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{ "a_id": [ "d1l3f7r" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This is a huge question and the answer to it formed a large part of my [doctoral thesis](_URL_0_), particularly chapter 2.\n\nIn legitimate early-modern seafaring there existed two distinct chains of command: within the ship (the *internal* chain) the captain held sway, with command passing down through the ship's officers; but in almost every instance there also existed a higher chain of command outside the ship (the *external* chain), consisting of the vessel's owners, in the case of merchant or privateer ships, or the in the case of Navy ships, the higher chain of commodores and Admirals, extending ultimately to the government and the monarch via the Lords of the Admiralty.\n\nHowever, pirate ships faced the problem of not having any form of external command to direct things like the appointment of officers or the course of actions the ship took. De facto ownership of the pirate ship fell to the crew themselves, effectively placing the *external* command hierarchy uniquely within the confines of the ship. This created an intriguing dichotomy whereby the captain held command over the crew on *internal* matters, but was subservient to the crew on *external* matters. Or, put a different way, as members of the crew the rank-and-file pirates were at the bottom of the chain of command, but as de facto owners of the vessel they were *also* at the top of the chain.\n\nSo, for example, the crew might choose the captain of their ship in their position as owners, just as the owners of a legitimate vessel would, but having chosen him generally had to obey his commands in their position as crew, just as the crew of a legitimate vessel would.\n\nThus, on the face of it, pirate crews appeared to be highly democratic.\n\n**But here's the kicker**. On very few pirate vessels were the *entire* crew considered to be owners.\n\nMuch has been made of the clause in Bartholomew Roberts' articles that states '*Every man shall have a vote in affairs of the moment*', but of all the surviving articles Roberts' is the *only* one to contain such a clause, and there is strong evidence that 'every man' did not actually include *every* man bound by the articles. Roberts' company included a large number of slaves, a few boys, and a number of forced conscripts, none of whom were probably allowed to vote. Former soldiers in the company were looked down upon and only given a quarter share in any proceeds, which, while not evidence that they couldn't vote, does suggest that not all men were equal. Thomas Davis, a forced man in Bellamy's company, gave evidence at trial that sheds light on the extent of the franchise in practice:\n\n > When the company was called together to Consuls, and each Man to give his Vote, they would not allow the forced men to have a Vote. There were one hundred and thirty forced Men in all, and Eighty of the Old company; and this examinate being a forced Man had no opportunity to discover his Mind.\n\nThat is to say, only 38% of Bellamy's company had the right to vote. In colonial Massachusetts the right to vote was extended to anywhere between 28.4% and 77.6% of the adult male population, so pirate companies begin to look less and less like beacons of democracy. On p. 132 of my thesis (linked above) there is a table showing the extent of the franchise in 14 pirates companies, 1704-1724, in which the number of voters ranges from 18-87%, in an analysis which is likely to overestimate the number of voters rather than underestimate.\n\nIn some companies, like John Gow's, there is no evidence of any formal voting taking place at all. John Philips was described as 'so arbitrary as to be hated by his own crew,' and one of Gow's articles states,\n\n > That every Man shall obey his Commander in all Respects, as if the Ship was his own, and we under Monthly Pay\n\nPerhaps one of the biggest issues is that even when a vote was taken, there was no guarantee that it would be adhered to. For example, the company of a pirate ship commanded by William Mason in the Atlantic voted on whether to sail East for the Indian Ocean or West for the Pacific. The officers all voted for the East and the men (the larger party) voted West, but since everyone capable of navigating had voted for the East, that was the course they took.\n\nThe status of both women and black men on pirate ships of the 'golden age' could easily fill a whole post each: here's the short version. Only four women are known to have been members of pirate companies in the period, and while three of them seem to have been more or less 'equal', that's a statistically insignificant number. The status of black men varied enormously: those who were useful and spoke English might well become free members of the company, though I've yet to find an example of a black man receiving a share of the profit; the rest were generally treated as slaves, to be put to work on the arduous tasks like pumping or sold for profit." ] }

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[ [ "https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/14872/FoxE.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d36ay5u" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "The only one I can recall off the top of my head is when Lincoln (Republican) chose Andrew Johnson (Democrat). Johnson was a Democrat who supported the war effort. Other folks will likely give more detailed responses, and other possible cross-party tickets. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chqb8e5" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "I am afraid the reason is linguistic. According to [Pijnenburg](_URL_0_) (pdf in dutch, the second chapter) the reason why Dutch diverted from German is twofold, the [high German consonant shift](_URL_1_) didn't happen in dutch and the dutch dialectcontinuum was influenced by oldfrankish. High german did follow the consonant shift and low german was influenced by oldsaxon, not oldfrankish.\nFor knowledgeable comments I advise you to post this question in /r/asklinguistics.\n\nOf course history does have something to do with how the languageborders are determined, an interesting remark by Pijnenburg was the influence the administration of the bishopric of Utrecht had on the language of especially the current province of Overijssel, since Utrecht (in the frankish dialectcontinuum) ruled that area, then called Oversticht. Utrecht's civil servants wrote in middledutch, while the area was part of the lowergerman dialectcontinuum. The local Overijssel dialects are still called nedersaksisch, lowersaxon." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/toor004gesc01_01/toor004gesc01_01.pdf", "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_consonant_shift" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cankrei" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Crone wrote Hagarism when she was a grad student, which was extremely gutsy since the book essentially refuted the whole of Islamic studies at that period. Crone herself has repudiated the book's central premise but it is still very important and useful. Crone advocated that we should not trust Islamic sources from the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries to tell us the reality of what happened in the 8th or 7th centuries since later adherents of Islam might want to legitimize the accepted practices of their time or change history to accommodate political and social behaviors. In that sense, her work is very valuable in its analysis and study of the contemporaries of Islam, and the few Arab sources we have as well. We ought to look at what Islam's neighbors were saying about Islam but also realize that many of them deliberately misunderstood or misinterpreted Islam as well (Byzantines purposefully mistranslated the Arabic phrase 'Allah u Akbar' to mean 'praise Aphrodite').\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c7l8eax", "c7ler68", "c7lfdaw", "c7lgfin" ], "score": [ 3, 5, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Very interesting question. I have always wondered this and assumed it was because of no capitalism for 45 years. While talking about something else, on of my history profs did mention that the Balkans has always been and economically depressed place. They were under the Ottoman Empire, so were not very open to new technologies and ideas and they had very simple economies. They didn't have the openness and market driven economies of the Western European nations. But that would only apply to some of the Communist countries.", "First, Eastern Europe is huge. Although there's no consistent definition, it's quite a bit larger than Western Europe. So when you refer to it as a \"historically unstable region,\" it's not clear which part you mean. It's not at all clear to me that Eastern Europe is any more historically unstable than Western Europe. \n\nI'd like to answer your question, but I also need to know what \"economic shortcomings\" means. Are we measuring GDP? Economic growth? Resiliency against the '08 crisis? Are we going to compare Eastern European nations with Germany? Or are we going to compare them with Greece and Spain? Are we going to normalize the results by economic status in 1990, or should we not take that into account?\n\nIn order to have a reasonable discussion, some of these terms need to be specified. Without any more information, I'll say that yes, communism had a negative effect on economic development both during the communist-era and the post-communist period, and that, generally speaking, lack of stability affects all national economies, in Eastern and in Western Europe and everywhere else. So I suppose the answer is both. I reject the term \"hinder ability to compete economically\" - by definition every country economically competes with every other country. Eastern European nations are however, on average, less economically developed than those in Western Europe, for an entire wealth of reasons.\n\n", "Just to contribute pure anecdotal evidence, if you go to some of the great cities of Eastern Europe - Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaw, etc, especially the ones that weren't too badly damaged by WWII - you will find some stunning architecture (often imperial) that matches anything you can find in the great cities of Western Europe. Budapest, for instance, has the incredibly gorgeous Parliament building and a number of impressive cathedrals. Though they may not have had the empires Western Europe had, they certainly were capable of shining on their own right. \n\nThat (almost) everything after WWII and the advent of communism does not quite match up suggests to me that Eastern Europe can't be said to be behind because of any inherent property of the region (which is, as other commenters have posted, loosely defined in any case). It's far more likely that it's the result of stifled economic, political, and social growth from totalitarian policies of the regimes there.", "increasecapacity is certainly right, that the question lumps countries and regions of a very broad range together, which all have their different histories and conditions. It's also not clear, what \"historically unstable\" means in this context.\n\nHaving said that, it is true that Eastern Europe, whether we're talking about the Balkans, Eastern Central Europe or easternmost Europe, was economically behind in comparison to Western Europe even before the advent of communism. But there were large differences even between those nations, which would become part of the eastern bloc. There were worlds in between Romania and Poland for example and they still are today." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9cjdv9", "c9cp000" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "I personally do not have a history of Colonial Korea to give you, as I am not in possession of the literature necessary to do so at this time; however, I can point you in the right direction, if you have access to a library.\n\nThere is a great primary source collection called *Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945* authored by Hildi Kang. It's a very balanced approach to the subject, as it gives you accounts of both those who *were* oppressed by the Japanese and those who were not.", "Hello! Taiwanese person here. While I'm not a true historian, I've been recently getting into my country's history during the occupation. Certainly, I can say that many Taiwanese will regard Japan's rule in a much higher regard than the Chinese's after the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan in 1949. \n\nAs for life during the occupation, things were only in a happy democratic state starting at what is referred to as the Dōka period (assimilation/integration) starting around the 1920s which in the entirety of the empire the electorate of the Lower Diet had been extended to all adult males. This period also added that Taiwan be considered an extension of the homeland. \n\nDuring the Kōminka movement in the mid-1930s as Japanese militarism was on the rise, locals were forcibly \"Japanized\" to an extent, in which their lives became highly similar to that of any other Japanese. During the war, Taiwan was an important airbase in the early stages and many Taiwanese did indeed serve in the armed forces.\n\nAs a personal addition on my part, my great-grandmother had lived under the occupation and her house was demolished by an American bombing raid during the war. I'd also recommend reading *George E. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed*, it provides a much better insight into how Taiwanese felt before, during and mainly after WWII than I have presented. My grandfather just received an original copy last year.\n\nLastly, I apologize because I actually met a Korean lady last week who was born in 1934 and provided incredible insight into life under the occupation, but I've largely forgotten what she told me (mainly because our conversation began with ways to treat acne, since she was a cosmetologist) - but at the very least she did mention it in kind terms, despite the fact I know many Koreans were used as laborers (more than a few had been working on the airfield at Guadalcanal).\n\nI do hope this helped." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cw4bkqi", "cw4cat8" ], "score": [ 7, 23 ], "text": [ "Hi, questions on early humanoids are worth x-posting to our sister sub /r/AskAnthropology ", "The most commonly used evidence of fire is remnants of charcoal, burned earth, or burned bone, that can either be dated directly, or dated in relation to objects of known age nearby. The chief issue with the extremely early dates for fire use ( > 600,000 years ago) often associated the *H. erectus* is that the evidence of those fires is difficult to distinguish from naturally occurring brush or forest fires. After several hundred thousand years a burning stump and an intentionally managed, but not re-used, cooking spot tend to look the same. Richard Wrangham is perhaps one of the most vocal advocates for the early appearance of fire, and he maintains cooking drove cognitive, social, and biological changes in our genus that eventually prompted the emergence of anatomically modern *H. sapiens*. His detractors claim the early hominin use of fire vs. naturally occurring processes isn't clear enough, nor is there sufficient evidence of early consistent, controlled use of fire needed to cook foods (and drive evolutionary change in our species).\n\nBy ~200,000 years ago, hominins begin constructed hearths, and routinely re-use cooking space, which leaves much better evidence of consistent, controlled use of fire. If you are interested in Wrangham's work [*Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human*](_URL_0_) is an accessible introduction into the fire and cooking debate." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=BVzV9reo0bYC&dq=catching+fire+how+cooking+made+us+human&source=gbs_navlinks_s" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d3ecox6" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Here is the earliest known Japanese account of the Portuguese:\n\n\"They eat with their fingers instead of with the chopsticks such as we use. They show their feelings without any self control. They cannot understand the meaning of written characters... They have no fixed abode, and barter things which they have for those they do not, but withal they are a harmless sort of people.\"\n\nAccording to \"Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword\", this type of account was typical. Japanese in this time regarded the Portuguese and other Europeans as culturally inferior, reflected by the Japanese word for Portuguese (And later other Europeans) in this time: Nanban, which meant barbarian from the South.\n\nDespite this, trade with Europeans brought in some foreign influences from Japan, such as new foods, loan words, art, furniture, and the Christian religion. This continued from the arrival of the Portuguese in 1543 until the Sakoku Edict of 1633, which strictly limited trade with Europeans (And other areas). The only Europeans allowed to trade after this were the Dutch, who could trade only through the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbor.\n\n Oda Nobunaga was adoptive of foreign influences and encouraged conversion to Christianity. However, later, this changed with Toyotomi Hideyoshi who was far more distrustful of Christianity and foreigners. Both of these things were seen as a threat and distrust of foreigners grew in government. Toyotomi wrote that: \n\n\"1. Japan is a country of the Gods, and for the padres to come hither and preach a devilish law, is a reprehensible and devilish thing ...\n2. For the padres to come to Japan and convert people to their creed, destroying Shinto and Buddhist temples to this end, is a hitherto unseen and unheard-of thing ... to stir the canaille to commit outrages of this sort is something deserving of severe punishment.\" (From Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan)\n\nThe Tokugawa Shogunate also saw Christianity as a threat, having a negative view of foreigners, and eventually banned the religion from the country, persecuting those who practiced it, most notably after the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638. This type of attitude towards foreigners continued until the Fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. After that, during the Meiji Restoration, Europeans were no longer seen as inferior. \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f0sbuxu" ], "score": [ 678 ], "text": [ "Upper-class Romans were typically spectators, not performers, of dance.\n\nAt least some elite Romans, in fact, considered participating in a dance nothing less than shameful. Cicero, for example, is at pains to explain why one of his clients - accused of being a dancer - would never stoop or shimmy so low:\n\n\"Cato calls Lucius Murena a dancer....you ought not \\[O, Cato\\] rashly to call a consul of the Roman people a dancer...**For no man, one may almost say, ever dances when sober**, unless perhaps he be a madman, nor in solitude, nor in a moderate and sober party; dancing is the last companion of prolonged feasting, of luxurious situation, and of many refinements.\" (*Pro Murena* 1.6)\n\nIt was perfectly legitimate, however, for elite Romans to dance in certain religious contexts. Only patricians, for example, could be *Salii* \\- the dancing priests of Mars. Twice a year (probably), 24 of these men would put on a stylized version of ancient armor and process through the city of Rome, pausing at intervals to perform an elaborate dance while clashing their shields and singing ancient songs. The dance itself (the *tripudium*) seems, like the Pyrrhic dances of ancient Greece, to have evolved from military exercises. Plutarch gives a disappointingly brief description: \"the dance is chiefly a matter of step; for they move gracefully, and execute with vigor and agility certain shifting convolutions, in quick and oft-recurring rhythm\" (*Numa* 13).\n\nRoman women might also dance in ritual contexts. A traditional (and therefore respectable) example was the \"rope dance\" at least occasionally performed to honor Juno. As described by Livy:\n\n\"Then the seven and twenty maidens in long robes marched, singing their hymn in honor of Juno the Queen...From the gate they proceeded along the Vicus Iugarius into the Forum. In the Forum the procession halted, and passing a rope from hand to hand the maidens advanced, accompanying the sound of the voice by beating time with their feet.\" (27.37.12-14)\n\nOther sacred dances were less reputable. The *Galli* \\- the eunuch priests / devotees of the Anatolian goddess Cybele, whose worship had been imported to Rome in the third century BCE - were known for their ecstatic dances, which often seemed disturbingly exotic and indecorous to the Romans. Their fascination and otherness are captured by a passage from Lucretius:\n\n\"The Galli come: and hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines resound around to banging of their hands; the fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray; The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds in Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives, wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power to panic with terror of the goddess' might the rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts\" (2.614f)\n\nUnless they happened to be part of a priestly college, however, elite Romans were almost exclusively spectators of dances. Roman banquets often featured professional dancers - male, female, or both - who would perform carefully choreographed pieces for the pleasure of the diners. Spanish dancing girls seem to have been especially popular in the late first and early second centuries. Juvenal, with characteristic sourness, condemns those who indulge in such things:\n\n\"You may look perhaps for a troop of Spanish maidens to win applause by immodest dance and song, sinking down with quivering thighs to the floor...\" (11.162-4)\n\nMost Romans, however, seem to have had no problems with immodest dance or quivering thighs. \n\nOutside of banquets, the Romans were very fond of watching pantomime, a ballet-like entertainment in which a highly-trained masked dancer (usually male) performed an episode from mythology as a stylized dance, to musical accompaniment. Pantomime was sometimes criticized:\n\n\"The pantomime dancer, \\[a Cynic philosopher\\] said, was a mere appendage to flute and pipe and beating feet; he added nothing to the action; his gesticulations were aimless nonsense; there was no meaning in them; people were hoodwinked by the silken robes and handsome mask, by the fluting and piping and the fine voices, which served to set off what in itself was nothing.\" (Lucian, Of Dancing 63)\n\nBut many appreciated the talent and range of the star pantomimes, who could imitate episodes from the madness of Ajax to the love of Venus and Vulcan to Saturn devouring his children (I would have liked to see that one). \n\nElite Romans, in short, knew and appreciated a great variety of dances; but they very seldom polished the dance floor themselves." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ce4wq75" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ " > What group of people determined the constellations we use today\n\nAssuming you mean the constellations used by the scientific community, I'll let someone else handle the development of the International Astronomical Union's official constellations, and their largely Mediterranean and Middle Eastern origins. Those are the constellations your likely most familiar with, barring a few exceptions (most Americans would recognize the Big Dipper as a constellation, for example, but to the IAU it's part of Ursa Major). Instead, I'll focus on your second question.\n\n > were there different constellations for different groups of people?\n\nYes, different cultures had and have their own sets of constellations, though their are sometimes similarities - both coincidental and due to the sharing of ideas across cultures over time.