_5_) [representations](_URL_1_) [of](_URL_3_) [the](_URL_4_) [event](_URL_2_), there are many different artistic portrayals of this famous biblical scene. While we will never know how this looked exactly, any of these works can be a guess as to how it actually looked. \n\nSources: \n\n* Kenneth Clark.Leonardo da Vinci, Penguin Books 1939, 1993, p144\n* \"The Last Supper\". _URL_0_. Retrieved 2014-06-24\n* \"DaVinci\". The Mark Steel Lectures. Series 2. Episode 2. The Open University. 7 October 2003. BBC. Retrieved 2014-06-24\n* \"Leonardo's Last Supper\". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved 2014-06-24\n", "/u/explicit_snark already answered your question, but I wanted to provide you with this link:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou can search for \"The Last Supper\" here to see how different artists depicted it. \"Same side of the table\" is actually fairly common." ] }

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[ [ "lairweb.org.nz", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comunione_degli_apostoli,_cella_35.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valentin_de_Boulogne,_Last_Supper.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%9Altima_Cena_-_Juan_de_Juanes.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jacopo_Tintoretto_-_The_Last_Supper_-_WGA22649.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BouveretLastSupper.jpg" ], [ "http://www.wga.hu/index1.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cbzxwkw", "cbzzv18", "cc00i8y", "cc00uhh", "cc0185w" ], "score": [ 13, 29, 3, 7, 10 ], "text": [ "Nothing elaborate, and not an answer to your question, but one thing I will point out just for some reference is that prior to the late 19th century, the entire idea of a hotel did not exist. Sure you had inns and taverns, but those were not places the wealthy would stay. Instead if the wealthy traveled, they would be staying at the houses of friends or other people they knew.", "This is right at the end of the 19th century, in the Gilded Age in America, but [The Biltmore Estate](_URL_0_) gives you a good idea of how the tippiest-top of the elite would entertain. I visited about a year ago so it's on my mind. \n\nWhile you were staying with the Vanderbilts you could expect: \n\n- formal dining every night, including dressing for dinner, all in all you'd have to change your clothes several times a day while a guest\n- walking their estate (a relatively common entertainment) \n- looking around the greenhouse \n- riding their estate\n- outdoor sports like tennis, croquet\n- partaking of their state of the art gym\n- reading in the library \n- swimming in their indoor swimming pool (pretty uncommon) \n\nYou'd have a fair amount of free time to do these things, but you'd be expected to dine with your host/ess every night. You might find some fruitful reading in [*Manners and social usages* by Mrs. John Sherwood](_URL_1_) (1877) especially Chapter 50 on house guests (which is stubbornly not letting me link directly to it). It's written by a lady for ladies, but it lays down the expectations that both host and guest would have around that time. ", "Check out \"The Sorrows of a Summer Guest\" in[ this collection](_URL_0_), which is from 1918 but still has a Victorian flavor. If nothing else, it's entertaining reading.", "Musical evenings, handcrafts, dances, parties w/ neighbors, fishing, hunting, outings to local points of interest and other estates, church. \n\nIf a male guest had an inclination or ability to assist w/ work on the estate, any real help would be welcomed and they may spend days with his male host, then evenings at home together. If a guest didn't have those skills, a male host would take some time away to entertain him, but would still have to tend to his own business. Major social visits were planned for the slowest times of the year. A visitor or guest of necessity wouldn't expect to be babysat when a man must obviously do his job. Women were a lot more flexible. \n\n > was the ability to travel in this way largely limited to elite men, perhaps accompanied by their wives and families?\n\nEasier for elite men. A poorer man who was traveling was more suspect in most regions unless well outfitted (w/ wagons, horses, equipment, family) or showing other signs of prosperity (cash). Lone indigent men are percieved to be on the move because they *must* be. ", "In her prologue to the second edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley writes about how she come up with the idea: her husband and her were visiting Lord Byron, and the three of them would often get into storytelling sessions every night. \n\nShe couldn't come up with anything, until one night she had a nightmare that was the basis for a story, that later became the book.\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.biltmore.com/visit/house_gardens/default.asp", "http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/musdi.237" ], [ "http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=8457" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fmssmyk" ], "score": [ 33 ], "text": [ "This is exactly what I work on (and I mean *exactly*). Most Egyptian texts are written in a phase of the language called Middle Egyptian. Middle Egyptian was only spoken until the mid second millennium BCE, but the written language continued to be used for formal writing for the remainder of Egyptian pharaonic history. Because most Middle Egyptian texts were written during a state of diglossia (the formal and vernacular languages did not match), it's difficult to say much about how this language was pronounced. By the time we get good information about pronunciation in Coptic, 2000 years passed. Most words do not survive into Coptic. Even when they do, the specific grammatical form is not attested, because the grammar of the language changed as well. \n\nAdd to that the fact that many Egyptologists never learn Coptic at all, and the result is that we almost never know how to read a hieroglyphic word aloud. The solution generally adopted is to put e's (phonetic [ɛ]) between the known consonants, and to treat some consonants as though they represented vowels. This is done to deliberately mark the fact that we don't know how it would have been pronounced.\n\nYou've probably seen this happening in practice without realizing it. The name \"Ra\" is known from Coptic as ⲣⲏ ([re]), so his name should always be rendered as \"Re\", but people pronounce it as \"ra\" because the hieroglyphic spelling is 𓂋𓂝𓇳 (*rꜥ* in Egyptian transliteration, [r_ʕ] phonetically). Names like 𓇋𓏠𓈖𓊵𓏏𓊪, \"Amun is satisfied\", may be rendered as \"Amunhotep\" from Coptic ⲁⲙⲟⲩⲛ+Ϩⲱⲧⲡ or Imenhetep based on Egyptological convention.\n\nThe key thing to recognize there is that \"Imenhetep\" is *deliberately* wrong. It couldn't possibly be the word's true ancient pronunciation. If you ever see a piece of pop culture where people speak Egyptian, they've probably misunderstood what Egyptologists are trying to accomplish by pronouncing things this way. The list includes [Philip Glass's Akhenaten](_URL_2_) and [Assassin's Creed: Origins](_URL_3_).\n\nSo this is what we do when we read for the most part, we mispronounce things on purpose to show that we don't know. People who are obsessed with vocalization, like me, tend to use the Coptic pronunciation or the various Coptic-based vocalizations. That's a minority practice to be sure. I always read [Demotic](_URL_0_) with Coptic pronunciation in my head, but I know many highly-competent Demotists who don't know any Coptic whatsoever. It's pretty flexible in practice.\n\nI've been arguing forever that the absence of this crucial component of language learning hamstrings our understanding. Many people disagree. That's more of a personality thing. There are plenty of Egyptologists who are more interested in extracting meaning than they are in revivifying the spoken language of ancient Egypt. For them, being able to read the text seems separate from being able to hear it. I think they're incorrect. I did an experiment a few years ago with a Late Egyptian class where I taught one class Coptic alongside the hieroglyphs. The students who had Coptic vocalizations performed better on vocabulary quizzes, but my sample sizes were too small to be confident in the results (p = 0.54 😕). I'm hoping to try the experiment again on a larger scale.\n\nSources available at r/AncientEgyptian. See especially the [thread on Allen's *Middle Egyptian*](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demotic\\_\\(Egyptian\\)", "https://old.reddit.com/r/AncientEgyptian/comments/eblzib/allens_middle_egyptian_megathread/", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw", "https://youtu.be/3gVlx_GkNPY?t=159" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f0yytbh" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "An answer ([Why are the spanish and french not considered Germanic](_URL_0_); u/Libertat) I posted some time ago might provide with some elements of response. \nBasically, it's doubtful that each Barbarian coalition had its own \"national\" language, being made up from the IInd century of various (indigenous or migrating peoples) and being growingly Romanized due to their relations with Romania and the influx of slaves, fiscal refugees and deserters among them from the IIIrd century to the Vth, especially as Barbarians entered the empire. A good part of Goths, Franks, Vandals, etc. probably didn't really spoke a Germanic language at this point, while Germanophone Barbarians were more or less importantly Latinized \n\nSo, it's both a result of the resilience of Late Roman society (or its collapse in Britain and Illyricum) and the appearance of Barbarians as \"peoples of the limes\" then as Roman armies/groups since the IVth century. \nNot that they didn't had an influence on the development of Romance language (although this is especially the case for northern Gallo-Romance and Retho-Romance languages), neither that the Germanization of the Rhineland couldn't be attributed to a stronger Germanophone presence : but we're talking of an evolution that took centuries and didn't really stabilized before the Xth century. Apart from that, actual evidences for an everyday use of Germanic speech in former western provinces are quite rare, and generally assumed to have died out as such (although preserved in ceremonial and institutional terms) by the Vth or VIth century." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cy8r3e/why_are_the_spanish_and_french_not_considered/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cz9uxan" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The 25c denomination is historically derived from the usage of the Spanish colonial 8 reale or \"Spanish Dollar\" coin in British colonial America. The Spanish Dollar (and smaller denominations such as the 4 reale, 2 reale or quarter dollar, 1 reale, and half reale) is estimated by some to have comprised half the coinage in colonial America so it's importance cannot be understated. As well as being minted in smaller denominations the the 8 reale coin was cut into halves, quarters, and eights to provide smaller change. The tradition of the \"quarter\" continued in 1796 when the first was minted for the US and has continued to date. Interestingly the USA toyed with a 20 cent coin from 1875 to 1878 but it failed to take off. A further point of interest is that a reale was known colloquially as a \"bit\" and a quarter \"two bits\", a term the quarter is sometimes known by.\n\nAs to the denominations of the notes, the 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 notes follow the 1-2-5-10-20-50 number series. The US does have $2 note but it is not generally used. This number series uses prime factors of 10 (1x10, 2x5, 5x2, 10x1, 10x2, 10x5) which makes arithmetic easier. \n\nA lot of other countries use this same numbering system for both their coins and notes, for example Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the Euro circulating countries. Countries such as Canada and Panama still have a 25c coin but use the 1-2-5 numbering system for their bank notes.\n\n**References**\n\nJordan, Lewis - Colonial Coins - Section Contents. 2016. Colonial Coins - Section Contents. [ONLINE] Available at: _URL_0_. [Accessed 24 January 2016]\n\nColin Bruce, 2007. Standard Catalog of World Coins 1701-1800. 4 Edition. Krause Publications\n\nColin Bruce, 2010. 2011 Standard Catalog of World Coins 1901-2000. Thirty-eighth Edition Edition. Krause Publications\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinContents/Contents02.