\n\nTo give you an example from the eastern portion of North America, the stars around the Big Dipper / Ursa Major as also usually associated with a bear, as it is in parts of Europe. However, the bear is usually being hunted in Eastern Woodland astronomy, and there is disagreement over which stars are the bear, which are its hunters, and which are its den. \n\nSo for the Mi'kmaq, the constellation is the Endless Bear Hunt, with the bowl of the Big Dipper being the bear, the stars of the Big Dipper's handle and others all the way to Arcturus and a little way beyond are the hunters (a flock of birds, including two owls, a blue jay, a pigeon, and a chickadee carrying a pot). They block the bear's path to its den, which is composed mainly of the stars of the Northern Crown.\n\nThese stars form a nearly identical constellation for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), though the hunters are human, not birds, and fewer in number (usually three). The chickadee's pot may either be one of the hunters' pot or his dog. Rather than being the bear's den, the Northern Crown is the net the hunters throw at the bear. The three hunters with a dog interpretation is also shared by the Meskwaki (Fox).\n\nThe Lenape (Delaware) have a different interpretation of the bear hunt using these stars. The Northern Crown is the bear's head, rather than being the den or the net, and is detached form its body. Its body is nearby, trying to catch up with its missing head (with apocalyptic results if it were ever to succeed). Another set of nearby stars represents the bear's den, while a fourth set represents the monstrous beast the pursues the bear. The exact identity of the body, the den, and the monster is debatable. \n\nWhen these stars aren't associated with bears, the next most common interpretation is they represent [the Fisher](_URL_0_). This is the interpretation favored by the Anishinaabe and the Cree. The bowl of the Big Dipper is the Fisher's body; the handle is its tail. The little star that other's associated with a hunter's pot or dog is an arrow that struck the Fisher and killed him.\n\nAnother possible exception in the east is the constellation *Hotci'li pi'la*, the Boat Stars. This is one of the constellations of the Alabama, who were part of the Creek Confederacy during the colonial era. The constellation is described as being a large boat trailed by smaller boats, which ferry the Sky People to and from the earth. While ethnographic sources are explicit about which constellation this is, it has been associated with the Big Dipper - the large boat being the bowl and the smaller boats being the handle. \n\nSource:\n\n[Stars of the First People](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_(animal\\)", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Stars_of_the_First_People.html?id=tPDWAAAAMAAJ" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dqo981s" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Although there's certainly more to say, especially with regards to agricultural productivity in late antiquity and the fall of the Empire's impact on the mediterranean \"common market\" for agricultural goods, we've actually gotten a number of questions about the end of Rome recently that might give you a cleared idea about life during the end of the Roman Empire. \n\n[This discussion](_URL_0_) led by u/Iguana_on_a_stick examines life in \"Roman Cities\" after the end of the empire, and might give you a clearer idea of what post-Roman society was like. u/shlin28 wrote [this other answer](_URL_1_) on the specifics of the city of Rome after the empire ended." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7dt269/what_happened_to_the_inhabitants_of_roman_cities/dq0gwxc/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4dclc7/what_exactly_happened_to_the_city_of_rome_after/d1qhl1q/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csa7eib", "csabii5" ], "score": [ 11, 30 ], "text": [ "hi! it may be worth x-posting this one to the coin collectors in /r/coins or /r/Numismatics ", "So the best answer i could find on the webs states that the real reason was likely practical: Ancient Chinese coins were cast/poured into moulds, not stamped or milled. If you've ever casted, you know that you get flash, which is material that overflows through the casting molds' joining space. In order to make a uniform coin, after the casting, the coins were put on a dowel or rod so that many of them could be filed down at once. This rod was square in order for the coins to stay stable and not roll while being filed. \n\nOlder round Chinese coins did have round holes in them as well, and one effect of this was that the money could be stored on strings. \n\nThere are a variety of philosophical meanings assigned to the \"square hole, round coin\", but these appear to be an after effect from the practical filing needs\n\nOn a side note, I am not a fan of Wiki as a source, but the [Wiki page](_URL_1_) on \"Ancient Chinese Coinage\" is a clearing house of every type of Ancient Chinese coin, all the way back to their \"spade money\", and cowrie shells! A dedicated numismatist put this together....\n\nSources:\n\n^[1] Encyclopedia of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives by C.A.S.Williams, 1960, NY\n\n^[2] The Passing of Korea by Homer Hulbert 1906 (? date questionable)\n\nvia:\n\n[This website](_URL_0_) Sources listed above confirmed via google books search and other text searches." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.charm.ru/library/faq004.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Chinese_coinage" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0eetyh" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "While I can't exactly answer how enthusiastic they were about it but I can write something about ordinary Germans joining in active measures of discrimination and violence before 1939.\n\nGenerally, people higher up in the Nazi party were not fond of spontaneous pogroms. People like Hitler, Himmler, and Werner Best saw themselves as proponents of what they called \"rational anti-Semitism\", meaning that to them the alleged Jewish threat had to be encounter not with violence on the streets but with an overarching political program. That didn't mean though that they were against using violence in the streets when it suited their program.\n\nThe first attempt at rallying the public against the Jews by the Nazi party was a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 but that was in essence a failure and it was not until 1938 and the November pogrom that there was to be some kind of Reich concerted action against Jews. During the pogrom of 1938 however, a lot of people joined in and over 400 Jews died during the night and many synagogues all over the country burned.\n\nAnother area where ordinary Germans joined into the discriminatory policy is \"Aryanization\", meaning the theft of Jewish property by the state and its redistribution to the German populace. It's hard to gauge just how many people pofited from it but the number is somewhere in the high thousands if not ten thousands.\n\nThirdly, we have what Michael Wildt describes as low key anti-Semitic action as a reaffirmation of the Volksgemeinschaft (the German racial people's community loosely translated). In his book on the subject, he describes that outside the urban centers small anti-Semitic actions could serve as a affirmation for the community partaking in them. He describes such things as a village crowd getting hold of a German-Jewish mixed couple, shaving their heads and parading them through the street as \"race defilers\". These things seem to have been rather common in German provincial areas, especially during the first half of the 1930s.\n\nFurthermore, with the addition of more and more discriminatory measures, most Germans participated or at least accepted them like separate benches for Jews and Germans, separate shops etc. etc.\n\nSources:\n\n* Frank Bajohr: „Arisierung“ in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945. Christians, Hamburg 1997.\n\n* Saul Friedländer's books on the Jews and the Third Reich.\n\n* Michael Wildt: Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2007." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdxt8m0", "cdxub8u" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "I'm not an expert in that specific area, but I can dig up some sources. [This party census](_URL_1_) says that slightly over 5% of party members in 1924 were Jewish. Wikipedia cites [this source](_URL_0_) for other figures, but unfortunately I can't read Russian. A cursory google translate gives a figure of 7.1% in 1922. Given the number of Jews in Russia, those figures aren't terribly surprising. [This source](_URL_2_) says 364/23,000 were Jews pre-revolution, because more Jews were Mensheviks, not Bolsheviks.", "I've attempted to answer here:\n_URL_2_\n/what_was_the_role_of_the_jews_in_the_bolshevik/\n\nI would add that many jews, holding top-level offices in Soviet government have tended to de-emphasize their nationality, as per Marxism and Bolshevism class is much more important than nationality. \n\nTo the point that [Lazar' Kaganovich](_URL_0_) - being as ethnic jewish as it gets - refused to sign Anti-fascist Jewish Committee memo: \"I'm not a Jewish politician, I'm a member of Politburo\".\n\n**Sources**\n\n1. [Russian: Emmanuil Ioffe - \"Unknown Lazar Kaganovich\" (excerpts from interviews with L. Kaganovich)](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.sem40.ru/anti/7820/", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/1924_Chart_-_Conditions_in_Russia.png", "http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/39.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich", "http://mishpoha.org/n29/29a21.php", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rm47m" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "emhkxsd", "emhqtk0", "emi8izx" ], "score": [ 4, 10, 2 ], "text": [ "I’d wager that It really depends on the classes you take. In high school, I learned fuckall about anything that wasn’t western Europe or the US (including barely anything about Persia) simply because my high school’s curriculum, or at least the AP curriculum, was structured that way. But in university, there are plenty of courses offered at my school that talk about European-Muslim relations during the early modern era, and so on. It just depends on where you take classes I suppose. Individual teachers might also be biased due to their own courses of study or their backgrounds. I wouldn’t simply say that the Ummayad Caliphate is underrepresented in academia... Especially in higher education.", "If you mean the Umayyad period specifically (661–750 CE), keep in mind that it was relatively short-lived. And it can be overshadowed by what came before it (the initial rise of Islam) and what followed (the ‘Abbasid “golden age”).", "A combination of Eurocentrism, Anglocentrism, and general ignorance.\n\nIt's often not taught in schools because they tend to focus almost entirely on European and colonial/postcolonial American history. The things that Americans and Europeans see as \"their\" history and fit the narrative they want to tell. At least from the perspective of an American history curriculum, pre-United States history only matters insofar as it acts as a prologue to United States history/\n\nThings like the Umayyad conquest of Spain are left out due to Anglocentrism. At least in America, they want to tell the history they see as their history. Spain does factor into that until Columbus comes in and discovers America. which sets the stage for colonization, which sets the stage for English colonization, which sets the stage for the United States.\n\nAs for why it's not \"talked about\" in popular discourse, that's because it's not part of \"popular history.\" The Romans (but not the later Eastern Romans or the earlier Kingdom of Rome), the Greeks (but again, not the Greek speaking Eastern Romans), the English (but not the pre-Anglo Saxon Britons), the Colonial Americans (but not the Native Americans), the Crusaders (but not the Islamic defenders) all get movies, and TV specials, and pop history books written about them. So what they did, and how they lived their lives are pretty well known to the general public.\n\nBut the Umayyads don't get this same treatment. They tend to only get discussed in academia or in specialist historical works. So, most people don't really know who they were, what they did, or how they lived. They aren't aware how big the Caliphate got, and the impact it had on history. They probably aren't even aware that an \"Umayyad Caliphate\" existed and how it differed from any other Arab state.\n\nSadly, it's a self causing cycle. Arab history isn't taught in schools, so it doesn't become part of our popular histories. No one knows about it, so no one thinks to teach it in schools. So, because of that, one of the largest and most important empires in world history is completely unknown in the west outside of academia." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f84mpsa" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "Perhaps the most interesting is the mysterious death of Jane McCrea. Jane was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey, and in July 1777 was living with her older brother outside Saratoga, New York. \n\nHer brother was called up by the local militia, and her fiance was a loyalist posted at the recently re-captured Fort Ticonderoga, so she made her way towards British lines. \n\nWhile resting in the home of another loyalist, Sara McNeil, an Indian scouting party attached to General Burgoyne's advancing forces raided the village of Fort Edward, killing a patriot family and taking Jane McCrea prisoner.\n\nWhat happened next became the stuff of folklore, and even repeated exhumations of McCrea's remains for forensic analysis have been unable to resolve the conflicting accounts.\n\nThe warriors who scalped her, and the official British stance, said that McCrae was struck by a Patriot musketball and killed while being marched back to the British camp. Her Indian escorts, wanting to claim their reward for capturing an alleged Patriot, decided to scalp her and take her hair as proof rather than carry a corpse several miles. Her fiance, and many others, believed she had simply been murdered by an overzealous scouting party. \n\nThe Patriot cause immediately seized on the incident as proof that the British could not uphold their promises to protect the Loyalists from raids and reprisals, and the sensationalized story struck a blow to Burgoyne's civilian base of support at a crucial time of the war. \n\nIn 2006 a research team, with the blessing of Jane's closest living relative and a court order, exhumed her grave for forensic examination. Most of her bones were intact and showed no signs of injury, but her skull was missing (likely looted during her first reburial in 1822) as were most ribs. With no signs of injury on the remains, even the best modern science cannot conclusively say if Jane McCrea was the unfortunate victim of a stray Patriot musket ball or of a native's hatchet during a British-sanctioned raid.\n\nEDIT: I reread the actual 2006 report today, not just the summary I had saved, and apparently Sara McNeil's remains were reburied with Jane in 1822, causing no small challenge for the forensic team." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ei35qq9" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It's been about a year since I did anything on this topic so forgive me for any mistakes I make in terms of the Historiography or nuances on the topic. The shift away from systems of slavery occurs far later than one might expect, it is around the year 1000 Pierre Bonnaisse (**1**) identities slavery as having ended in France, although we must remember even after the shift towards serfdom slavery still existed into the high middle ages in the form of galley slavery and eventually economic chattel slavery imported from Syria by the Genoans.(**2)** \n\nThe nature of the shift away from slavery towards serfdom occurs slowly over a long time making it a favoured topic by the Annales school, contemporary studies look more towards the ideas of \"unfreedom\" and \"freedom\" which are far more useful terms in deriving information about the transition. I'll largely base this off my reading of Alice Rio's book *Slavery after Rome.*(**3**)\n\n**What is Medieval Slavery:** In brief I don't think medieval slavery is so much to do with selling or buying people as later slavery is, but to do with cultural ideas of debt and punishment. Slavery took different forms such as:\n\nCapture and resale: Typically a goal of Viking/Islamic raids and unsurprisingly disliked in Christian sources (*Life of St.Wulfstan* for example).(**4**) Western Christians also partook in this form of slavery too, but as a bi-product of conquests like the expansion of Charlemagne's empire into Slavic lands or the instability of the Heptarchy period in England, slaves takenin this way were moved and planted on estates as labourers.(**3**) However, this form of slavery shouldn't be emphasised too much as it is typically seen on Scandinavian, Islamic and Pagan peripheries and remains unsourced in western documents.(**3**)\n\nDebt: A favourite term of economist David Graeber, this explains slavery on local levels where figures may willingly sell themselves into temporary slavery in order to pay off unpayable debts to someone else in the community.(**3**) I'm not hugely familiar with the impact of this on ones family but I would imagine they also become slaves until the debt is payed. This is where \"unfreedom\" becomes useful as people in this position are subservient and slaves, but still partake in the community and can have ambiguous social statuses, in general however they're unfree.(**5**)\n\nPunishment: Very similar to debt slavery this was paying off a debt to legitimate legal authority via temporary enslavement.(**3)**\n\n**Why Did Slavery \"end\" in Medieval Europe:** \n\n**Feudal Impact:** The \"feudal revolution\" led to a shifting role of the general peasant and in general symbolised a shift from paying tribute to those above you but towards a system of obligation that is feudalism. Seen in the ideas of the school Auxerre and King Alfred the Great there's a general shift towards the notions of \"three orders\" and mutual obligations in the 9th century which eroded some of the practical and social reasons for slavery.(**6)** Lords are quite likely to grant manumission/freedom to slaves and even grant them property to live on which allows them direct access to their labour, rather than having the intermediate access via a slave owner.(**7**) This may have been to do with the collapse of the Carolingian empire with Charles the Fat in 888 into many polities as the more personalised feudal politics that followed encouraged a shift away from slavery for aforementioned reasons.(**8**) In England we can see this following the Norman Conquest of 1066 which largely ended the collapsing practice for good, in the *Doomsday Book* we see a lot of examples of slaves freed by their new lords and added to the general collective of serfdom who incidentally may have become increasingly \"unfree\" as a result.(**9**)\n\n**Church Impact:** Surprisingly church impact was initially limited in the ending of slavery and permitted rural slavery beyond the nobles (in England) as they couldn't as effectively monopolise the labour of serfs as effectively as the nobles.(**10**) Guy Bois was increasingly cynical about the church's role in ending slavery, citing examples such as St.Augustine who called it a \"temporal punishment\" and their Christian pushing of acceptance of ones place in this life as all could be redeemed in Heaven.(**11**) Nonetheless the church doubtless had social impact, in England and France it shows an increasing intolerance towards slavery towards the millennium, something that likely took a while to come into effect (the works of *Aelfric of Eynsham, Wulfstan of York and Wulfstan of Worchester* in the context of England).\n\n**Social Impact:** As mentioned before, debt slavery (alongside penal and self sale) were common in early medieval communities but one could remain a slave and generate a social standing within a village. One of the most important sources for this is the example of the *Judgement of Courtisols* in 847, in which serfs in Chalons-sur-Marne vouch for the serf status of several slaves in the village (until some village elders attest against it).(**12**) This implies the status of slavery in a social context was malleable and in the absence of personally aware authority people could work or earn their way out of slavery, something that plausibly occurred in times of chaos (which paradoxically may have created more slaves too such as after the Danish invasion of England in the early 11th century).\n\n**Conclusion:** In conclusion the question is incredibly difficult to answer, the end of slavery in the early middle ages is more of a transitional period towards general serf-ly \"unfreedom\" more than any form of mass liberation or radical shift in thinking. This is a rather Anglo-centric answer unfortunately, although I don't know much about the ends of slavery in places beyond England or France, ultimately, it is just important to recognise that slavery was malleable and transitionary, rather than enshrined institutionally to any serious degree, the names for \"serfs\" and \"peasants\" in of themselves vary and aren't codified, it is dependent upon local social relations to function. \n\n**General Sources (I don't know how to cite on Reddit):**\n\n1. Bonnassie, P., *From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe,* Birrell, J., (tran.), (Cambridge, 1991).\n2. Phillips, J.R.S., *The Medieval Expansion of Europe*. 2nd ed., (Oxford, 1998).\n3. Rio, A., *Slavery After Rome: 500-1100,* (Oxford, 2017).\n4. Coleman, William of Malsmebury (ed.), *Life of St. Wulfstan.*\n5. Greaber, D., *Debt: The First 5000 Years,* (New York, 2011).\n6. Alfred of Wessex's and school of Auxerre's respective translations and interpretations of *Boethius*\n7. Pelteret, D. A. E., *Slavery in Early Medieval England,* (Woodbridge, 1995).\n8. Bois, G., *The Transformation of the Year 1000: The village of Lournand from antiquity to feudalism,* Birell, J., (trans.), (Manchester, 1992).\n9. Hincmar of Riems, The Judgement of Courtisols." ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36qigb/what_happened_to_the_roman_system_of_slavery/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cnuluwj" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I did a quick run-down of the [history of men's and women's underwear](_URL_0_) in a previous post, but there's definitely room for someone more versed in 19th century fashion to expand!" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/265b9n/when_did_people_start_wearing_underwear_did_men/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dcqizfm" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Follow up: Did the structure of the Holy Roman Empire help or hinder member states going to war with other members?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f4oo6eh" ], "score": [ 30 ], "text": [ "While precise estimates are hard to come by- the simple answer to your question is yes. \n\nThe primary reason we do not know for sure is the UK Land Registry (wherein land owners are named) does not cover the whole of Britain. Ownership of land only needs be declared if the land is sold and a new buyer takes it, so land that existed before its establishment often is owned by unknown people. \n\nGiven it has remained in these mysterious hands for so long it is a reasonable assumption that this land is in the hands of noble families. \n\nThe undeclared amount of land in the UK stands at 17%. If it is owned by nobility that would make landownership by nobles in the UK about 47% of the whole country, just shy of half of it all. \n\nWhat we do know is in the hands of our Dukes?