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dvsvngo" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "You are correct in the assertion that geographically, the Confederacy wasn't split in \"half,\" but it was irreparably split. Think of the consequences had the British been successful in controlling the entire Hudson River and split New England from the other colonies. Geographically it wasn't half, but would have been a decisive blow. \n\nVicksburg was vital for two reasons. One, it was a southern bastion that had to be taken to effectively control the River. The Union could not simply bypass it, and they couldn't ignore it, so it had to fall. Two, the Mississippi was vitally important to the transport of goods and materiel for around ten states. The Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers, plus the Red River all flow into the Mississippi. Granted several parts of these were in seceded states, but goods moved to and from Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri all needed the Mississippi to move and obtain goods. Railroads were in place, but much of the midwest did not have easy access to the Great Lakes, mainly since the MS River was there to use (until it wasn't). Vicksburg was on a high bluff at a hairpin turn, and after New Orleans, Memphis, and Island No. 10 fell, Vicksburg was the last blockage to allowing Union forces and gunboats to move men and supplies to other vital areas much faster. And with complete control of the River, Richmond no longer had any real control over anything in a large section of the Confederacy. Texas did supply a large number of soldiers in the Confederate Armies, as well as being a vital route to funnel (i.e. smuggle) goods from ports in Mexico. \n\nIt's also important to remember the Mississippi River wasn't the only valuable objective. By July 1863, The Union controlled the entire Cumberland River, and the majority of the Tennessee (which is why the Emancipation Proclamation didn't cover Tennessee, as it was technically under Union control then), New Orleans, parts of North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri (which had remained in the Union officially but had many occupying Confederate forces early on). In other words, Vicksburg was one of the last major waterways the Union needed to seal the fate of the Confederacy. On its own, it wasn't quite THAT important, but taken as a whole, the Confederacy was doomed by losing its rivers, the Mississippi being one of them." ] }

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[ "http://railroads.unl.edu/views/item/1864rr?p=2" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c9uoajx" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "German scientists were taken to some sanatorium at Gorodomlya island at Seligyor lake, they lived there much more comfortably than most of Soviet scientists. They actually had made a contract to work there and were allowed to take with them wives (or mistresses) and children. German engineers were paid quite well and worked in USSR till 1951-1953.\n\nThese 150 German persons helped a lot in copying V-2 rocket and building Kapustin Yar launch site. Impression of V-2 made Soviet researchers change priorities from cruise rockets to ballistic rockets (even Korolyov worked on winged cruise missiles before the war)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ctf79z4", "ctf7vra" ], "score": [ 10, 110 ], "text": [ "Follow up: would Plato or Aristotle have been familiar with Genesis or Jewish thought?", "So the simple answer to this would be: probably not. The longer answer is, in order for Jesus to have studied these philosophers, even on a basic level, he would have had to have learned how to speak, read, and write ancient Greek, and while there is a legitimate chance he could have spoken greek, he likely didn't learn to read and write it. However, at the heart of this question is asking what Jesus' educational level, which Bart Ehrman addressed in his book, [Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium](_URL_0_) where he says: \n\n > There are multiply attested traditions that Jesus spoke Aramaic. Sometimes, for example, the Gospels quote his words directly without translating them into Greek (see Mark 5:41; 7:34; John 1:42). This would make sense contextually, since Aramaic was the normal spoken language of Jews in Palestine in the first century. Moreover, there would be no reason for anyone to make up the tradition... It is also indicated in the Gospels that Jesus could read the Scriptures in Hebrew (e.g., Luke 4:16–20; see also Mark 12:10, 26), and that he eventually became known as an interpreter of them. He is sometimes, for example, called “rabbi,” that is, “teacher” (see Mark 9:5; John 3:2). At the same time, there are independently attested traditions that those who knew about Jesus’ background were surprised by his learning (Mark 6:2; John 7:15). \n\n > **Together, these data suggest that he did learn to read as a child—that is, that he had some modicum of education—but that he was not considered an intellectual superstar by the people who knew him as he was growing up.** There are no traditions that specifically indicate that Jesus spoke Greek, although some historianshave surmised that living in Galilee, where Greek was widely known, he may have learned some. Moreover, some have suspected that he communicated with Pontius Pilate in Greek at his trial—although we will see later that it is very difficult to know exactly what happened then. At best we can say that it is at least possible that Jesus was trilingual—that he normally spoke Aramaic, that he could at least read the Hebrew Scriptures, and that he may have surmised that living in Galilee, where Greek was widely known, he may have learned some. Moreover, some have suspected that he communicated with Pontius Pilate in Greek at his trial—although we will see later that it is very difficult to know exactly what happened then. At best we can say that it is at least possible that Jesus was trilingual—that he normally spoke Aramaic, that he could at least read the Hebrew Scriptures, and that he may have been able to communicate a bit in Greek. The final point is, in my judgment, the least assured. (P. 99-100)\n\nSo we've established that he was likely literate in at least one language (which already made him elite since about 90% of the Roman occupied population during this time period was illiterate), but it was most likely primarily directed at learning and teaching about the Torah. Also, in all my studies of of the New Testament (and also classical Greece from my undergraduate degree) I've never seen anything to suggest that Jesus learned or incorporated these ideals into his teachings.\n\nAnd to answer your final question, most Jews during this time period were illiterate. We know that at least two (probably most) of Jesus' followers were illiterate and uneducated as well. Next I'd like to pull in a quote from the bible, specifically the book of Acts, where it talks about two of Jesus' most important followers.\n\n > When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. (New International Version)\n\nNow the word \"unschooled\" here in the majority of ancient manuscripts is: ἀγράμματοί (agrámmatoí). This word is often translated to \"unschooled\" or \"uneducated\" but typically it directly implies that they are illiterate. That said, it would then suggest that these men didn't know how to read or write, making it likely they were never taught anything of significance about Greek Philosophers.\n\nIt's also worth noting that philosophy wouldn't have generally mattered to peasants, especially for middle of no-where towns like Nazareth. These men and women of this time period were preoccupied with following Mosaic Law and following it's teachings, so learning about other philosophies could have been sacrilegious during this time period.\n\n" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Apocalyptic-Prophet-New-Millennium/dp/019512474X" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c87x2cv" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Hi. I'm not a historian but I am reading [Tim Weiner's *Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA*](_URL_1_). Here are a few thoughts.\n\n* Weiner writes about an Oval Office conversation on October 27, the day before the crisis was resolved, in which Robert McNamara burst into the office to report that the U2 was shot down over Cuba. Subsequently, the Joint Chiefs \"now strongly recommended that a full scale attack on Cuba should begin in thirty-six hours\" (chapter 19, no page on my kindle). Weiner writes of no threats of a coup or other plans to act without Kennedy's orders.\n* Kennedy may have been playing good cop (if that's an okay analogy) and trying to bluff. The goal might have been to surprise Kruschev and force him to act or else believe that the big bad US military would usurp control and strike first.\n* Kennedy may have been advised by [Allen Dulles](_URL_4_) that the Soviet intelligence on the US military wasn't very good, with the goal to mislead Kruschev and persuade him to abandon any ideas of military action. (I think [Willie Fisher](_URL_3_) was the last resident Soviet agent until the late 1960s. The Wikipedia entry for the [KGB during the Cold War](_URL_2_) depicts a depleted Soviet intelligence network in the US because of McCarthyism and other internal spy hunting in the 1950s.)\n\nEdit:\n\n* For some more context, [here](_URL_0_) is a taped telephone recording of a conversation in which JFK called Eisenhower for advice during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither man mentions the possibility of the military acting out of order." ] }

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[ "http://books.google.ca/books?id=0WwIjdg47PoC&amp;pg=PA310&amp;lpg=PA310&amp;dq=oliver+stone%27s+untold+history+khrushchev+memoirs&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=gMHdzxd8dJ&amp;sig=bKhpoeb6eNb7khosAhE4Q2tHY1w&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=jbP4UMOvG8rLqAHAgYHABQ&amp;ved=0CEkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q=oliver%20stone%27s%20untold%20history%20khrushchev%20memoirs&amp;f=false" ]

[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkzjodKAQhA", "http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kgb#During_the_Cold_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilyam_Genrikhovich_Fisher", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7b8msi" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "It was not the 'cornerstone' for many. There are other parts of the Noble Eightfold Path, after all. And there are many 'Dharma doors': devotion, faith, charity, compassion, ethical behavior, the path of study, the path of shamanism, the path of work, the path of yoga, lay and monastic paths, social and hermetic paths.\n\nBut one historical factor was that in the effort to establish, preserve, and study a ratified canon of scriptures, focus on the letter rather than the spirit of the teaching sometimes took precedence. Some radically meditative schools arose in response.\n\nMillennia later, Zen set root in America before most other Buddhist sects, in part because western Buddhism is made in the image of the Western mind: heavy on the intellectual, light on the empathetic and physical, and always with the question \"what's in it *for me*\" resounding Western individualism. The vernacular by which Asian language and concepts were conveyed was, back then in the 1930s to 1960s, the terminology of psychology and to a lesser degree of atomic science.\n\nBecause Westerners are head-heavy, our concept of Buddhism is head-heavy. The common person generally thinks it's about meditation, but more fundamental concepts like compassion and faith are not widely embraced, largely because that's not what our culture recognized and glommed onto when Buddhism arrived here.\n\nBut outside of pop Buddhism, there are vibrant and authentic practice centers, and second and third generations of Western Buddhist masters unfolding a uniquely Western Buddhism without losing the grounding and lifeblood of lineage." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dymv12y" ], "score": [ 67 ], "text": [ "The short answer to your question is that the College Board is the Old Boys Club in education made tangible. \n\nThe College Board (originally called the College Entrance Examination Board) is basically one of the first educational think-tanks in this country, founded in 1899 by educational leaders including Nicholas Murray Butler, future president of Columbia, with the explicit purpose of strengthening the connection between secondary and tertiary education. The Board would be joined in the educational landscape by others including The Carnegie Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and American Council on Education, all focused on \"improving\" education. Due the early leadership of Henry Chauncey, the Board gave some of their tests over to Educational Testing Services (ETS) and became a major player in the assessment of Americans - when scientific management became all the rage for schoolmen, they advocated for the new invention that was the multiple choice test. As public high schools advocated for courses for their students that would earn them college credit, similar to what some private schools did, the Board made Advanced Placement courses available to more schools. And when the gap between college acceptance criteria and high school exit skills became noticeably large, they were instrumental in making the SAT part of school culture.