\n\nThe Boughton estate belongs to the Dukes of Buccleuch, who also happen to be the largest aristocratic land owners in the UK (they own about 240,000 aches of land in Scotland); the Dukes of Westminster own more of Britain than the Queen does- crucially the land is run via Grovsenor Estates, the private family company which manages their estates; their fortune was built upon owning huge swathes of land that became London (Mayfair and Belgravia), but now own properties in the United States, Canada, Sweden, China, Japan and more. \n(I believe a surprisingly large chunk of Washington DC belongs to the Duke of Westminster). \n\nThe Queen is a mammoth land owner- she does NOT own 6.6 billions ached as has been incorrectly reported several times; this land is run via Crown Estates and includes large portions of London, most of the still in use palaces; large parts of Scotland; and most of Britain’s off shore wind farms. \nAs Duchess of Lancaster (the title of Duke of Lancaster always goes to the reigning monarch these days) she owns quite a bit of land in the industrial north-east, while the title of Duke of Cornwall always goes to the heir of the throne (in this case HRH Prince Charles) and includes areas like Dartmoor, the Isles of Scilly and of course Cornwall). \n\nShe also privately (not as monarch) owns we believe a horse farm in Kentucky and a chunk of Park Avenue in NYC. \n\nWe don’t exactly know- but the British Embassy in Washington (the largest Embassy in the US) is located next door to the Vice Presidents residence I believe and that is owned entirely by the monarch. \n\nBeyond that? Other noble land owners? \nThe 8th Earl of Mexborough owns 20,000 aches; the Duke of Beaufort owns 20,500 mostly in Wales; the 4th Earl of Iveagh owns 20,665 aches of farmland mostly in Suffolk (fun fact- the Earl of Iveagh family surname is Guinness- yes THAT Guinness); the Dukes of Bedford around 22,500 aches (slightly less than the Italian Count Vighignolo who owns 25,000 aches of Norfolk and is the largest foreign noble landowner); the Tempest family are not aristocracy but they have held land since Norman Times and rock in around 25,500 acres; the Earls of Lonsdale have about 35,000 acres mostly in Cumbria. \n\nAnd as I said- these are just the ones we know about. \nHope that answers your question about the land anyway." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e20kfoe" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hi! While more can always be said on the subject, you should check out the [\"Technology and Civilization in the Americas\"](_URL_0_) section of the FAQ, where your specific question has previously been discussed." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "c8vr1ic" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "It's not a secret society... Conspiracy theorists love to claim that secret societies such as the illuminati have influenced major events in history. \n\nThis would likely be a question for one of the experts like Panzerkampfwagon or NMW to answer. However, until they do, I would suggest that 11:00 was chosen because it is easy to remember and it gave time for the troops to be told.\n\n*edit: Actually... 11:11 sounds dodgy. I am relatively certain that the armistice came into effect at 11:00 not 11:11... Do some independent research on the topic and you will see that the theory of a conspiracy of secret societies has no leg to stand on.\n\nHope that helps...\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwfi71i" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm going to go on a limb and actually attempt to answer this question despite people's objections over the definition of prestigious.\n\nHarvard's prestige may have a large part to do with how old it is. For much of colonial New England's history, if someone of means wanted to get a higher education, the only options were to go to Harvard or back to England. \n\nFor obvious reasons, Harvard become a popular option for the rich and powerful of New England society. This cycle feeds itself as new up and comers in the system attempt to form connections with the existing establishment.\n\nBoth Roosevelt presidents can claim Harvard as their alma mater. The Roosevelt family is the closest you can come to naming blue blooded American royalty. The shear number of American and world leaders, justices, business men, etc that have passed through Harvard over the centuries is an inertia that is difficult to overcome.\n\nThis also feeds into another of Harvard's inherent advantages in the prestige department: their endowment. Because of the aforementioned individuals, Harvard gets more donations and can quite literally afford to acquire anything they want. The best facilities, or outbid on acquiring world class faculty. Harvard has a larger endowment than any other American institution of higher learning. On paper, their endowment also dwarfs Oxford's, however Oxford's other assets are more difficult to access." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccu6eg0" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Yes, and, to my knowledge, most of the prominent resisters (rather than the everyday resisters) were communists. Among the most prominent white resisters will always be [Joe Slovo](_URL_6_) (head of the South African Communist party 1984–1991, and a minister in Mandela's first government). He started his political career in a [white-led anti-apartheid social movment](_URL_10_). He was later a prominent member of [Umkhonto we Sizwe](_URL_0_), the armed wing of the ANC. When going through lists of White anti-Apartheid activists, you realize that almost all of them were also Jewish: in addition to Slovo, [Harry Schwarz](_URL_2_) (non-violent resister and prominent member of the legitimate non-Apartheid white parties), [Denis Goldberg](_URL_9_) (a communist involved with armed resistance), [Helen Suzman](_URL_3_) (from 1961-1974 she was the only member of parliament unequivocally opposed to Apartheid), [Helen Joseph](_URL_1_) (another important early activist), [Lionel Bernstein](_URL_12_) (another Jewish communist who ended up imprisoned for his political activism), [Arthur Goldreich](_URL_4_) (who was involved with military resistance and training), and [Ruth First](_URL_8_) (Slovo's wife who was assassinated via a letter bomb sent by the regime while she was teaching in exile in Mozambique). \n\nThe [1956 Treason Trial](_URL_11_) basically aimed to get rid of all major anti-regime opposition. To give you a sense of what the opposition looked like (quoting Wiki):\n\n > In December 1956 many key members of the Congress Alliance were arrested and charged with treason, including the almost entire executive committee of the ANC, as well as the SACP, SAIC, COD. 105 Africans, 21 Indians, 23 whites and 7 coloured leaders were arrested.\n\nAt the famous [Rivonia Trial](_URL_5_) which arrested 19 ANC leaders, six of those leaders were Jews (including some of those listed above), two were Indian, one was of mixed race, and the rest I believe were black. Of the 10 actually tried (including Nelson Mandela), three were Jewish, one was Indian, one person was of mixed race, and five were blacks. Another Jew was on the initially listed on the indictment, but removed before the trial began. \n\nSo yes, there were, but for the most part they were Leftist Jews associated with the Communist Party who cooperated extensively with the ANC (and in fact, were regularly tried alongside ANC members, especially in the early period). That's for more overt resistance. I know there were lots of more subtle acts of resistance, but I can't really list any off the top of my head. One prominent white, non-Jewish opponent of Apartheid was [Adolph Malan](_URL_7_) (at least, I think he was not Jewish)." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Joseph", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Schwarz", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Suzman", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Goldreich", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivonia_Trial", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Slovo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Malan", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_First", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Goldberg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torch_Commando", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Trial", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Bernstein" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6lvicz", "c6lvoka", "c6lvzo8", "c6lx0w4", "c6lxt43", "c6m7hbe" ], "score": [ 116, 9, 3, 12, 41, 3 ], "text": [ "By the use of production en masse of course. \n \nDedicated assembly line production with individual workers and work teams focussed on repetitive single tasks didn't really originate with Henry Ford. \n \nThe [Flavian Amphitheatre](_URL_0_) (aka *the* Colosseum) took nearly a decade of continuous labour to design and build starting with the draining, infilling and relevelling / compacting of 6 acres of lake. \nThe subsequent quarrying and shaping of 100,000 cubic meters of stone for the outer wall and the mining, smelting and fashioning of 300 tons of iron clamps to bind them were obviously big jobs, as were transportation, laying, tile making, etc., etc., etc. \n \nThe romans *had* mass production, just not mechanised. \n \nGlassblowers and smiths were artisans at the apex of small armies of wood cutters, charcoal makers, miners, refiners, stokers, bellow monkeys, and (of course) beer & wine makers. \n \nGetting tossed down the salt mines was a grim punishment for those that didn't fall in line and a useful source of salt and human urine for tanning all those hides for all that leather for all those soldiers.", "Mass non mechanized production with the primary source of labor being slaves! ", "The Romans used mass labour in forms of smithy's woodcutters etc.\n\nThe best example of pre industrialized mass labour is in England and Wales during the 100 Years War with France. Hundreds of thousands of arrows were produced every year by counties all across England and Wales.", "It sounds like this question should be \"without assembly lines and interchangeable parts, how did Rome supply its vast armies with weapons and armor?\" \n\nIs that right?", "I'll just leave this here. [Industry of the Roman Empire](_URL_0_)\n\nTL;DR\nRoman industrial production (especially metal production) at the height of the Empire was not to be exceeded until around 1750 - the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. \n\nEdit: Also, Romans certainly had mass production, so the question should be tailored more towards modern industrial practices, or something like that.", "This has always been something I wondered as well. Every writer in medieval history seems to emphasize how swords and mail were very expensive, and only the elite could afford them.\n\nYet when we look at Republican Roman history, almost every soldier had a sword and some armor. Even the velites, who were skirmishers, possessed a sword that would mysteriously become impossible for them to own a thousand years later." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum#Physical_description" ], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#Industrial_output" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cfit94m" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Sort of. Ancient armies used to keep screens a lot closer in than modern armies, usually within line of sitght of the main forces. this meant they had a very small footprint, maybe 4-5 miles wide while traveling, and sometimes they had to meander around a bit to find each other. The best example I can think of this is Alexander and Darius II heading to the battle of Gaugamela. They knew there was going to be a fight, and both sides were headed to it, but they actually passed each other up on the road heading to the showdown, and Alexander had to backtrack a bit to get the two armies aligned for a proper face off. \n\n This covers part of your question, it's a good example of two armies heading to a fight and missing each other, but they did find each other after a brief SNAFU. That is fairly typical for ancient battles, the two armies would often have to feel around a bit in situations where the defenders decided to meet the invaders out in the open instead of sticking to static defenses and waiting for them to show up. Scouting wasn't the same as it is now, and as I mentioned screening forces tended to stay much closer in, but eventually when two groups want to fight and are headed towards each other they manage to get it together." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg6lwut", "cg70epe" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Lookup 'William Still, The Underground Railroad'\n\nHe was an abolitionist and a conductor of the Underground Railroad. He interviewed hundreds of runaway slaves, kept records and wrote biographies on them.\n\nedit: also, I know there were tribes in florida that took in runaway slaves. If they converted religions they were compensated for with shelter, food, work, security, etc.", "Though you are likely referring to the African Slave Trade, and African slaves' attempts to return to their homeland, when we talk about slavery in early English colonies in North America we should not forget to focus on the Indian slave trade. \n\nThe Indian slave trade permeated life in the early U.S. colonies. Early contact along the Atlantic Coast was often initiated by traders or fisherman who, in an attempt to make a quick profit, would kidnap Amerindians living along the coast to sell as curiosities/slaves in Europe or the Caribbean. In the south, the Indian slave trade was the most important factor influencing the development of the Carolinas from 1650-1715. More Indians were exported out of Charles Town than Africans were imported during this period ([Gallay 2009](_URL_0_)). Slavery became a feature of total warfare with Indian nations, as seen in Massachusetts at the end of King Phillip's War, when the defeated remnants of the Wampanoag Confederacy were sold into slavery in Bermuda.\n\nPerhaps one of the most famous Native Americans, Squanto (or Tisquantum), was originally abducted with five other members of his Patuxet village in 1605. He managed to return to New England in 1614, only to be abducted again shortly after his return. His captor, Thomas Hunt, then sold him to clergymen in Spain. From Spain Tisquantum made his way to London, where he lived for a few years before boarding a ship to Newfoundland in 1617. He arrived in Newfoundland, but couldn't find transport down to Massachusetts, and returned to England. Finally, in 1619 he journeyed with John Smith back to his Patuxet village, finding the area depopulated from slaving raids and disease. A year later the *Mayflower* made landfall in Plymouth and Tisquantum began his role as translator/guide/ambassador between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag leader Massasoit, aided by the English language skills he gained during his captivity." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://books.google.com/books?id=HT69BbA3Is8C&dq=indian+slave+trade+in+colonial+america&source=gbs_navlinks_s" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "curstqb" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "How about Puyi, last Emperor of China? Was Emperor of China, was deposed. Later became Emperor of Manchukuo, a puppet state set up by the Japanese invaders. Manchukuo was a portion of China, not all of China. So a different country. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d18be5l" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "There is a very interesting book related to this subject, \"Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks: The World War II Memoirs of Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitriy Loza\". Very well written and well worth a read, btw. Loza, started as a lieutenant in the Red Army tank forces in a unit equipped with American M4 Shermans. He and his men liked the tanks quite a lot actually. He praises them for their reliability, build quality and the spacious cabin. \n\nI's been a while since I read this book, but I do remember once incident that Loza describes where his tank was disabled in the middle of a battle. He and the crew were completely pinned down, and couldn't retreat on foot, and the tank was burning. The only thing they could do was crawl under the tank to shield themselves from machine gun fire but they expected the tank to explode sooner or later so they resigned themselves to death. However the tank didn't explode and the entire crew lived. \n\nFrom what I remember, Loza didn't consider the Sherman to be inferior to the T-34 in any way. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "czufikq" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "While it may seem odd that Hannibal chose Generals all within recent memory he had good reasons to do so. Alexander the Great is a great choice for greatest general of all time because of the scope of his expansion in such a small (relatively) amount of time especially being outnumbered in almost all of his battles(Gaugamela being his most famous). Pyrrhus of Epirus is also a good choice for being pretty high on the list (though i dont think he'd be considered that high now) because of his wars in southern Italy and Sicily. He is even the namesake behind Pyrrhic victory, though i dont know it thats considered a good or bad thing. Likewise even though Hannibal chose himself he had good reason to do so. He had many notable victories under his belt (Cannae and Lake Tresimene being the biggest ones). He held together an army that spoke many different languages in enemy territory for years and won battle after battle.\n\nAlso the other generals you mentioned were pretty good but just not on the level of the other three. Leonidas' most famous battle is one in which he lost. It was a very great last stand but you just cant put him above any of the others when his whole strategy was to wedge his infantry in a bottleneck and wait. The other Generals just dont have the masterpieces that Hannibal and Alexander are known for. Alexander laid siege to city of Tyre that was an island fortress that was almost impenetrable by conventional assault. Instead of giving up or moving on, he just built a land bridge out into the sea towards the island and captured the city. The city of Tyre in Lebanon now still has no small island off the coast because the landbridge still stands. And Hannibal with his victories in Roman territory were technical masterpieces. He achieved something that had never been done before at Cannae when he completely surround a numerically superior force and destroyed them almost to the last man. 50,000 Romans were killed in a single day. That amount of bloodshed would not be matched until WWI.\n\nIt may seem odd that Hannibal chose men that lived in such close proximity to him but the reason for that is just that they were considered at the time to be better generals. While the others may have been Great Generals in their own time, the other three were great generals of all time or in some way made some unique imprint on history" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dvpedfi" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hey there! This is great--it sounds like you are just getting started with the research on this part of your story, so you'll be open to the things you find in your reading. \n\n(We get a lot of people here who already have their plots set up and storm off when they find out they had an element incorrect; you don't want to be them!)\n\nSince you're working from the ground up to create your character's \"world\" in Victorian England, I recommend immersing yourself in background reading to get the details right. Catherine Hall is a *fabulous* scholar of 'daily life'-type things in 19th century England, in light of colonial/imperial concerns at home and overseas. I would definitely recommend starting with some of her books! In addition to the ones listed on her [Wikipedia page](_URL_1_), there is the volume she edited, *At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World* that you might find useful. \n\nYou might also find the reading recommendations supplied in [this recent thread](_URL_0_) useful.\n\nOf course, if you are more interested in directly consulting users here for our knowledge than in doing your own work, you should contact people individually so you can work out an appropriate compensation plan for the use of the experts' time.\n\nGood luck!" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/847vgy/how_were_people_of_color_treated_in_the_early/", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Hall" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cdjbo27", "cdjgmf4" ], "score": [ 23, 2 ], "text": [ "The only previous female monarch in England, Matilda, was a bad precedent. Her inheritance was challenged and there was a civil war. Most royal heiresses married a foreign prince and delivered their country and its independence to her husband's dynasty. That is what would have happened if Mary had been able to produce a child with Philip of Spain. She would have ended English independence at least for a time, made it another part of the Habsburg empire like Portugal and Flanders.", "To add to what /u/oldspice75 commented about English independence, I feel there was the fear of the Tudor dynasty failing from within England. Henry VIII's father, Henry VII, took his crown from the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and solidified his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York. Having those male heirs in place gain support and give security to the people for the very reason /u/oldspice75 mentioned." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5dpw00", "c5dqng4" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Yes, however depending on what era and what context the fight wouldn't last more than a few minutes (and this only for perhaps duels where time, endurance, terrain, and psychological impact counted.) Leaders were often targeted, however leaders also often had trained soldiers nearby to guard them. IMO Oliver Stone's Alexander did a decent job in showing ancient combat.", "Soldiers of the Caliphate would use champions to challenge their enemies to a duel. There is evidence of duelling in the Napoleonic Wars between soldiers of the same branch (usually the horsemen). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cku8xyb", "ckuevh2", "ckuhb7j" ], "score": [ 26, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "You should probably try to specify a time before 1948, since the Middle East has a long and complicated history that can't really be summarized in a Reddit post.", "Before I answer (I have a pretty basic understanding of Middle Eastern history), I do have a few queries to make my answer more succinct.\n\nWhat do you mean by conflictual? Anti-Western aggression? Civil wars? Violence towards non-Muslims in the region? Sunni/Shiite antagonism?\n\nI'm assuming by Middle East, you're also including places such as North Africa. Is this an accurate assessment?\n\nI guess I really just want you to clarify your question.", "The tail end of the Qajar dynasty in Iran could be summarized as incredibly tumultuous. By the early twentieth century, the government lacked central authority over the country, giving way to the constitutional revolution in 1905. To be clear, the country was in such a dire state, it could not, among other things, actively protect its Northwestern borders in the face of spillover violence from the Armenian Genocide. Their rule ultimately came to a close with the coup and rise of Reza Shah Pahlavi (not to be confused with his son and successor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). In the decades to follow, leading up to 1948, the country fought against an Allied invasion and later fended off several attempts by the Soviet Union to absorb parts of Northwestern Iran.\n\nWith all that said, I'm not even really scratching the surface. There is a lot more to twentieth century Iran than my post lets on, but the general takeaway should be that-- at least in the context of modern Iran-- the region has had an incredibly rocky past." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfok8d2" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "Concerning your fourth point:\n\nThe crimes of Nazi Germany, everything that led to it and WW2 as a whole are taught VERY prominently in Germany. I might be overestimating it a bit in hindsight, but History lessons felt like 1/4 Nazistuff, 3/4 for the complete rest of human history. They even sneaked lessons about Nazi Germany into other subjects like Religion/Ethics (discuss the ethics of Nazi Germany!) or German Language (read a book about Nazi Germany!). We were force-fed the topic to a degree that some kids would simply snap and refuse to discuss the topic anymore. Luckily that stance starts to fade as soon as the topic is no longer forced down your throat..\n\nThe Gestapo is absolutely included in that education." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cq6y3us", "cq6y5kk" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "If you're looking for maps, one of your best bets is Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. It looks like maps existed for [Dodge City](_URL_0_) shortly after the period you're interested in. Sanborn Maps are not free, but your local library may have a subscription to an online database. Also, they were fire insurance maps so they were generally only of areas that were wealthy enough to worry about fire insurance, but they're still one of the best sources of (US city) historical maps we have.", "[1875 Montgomery Ward Catalogue](_URL_0_) Catalogues were the major way of purchasing items in the Old West. The local general store would generally have a collections of them you would place an order at your local store and then wait about 3 months. You can find other catalogues online if you look around. \n\nAt this point in time 1870 - 1875 wages were about 10 cents/hour for blue collar workers. It came out to about $1/day or $30/month.\n\nI'm afraid I don't really have a great source for maps. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/sanborn/city.php?CITY=Dodge%20City&stateID=18" ], [ "https://archive.org/details/catalogueno13spr00mont" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csloeax", "cslr6zw", "cslvm5t", "csm7mn5" ], "score": [ 73, 108, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "This thread seems to be accumulating multiple below standard posts. Remember, if you can contribute nothing more than your skills at using Google to find an article, please don't post.\n\nAsk yourself these questions:\n\n* Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question?\n\n* Have I done research on this question?\n\n* Can I cite my sources?\n\n* Can I answer follow-up questions?\n\nIf you answer \"Yes\" to all of these questions, then proceed. If you answer \"No\" to one or more of these questions, seriously reconsider what you're posting. For more clarification, see [our rules](_URL_0_).", "As an idiom it dates back at least the beginning of the 20th century. As a concept it goes back a few decades earlier. \n\nThe concept is not that the \"Captain must go down with his ship\". It is that the Captain should be the last to be rescued. This often times results in the captain going down with the ship but that is a result of saving the lives of everyone else first. \n", "Follow-up question: was there an increase in occurrences of a captain going down with the ship after the execution of Admiral John Byng?", "This concept is something of a myth. Although some Captains and Masters have gone down with their ships, in some cases clearly deliberately, there has never been any sort of requirement or expectation that this should happen. In many cases Masters have remained onboard until as many passengers as possible have got away, for example. There have, of course, been many cases where Masters or Captains have been lost in the loss of a ship, but haven't elected to \"go down with their ship\" but have simply been lost in the course of the foundering or other loss of the vessel. Captain Leach of HMS Prince of Wales (along with the Force Z commander, Admiral Tom Phillips) was lost with the ship, but had attempted to abandon along with everybody else. The Captains of HMS Hood, Jervis Bay, Rawalpindi, Glowworm, Courageous and Glorious, as Royal Navy examples were all lost with their ships, but there is no suggestion that any of them chose to be. Admiral Tryon may have chosen to go down with his ship after the fatal ramming by HMS Camperdown, but there is no evidence for this, and HMS Victoria's captain, Captain Bourke was saved.\nThe only cases I can think of where a Captain or Master deliberately chose not to survive their ship's loss, as opposed to remaining onboard through particular circumstances like Captain Herndon, are the loss of the Titanic, the Laconia and the French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. \nIn the case of the Titanic it has been assumed that Captain Smith chose not to seek to escape the sinking vessel, but there is contradictory evidence about this, with some survivors asserting that he remained in the Wheelhouse whilst others assert that he was in the water after the sinking. Rudolph Sharp, the Master of the Laconia probably did deliberately go below as she sank. He had been Master of the Lancastria when she was bombed and sunk in 1940, the worst British maritime casualty with the highest loss of life. Admiral Senes and all of the officers stayed onboard the Leon Gambetta when she was torpedoed and sunk in 1915, none of them making any attempt to escape, so it can safely assumed that in this case they certainly did choose to go down with their ship. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_answers" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dh6ylpb" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "A similar question has been asked before. You can view my own answer as well as that of /u/jonewer [here](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4m6sp6/were_there_really_multinational_communities_of/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dn8surk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "[This recent answer](_URL_0_) by /u/hillsonghoods partially touches on your question." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ouk3t/how_much_of_a_surprise_was_it_to_contemporary/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmd6dln", "cmdgozn" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "hi! there's lots of room for more on this, but you can get started on comments in this post\n\n* [Why has no other British King been named Arthur?](_URL_0_)", "So in Searocksandtrees's post the British monarchs are discussed. I'll give some info on French Kings.\n\nIf you go back all the way to the Merovingian dynasty there has been several Clovis, several Clothaire, ...Etc they were not known by numbers in chronics of the time but by their period of rules, sometimes with a deed they may have done. \n\nHowever during their lifetime, they were not called by a number until the XIIth Century. But even at this time, they used it that way : Louis the Ninth or Louis the Eight ( in French it would be Louis le Neuvième for example ). The first monarch to have a chronic written during his lifetime and using or know numerotation was Charles the Wise where he is mentioned under the name : Charles V. This remained very rare.\n\nLouis XIV was however called several times as such and not Louis the Fourteenth. Even under his predecessor, writers barely used Louis the Thirteenth but used Louis the Just. \n\nHowever, most of the people ( I mean low class people or simply people living at the time ) would never use a numerotation to refer to the King. For example you would not say Louis XVI if you lived in 1785 but simply King Louis or Our King Louis. It's only in the XIXth Century that historians started to put a number after all the monarchs even those during the Merovingian dynasty who never saw a number used during their lives. It was certainly done to ease everything. \n\nAs to why they are so many monarchs with the same name is pretty much like in England and many other nations. In France, the names were given in function of your godfather and godmother ( both in royal and noble families but also among the people, I saw that quite often during my genealogy researches ) :\n\nFor example, Louis XV had more than a dozen of godsons and goddaughters, resulting in plenty of Louis and Louise. The godmother would often give the second name. This tradition also introduced some \" new \" names. For example, the future Louis XVIII was born Louis Stanislas Xavier de France ( Stanislas being the deposed King of Poland, his grandfather ). Then they took their ruling names. \n\nWhy so many Louis ? Well Louis derives from the name Clovis and Clovis was the \" first King of France \". That was quite prestigious but then we had Louis the Pious ( Louis Ier ) who himself was remembered as a good monarch and it started to become popular. However, Louis IX, several years after his death became a Saint of the Church. That explains why it became such a popular name among French monarchs. You were named after a Saint who also happens to be an ancestor. \n\nIn France we also had ten Charles. Some were quite catastrophic monarchs such as Charles VI or Charles IX but the first Charles was Charles the Great ( or Carolus Magnus/Charlemagne ), a glorious ancestor. \n\nWe also had four Henri. The last two, Henri III and Henri IV were murdered and it may have thrown a cold on the name. \n\nSo indeed, like in Britain and a lot of other nations, monarchs were given the names of a glorious ancestor or someone responsible for great deeds. \n\nSources : *Louis I, II, III… XIV…L’étonnante histoire de la numérotation des rois de France* Michel-André Lévy" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lxcq2/why_has_no_other_british_king_been_named_arthur/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2twvfk" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Graham Hancock does a LOT of cherry-picking of evidence, displays a LOT of confirmation bias, and his research is actually really poor. He constantly sets up straw man arguments to dismiss legitimate academic conclusions. He cites \"experts\" who are actually working outside their field of expertise (like citing an astronomer as an authority on spider species, who incidentally gets his facts wrong about the spider). And that's just some of the methodological issues with his work.\n\nSomeone online did a thorough deconstruction of Fingerprints of the Gods, and I'll link you to their three part destruction of his theory.\n\n[Part 1](_URL_2_), [Part 2](_URL_1_), and [Part 3](_URL_0_)\n\nLet's go into a couple of details that they bring up. Let's start where he does, with the Piri Reis Map, which he states shows Antarctica without ice, therefore has to have been mapped 10,000 years ago. What he doesn't actually do is *look at the freaking place names on the map*. If he actually read the freaking map, he would see that what he claims is Antarctica is actually clearly labeled as Argentina. The southernmost part of the map is Puerto San Julian. And it's *labeled*. And that's just the start of his problems.\n\nAnother massive issue is his insistence that the Inca depicted Viracocha as a European. The truth is, they didn't. There is no mention of pale skin in the legends, there are in fact several South American cultures that had beards (like the Ache in Paraguay), and stories about initial lack of hostility is thought to be Spanish propaganda.\n\nIn addition, Hancock clearly knows nothing about field archaeology or stratigraphy, asserting for example that\n\n > “[r]adiocarbon was redundant in such circumstances; thermo-luminescence, too, was useless”\n\n(stated while dismissing the archaeological date of the Incan fortress of Saksawayman)\n\nSeveral things are wrong and misleading with his statement. First, there are several other ways of dating large masonry walls. Hancock cherry-picks and does not tell the readers that the buildings he is trying to say are really super old and built by a supercivilization are on top of another buried city conclusively dated by pottery and radiocarbon to 1100 CE.\n\nThese are just a couple egregious examples of what is either a stark lack of knowledge, incredibly poor research methodology, or a deliberate attempt to deceive readers by withholding information or presenting erroneous information as fact.\n\nGraham Hancock is a hack." ] }

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[ [ "https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/hancocks-fingerprints-of-the-gods-part-iii-plumed-serpent-central-america-part-one/", "https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/hancocks-fingerprints-of-the-gods-part-ii-foam-of-the-sea-peru-and-bolivia/", "https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/hancocks-fingerprints-of-the-gods-part-i-misunderstanding-early-modern-cartography/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ci65tus", "ci67ytk" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "There's no historical support that I've ever seen, but Osho for one claims Jesus went to Kashmir (his support is mostly the French historian Bernier's observation that Kashmiris looked Jewish afaik)", "No, there's no mention or implication that Jesus ever travelled beyond Galilee and Judea. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjgs299", "cjhnf79" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "These are a little obvious, but if you haven't read them, you're definitely missing out:\n\n[Connections by James Burke](_URL_0_)\n\n[A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson](_URL_1_)\n\nNot really original, but great fun, great stories and exactly what you seem to be looking for.", "Thomas Hughes, *American Genesis.* \n\nSteve Usselman, *Regulating Railroad Innovation.*\n\nLou Galambos, *Networks of Innovation.*\n\nThere are hundreds of other very good title out there, but these three are, IMO, foundational to your question. Start with Galambos, then Hughes. If you're really into it, go for the dry-ish but hugely informative Usselman.\n\nIs this sort of stuff is of serious interest to you, look into the [Society for the History of Technology.](_URL_0_) Their journal, *Technology and Culture,* is fantastic. " ] }

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[ [ "http://smile.amazon.com/Connections-James-Burke/dp/0743299558/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1407178222&sr=8-2&keywords=connections", "http://smile.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything-ebook/dp/B004CFAWES/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407178286&sr=1-1&keywords=a+short+history+of+nearly+everything" ], [ "http://www.historyoftechnology.org/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "caxmtg1", "caygu38" ], "score": [ 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Honestly, we don't know. Artwork shows both styles, and their art is more symbolic than representative. Each form has its own strengths and weaknesses. It doesn't help that we don't exactly know how phalanxes fought either. The basic idea of a hoplite phalanx was around for ~500 years, so they had plenty of time to experiment with both. I think it was probable that they would switch between overhanded and underhanded as the situation dictated.\n\nSome reference images:\nAmphora from ~560 showing overhanded :[here](_URL_1_)\n\nAmphora from ~500 BC showing underhanded:[here](_URL_2_)\n\nNot sure on where/when this is from, but shows both styles:[here](_URL_0_)\n\nFor what it's worth, it's harder to find examples of underhanded grips, although that isn't indicative of much. From a usability standpoint, an overhand grip shortens your stab quite a bit, and allows less power, but is much easier to put on target, along with being more versatile and maneuverable. An underhand grip allows you to strike from further and with more power, but you will be striking into a shield most of the time when fighting an opponent carrying something like an aspis or thureos.\n", "This is a very debated topic, but what u/stylepoints99 says about our lack of knowledge isn't really true. Snodgrass discusses this in his works, and also discusses how much we can trust the depictions of vase paintings in deciding on military matters as well. I'm not going to go too far into it, because frankly it's best if you just read Snodgrass yourself. Summary of what he says usually comes out pretty dry and boring, but the short version is that hoplites of the Archaic Period and Classical Period almost certainly used their spears overhand when in the battle line. Underhand thrusts, Snodgrass notes, are in vase paintings predominantly reserved for single combatants and heroes. Heroes, of course, can be discarded, but single combatants are interesting because almost all depictions of them are during the pursuit (such as in u/stylepoints99's second link). However, it seems rather likely that as the battle began to grow more chaotic (in the final phases, Xenophon tells us) and the lines became more untidy more troops used whatever method would protect themselves best. We find a poetic reference, for example, to the aged hoplite clutching in his hands his testicles, which have just been stabbed--which many scholars take as an indication that the underhand thrust must have been used in this particular instance, since it's easier to stab up under the shield if you're going for the groin. Epaminondas may have had at least some of his troops utilize the underhand position, rather than the overhand, since he also increased the distance between soldiers in the battle line. However, it's very important to note that every depiction we have of troops actually *in a phalanx* shows them using their spears overhand, which Snodgrass points to as an important thing to notice." ] }

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[ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klOc9C-aPr4" ]

[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Hoplite_fight_MAR_Palermo_NI1850.jpg", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Amphora_phalanx_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_1429.jpg/800px-Amphora_phalanx_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_1429.jpg", "http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/sites/core/files/images/Greek%20Hoplite%20vs.%20Persian.thumbnail.jpeg" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eqpxfn7" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "You might want to check out /u/AnnalsPornographie's answer and follow-ups to this question from a few months ago: [Is there any documentation of various sexual “kinks” in ancient civilizations?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a89oqd/is_there_any_documentation_of_various_sexual/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ctwsro8", "ctwu63n" ], "score": [ 9, 6 ], "text": [ "Your assertion that the Ottomans \"controlled the trade routes to the far east\" is an oversimplification of the situation in the 16th century. They controlled part of a route that was a bottleneck for trade between Europe and large parts of Asia, but they did not control the entire trade route. \n\nYour other assertion that they were \"ruling the Mediterranean in the 16th century\" is also misleading. \nWhile piracy and slavery in the Mediterranean were serious problems up until the 18th century, the Ottoman simply did not ever dominate the entire Mediterranean. They were checked both in the Siege of Malta, and the Battle of Lepanto, both in the 16th century. \n\nFurther on sailing out of the Mediterranean, beyond not having control of the western Mediterranean, you may want to read several recent posts:\n\n* [this post on Mediterranean versus Atlantic naval warfare in that era](_URL_1_). \n\n* [on the limits of Ottoman power in western Mediterranean](_URL_0_).\n\n* [whether the Ottomans were interested in the new world](_URL_2_).\n\nThe conflict over Mediterranean waters was covered in several books, including:\n\n* Roger Crowley, \"Empires of the Sea,\" ISBN 978-1-58836-733-4, 2008.\n* Adrian Tinniswood, \"Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean,\" ISBN-13: 978-1594485442, 2011.\n* Angus Konstam, \"Sovereigns of the Sea,\" ISBN 978-0-470-11667-8, 2007.", "Sometimes so-called \"Turkish\" pirates will show up in what seem to be the most unlikely of places. An example would be in 1631, a Basque vessel was attacked by a ship bearing a three-crescent flag, in the stretch of water between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.\n\nWhat follows is an account of the incident, quoted in Ruth Holmes Whitehead's *Nova Scotia: The Protohistoric Period 1500-1630.*\n\n > On the eighteenth they sighted land at Cape Ray; and shortly afterwards they perceived a vessel, which they took for a Turkish one, coming down upon them with the wind. This made them get under way and prepare for defence; but the Turk, perceiving a considerable number of men on the deck, drew off and bore down on a Basque vessel at which it fired some cannon-shots and then drew alongside. The grappling was not well done, however, and the vessels separated; and, as they separated, a Basque sailor who\nwas in the stem of his vessel grasped the flag that was in the stem of the Turk, and pulled it to himself. At once the Basque vessel began to make off ... so that it escaped and carried off the said flag, on which were depicted three crescents. \n\nWhitehead argues that the pirate vessel likely originated from one of the Barbaray Coast States in North Africa. So while probably not Ottoman per se, it is an example of similar pirate operating outside of what would ordinarily be considered traditional territory." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39ug4g/why_did_the_ottoman_empire_not_help_the_muslims/cs74xai", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37mpi4/how_did_naval_warfare_look_like_in_the_high_and/croaz5e", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3et5p9/why_didnt_ottoman_empire_or_north_african_barbary/" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgs8gcd" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "My best guess is The Fairs Act of Ireland from 1204 CE. Page 12 of this pdf [warning] of the [Irish Statute Book](_URL_0_), under the Schedule titled \"Statutes Retained\" indicates that it's the oldest law still in effect in Ireland. I assumed maybe Iceland or Japan might have something older, but I don't know of anything and couldn't find anything on any my databases. \n\nI'm an attorney rather than an historian, but most of my journal work related to really old (most copyright) laws in Europe. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/pdf/2007/en.act.2007.0028.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccf2yp3" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "They did. The [Polynesian expansion](_URL_0_) moved both east and west. Madagascar and Easter Island represent the farthest extent of their settlement, and were also settled latest. The Polynesians would jump from island to island, and when those islands got too crowded or political, groups would head for their outriggers and look for the next one. \n\n(Don't be fooled, by the way, into thinking those canoes were primitive just because they were built out of renewable materials. Every aspect of their construction was carefully considered and tested for centuries under brutal conditions. They were remarkably seaworthy and survivable craft. They were provisioned with ingenious care. They were navigated by men trained in every nuance of the art. They knew the stars. They could interpret wind and waves, the movement of fish and clouds. You don't colonize a quarter of the globe unless you know what you're doing and you do it damn well.)\n\nMadagascar does seem like an outlier, at first - until you take a look at [this map of ocean currents](_URL_1_). Compare that to the first map. You can see that the Polynesians basically followed the ocean currents out from Taiwan into the Pacific, and then west to Madagascar. Those same currents explain why no craft from Africa made the much shorter trip before the Polynesians arrived - currents pushed you north or south away from the island if you started from the continent. It also explains why the Polynesians didn't keep going to South America. Going east from Easter Island spins you into the Humboldt Gyre and you just get kicked back west. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.transpacificproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/austronesian-expansion.jpg", "http://marinebio.org/i/currents/Ocean_currents_1943.