\n\nAP has been around since the late 1950's when it was started by a group of private schools in partnership with Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. In effect, the AP exams were about giving young men from families of means an extra leg up on their path to college. AP would expand beyond private schools and Ivy League colleges and is now a way for High School students to earn college credit. In some cases, high schools give extra weight to AP courses on a student's HS transcript, which can elevate their Grade Point Average (GPA). In addition, college admissions offices may view students who've successfully completed AP courses more favorably as it suggests they can handle college-level reading demands and rigor. \n\nThe College Board not only shepherded the Advanced Placement exams, they were also part of the evolution of the mental tests like the Army Alpha test, IQ tests, and the GRE. Chauncey, who was responsible for the College Boards' networking prowess and eventually the founding of Educational Testing Services (ETS) was deeply committed to the idea of meritocracy. Informed by the work of men like Alfred Binet and Edward Thorndike, he believed it was possible to create a test that would measure a learner's true ability and that test could help make America a true meritocracy. \n\nHe wasn't alone in this sentiment. American public schools began to adopt a philosophy of increasingly secular, liberal arts in the mid-1800's. The general goal was to provide all children (all never means all, though - mostly white children, mostly boys) could best be prepared for citizenship through a broad curriculum that touched on a variety of topics in a variety of ways, without requiring a young person commit to any particular future. This vision contrasted with the then reality of college - most East Coast colleges and universities had their own admissions exams, often very specific to the professors who worked there. By the late-1800's, the gap between college admissions criteria and high school exit skills was becoming an explicit source of frustration for schoolmen. One of the clearer examples of this involved a man who would eventually become a college president. He wanted to attend a particular university but when he arrived for the entrance exam and interview, realized his high school curriculum didn't align to what was expected and he had to spend at least a year studying with a tutor before taking their particular entrance exam. His personal experiences would be a recurring talking point at educational conferences in the early 1900's and is a compelling example of how personal a great deal of educational reform has been. This gap explicitly challenged the notion that America was a place where anyone (mostly white, mostly boys) could succeed, provided they worked hard enough. \n\nThe evolution of the SATs was the result of relationships between eugenicists and educators and there was a feedback loop between colleges, the US Army, and high schools as they developed, what they felt, were better and better tools for assessing things that were previously unknowable. Most of the leaders involved in the College Board's work were exposed to formal education from childhood, were from families with the means to provide their son with advanced education, and were white. None of the them were women. College presidents, private school headmasters, district superintendents, and leaders of groups like the College Board generally came from the same pool of East Coast educated of men, meaning those who advocated for change were typically viewing that change through a particular lens and pool of experience. That the College Board members' philosophy that tests can distinguish levels of thinking and abilities is so widely accepted today speaks to the networking that happened. \n\n\n\n___\nFurther Reading:\n[This](_URL_0_) is a pretty solid timeline of the SAT's evolution over time \n\nLemann, N. (2000). *The big test: The secret history of the American meritocracy.* Macmillan.\n\nRiccards, M. (2009). *College Board and American Higher Education*, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. \n\n\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cok61yo" ], "score": [ 87 ], "text": [ "Well for one thing, observers were looking at what seemed to be building up to a massive scale conflict and Iraq's military was certainly nothing to sneeze at. \n\nWe have the gift of hindsight and many today seem to consider Iraq's military forces as weak, incompetent or 'not standing a chance' against US/UN coalition forces both during the Gulf War and the subsequent invasion several years later.\n\nThis can be compared to the disingenuous but fairly popular idea that French military forces or Polish military forces were 'weak' because of the results of World War II. \n\nAdmittedly, I am not expert on Iraq's military forces but I have some information that can provide some insight for you while we wait for someone more qualified to answer. In all honesty, I wrestled with whether or not I should post since my limited knowledge might not be able to fully answer all your questions, but since there hasn't been an answer yet, I'll try to fill the gap for now!\n\nSo what made Iraq's military seem a dangerous and capable enemy for the UN coalition forces??\n\n**Well, for one thing Iraq had one of the largest standing armies in the world at the time of the conflict.** They theoretically could field upwards of a million personnel in their standing army and half again that many in various paramilitary groups. Of course, this was mainly on paper but it still stands that they drastically ramped up their conscription numbers and investment into the military, focusing on using any and all manpower they could find. \n\nAnd of course numbers don't mean everything, especially in a modern conflict, but the ability to maintain, supply, equip, and sustain an army of this size certainly meant something. If nothing else, Iraq had the sophistication of doctrine and infrastructure as well as command & control capability necessary to make such a large military work smoothly. \n\n**Iraq had also just come out of a long drawn out war with Iran.