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dlitwp3" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "It's not actually that difficult to keep within sight of land sailing more or less straight across the Aegean. Modern-day Greece has over a thousand islands, as many as five or six thousand by some estimates (depends what an island is). The modern Greek Tourism Bureau lists 227 inhabited islands, most of them in the Aegean. Add in the large number of islands considered part of Turkey and you've got a lot of islands--if we were big enough we could probably run through the Aegean on the islands like stepping stones through a creek. The Aegean also isn't really all that big. Stanford's Orbis tool suggests a journey from Athens to Ephesus in summer should only take 3.5 days, with average winds and travelling only by day. The route they plot stops at Delos and Ceos along the way, as well as a brief stop at Sumium before setting out on the sea proper to supply and prepare. Potentially, if one wanted to travel at a more leisurely pace, one could stop at any of the thousands of smaller islands in the Aegean. Now, larger voyages across truly open sea occurred sometimes. The Athenian fleet on its way to Syracuse had to round the Peloponnese before hopping across the Adriatic and skirting the Italian coast. The journey would not have been totally on sea the whole time of course, since Athenian fleets regularly beached in Peloponnesian territory to raid and rest more or less with impunity, but the journey from Corcyra, where the Athenians and their allies gathered before setting off, to the heel of Italy takes a good couple days, without any possibility of stopping on the way. The Athenian fleet, Thucydides says, made the journey to Corcyra as rapidly as possible, stopping at Aegina before racing to Corcyra. We must suppose that the Athenians stopped at night along the Peloponnesian coast. From there Thucydides describes the fleet as sailing across the Ionian Sea from Corcyra to Tarentum, stopping briefly at the promontory at the Italian heel. That's at least a couple days of open sailing. The cities in south Italy shut their gates to the Athenians and did not allow them to come to market, so the Athenians lived on water and presumably the grain brought by allied grain ships. The grain was carried, we must assume, to land--the idea of trying to resupply while floating at sea on a delicate trireme is horrifying. Rhegium closed her gates to the fleet, but allowed them to pitch camp outside the city and provided them with a market. After that the fleet crossed into Sicily. The point of all that is to show that there were options, even if a fleet could not enter a city and could only rest. This of course is in a fleet, which would really need to stop regularly at large harbors--a single ship or a small squadron would have fewer problems beaching on some deserted islet somewhere for the night. When there was no other option but to hoof it across open ocean for several days, as in the crossing of the Ionian Sea, fleets of warships would do so, with some apprehension (luckily it was midsummer when the Athenians set out, so sailing conditions would have been excellent), but if any other course of action presented itself it was usually preferable " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e9gegd4" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "You're probably thinking of the *misericorde*, a long, narrow-bladed dagger with similarities to both the earlier rondel dagger and the later stiletto, appearing around the 13th century and carried as a sidearm. Its shape certainly lent itself to penetrating armour to deliver a *coup de grace* (the name *misericorde* derives from a French or Middle English word meaning an act of mercy) but it wouldn't have been used exclusively for that - rather, it was a general-use knife that happened to be particularly good at that.\n\nAs ever when dealing with this sort of thing, bear in mind that mediaeval weapons were no respecters of taxonomy; the same thing could be called by different names at different times and places or by different people, or different things called by the same name.\n\nThe record is patchy on details - much of what we know about mediaeval weaponry comes from \"manuals\" and treatises by people like Fiore dei Liberi and Sigmund Ringeck, most of which were written a little later (15th and early 16th century) and whose audiences were understandably more interested in how to win a fight than in the messy details of what happened afterwards. There are a few mentions in Charles Boutell's *Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages* (1902!) but it's fairly superficial stuff like where they were worn and what their pommels were shaped like, i.e. details gleaned from historical illustrations, not a description of actual use." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c97lt8t" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "**The Sheriff**\n\nThe primary policing authority was Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. He had the power to call on the militia to deal with criminals or mobs, serve writs to search buildings and ships, and to arrest suspects and place them in the gaol (a prison). \n\nIf you're interested in what gaols looked like, or who they could hold, check out this little blurb from Colonial Williamsburg about their extant [public gaol.](_URL_5_)\n\n**The Militia**\n\nThe militia could be called out in cases of emergency, and weren't usually called out to deal with a single criminal, who could generally be apprehended by Greenleaf himself and perhaps one or two of his underlings. The militia was composed of all able bodied free males of appropriate age in Boston (some northern rural communities actually allowed slaves to serve in the militia, though I am not sure if this was true of Boston), and they operated as a popular and fairly democratic body. More than once, Greenleaf or a Crown official would call on the militia to suppress a popular mob, only to find that either the mob already included the militia or the militia would dissolve to join the mob and exacerbate the problem.\n\n**The Town Watch**\n\nGreenleaf was probably the most visible sign of authority in the city, but he wasn't always on duty. During the night, the Town Watch would be given care of the city. The Town Watch was divided into four man teams that patroled designated areas of the city. One of these Watches was headed by Benjamin Burdick who held the title Constable of the Town Hall Watch. \"Town Hall\" would designate their district or jurisdiction, though there does not appear to have been a lot of wrangling over who had jurisdiction where, and I've not yet read of criminals being released for being seized by the \"wrong\" authority. This short blog post about Benjamin Burdick also provides us with a primary source guide to a [watchman's duties.](_URL_3_)\n\nThe watchmen were instructed to keep an accurate log of each night (which could be provided as evidence in court if need be). They walked through their entire neighborhood, either as a team or in pairs, and kept an eye out for any mischief. They were paradoxically instructed to both be quiet, and to call out the time and the weather. There appears to have been no curfew, except for \"Negro, Indian and Mullatoe Slaves,\" all of whom were instantly suspect. The watchmen carried lanterns and and least two of them were armed with sticks for bludgeoning if need be. The [image](_URL_1_) of the watchman was a fairly common one in all colonial and British cities, generally wearing a large overcoat and wrapped tight against the cold. They are always portrayed as carrying a stick and a lantern, and often a wooden rattle to alert the town in case of emergency. This image holds even when they are depicted as entirely [inept and sleeping on the job.](_URL_2_)\n\n**Soldiers**\n\nThe final and least effective policing during this time in Boston were the British regulars. Prior to 1768, there were no regular soldiers garrisoned in Boston. The Americans objected strongly to their presence. Despite popular belief, British soldiers were [not quartered in people's homes.](_URL_4_) British law required that soldiers be quartered in any barracks available, and could only resort to occupying available rooms in tavern, alehouses, and public buildings when the barracks were filled. This meant that of the two regiments sent to Boston in 1768, one was stationed in Castle Island, and all but permanently removed from the populace.\n\nBritish soldiers would be stationed at specific spots and usually within guard houses and [sentry boxes](_URL_0_) (this is only a scale model of a sentry box, but gives you a good idea of what they would look like). An officer would be assigned to lead guard duty at any given time of the day or night, and would lead a team of soldiers out of the guard house to the various sentry boxes and important posts, where the soldiers would be replaced with fresh guards.\n\nSoldiers \"challenged\" passerbys at night. This generally consisted of a soldier demanding the approaching party identify themselves, probably with a phrase like \"Who comes there?\" They were then supposed to repeat themselves if they received no answer, and if they felt it necessary present their musket. \n\nThe soldiers were generally ineffective in policing for legal reasons. The watchmen strongly objected to the soldiers' challenging subjects, and declared it was their legal right to challenge, and not the soldiers'. Further, British law allowed British soldiers to be tried in civilian courts if they committed a crime against subjects. Soldiers were not permitted to fire their weapons unless it could be definitively proven that they had reasonable fear for their lives. This meant soldiers generally intervened with fists, swords, and bayonets. Brawling was very common in Boston between the soldiers and the populace, and soldiers were more often than not arrested for this. Civilian courts had civilian juries, and soldiers did their best to avoid them if at all possible. In several instances soldiers broke each other out of the gaol to avoid trial, or officers intervened to have them removed. In the end, placing soldiers in Boston only inflamed the populace, and made the job of Greenleaf and the Watch even harder.\n\nEDIT: Clarity" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fgn39km" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "The first Crusade started in 1096 and lasted until 1099, the causes of this are widely debated but I was taught that the Crusades were launched in response to the Seljuk victory at Manzikert which saw a large portion of Anatolia(Modern day Turkey) fall into Muslim hands. When the Emperor of the Byzantime Empire asked the Pope for help, the Pope thought this would usher in a reunification of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy church, so he called for a Crusade to defeat the Muslims, and reclaim the holy city of Jersualem, which had been under Muslim control for over 400 years at this point in time. Ultimately the reunification between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy never ocurred, and even Constantinople was sacked by a Crusading army in the future, but your question is about two of the many military orders that rose up in this time. \n\n In, 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens petitioned King Baldwin of Jerusalem with the notion of creating a holy militant order to protect pilgrims making the journey from Europe. Though the city of Jersualem, Acre, and Antioch in the north all were held by Christian's and upstart Crusading Kingdoms, the lands were stricken with a bandit plague. These bandits would often make short work of peasants and other Christian Pilgrims coming in from Europe. So in order to combat this the Knights Templar were created. \n\nThe Templars were renowned warriors, feared by Muslims and praised by Christians everywhere. They grew in such power that they rivaled the Kings in Europe. Chapter houses were opened throughout the Crusader States as well as in Europe. They had a strict code that men of the order would own no castles, hold no lands, and never marry. So the order was made up primarily of second sons who wouldn't have inherited their fathers lands anyway, so striking out to make a name for themselves, they pledged their undying loyalty to God and to the Order. They opened Hospitals and they cared for Christian pilgrims everywhere. As good as they might seem, they were also brutal towards their enemies, but even they would put aside their loyalties to help the Muslims combat the later Mongol invasion of the middle east. \n\nMany other Knightly Orders rose in this time, including the Teutonic Knights who were not known for what they did in the Holy Land, but rather what they did in Lithuania and Poland. \n\nThe Teutonic Order was created in 1192, in Acre, comprised mostly of German Knights. They mostly helped build hospitals to house the German pilgrims coming to the Holy Land. Once the Holy Land was lost to the Saracens, the Teutonic Order retreated to Transylvannia, and then eventually to Northern Germany and modern day Poland. There they guarded German missionaries from Prussian pagans who would often raid and kill all Priests and Monks who tried to convert them. Overtime the Teutonic Order eventually came to start recruiting more and more Prussian converts into their ranks and began to build up more and more power. Again copying what the Templars did, the Teutons built chapter houses all over Germany, but their true house of power was Königsberg (Kaliningrad, Russia). \n\nEventually the Teutonic Knights began to become more and more power hungry and began to brutalize their new enemy, being the Lithuanian pagans. They even began to move against the Polish Kingdoms, which were Catholic, and the Novgorodian Princes who were Eastern Orthodox. Eventually the Polish and Lithuanians defeated the Knights at the Battle of Grunwald which cost them much of their power, until their Livonian Branch was defeated by Alexander Nevesky almost 100 years after Grunwald which finally ended the Orders claims over Russian lands in the North. \n\nFundamentally The Teutonic Order was based on the Templars with each member refusing land and wealth all in the service of God. The main difference between them was the fact that the Templars never recruited \"auxiliaries\" not even Turccopoles, to fight against the swifter horse archers of the Muslim and Mongol armies. While the Teutonic Order heavily relied on auxiliary troops. \n\nUltimately both ended up being too powerful for their own good and created many enemies by being so. The difference was that the Teutonic Order was much more aggressive with its neighbors, while the Chapter houses of the Templar order were mainly just that, never really lands to rule just lands to recuperate and launch another crusade against the Holy Land. \n\nAnother big difference between them is money and the banking system that the Templar order built. This banking system gave the Templar a lot more influence over the rest of Europe and much more organized that the Teutonic Order could ever have hoped to have been. The Teutonic Knights also waged war on the Catholic Kingdom of Poland over territorial disputes, which the Templar Order most likely would have just used gold to solve the issue rather than annihilate Christians. That however is just a guess and its not based upon fact, it very well could have been that the Templar order may have found itself in the exact position as the Teutonic Knights found themselves. However I do not believe that the Teutonic Order would have found the same end as the Templars due to their order being much more disorganized and not as well financed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crvivwb", "crwgl6f" ], "score": [ 18, 2 ], "text": [ "This industrial growth is both a byproduct and a necessity of Chancellor Bismarck's plans for Germany's socio-political control of the region. The general feeling in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War was that a general European War was eminent and whatever happened Bismarck wanted Germany to be in the driver's seat. ", "One important factor for the development of a massive German steel industry after 1871 is the annexion of Lorraine with its coal mines and high quality iron ore deposits.\n\nThough, as others have already pointed out, the industrialization in Germany began much earlier.\n\nThe first railroad in what is now Germany was opened between Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835, only ten years after the opening of the world's first public railroad, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in England.\n\nIt is certainly no coincidence that the city of Nuremberg was famed for its excellent craftsmanship even in the Middle Ages. [Edit] Cf. [Peter Henlein](_URL_0_)." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "dtph4z9" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "While a number of Western , largely conservative, critics of the New Left and the wider 1960s counterculture as communist, this did not mean the New Left was Marxist-Leninist in nature or that the USSR identified with them.The Soviet leadership was ambivalent about the New Left and this mirrored the generalized ambivalence the New Left's ideologues held for the USSR. Although the New Left espoused a harsh critique of American society, their ideological focus was more in line with younger communist movements and leaders like Mao, Ho Chi Minh, or Che. Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders had experience with this type of ideological independence with both Tito and Mao during the 1940s and 50s and that had led them to be leery of ideological movements that deviated from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Conversely, many within the New Left perceived Moscow as being run by old men and the emerging gerontocracy under [Brezhnev](_URL_3_) did not exactly present a picture of revolutionary dynamism. The fact that the SDS did grew out of an American progressive milieu instead of the American Communist Party added a further layer of skepticism for Soviet leaders. \n\nMoreover, the New Left would also occasionally criticized Soviet actions; one of the precursors of the New Left in Britain, the Communist Party Historians Group, which included such luminaries like E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, openly critiqued the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. There were similiar sentiments over the Soviet's crushing of Prague Spring. Graffiti both at Berkeley's and Chicago's1968 protests drew explicit connections between American police actions and Czechoslovakia. While this graffiti (welcome to Czechago) was more about thumbing the eye of the anticommunism of the West, it was not a celebratory picture of the USSR, especially in contrast to how the \"Old Left\" romanticized the Soviet worker state in the 1930s. \n\nThe transgressive cultural precepts of the New Left, especially its liberal stance on sexual mores, were at odds with the social conservatism that typified Soviet leadership during the Brezhnev era. One of the odder quirks of Soviet state attitudes towards music in the late 1960s and 1970s was they felt that rock bands exemplified by the Rolling Stones, The Doors or Jimi Hendrix were a cultural plot by the capitalism to sap the revolutionary vigor of youth through an appeal to hedonistic excess. Many teachers and other Soviet cultural gatekeepers lamented that the arrival of Beatlemania in the late 1960s via the Baltics or western Ukraine, which was more open to connections with Western Europe, as pulling Soviet youth towards esoteric Indian philosophy and spirituality rather than more grounded subjects. The Soviet state was very quick to repress its own counterculture whose hippies took their cues from the global movement (long hair, sexual freedom, etc.). \n\n When faced with the rise of this movement in the West, the Soviet leadership was quite confused as to what to make of it. For example, these two Soviet cartoons [1](_URL_1_) and [2](_URL_5_) show solidarity with the war protesters as true representatives of the struggling masses that the USSR was on the side of. In contrast, this [cover \"Distinguishing Badges\"](_URL_4_) of the 1969 Soviet satirical *Krokodil* mocked the West's fashion of long hair and androgynous clothing as does this [Soviet cartoon](_URL_0_) that attacked the fashionable Soviet youth. This [cartoon](_URL_2_) mocking stylish fringes would not be so out of place in Western anti-hippie discourse such as *Mad Magazine*. \n\nWriting in 1975, the German journalist Klaus Mehnert observed:\n\n > The New Left is not one of the perennial topics that Soviet writers *have* to write about, rather it is a marginal phenomenon in Soviet writing [emphasis original]. Therefore, it is studied only by those especially interested. Seldom have I found anyone in the Soviet Union who even knew the New Left’s name. \n\nMenhert found that although the Soviet state published extensively about the New Left and student protests, the state was more interested in the fact that the New Left was protesting than what in fact the New Left was actually saying. \n\n*Sources*\n\nDworkin, Dennis L. *Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the origins of cultural studies*. Duke University Press, 1997.\n\nKatsiaficas, George N. *The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968*. Boston, Mass: South End Press, 1987. \n\nMehnert, Klaus. *Moscow and the New Left*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. \n\nRisch, William Jay. *The Ukrainian West Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv*. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6k377w", "c6k3min", "c6k4ov7", "c6k53m3", "c6k5sch", "c6k6gn0", "c6k6mfp", "c6k6qte", "c6k6ss1", "c6k6t8v", "c6k6v6b" ], "score": [ 8, 14, 15, 4, 2, 4, 10, 9, 5, 2, 9 ], "text": [ "Industrialisation and the Plague.", "[The Mongol Empire](_URL_0_) expansion in the 13th century. Within 50 years they'd taken all of central Asia, Asia Minor and were expanding into Europe.", "The Reformation - except for the Hussite Wars Catholicism was firmly in charge of Europe, and then, Martin Luther came.", "Plastic. Not a historian, but I'd wager that was a doozie.", "I've always found the various royal marriages in Europe to be incredible with how they could change boundaries. Louis VII of France divorcing his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ends up marrying Henry II of England which gives England control over practically half of France. The Hapsburg dynasty and their acquisition of Burgundy, the Low Countries and Spain all through marriages. It's just bizarre from a modern perspective.", "A 9/11-style attack most certainly **WAS** predicted. It's just that the specific details were not.\n\n\"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack\" (5/3/01)\n\n\"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing\" (5/26/01)\n\n\"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent\" (6/23/01)\n\n\"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats\" (6/25/01)\n\n\"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks\" (6/30/01)\n\n\"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays\" (7/02/01)\n\n- subject lines of Richard Clarke emails to Bush Administration prior to 9/11/01\n\n\"You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it.\"\n\n- Dick Cheney, on Richard Clarke\n\n\"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.\"\n\n- Presidential Daily Brief, August 6, 2001\n\n\"All right, you've covered your ass now.\"\n\n- George W. Bush, to the CIA briefer who warned him about an imminent bin Laden strike, August 6, 2001\n\nAs for using aircraft as weapons....\n\n\"The Joint Inquiry of 2002 confirmed that the Intelligence Community had received at least twelve reports over a seven-year period suggesting that terrorists might use planes as weapons. After briefly discussing each of them, it says that \"The CIA disseminated several of these reports to the FBI and to agencies responsible for preventive actions. They included the FAA... \" ([citation](_URL_1_))\n\nThere were also of course REAL WORLD warnings like Air France Flight 8969, where the hijackers were going to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower or blow it up over Paris with a maximum fuel load.\n\nThere's that plane that hit the White House in 1994. (A few years before 9/11, Tom Clancy had a best seller, \"Debt of Honor\" that ended with a 747 crashing into the US Capitol building during a State of the Union address and killing the President and most of congress. A few days after it was released a small plane hit the White House, killing the pilot, destroying the plane, and doing almost no damage whatsoever to the White House.)\n\nThere's the \"Bojinka plot\" in 1995: \"A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995 stated, \"What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters.\" [...] \"Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.\" ([citation](_URL_0_))\n\nIn April 2001 NORAD ran a war game in which the Pentagon was to become incapacitated; a NORAD planner proposed the simulated crash of a hijacked foreign commercial airliner into the Pentagon.\n\nAt the July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, anti-aircraft missile batteries were installed following a report that terrorists would try to crash a plane to kill George Bush and other world leaders.\n\nSo yeah, there were plenty of predictions.\n", " > before the soviet union fell, no one would have thought it possible that it would fall. \n\nExcept of course for all the people who predicted it, and some who helped arrange it.\n\nIn the early 80's I had friends in high school who emigrated from the Soviet Union. They told me about how during each harvest, because of the lack of tractors and other farm equipment, the universities sent their students to work in the fields to work alongside the army, harvesting grain. The grain would then sit in huge piles, rotting, because of a lack of transport to take it to the rail lines.\n\nA couple years later during the famine in Ethiopia there was a scandal when ships full of food and grain had to wait for Soviet ships to offload tanks for the Ethiopian army. What wasn't understood at the time was that it HAD to be done in that order: The tanks had to be unloaded to make room for the food and grain, which was payment for the tanks, and was shipped to the Soviet Union. Remember the food riots in the southern USSR around that time, with the accusations that chemical weapons were used to break up one riot? Live Aid prevented a famine - just not where planned.\n\nSo why didn't the Soviets have the tractors and combines, or the transport needed to take their grain to the rail lines?\n\nA huge percentage of the Soviet Union's transport production, trucks, tanks, etc, was shipped at huge expense to Vietnam and destroyed by the USAF.\n\nIn 1973 the US at a cost of 663 US casualties aided ARVN in repulsing a 150,000 troop invasion - fewer than 40,000 ever got back home - bringing with it more tanks than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk and more trucks than Patton ever had - none of which ever got home. AC-130 gunships destroyed another 10000 trucks.\n\nAll those tanks, trucks and other materials were replaced by the Soviets. When North Viet Nam invaded the South in 1975, again they had more armor than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk, and more trucks than Patton ever had in the Red Ball Express. Add to that all the Soviets fighter planes, countless surface-to-air missiles and medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters and artillery, all dumped into Vietnam.\n\nThink of what that does to the economies of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union:\n\nWhen the U.S. builds 50,000 vehicles, sends them to Vietnam and loses them, it's bad. But this provided jobs for tens of thousands of people. They pay income tax, and spend the rest, paying sales tax. This creates jobs for people selling them goods, who pay more taxes, etc. When the Soviet Union builds 50,000 vehicles to Vietnam and loses them, it's bad, period. The workers had to be given jobs regardless, and they don't pay taxes. In a war of attrition, the U.S. had the upper hand.\n\n**Vietnam took the USSR - a country that could put the first satellite into orbit, the first man into orbit, etc. - and converted it into Bulgaria with missiles.** They neglected their own infrastructure to send materiel to Vietnam for the U.S. to destroy.\n\nThe punch line is that Soviet Union believed all the analysis and propaganda that they had won in Vietnam and that they could project power... and they marched right into Afghanistan.\n\nA big part of Reagan's military build-up - not just the super-secret-yet-somehow-highly-publicized Star Wars and stealth programs - is that the Soviets with their already wobbly economy would bankrupt themselves trying to counter it. And they did.\n", "Standardized shipping containers.\n\nThanks to standardized shipping containers, many cities are getting their waterfronts back. Rail lines within cities, with spur lines running to countless warehouse loading docks - are disappearing. Out in the country, here in Manitoba for example, something like half our rail lines have been torn up in ther last 20 years.\n\nNow goods don't have to be loaded on a truck, then unloaded and reloaded at the rail yard, then unloaded and reloaded at a port, then unloaded and reloaded at the destination port, etc., etc, etc. The goods are loaded into a container ONCE, and that container gets moved from truck to rail to ship to rail.\n", "Consider the rapid change brought on by the miniaturization of computers! There was a point in time when they really didn't think that they would get smaller than fridge-sized and from the introduction of the personal computer in the seventies to now, forty years later, when everyone has a powerful computerized communication tool about as big as half a deck of cards in their pocket. Completely changing the way we communicate and the speed at which we communicate vast reams of information around the world.\n\nI'm relatively young and I can remember the time before the internet when even making a long distance call in my own country was, if not exactly difficult, expensive and a rare occassion. Now I can communicate with a person I do not know in a country on the far side of the world in moments, every day, as much as I like. That is just the internet, a piece of what the advance of computing has done in less than a decade, and that's happened in the last TWENTY years!", "Honestly, every historical event, no matter how minor, was likely impactful in a way. Without any of them, the world would be different, sometimes very much so. Even the most minuscule of actions or people have their place in the world.\n\nSo to try and attribute just a handful of events as being particularly impactful is a useless gesture at best. Everything has it's importance in history, and everything has played an equal part in shaping our world today.", "The rigid horse collar. It largely ended slavery in Europe, four or five hundred years before it restarted in the Americas. At one time there were as many slaves in Europe as free men.\n\nIt used to be that a horse could do four times as much work as a man. But a horse **ate** four times as much as a man, so the versatility of human slaves won out.\n\nWith the rigid horse collar, the horse not being strangled as it pulled, now a horse could do 10 times as much work. But it still only ate four times as much. And so now the horse won out.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d74u3c4" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Can you clarify what you mean by 'the mess that it did'?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9catms" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "London is essentially a port city. Even if it isn't literally a port, it is a good \"hub point\" for much of the British island to connect to the Thames, and thus essentially controls much of the trade into and out of Britain (Bristol is probably the biggest exception). Therefore, its fortunes are heavily dependent on the general commercial health of the isle. The collapse of Rome in the west led to a collapse in commerce, which gutted London, but when the immediate post Roman turmoil gave way to the rise of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms, Lundenwic developed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqtk5w8", "cqtp8i9", "cqtq4zm" ], "score": [ 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Dampier, William (Ed. John Masefield). Dampier's Voyages (London, 1906).\n\nExquemelin, A.O. Bucaniers of America (London, 1684). [Note: I've read this one. I think there's a 1920's edition available on Google e-books for free. Great resource but note that the author's surname may also be listed as: Esquemeling.]\n\n\nThe Library of Congress has great primary sources online on buccaneers, and privateers:\n_URL_0_\n\n\n", "[Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana](_URL_0_), which is about sailing in the 1830s.", "The British Library now holds the massive archive of the East India Company. I believe only a portion has so far been digitised, although that it is an ongoing operation. It was more than a year ago when I last looked, at which time indexing was severely limited' but there was a search function. I was able to browse unexpurgated letters from the EIC President at Batavia, Richard Fursland, back to the Board in London, from the period 1615-1623 which I was then researching - lots of complaints of squalid conditions, drunkenness and ill-discipline, plus the high cost of red peppers (the latest culinary marvel). Sorry I can't attach a link, as I'm on my tablet." ] }

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[ "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1044940/Diary-18th-century-sailor-provides-fascinating-insight-life-decks-Nelsons-navy.html" ]

[ [ "http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/kislak/kislak-interactive.html" ], [ "http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4277" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dk0gvrs" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "There was significant entanglements related to the French that caused Eden to reject these proposals, most of them stemmed from sentiments from the time he was Foreign Secretary and considerations at the time also in play. \n\nThere was a few presumed and inevitable outcome that came with much closer social and political allegiances with the French. Most imperative and damning among them would be tying two very different types of colonial projects and the mannerisms in which they were treated together.\n\nFrance unlike the British had separated itself much more heavily from the influence of the United States following the second world war with the express intention of maintaining it's colonial empire and autarky to the best extent possible. Conflicts like the 1st Indochina Conflict and the Algerian conflict were just ending and starting respectively by the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956 and neither bore well for the French. Long and diplomatically isolating conflicts were what brought Guy Mollet into attempting his shotgun marriage proposal to the British. Eden was quite aware of the risks of such engagements. \n\nIn addition to those more overt diplomatic contradictions between what the French sought and the British would benefit from on the matter. Eden also was of the opinion that France needed to cooperate further with Germany and the rest of Europe rather then retreat into the Entente rationale of the 1930's, Eden had taken a very strong stance on the European Defense Committee in favor of it. And was also a strong advocate to grant recognition to West Germany as a sovereign state. In this sense Eden held the traditional Churchillian cosmopolitan view of Europe. One that would be extremely integrated but without the presence of a British state. \n\nAt the time over 50% of British commerce was contained entirely in the Sterling Area whilst only a quarter was at the same time in Western Europe. It was considered more effective to keep Britain self contained with it's primary focus being on opportunities with the United States. At least in Eden's opinion. \n\nThere was a lot of other nuanced fields like the technicality of the French state being 100% integrated between the Metropolitan areas and colonial Empire that would've involved a colossal increase in social expenses for the British, and even more logistical problems like the remaining French obligations to states like Tunisia and Morocco that would have become joint British - French obligations. \n\nI can't speak entirely to why Eden rejected French membership of the commonwealth. (Although it may have simply been the fact that France would have needed political capital to change itself to a Monarchy that Guy Mollet himself knew he couldn't bring to bear.) But the conditions and asterisks related to a full Franco - Anglo union would've been insurmountable due to their declining but still outstanding worldwide and political obligations. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dagqcli", "dagum3f", "dagw5nc", "dah27ce", "dah5g2n" ], "score": [ 24, 132, 28, 21, 13 ], "text": [ "Might be better suited to /r/asksocialscience.", "It was rather often that the Communist Parties that gained power weren't popular parties in modern and established economies choosing equality over the methods that developed them. Rather they were *Vanguard Parties*. The concept was something of a significant departure from earlier Communist Thought. Rather than socialist revolution coming from establish democracies and modern economies where the middle class overthrew the elite it was coming from places that hadn't yet gone through that stage. Which upended a lot of the assumptions of Communist Theory.\n\nSo, what is a Vanguard Party? Well, it's a smaller cadre of professionals, an elite if you will, who attempted to take control of a country that isn't entirely ready for end state communism and steer it to those ends. In the case of Russia it was a small group of hardcore professional revolutionaries and the people they trained. Really, this is a major point where Leninism diverges from Marxism. Given that the Soviets were the primary backer of all later Communist movements and given that they were the ones giving out training, guns, and money those willing to incorporate the Soviet ways of doing things were able to crowd out native communist movements.\n\nSo, Vanguard Parties were what happened. So, how did they end up very centralized rather than very decentralized? Well a bit one was bit of mental slight of hand. You see, the Vanguard destroys anything that is not the workers. The workers make up the nation. Therefore the nation is the workers. If the workers and the nation are the same thing then the nation owning the land is the same thing, right? But, in practice, it's this elite, enlightened vanguard that ends up owning the thing. After all, the workers aren't ready for direct control as they haven't gone through the whole process described by Marx's theories yet, going straight from rule of autocratic kings to the rule of \"the workers\" (and by that, they meant the Vanguard). \n\nA lot of the totalitarianism was theoretically justified by turning the workers into Homo Soveitcus, a fully modern and fully communist entity that would be ready for the socialist utopia that was inevitable in coming. This was understood as being as removing anything that was getting in the way. After all, if people don't have a choice but be that way then they will be that way... only, a lot of the Communal (read: State-Owned) enterprises and farms didn't work out as well. Soviet Agriculture, for example, was a disaster. The communal farms were never really able to produce as well as their western counterparts. This isn't an indictment of Russian Peasant, as the roughly 3% of farm land that was private plots produced about half of the nation's meat and fruit. The Soviets themselves figured that it was a lack of machinery that could take advantage of the larger scale of farms and a lack of infrastructure to distribute what was produced. At the same time western farms were consolidating in a similar manner, after all. In the United States factory farming was developing to get the most out of the various equipment being developed. It was hard for a small family farm to make use of a giant thresher, but with enough land a giant thresher can thresh much more cheaply than can be done by hand or even by smaller machines. So, the flaw has to be something other than just \"large, centrally managed farms are inefficient\" going on there. \n\nThere were several problems, so in addition to those that the Soviet leadership identified, there were things called agent-principal problems. In their dismantlement of Labor Unions they pointed out that the leaders of Unions often acted in their own interests despite their power coming from the workers. Basically, an agent-principal problem is any case where a person is empowered to make decisions for a larger group but acts in favor of their own values and goals and neglects those of the people they should be acting on the behalf of. Despite this accusation being leveled against the less political labor unions in the West, it's especially clear that it's what happened to these Vanguard Parties. If they were successful they became a new Aristocracy whose reason for existence was to bring workers to the point where they could own and rule in their own right and gathered all power to themselves to have the ability to make that happen. Though, they ultimately failed to make a great deal of progress because once they had all the power making decisions that would entail the loss of that power over time wasn't exactly the decision made. Once the Soviet Union blazed that path and richly rewarded anyone who followed it became the dominant mode of Communist expression throughout the century.", "You may be interested in an answer I gave [here](_URL_0_) discussing the ideology of Soviet leadership towards classless/stateless societies. In short, though, Marxism only advocates decentralization during *communism*, not *socialism*, which is what \"communist countries\" were; they were socialist states trying to advance forward into communism. \n\nAs for authoritarianism, Marx and Engels encouraged such means. Engels wrote in 1872: \n\n > [Anti-authoritarians] demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? **A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all;** and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. **Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?** Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.", "I think you are almost hinting at the answer in your question. It is because the parties and states that called themselves communist or socialist were far from being so. I am going to stick to the Soviet Union while answering your question as it is the one I am most familiar with, perhaps the most brutal society and the one I suspect most here are most familiar with too.\n\nOf course, \"communist\" or \"socialist\" is a term, like many in politics, that has been so eviscerated of any meaning that it is difficult to use, but from its very earliest days the core of socialism or communism was democratic employee control and ownership of the workplace, or what Marx called \"workers' control of the means of production.\" That concept was entirely lacking in the Soviet Union, where control and decisions were made from the top down and there was little input from workers' councils. Stalin increased this by introducing [Edinonachalie](_URL_0_) or one-man management, where one official ruled the workplace and was responsible for virtually all decisions. These bosses were given presitge, power and very high wages, so much so that Stalinist statisticians were embarrassed that the ratio of workers' to managers' pay was higher in the Soviet Union in the 1930s than in the United States. \n\nThis top-down structure was mirrored in the parties themselves, which, as /u/a_soporific has mentioned, were vanguardist, meaning they saw themselves as the leaders of the state and expected obedience from subordinates. This is, needless to say, a highly authoritarian structure.\n\nTherefore, we should address why both these governments and Western governments continued to call them communist or socialist when they diverged so wildly from what was understood to be the core socialist principle. In the USSR, the government continued to call itself communist because of the very good light in which people (particularly working-class people) saw the concept. In the US, it was done for the absolute opposition reason: in order to defame the concept of socialism entirely, to associate it with authoritarian regimes.\n\nWe must also address the context in which communist governments like the USSR came to power. The Bolsheviks seized power after a devastating 3 year war which wrecked the society and the economy, to the point where starvation was widespread in Petrograd. There then followed an intense war where the British Empire, the United States, the French Empire, Japan, as well as host of other countries invaded Russia in order to \"strangle bolshevism in its cradle\", as Chuchill said. This led to further destruction of the country and to the new government developing under an all-out fight to the death against people inside and outside Russia who wished to destroy them. The society had not recovered when fascism rose around Russia's borders, in Germany, Japan, Poland and other states. one of the key messages of fascism was to destroy communism, and so Russia was dragged into preparing for another inter-contenental war of annihilation. Often historians portray the Soviets as paranoid, but their paranoia turned out to be justified. Stalin said in 1931 \"We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries, either we make good that gap in 10 years or they destroy us.\" Germany invaded 10 years later. \n\nIt is in this context that the decision of the communist governments were made: under threat of complete annihilation. They were seeming permanently at war and permanently in danger.\n", "We can use Marx's own framework of historical materialism to answer the question.\n\nIn Marx’s theory of history, called historical materialism, society moves forward to new states, cultures, economic systems, etc. through a conflict between economic classes. A wealthy exploiting class, possessing property while the rest of the society use it but do not own it, is overthrown by the exploited class, creating a completely different socio-economic system. Marx’s definition of class is not based on things like income level, but whether or not one has any ownership of the means of production (factories, restaurants, stores, etc. and all other businesses). In one very critical phase of Marx’s historical timeline, capitalism has the function of modernizing and industrializing a society. This consequently creates a very huge sum total of wealth in a society despite the fact that the majority of the wealth is owned only by a very small section of the business-owning population. Socialism would follow capitalism as Marx argued, and it would improve upon the society by having the entire working class democratically control businesses allowing for a more equitable distribution of wealth (although not a perfect equality and not without material incentives for us to still pursue).\n\nMilovan Djilas, a Marxist critic of Communism from Yugoslavia, published *The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System* in 1957. Djilas used Marx’s theory and progression of history to underline a fundamental problem: most or all of the societies that underwent leftist revolutions were not fully capitalist and even to a great extent feudalistic like Russia. As a result, Marx had been wrong on a key point of predicting that the advanced capitalist regions like North America or Western Europe were to be the first movers to socialism. In many of these new Communist countries the leaders themselves understood that their society was too backward and impoverished for socialism and so they developed their nation through an economic system called state capitalism – a term many believe best describes the nations we falsely call “Communist” whether past or present. The attempt to rush through this phase of Marxist history had failed as Djilas argued, and a new bureaucratic class had formed signifying a lack of democracy and socialism.\n\nDjilas goes in great detail to solidify his description of the “new class,” which involves them doing everything from using Marxism as a form of religious dogma to inflating their personal wages like CEOs in capitalist countries. As mentioned, the new class had formed because these societies based themselves on state capitalism to industrialize and modernize themselves. One critical aspect of this involved highly centralized planning to industrialize a nation more quickly than a market could, especially during Stalin’s rule and regardless of how much death and suffering was involved. Djilas explains that such intense centralization and capitalist behavior in the society gave birth to a bureaucratic and oligarchic class unaccountable to the vast majority of citizens living in Communist nations, a ruling class just like the slaveholders in ancient Rome, the land barons in medieval Europe, or capitalists in the United States." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/520o11/marx_thought_a_postcapitalist_society_would_be/d7gsrb8/" ], [ "https://www.jstor.org/stable/151385?