** There was no shortage of veterans and many of the officer corps leading Iraqi forces had cut their teeth in real actions during the Iran-Iraq War. Having a competent officer corps is essential for smooth operations. \n\nThe special forces and paramilitary units were considered fairly significant shock units that were deeply loyal to the Ba'ath Party and had seen action during the Iran-Iraq War. They had been expanded and given better equipment and apparently US military analysts expected to fight them to fight fiercely and inflict casualties even in the face of their own probable horrendous casualties. \n\nAnd of course Iraq had tons of equipment. They had over 5000 tanks, close to 1000 combat aircraft, thousands of artillery pieces and thousands more of other various AFVs. Many of their vehicles were purchased from Chinese or Russia arms makers and they were not lacking in spare parts, ammunition, maintenance crews, or fuel. The Iraqi air force was not something they could just disregard as they had proven themselves more than capable flying many missions in previous conflicts and being well trained. \n\n**The key worry coalition forces probably had was the vast array of effective anti air weaponry that the Iraqi military had.** The Iraqi forces had plenty of anti aircraft artillery (AAA), SAMs, MANPADs, etc. and the extensive AA network posed major threats. \n\n**The other major worry for coalition forces was Iraq's notorious use of chemical weapons and SCUD missiles.** There was constant worry that Iraq would use one or both, the worst case scenario being SCUDs with chemical warheads. Iraqi SCUD launchers were incredibly difficult to locate and neutralize because they would operate mostly at night, 'shoot and scoot' and during the day would be hidden in extremely effective camouflage, under bridges, inside hardened bunkers, etc. \n\nAll these things added together meant that coalition forces were expecting significant casualties, especially in losing air assets as well as fears of mass chemical attacks. \n\nSo how did coalition forces inflict such a one sided loss on the Iraqi forces?\n\nIt can be summed up in three main things. \n\n**Air superiority** \n\nThe initial air strikes that vastly reduced Iraqi ability to respond directly in the air paved the way for total aerial superiority over the skies in Kuwait. And because of the technology that the USAF fielded in stand off weaponry, it was able to negate much of the risk of flying into the extensive network of Iraqi AA defense. The effect of this cannot be overstated. Coalition air packages basically flew round the clock missions to constantly interdict Iraqi convoys, supply lines, command structures, and key infrastructure. \n\nBy the end of the conflict, many Iraqi forces simply routed because of the effect of nonstop air bombardment on morale. Many had no personal way to strike back at the aircraft and it must have felt terrifying to feel so powerless against an enemy that could blow you away with almost certainty. \n\n**Information control**\n\nCoalition forces had a massive advantage in battle intelligence over the Iraqis. Firstly, after air superiority was achieved, **air strikes immediately began to target known elements of the Iraqi command structure**. While the Iraqi military had a solid officer corps of upper ranking decision makers and generals, their lower rank officers were doctrinally inflexible and not prone to taking initiative. \n\nThis meant targeting communications and command units a priority for coalition forces, so as to 'chop off the head' of the Iraqi forces. They predicted that without clear, effective coordination from above, many Iraqi units would have their combat effectiveness drop drastically. \n\nThe other part of this was the integration of **GPS** as a standard for situational awareness and movement across the battlefield. This gave the coalition forces the ability to know in real time where their allies were and where Iraqi forces were situated, giving them the ability to track and engage enemy units at will. \n\nMeanwhile, Iraqi forces had to operate by maps, landmarks, and high command's coordination to figure out where they were and the location of enemy forces. \n\nAnd while we talk about GPS, the final big advantage for coalition forces was **technology**.\n\nAlong with GPS, US air force weaponry, avionics, and comms were simply much better than Iraqi technology. Laser guided munitions, radar missiles that eliminated SAMs, better radar, etc. \n\nCoalition tanks outclassed Iraqi tanks by a wide margin, which was more about the electronics than the thickness of armor or size of their barrels. \n\nFor example, M1 Abrams had excellent sights and gun stabilizers, along with GPS and their comms net allowed them to engage Iraqi tanks at distance and speed. Iraqi armor brigades were overwhelmed. \n\nSo yes, people were very surprised that there weren't a great deal more coalition casualties and they seemed to beat the Iraqis 'easily'. \n\nHopefully someone more informed than I comes along soon!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdjdveb", "cdo7632" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "I think this will be almost a matter of taste. In chronological order, and taking no stance on which one is worst:\n\n* The Boer war is notoriously the last in which the British Army suffered more casualties from disease than from combat. Also where concentration camps were invented, although this perhaps didn't bother the average infantryman too much. \n\n* The Great War is perhaps not quite as bad as its reputation, but still, it was genuinely awful. Mud, rats, charging into machine guns, living in the trenches for months on end waiting for the shell that would finish you - perhaps it has been exaggerated, but still, it's all *true*. Also of note for the near impossibility of getting medical help if you were wounded between the trench lines. NB: No antibiotics, lots of muddy battlefields. Widespread use of chemical weapons by both sides.