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cm9v9nd" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The message coming out of the Soviet Union regarding independent Eastern Bloc policies changed over time. When leaders first came to power in Moscow, they tended to announce that things were now different and that the Soviet Union would no longer interfere with the day to day business of its allies. Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev both argued as much, only to both famously call for an invasion of a Soviet shortly after (Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968). This is one reason that many in the West doubted that the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev would lead to true independence in Eastern Europe, but when the Eastern European nations did start to rebel in 1989 he did not interfere as the Eastern Bloc fell apart.\n\nLooking at the specifics of the pre-Gorbachev invasions, the evidence of the limits of Eastern Bloc independence, we can see that Eastern Bloc states did have the ability to set their own national policies to a great extent. First lets look at the key difference between the invasion of 1956 and the invasion of 1968: in 1956, Hungary attempted to leave the Warsaw Pact altogether, to not only set its own domestic policy but also its own foreign policy. The invasion, then, does not really indicate the extent to which an Eastern Bloc nation could set its own domestic policy. In 1968, Czechoslovakia had no intention of leaving the Warsaw Pact but in fact renewed its commitment to the pact and to the Communist movement in general, as its reformist leaders continued to provide war material to North Vietnam. Yet even still, domestic policy threatened the Soviets and the other Warsaw Pact leaders enough to warrant an invasion. Before we look at the reasons why, lets look at the Eastern Bloc of 1968 a little more generally, because it was not just Czechoslovakia that sought its own path.\n\nThe leader of Poland, Wlydyslaw Gomulka, was not a Soviet first choice. He had come to power during the tumultuous days of 1956. Prior to that, he had briefly led Poland after WWII, only be removed from power by Stalin and his closer allies. During the crisis of 1956, the Poles themselves chose to return him to power as a reformer who could bring stability to Poland. The Soviets yielded because he was in fact an anti-German Communist even if he sought to liberalize Poland in ways that made them uncomfortable. In 1968, he remained the leader of Poland, although he had ceased the reforms he had previously sought. Gomulka was already one example of domestic independence; had the Soviets been \"pulling the strings\" like many imagine, Gomulka would not have been chosen in 1956. \n\nIn Romania, the Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu had been at odds with Moscow since well before Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring. He had ceased to participate in Warsaw Pact activities, though he never threatened to leave the pact altogether. In 1968 he even condemned the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia. It is important to note, however, that Romania was not as strategically important as Czechoslovakia or Poland economically or geographically, so you view Ceausescu's stubbornness differently because Moscow did as well. In any case, Moscow certainly did not pull the strings in Romania.\n\nNow on to Czechoslovakia and its Prague Spring of 1968, which led to the Warsaw Pact invasion Ceausescu condemned. Here we can see the full extent of Eastern Bloc independence (at least in the context of 1968) and where that independence ended. The Central Committee in Prague overthrew the Stalinist Novotny and elected the reformer Alexander Dubcek to power without interference from Moscow. Dubcek sought to implement massive economic and election reforms, and none of this bothered the Soviets much. Building on years of economic reform, this would have meant increased and eventually open trade with the West, as well as the introduction of a \"profit motive\" that would have allowed managers and workers to keep a large percent of their enterprises net profits. With election reform, Dubcek meant to allow the people of Czechoslovakia to play a more direct role in choosing their leaders and in designing domestic policy. Less famously, the Slovak Dubcek also sought to federalize Czechoslovakia and to allow the Slovak half a degree of autonomy, which obviously clashed with the Marxist-Leninist notion of the slow destruction of national identities. The Soviets were prepared to allow all of this. The problem arose with the lifting of censorship, as the rebellious writers of Prague began calling for the complete overthrow of Communist power not only in Czechoslovakia but in the Eastern Bloc generally. This sparked fears in the Soviet Union that in the absence of strict censorship Czechoslovakia would eventually leave the Warsaw Pact even if Dubcek was loyal to Moscow himself; moreover, it sparked fears throughout the Warsaw Pact that people in Hungary, in Poland, and perhaps even in the Soviet Union would soon demand that their own \"Dubcek\" came to power (a look at certain protest signs of the era reveals that indeed this literally happened). Dubcek continuously refused to reintroduce censorship no matter how hard the Soviet Union demanded it, and so Brezhnev eventually agreed with others that the Prague Spring should be put down by force. The knee-jerk reaction to this is to say \"look how little independence the Eastern Bloc nations had!\" A more nuanced analysis reveals that Czechoslovakia did in fact have an enormous amount of autonomy: it elected its own reformist leaders and put into practice their reforms. The Soviet Union only invaded after Czechoslovak initiatives threatened to undermine Soviet hegemony within the Eastern Bloc generally, and even then Brezhnev was strongly influenced by leaders in East Germany and Poland who feared they would be overthrown by their own domestic \"Dubceks.\"\n\n**IN SHORT**: No, the Soviet Union did not pull all the strings in Eastern Europe. Eastern Bloc nations had room for independent domestic policies. Moscow, however, would not allow these policies to threaten Soviet hegemony within the Eastern Bloc, and would use force to prevent a general collapse within Eastern Europe.\n\n*I have to point out that the concept \"Eastern Europe\" as it is used here was really a Cold War construct. Czechoslovakia was a \"Central European\" nation prior to the Cold War and that at one time meant something.*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dd3b2o5", "dd3c572" ], "score": [ 7, 11 ], "text": [ "In the years leading up to the PRC, Ding Ling was a very prevalent female author. In 1942, she wrote a piece titled Thoughts on March 8th (International Women's Day) which brought to light the sexism within the Communist Party. Specific examples she described included the relative difficulty of female comrades to get a divorce compared to their male counterparts, and persistent ideas that a woman's primary role was bearing children. Before publishing this Ding Ling had been well-regarded, even by Mao himself, but this criticism of the party and challenge of authority haunted her more or less for the rest of her life; 15 years later she was persecuted in the Anti-rightist campaign and variously exiled and/or sent to hard labor until 1979. \n\nThat's not to say the Communist Party was opposed wholesale to feminism. Earlier in the century, revolutionaries championed the abolition of foot-binding. Additionally, during the May 4th movement of 1919, when many of the male students protesting the Chinese government were arrested, it was young women who took their place protesting. So, it was more the affront to the party that got Ding Ling in trouble; if she had levelled the same criticisms at the culture of Qing-era China or even at the KMT or Japanese, she might have been fine. \n\nSource: The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Jonathan Spence ( & a class I took last semester on modern Chinese literature)", "The PRC is a case I can't tell you much about but as far as I am aware, of the socialist countries in Europe only one had a significant feminist movement that went beyond very small circles, produces an actual counterdiscourse, and had a significant literary and theoretical output: Yugoslavia.\n\nFor background first: Communist parties and the 1st wave of feminism, i.e. the suffragist movement, had in the beginning of the 20th century despite similar political aims when it came to women, not always been on friendly terms. Classical Marxist-Leninist Communist had the tendency to understand of understanding issues of women's rights as a so-called side-contradiction, meaning that once the main contradiction of Capitalism, the class conflict, was solved, discrimination against women would end and a feminist movement would become unnecessary.\n\nThis however, was not a universally shared opinion. Rosa Luxemburg for example, early on, emphasized the importance of the struggle for women's suffrage and women's rights. In her 1912 article [Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle](_URL_0_) she wrote:\n\n > There are many who, precisely on the basis of these facts, may underestimate the significance of the struggle for women’s suffrage. They may reason: even without political equality for the female sex, we have achieved brilliant advances in the enlightenment and organisation of women, so it appears that women’s suffrage is not a pressing necessity from here on in. But anyone who thinks so is suffering from a delusion. (...) One of the first great heralds of the socialist ideal, the Frenchman Charles Fourier, wrote these thought-provoking words a hundred years ago: \"In every society the degree of female emancipation (freedom) is the natural measure of emancipation in general.\n > \n > This applies perfectly to society today. The contemporary mass struggle for the political equality of women is only one expression and one part of the general liberation struggle of the proletariat, and therein lies its strength and its future. General, equal and direct suffrage for women will – thanks to the female proletariat – immeasurably advance and sharpen the proletarian class struggle. That is why bourgeois society detests and fears women’s suffrage, and that is why we want to win it and will win it. And through the struggle for women’s suffrage we will hasten the hour when the society of today will be smashed to bits under the hammer blows of the revolutionary proletariat.\n\nThis position, while finding some initial traction in the early Soviet Union disappeared again later, especially in the wake of the Stalinist \"social fascism\" thesis, which condemned all reformist undertakings as the seed of fascism.\n\nThis is important in as far, in the second half of the 20th century, socialist ruling parties in the concerned countries often perceived feminism, the then second wave, as a liberal and bourgeois undertaking and thus as counter-revolutionary. The path to women's liberation for them lay in their form of socialism and criticizing the status of women in their society was perceived as a movement or position that could only be inspired by revisionist and bourgeois thinking.\n\nThe onyl exception, as mentioned above, was socialist Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had been different from the other kids form the beginning. Not only had Tito and the KPJ been able to secure their position and claim on legitimacy through their efforts in WWII and their liberation of their country from fascist rule by their own strength, but unlike countries like Poland or the GDR, the rule of the KPJ and Tito was not perceived as imposed by a victorious Soviet army but as the natural outcome of the country's struggle for liberation (basically, at least imposed by their own people).\n\nLegitimacy for socialist rule on Yugoslavia was built upon a narrative of the struggle for liberation and the Partisans. Transfiguring the Partisan struggle into the birth of socialist rule while at the same time portraying it as the natural expression of the new and socialist way society would work, it became the central element and narrative of Tito's rule, which ultimately allowed him to break with the Soviet Union and position Yugoslavia in the peculiar position it held for a long time: Not part of the Eastern bloc but socialist; socialist but without such a strict planned economy; a partly planned economy but with a large consumer goods industry etc. pp.\n\nThis is all important for the later appearance of a feminist movement in Yugoslavia because the narrative of national liberation and the Partisans could from its very inception not deny the important role of women. More than 100.000 women had served within the Army of National Liberation and the Partisan detachments. Those involved in the Anti-Fascist Front of Women (Antifašistiki front žena – AFŽ) counted around 2.000.000. Out of these, 600.000 were carried off to concentration camps (German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Ustase), where around 282.000 of them died. In the course of fighting, 2.000 women reached an officer’s rank and many of them were elected members of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia. After the war, 91 women were accorded the honor of National Hero.\n\nWomen who had participated in the struggle for national liberation were celebrated after the war and for the women who had served too, taking over professions from men and serving with a gun in hands established a place in the new socialist rule behind which the regime could not go back. In fact, the socialist Yugoslavian regime celebrated this narrative of equality within the Partisan movement (I say narrative here because the reality on the ground did sometime have the tendency of looking different in the sense of women in the Partisans being relegated to unimportant roles or some Partisan detachments not allowing women in the first place) and incorporated it into the new state.\n\nThis expressed itself in various ways, from the constitutional provision of Yugoslavia that women must be paid an equal salary, to Yugoslavia decriminalizing abortion in the 1950s, to the law concerning parental leave specifically instead of only maternal leave, to a concerted propaganda effort that highlighted female equality in film, literature and TV.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eedak2s" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "The Moscow subway system was considered for use as bomb shelters as early as World War II (against conventional weapons). They were also extensively studied for use as nuclear blast shelters in the Cold War. It should be noted that by the Soviet's own estimations, the subways were not large enough to shelter the entire Moscow population; they could accommodate maybe 530,000 or so (out of a metro area of several millions), assuming you had adequate warning to move people down there. \n\nIn the USA, I don't know of any subway metro systems that were specifically designed for this task, though the vaulted ceilings of the central Washington Metro system have been noted in contemporary discussion of public shelters as being pretty good for blast pressure support. (The New York City subway system, by contrast, was clearly not specifically developed with this in mind — it is much older on the whole — but any underground shelter is probably better than any above-ground shelter, the deeper the better.) I have not seen any indication that planning for subways in the US was ever bent towards the aim of being better shelters than they might be by default (which would involve \"hardening\" design decisions at the very least, storing supplies and careful ventilation choices at the most). But many discussions of urban Civil Defense in the USA did (and still do) talk about subways as one of many possible ad hoc shelters against blast or fallout. Again, as with the USSR, while US subways seem to be endlessly cavernous and accommodating, they could, even with lots of warning time, only accommodate a fraction of the total population of a dense urban area (as anyone who has been in these systems during rush hour knows quite intuitively!).\n\nOn the Moscow subway shelter estimates, see Edward Geist, \"Was there a real 'mineshaft gap'?: Bomb shelters in the USSR, 1945-1962,\" _Journal of Cold War Studies_ 14, no. 2 (Spring 2012), 3-28." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ci7wk7d", "ci7y04o", "ci7yqg0", "ci81toj" ], "score": [ 266, 29, 495, 5 ], "text": [ "Interestingly, though it doesn't directly answer your question, the British people were presented images of Cornwallis surrendering his sword to General Washington. [A painting by John Trumbull of the same name hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol](_URL_0_)\n\nHowever Cornwallis didn't actually meet Washington and surrender. On October 19, 1781 he called in sick and sent his aide-de-camp Charles O’Hara with the sword. Washington refused to take it and sent his aide, General Benjamin Lincoln, to collect it.\n\nSo to some extent, the British people were presented a lie in this case. Cornwallis did not behave honorably according to protocol.\n\nSource: Ferling's \"Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence\"\n\nIn fact, in spite of behaving dishonorably at the surrender of Yorktown, Cornwallis did not go down in shame and ignominy. The king still favored him and the new Prime Minister, William Pitt, held him in esteem. He was made a Knight Companion of The Most Noble Order of the Garter in 1786.", "To add to the question, I learned in high school history class that the English actually organized Betting poles in which they gambled on when the the post- revolution United States would collapse (apparently done somewhat prolifically). Is this supported by any scholarly or academic sources? ", "Firstly, remember that there was no universal opinion in Britain at the time - many people supported the Amercian rebellion. As well as prominent Whig politicians like Charles James Fox, David Hartley, Thomas Brand Hollis, Sir George Savile, John Wiles and Edmund Burke, many ordinary people showed support as well. \n\nGroups like the pro-Amercian London Association approved an anti-war petition to be presented to the government, though this was shelved. \n\nThere were also dissenting clergymen such as Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, Francis Blackburn, John Jebb and John Horne Tooke, who reportedly made the anonymous charge in a London Newspaper that Americans has been \"inhumanely murdered\". The Reverend Richard Price released a pamphlet called, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, And the justice And Policy of the War with America. \n\n_URL_4_\n\nThis sold over 60,000 copies.\n\nThe British Press was the freest in the world at the time and those printed in London had the largest readership. Solomon Lutnick performed a study of attitudes in the British Press.\n\n_URL_3_\n\nHe found that the Morning Chronicle, the London Advertiser, the Courant and Westminster Chronicle were against the government, and the London Gazette, the General Evening Post and Lloyd's Evening Post were supporters. Such devisions were replicated in the provincial press.\n\nColin Bonwick's English Radicals and the American Revolution provides further insight.\n\n_URL_2_\n\nMuch of this was driven by Englightenment ideals, popular amongst the coffee houses of the time, but there was also a decline in trade during the war. In 1779 English exports were the lowest since 1745. With trade so vital to Britain at the time, there was a hope that the end of the war would allow for peaceful trading relations. In fact, despite losing its trading monopoly, Britain's level of trade quickly restored to pre-war levels.\n\nSamuel Johnson, the prominent Tory writer of one of the most influencial dictionaries in history, in his anti-rebellion pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny of 1772, forsaw the possibility of losing the American colonies, but hoped that in this case, trade would still be possible:\n\n > We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?\n\n > But let us interrupt awhile this dream of conquest, settlement, and supremacy. Let us remember, that being to contend, according to one orator, with three millions of whigs, and, according to another, with ninety thousand patriots of Massachusett's bay, we may possibly be checked in our career of reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon equal terms, or driven from the western continent, and forbidden to violate, a second time, the happy borders of the land of liberty...\n\n > If we are allowed, upon our defeat, to stipulate conditions, I hope the treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the confederated cantons such products as they do not raise, and such manufactures as they do not make, and cannot buy cheaper from other nations, paying, like others, the appointed customs; that, if an English ship salutes a fort with four guns, it shall be answered, at least, with two; and that, if an Englishman be inclined to hold a plantation, he shall only take an oath of allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while he lives inoffensively, to retain his own opinion of English rights, unmolested in his conscience by an oath of abjuration.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAfter the war was lost, there was definitely a feeling of immediate reconciliation. In this cartoon of 1782: \n\n_URL_1_\n\nIt expresses the idea of America as the daughter reconciling with her mother, Britainnia while other nations try to pull them apart.\n\nAfter the war, the pro-Grovernment press tended to concern itself with two issues: the money that Americans had borrowed from British merchants before the revolution, and the property that state governments seized from Loyalist exiles after independence. There were also criticisms of the weakness of the American government under the Articles of Confederation when it was seen as being impossible to negotiate treaties with a Congress which did not yet have the power to enforce them.\n\nOverall then, those that supported American Indpendence were pleased that the North Administration had lost, and those that supported the government, whilst critical of the new country, wished for normalised peaceful trading relations as soon as possible.\n", "Wow! Thanks to all the submissions! Just a couple more questions:\n\n* Were people angry they lost, or was it just a \"whatever, good for them\" kind of ordeal?\n\n* What happened in the trade industry after the war? Did the newly founded America have trouble importing and exporting materials?" ] }