\n\n* WWII, well, what can one say? You asked about infantrymen, so I'll leave the Holocaust out of it. But at least on the Eastern Front, things were pretty grim all around. Being taken prisoner - and let's note, neither side was that keen on prisoners - meant death by slow starvation. For the Russians, even those who survived captivity could expect some years in the Gulag. Something on the order of 80% of the Russian men born in 1923 died. \n\n* Korean War: I can't think of any area in which this one was plausibly the worst. \n\n* Vietnam: No support from home, or at least, none that was very obvious in the media. Perhaps the first unpopular war in which the soldiers could really *feel* that the home front didn't have their back. \n\n* Iran-Iraq war: Unarmed teenagers charging into minefields. 'Nuff said. \n\nOf course this is only a selection. No doubt I've missed some little hellhole in an obscure corner of Africa that's notorious for 50% of its veterans having PTSD, or something of the sort. All in all, I think I would put my money on the Great War; but there are a lot of strong contenders out there. ", "I'll go for WWI, not only the living conditions in trenches were horrible but the tactics were suicidal. In \"The price of glory: Verdun 1916\" Alistair Home describes how entire French regiments were placed in trenches, whose previous occupants had been wiped out hours earlier by German artillery bombardment, just to avoid having any positions unmanned, but it was pure slaughter with no purpose. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dmvr2x4" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The West is an enormous place so generalizations are difficult to make. That said, the majority of the region was and continues to be largely urban in its settlement. Since most people in the nineteenth century did not have a horse (contrary to the Hollywood-based stereotype), people had to be able to walk to work, shopping, places of worship, places of leisure, etc. This often resulted in tightly-packed houses. There was often room in the back (for an outhouse and also for a place for chickens or growing vegetables, etc., but the idea of a large yard surrounding a house and setting it away from the road is a fairly late ideal for the West." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "csdg699" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "[You might find this interesting.](_URL_1_) Can't say I know much more than that, but I recall Needham mentioning the same thing in one of his books on China. You can download his books [here](_URL_0_) if you're interested. Sorry for the short answer and I haven't read RKG's book, but this is something right? Maybe /u/Asiaexpert can help out." ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3ajdpr/til_the_han_dynasty_of_china_drilled_for_natural/" ]

[ [ "http://monoskop.org/index.php?search=needham&amp;title=Special%3ASearch&amp;go=%E2%8F%8E", "http://csegrecorder.com/articles/view/ancient-chinese-drilling" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6ygjwk", "c6ygygp", "c6yhg8d", "c6yijco", "c6yisro", "c6yjk0a", "c6yjn3g", "c6yjz28", "c6ykiye", "c6yo6vf", "c6yoegq", "c6yonhv", "c6yotf3", "c6yp1hg", "c6ypxas", "c6yq9dd", "c6yqpp4", "c6yr5ro", "c6yr7wy", "c6yrdrv", "c6ywajc", "c6yz57g" ], "score": [ 80, 67, 22, 69, 38, 24, 55, 14, 15, 49, 14, 20, 12, 14, 5, 8, 8, 10, 10, 8, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "There is absolutely no way that the media would have given FDR the same consideration of his disability that they did in the 1930's and 40's. Even when he was \"walking\" you could tell something was wrong. Many people knew he had problems, but the full extent of his disability was relatively well hidden. Also, the media ignored many sex scandals or, rather, people didn't contact the media about them (Grover Cleveland's illegitimate child being an exception). ", "The Roman word \"obnoxium\" means, rather than to puff yourself up, to make your self humble before someone. It still had the negative connotations that we have today for the word obnoxious, but meant the complete opposite. Being humble was as socially unacceptable as boasting is today.", "\"Bully\" used to be a term of approbation for someone strong and aggressive.", "Being overweight used to be a sign of wealth, power, and in some cases beauty. ", "Blind obedience by the warrior class to their lords. While not always a bad thing, it often led to civilian massacres, futile last stands, and more famously, the seppuku ritual. ", "It's known that for a period in European history fair-skinned woman were considered far more attractive than those who had tanned. Having fair, creamy skin was a sign of status and beauty for many early Europeans. This trend was not unique in nature to any one specific country; it expressed the social opinion of Europe as a collective rather than characterizing one particular group of people.\n\nWhile not *generally* frowned upon, having pale skin represents the exact opposite in modern society; attractiveness began to shift over to how tan/bronzed you were, and pale skin began to be seen as an undesirable trait.", "Raping a slave child was fair game. After all, they were only property. Sometimes I feel I'm not disgusted enough by the stuff I read day in day out. Jokes about this are all over Roman satire.", "Not a historian but ancient Greeks and Romans sometimes took boys as lovers. _URL_0_\n\nEDIT: For example, Roman Emperor Claudius was viewed as weird in his day because he *didn't* engage in sexual behavior with boys or men.", "The ability to produce thousands of handaxes or respect for labor jobs and their workforce.", "The Russians in their Christian Orthodox tradition revered a type of madman called a юродивый (yurodivy), or in English a \"Holy Fool\". That person was believed to be doing all those weird, unstable things because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit; they functioned rather like a court jester in that they could speak frankly to anyone without being punished. They were quite highly regarded - St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is named after a Holy Fool, for instance.\n\nNow, it's a bit of a pickle to know if all of these men and women were genuinely mad or if some of them were feigning: the ideal was that these men \"voluntarily take up the guise of insanity in order to conceal their perfection from the world, and thus avoid praise.\" But speaking now from memory, the Professor who taught me about Russian religious practices seemed to believe that most of the Holy Fools were genuinely mentally ill - he believed that the sources supported an interpretation which suggested that Basil especially probably had some sort of Autism. \n\n((If the Byzantine expert would like to jump in, I would be interested to see if this idea of a Holy Fool is organic to Russia, or if it was acquired from their tradition.))\n\nOn the same Eastern European vein; the minstrels of the Ukraine that sing their truly epic били́ни (Byliny) used to be blind. Teaching them to sing these songs was a form of trade for them - it allowed them to earn money and gave them a place in society which prevented them from being a \"burden\" on society. Best source for this is [And The Blind Shall Sing](_URL_0_) by Natalie Kononenko.", "I recall that, for the greeks, having a small manhood was considered best.", "The biggest thing of all: Paganism. It was as universal and normal and as entrenched and self-evident as sex, and it wasn't going away. \n\nThat it would eventually die off in the West and mostly around the world so quickly is completely unthinkable, and the closest thing in history that I can describe as a miracle. So next time one of you /r/atheists see a Christian, thank them for their philosophical bombshell on the world, because without that enormous movement in the early millennia science wouldn't have had a chance. After all, the Christian tradition was a largely secular movement that didn't treat nature as sacred and put the divine object *outside* of reality and treated reality as fair game to control and manipulate and probe, thus opening the door for the sciences. So when you think Christian superstition and science suppression, you're usually thinking about remnants of European mysticism and their political structures infiltrating/associating with Christendom.\n\nI am not a Christian.", "[Lincoln's Melancholy](_URL_0_) - this man's history would not be tolerated in the presidency today.\n\nThere's a part in it discussing where people viewed as melancholic (depression is the wrong word, I think) were highly valued by society - as deep thinkers who ruminated on life and the difficulties of being human.\n\nSee also Churchill's 'black dog'.", "That massacres of enemies was an excellent way to make them fear Rome, and for them to come to terms.\n\nHostage taking (It was more formalized, in the sense that 'allied' leaders would be expected to come with cavalry and light infantry auxilia so that the Roman promagistrate could keep them in his power).\n\nOne of the major benefits to being a legionary was the ability to rape and pillage after a successful siege. \n\nDisturbing to the modern eyes, but Roman citizens would have no issue with any of this, and would be supportive of most of it.", "In Feudal Japan, especially during what is known now as the Warring States (Sengoku) Period, a warrior was expected to kill himself in the most painful manner possible if he did something to tarnish his honor. War tales of this era (usually written in the Tokugawa era, after the end of the Sengoku period) idolized men who committed suicide rather than face their own failures. This isn't exactly uncommon knowledge, though. ", "It really depends on who you are asking. I study medieval history and I would say many people would criticize the extremism of many of the saints, specifically their asceticism. Many female saints were praised for their ability to fast extreme amounts, where today they would probably be considered to be anorexic. An interesting side note of fasting and anorexia is that a lot of the language to describe fasting in the middle ages is similar to the language anorexics use today.\n\nedit: for more on the subject of fasting by women in the middle ages see Holy Feast and Holy Fast by Caroline Bynum, it is really a fascinating read if you are interested in the subject.", "In Ancient Greece, having a small penis was thought to be the greatest thing ever, whilst \"Long, thick penises were considered -- at least in the highbrow view -- grotesque, comic or both ...\".\n\n[source](_URL_0_)", "In late medieval Western Europe, it was considered beautiful/fashionable for a woman to have a high hairline or forehead, sometimes with shaved eyebrows. \n\nYou hardly ever see it in movies or modern depictions because it's just so unappealing to modern eyes.\n", "In many Native American nations, tribes, and groups, being someone who would currently identify as LGBTQ was nearly always accepted and often revered. The current pan-Indian moniker for such peoples are two-spirits.\n\nGiven the wide diversity of languages and cultures indigenous to North America, LGBTQ treatment was not uniform throughout. However, it is widely agreed upon by historians and modern Natives that the concept of two-spirit people was pervasive and accepted across the continent. ", "In medieval times getting together and burning cats alive, etc was considered great fun. Today if you saw someone doing that you'd think they were training to be a serial killer. ", "Around 1650-1750 in Europe, too much evidence of hard work in order to achieve results was frowned upon in performing arts and conversation. There were a lot of learned skills people were expected to possess, but when the time came to present them, they were supposed to pretend it was nothing and never admit it if they had worked hard to make it happen. So in performing arts, those who acted like perfectionists were unpopular, while those who acted like it was a lazy, easy, offhand thing were applauded. This attitude of sponteneity and ease was known as sprezzatura. While it can still be found today, in fashion, for example, and in the concept of \"untrained talent\" that seems to captivate people, today we publicly applaud hard work and discipline. Back then hard work and discipline were sometimes encouraged privately but when it came time for performance, they were a secret. ", "Self flagellation and mutilation by pious members of the nobility throughout the medieval period in Europe. I cannot count the number of lives of saints I have read that revere the subject for their devotion to whipping themselves. Nowadays we'd send them to a therapist instead." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty#The_ancient_world" ], [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&amp;linkCode=qs&amp;keywords=0765601451" ], [], [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Melancholy-Depression-Challenged-President/dp/0618773444" ], [], [], [], [ "http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2627/why-does-so-much-ancient-greek-art-feature-males-with-small-genitalia" ], [], [], [], [], [] ]