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[ [ "https://i.imgur.com/LlJBCjA.jpg" ], [], [ "http://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html", "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/The_reconciliation_between_Britania_and_her_daughter_America.jpg", "http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1877433?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21104152140367", "http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_American_Revolution_and_the_British.html?id=yjhCAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y", "http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1781" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cia6cjp" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "I'm not quite I understand what you mean.\n\nThe \"counterinsurgency\" that was carried out was nothing more than conventional mopping up operations, sometimes not being more than a platoon of soldiers facing off against a lone sniper. The Nazi \"insurgency\" that existed after the war was nothing more than a bunch of uncoordinated fanatics and was never a practical threat beyond theory. There were plans made up on how to deal with a possible insurgency, but since an actual insurgency failed to materialize, they were not actually put to use.\n\nSince I am not close to as well-read on the Eastern Front as I am on the various other fronts, perhaps one of our experts on here can enlighten us how it looked on the Soviet side?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cptljxb" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Hello, I apologize for the late answer, I hadn't seen this post until now. This film does actually have a lot of accurate aspects to it, and the uniforms are portrayed surprisingly well (in some aspects, which I'll get more into later). It's interesting to note that this film was banned from Italian viewers until 2009. It was controversial in how it portrayed Italian occupiers of Libya to be rather ruthless, however, there is quite a bit of truth to this portrayal.\n\n\n\n\nWith regards to the concentration camps, I believe the movie was attempting to portray the camp at El Agheila (it's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I can't quite remember). There was indeed a forced migration of an estimated 80,000 Bedouins into these camps of which many thousands died. I have not seen any accurate figures proposed, just rough estimations. We can assume though that the populations inside were malnourished. I'm not sure if you realized this while watching, but the aerial footage of the camps is *real* footage taken from the Regia Aeronautica. It wasn't a set, but that was actual footage that Akkad worked into his film. As for the gassing and executions, I cannot say for certain if this did or did not happen. The idea behind these camps were to isolate and cut-off local support for Mukhtar and his resistance movement. The goal really wasn't to exterminate the Libyans as is often associated with concentration camps of this nature. MVSN (the soldiers displaying clear fasces collar tabs) did investigate and monitor these interned civilians, executing those suspected of resisting occupation. I'd hesitate to say that Italian soldiers were held to a higher standard than to resort to war crimes, because it is known that Graziani and Badoglio (Italian general and Governor of Libya at the time) had no problem gassing urban areas in Ethiopia a few years later during the 2nd Abyssinian War.\n\n\n\n\nBenghazi did have a large Italian population, and by the time of Mukhtar's trial, was seeing a large influx of Italian settlers. It's important to note that Mukhtar's resistance lasted *20 years.* Many Italian industries were beginning to move into the colonies and Benghazi, Tripoli, and Tobruk were the ports they would come in through. So naturally, these cities were the largest influx of Italian settlers. Benghazi specifically had a large concentration of Jewish Libyans (and importantly in favor of Italian occupation), so this city became a central location for Italian settlers to integrate into the colonies. At the time the movie was portraying, which was Mukhtar's trial and execution, Benghazi would have been in the process of the build-up campaign. In the early 1920's governor generals Volpi authorized a unique architectural campaign in Benghazi which to this day are still popular tourist attractions. This architecture is referred to as a \"Western interpretation of Eastern culture,\" and commonly known as *The Volpi period.* The designers used Moorish motifs, complimented by a grandiose fascist style. Volpi brought in Armando Brasini, a prominent Italian architect to create massive and impressive buildings in this style to compliment Volpi's *lungomare,* a walkway path along the sea that is still to this today, one of Benghazi's must see tourist attractions. In addition to this and Governor Italo Balbo's assimilation campaign, there were an estimated 20,000 Italians in Benghazi in the early 1930's, so the portrayal of Benghazi in the movie is quite accurate to how it would have looked.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_) \n\n\n\n\nThe uniforms are surprisingly accurate in the movie. The soldiers displaying the fasces are MVSN units, also known as \"Black Shirt Battalions.\" These are Mussolini's Black Shirts that were very active in the Libyan occupation and campaigns. Their colonial uniforms are quite accurate, their insignia is indeed a black collar tab with fasces pin over it and a fasces *fregio* (insignia) on their caps, which were the Alpine styled cap (without feather) and were used before the MVSN switched to bustina. There are a few historical inaccuracies with the uniforms in the film, most prominently in the weapons they used. A lot of the machine guns were American and British, understandably as Italian firearms of the era are rare and hard to come by. A few non-carcano's being used here and there, but minor criticisms. There is also an Alpini soldier (Italy's elite mountian trrops) featured towards the end the movie in a continental Grigio-verde colored uniform (grey-green that the Italian army looooooved to use on everything), but there were no Alpini in Africa at that specific time. Graziani is portrayed very very well, as is Mussolini. In fact, Stieger (the actor portraying Mussolini) actually found Mussolini's real life barber, and had him give him a Mussolini style shave/haircut and tell him stories about his mannerisms, what he was like, etc. and used this in his portrayal of the film. A very neat story and well-done rendition of Il Duce.\n\n\n\n\nMussolini did want his soldiers to be dressed professionally and basically advertise for him. This was his mentality, to advertise fascism. He loved parades, military marches, grand fascist celebrations, and he wanted to impress. When he conquered a country or city, or island, he wanted to have large parades in the streets where people were impressed and want to be a part of the Italian empire. He didn't want to simply exploit colonies, he wanted them to *want* to be a part of Italy and this surprisingly worked pretty well in Libya. In 1911, Mukhtar had widespread support and people were resistant to Italian occupation. By the 1930's, many Libyans willingly enlisted in the Italian askari corps. Now, of course there were benefits for bedouins and native populations to enlist, but Libya was to some degree effectively assimilated into Italy as well. In fact, it was a Libyan Savari serving in the Italian military that caught Mukhtar. Italian Savari's were often murdered and tortured by Mukhtar's men, along with their families. While many opposed Italian occupation, there were many that embraced it and the modernizing (at least to some extent) of their country\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=PqqGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA17-IA55&lpg=PA17-IA55&dq=lungomare+Benghazi&source=bl&ots=vrKQ3Wd1Pu&sig=COXZbIOXbFKk_JkKm-oKU0N2Bwc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PMMWVeTGIM_YggTR0IM4&ved=0CFAQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q=lungomare%20Benghazi&f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c64kb8f", "c64kng2", "c64nnlr" ], "score": [ 2, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "John Wilkes Booth would be more on the line of Johnny Depo.", "Edwin was very famous. I'm currently looking through Brooklyn and NYC newspapers during the war years. Edwin was doing a run of shows in Brooklyn--they were HEAVILY reported. I think it's hard to compare them to current actors, but I would say compare them to sports teams. The way we follow and are \"aware\" of sports teams in our day-to-day lives is the same kind of thing.", "I've always pictured them as the Wilson bros. Edwin was the more famous Owen, while John was Luke." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvdor41", "cvdpln5", "cvdq0n3", "cvds4zv", "cvds723", "cvdtbba", "cvdwk6x", "cve3jp6", "cve5heq", "cvebaje" ], "score": [ 131, 18, 284, 8, 18, 47, 51, 32, 3, 2 ], "text": [ " > Did it happen anywhere else?\n\nAt least I can answer this. In Sweden the Moderate Party was moving towards an [\"an increasingly Friedman-inspired and market liberal direction\"]( _URL_2_) but their \"Thatcherite era\" was [more in the 1990's.](_URL_1_) (Thatcher personally liked Bildt a lot.) \n\nThe immediate reason is listening to the economists like Martin Friedman, broadly the Chicago School.\n\nWhy exactly to them in why exactly in this era is more a complex econ question, although surely one big part of the reason is that the Keynesian school, that was largely the econ behind Social Democracy, had [difficulties with stagflation](_URL_0_).\n\nThis is only a part of the story. But very broadly, Social Democracy seemed to work really well 1945 -1975, France called this era the Thirty Glorious Years, and then there was all kinds of economic trouble and people were willing to listen to different ideas.", "Douglas Rushkoff has argued that neoliberalism was a reaction to the basic income becoming a viable mainstream political idea in the '70s. (Proposals of this kind have taken various forms, but essentially basic income means a living allowance paid to every citizen.) Supporters said it solved the core dilemma of automation: new technology increases our supply of useful goods and services in the long run, but in the short run decreases demand for the same by putting people out of work. Theoretically, a properly-calibrated basic income would establish a floor under demand while the economy adapts. Once the likes of Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman had come out in favor, the Anglo-American right wing experienced an identity crisis and Reagan/Thatcher was the result.", "I would say it's not a coincidence at all, and there would have to be a global cause which would likely be the OPEC oil embargo and subsequent economic shock on the Western countries it was leveled against. Prior to this, there was a relative consensus around Keynesian economic policies that had been formed in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Socially liberal governments dominated and built mixed economies based on strong unions, direct government intervention in major industries like healthcare, and high government spending to support growth. Adherents of Keynesian theory also relied on an underlying principal: that inflation and unemployment are inversely related. In other words, as long as there is high inflation, there will not be high unemployment.\n\nIn America, the existence of stagflation unraveled that consensus and the public began to look for a new theory to guide policy. I can only imagine the psychological effects of the world's most powerful nation suddenly finding itself having to ration gasoline based on license plate number and the President suggesting solutions like putting on a sweater to lower home heating. The US was almost entirely dependent on these imports, and the foundation of the entire economy was oil. When those imports stopped, the economy came to a grinding halt. \n\nBoth Reagan and Thatcher (and conservative figures in other nations I'm sure, but know less about) presented an alternative. Whether called trickle-down economics, Reaganism (\"voodoo economics\" by skeptics), or Thatcherism, it was bound by a rejection of Keynesian thought and the theory that lowering taxes (especially for the wealthy), deregulating markets, lowering government spending, and privatizing public markets would grow the economy. Both used public dissatisfaction with unions for their corruption and disruptive strikes (US airlines, UK coal) to initiate major union-busting campaigns that would lead to their demise. \n\nAs I mentioned, the oil embargo had profound psychological damage on the superiority complex of both the US and UK. Reagan and Thatcher each believed in massive military spending and used their tenures to restore American confidence. Reagan directly confronted a Soviet Union already in decline, and Thatcher used the Falklands controversy in what was largely considered to be an unnecessary conflict to reassert British dominance after decades of decolonization and losing its status as a global empire. \n\nI have to say that the 1960s Civil Rights Movement can't be overlooked in Reagan's election, but I can only speak on the US side of things. One of the most controversial aspects of Reagan has been his use of racial \"dogwhistling\" - using white working class fears concerning a recently liberated black population in order to win over a crucial electorate that had been loyal to the Democratic Party for its pro-immigrant, pro-labor policies dating back to FDR's New Deal Coalition. There's a lot that could be said here, but to keep this on topic, I think it still ties in with the overall ideology both he and Thatcher pushed: rebuilding a strong America/Britain that works for heavily-coded \"traditional\" public. ", "Thomas Piketty also correlates the rise of Reagan/Thatcher to the surge of Japan and core European countries (mainly Germany) during this time. He thinks the countries that were catching up were bound to catch up since their economies were destroyed a lot more than the UK or the US during WW2. However, he says, the voters were scared and voted for the ideology championed by Reagan and Thatcher to get their countries' economies pulling ahead again.\n\nIn shorter words, other countries (esp. Japan) were catching up to the UK/US block mainly on their dynamic economies. The voters got scared. The right wing promised an alternative that voters thought could make US/UK pull ahead again.", "This is based on Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty:\n\nAt the end of the second world war, the USA and the UK were in an excellent economic position compared to the rest of the world, because they suffered less destruction. This was especially true for the USA, who now had by far the biggest economy of the world(more than 50% of the world GDP, if I remember right).\n\nIn the next 30 years other countries(Germany, Italy, Japan, France etc.) all had their economic miracles, they were lagging behind but catching up fast. By around 1975 they had mostly caught up with the USA and the UK.\nThese countries now felt threatened, because they had been \"on top\" for the last 30 years and they thought that they had done something wrong and now things have to change.\n\nThis led to the election of Thatcher and Reagan, because they hoped they could overtake the rest of the world again, if they just became more economically liberal.\n\n", "Previous answers touch on most of the obvious economical factors that led to a rise of neoliberalism in most industrialized countries in the 80's.\n\nAnother factor to consider is demography. That particular period of time (80-85) is also when the *majority* of Baby-Boomers (born between ~45-64) reached ~25-35 years old and had started families. That particular age group had virtual total control over any election because of their sheer number (in most industrialized countries, Baby-Boomers represented ~45% of the population by the early 60's). \n\nAlthough historically Baby Boomers had been more socially and economically Left-leaning compared to preceding generations, and had been highly favored with the post-War economic boom by their (relatively) easy entry and mobility in the growing job market; when the going got rough *twice* in the 70's (73-75 recessions, Energy Crisis, late 70's/early 80's recessions) the collective minding of Baby-Boomers began to shift. With young children and more on the way, many Baby Boomers became more conservative and Right-leaning fiscally, lending a good voting base for political parties that presented Neoliberalism as a solution to almost a decade (70's) of economical hardships. \n\nAnother factor to consider as well: the Cold War was still going strong in the 80's. So Neoliberalism was easily absorbed within already existing anti-Communist political platforms, the latter of which had a permanent voting base in the older demographics (those who were already adults in the 50's and 60's). So when some Baby Boomers voters migrated to more Right-leaning fiscal ideologies, Conservative/Neoliberal candidates had an easy -- if not overwhelming -- upper-hand.", "As a professional historian of the 20th-century USA, I must say this has been a really strong thread. Thank you all!\n\nI would add a couple points from a transnational perspective. When neoliberal policies became dominant throughout the Western world, both in liberal and social democratic countries, was in the aftermath of decolonization. Keynesian thinking was popular with imperialists who needed not to worry about stagflation because the unequal trade relations they could count on with their colonies or their neighbors' colonies kept core economies growing. Once colonies began breaking away and nominally independent states like Chile began to behave like sovereign entities, Keynesian thinking grew incredibly dangerous. From OPEC to Allende, Third World polities began to turn statism against those who had benefited from this thinking for a century. Nationalizing copper, oil, or other natural resources and public amenities was in accord with Western behavior. The West forced what we now know as neoliberal policies on Chile with the Pinochet coup. That country became the laboratory for figuring out whether social collapse would follow. As much as I hate what happened there, Pinochet's Chile worked, and Carter/Reagan and Thatcher promptly followed suit. Why did neoliberalism take off c. 1980? Because it was already in place in Latin America's cone and had proved workable.", "People focus on the effect of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s on the revival of free market capitalism. But most everybody – including in this thread – miss the leader of greatest importance for the free market's resurgence: Deng Xiaoping. Beginning slowly in 1978, Deng made changes that opened China to market systems and foreign investment, and not just in a *de facto* manner, but explicitly justified as adopting market techniques from capitalists, saying on one occasion: \"We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries…\" In the long run, the reform path begun by Deng Xiaoping and continued by his successors may be viewed as more consequential for global capitalism than anything done by Reagan or Thatcher.", "Im new but actually wrote about Reagans popularity in my bachelor's paper in history.\nAs a background Reagan thought of himself as one of the people, \"we against them\" mentality. A mentality which he kept going on to the oval office.\n\nBut what made him a neoliberalist was according to David Stockman in his book \"the triumph of politics\" was that Stockman backed Jack Kemp as the republican presidential candidate. Jack Kemp together with his group was influenced by Milton Friedman and Fredrick Hayek saw a free market , lassiez faire market. Jack Kemp agreed to drop his candidacy if Reagan back his economical plan. Stockman jumped camp and became extremely important in creating what would become Reaganomics.\n\nThe problem they saw under the Carter precidency with a stagnation inflation market, later dubbed stagflated market, made it easier for Jack Kemp and his group to promote a neolibralist economy.\nReagan believed in Neolibralism because according to himself he would in his actor days make a certain number of films to escape paying taxes. A system which cut down on taxes and governmental interference would create a market that would regulate and would be self reliant. With a higher income in the richest percentages in the population together spending cuts in government would cut down on governmental debt. The money would simply trickle down from the top and benefit everyone.\nAnother seperate argument is that the democrats had a philosophy with governmental interference from FDR via JFK. It is argued that the republicans did not have a similar inheritance which made the small government -trickledown- solution easier to like, even though it was doubbed voodoo economics by Bush Sr. In the republican candidate debates.\n\nFinally it was much easier to accept because of the failiures of Jimmy Carter to stop the stagflation and his controversy with the Shah of Iran.\nSo sorry for the lack of structure guys and the nd language. Have a nice evening", "Canadian follow-up: Brian Mulroney came to power around the same time. Was it for the same reasons discussed above?" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation#Explaining_the_1970s_stagflation", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sweden_\\(1991%E2%80%93present\\)#The_Bildt_Era", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sweden_\\(1967%E2%80%9391\\)#Right-wing_intermission" ], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjpmfpd", "cjpmhjj", "cjpubf8" ], "score": [ 71, 8, 13 ], "text": [ "Our modern conception of a religion as a distinct group that you belong to exclusively is something that has developed rather recently in the history of religious belief and actually coincides with the rise of Christianity and Islam in the West. In fact, in countries like China, such a distinction still doesn't readily exist. During \"Pagan times\", what we think of as \"religions\" were typically divided along cultural lines; certain cultural groups had certain deities, rituals, and beliefs about the world around them. However, there was not an idea that because you were Greek you could not worship Anubis or Odin because they were not part of \"your religion\", rather deities were commonly syncretized or traded when two cultures came into contact.\n\nThe closest thing to \"religions\" as we know them today were mystery cults, special religious groups with voluntary membership that provided spiritual fulfillment for those whose needs were not being met by the overarching state cults. These groups often purported to have secret knowledge that was only shared with initiates and promised direct experience with divinities in addition to benefits in the afterlife. These groups were rarely exclusive, however, and many people, such as the Emperor Julian the Apostate (the last Pagan emperor of Rome) were initiated into multiple mystery cults.\n\nThis changed when Christianity became popular during late antiquity. Christianity, unlike the mystery cults, specifically marked itself as in opposition to all other religions; they believed that there was only one God, only one way to worship Him, and that all other gods were lies or demons. Since they were an exclusive group, they were identified as one. Towards the end of the Pagan era, the Emperor Julian did try to reorganize the state religion of Rome into an organized religion along the lines of the Christian church and referred to this religious group as \"Hellenismos\" (\"those who worship in the style of the Hellenes\" in Greek).\n\nThis is something of a simplification and does not get into the continuing development of religion as an identity that occured once Islam rose in the Middle East and Christianity found itself faced with it's first organized opposition in centuries. If you are interested in the changes in the religious structure of the West during the fall of Paganism, I suggest checking out \"God Against the Gods\" by Jonathan Kirsch.", "It's difficult to ascertain, but seems unlikely, as the forms of pagan worship that we have records did not keep a written word until after the introduction of Abrahamic monotheism, whose writers would have recorded as simply an equivalent for pagan, heathen or infidel. \n\nRecords of paganism would more describe the peoples who practised it, so a Scandinavian (Norse) who practised Pre-Christian beliefs was a norse pagan. It seems likely that the pagan followers would have simply refered to themselves as the peoples or region they came from, and they would practice the local beliefs and traditions. With the introduction of the new Abrahamic faiths, they might refer to themselves as something \"following the old ways\".\n\nNames such as Asatru (Norse), Romuva (Baltic), Suomenusko (Finnic) are the names given to the modern Neo-paganism movements, which usually claim some form of continuum from the pre-modern beliefs, rather than the historical forms. These names are created and used by neo-pagan followers, often which may translate to something like \"The Way\".\n\nDavies, Owen (2011). Paganism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191620010.\n\nRobert, P. & Scott, N., (1995) \"A History of Pagan Europe\". New York, Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0-7607-1210-7.\n\nBlain, Jenny; Ezzy, Douglas; Harvey, Graham (2004). Researching Paganisms. Oxford and Lanham: AltaMira Press. ISBN 978-0-7591-0522-5\n\nLewis, James R. (2004). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. London and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514986-6", "Groups/tribes/peoples all over the world had names for themselves, but often in small scale societies the names for themselves just translate as \"the people\", \"the real people,\" \"the free people,\" \"the original people\", \"the brave people\", etc. Take the Germans, for example. Our word is untraceable past the name of the Germani, a specific tribe. But in German, they're called *Deutsch*, which is related to a Proto Indo European root meaning [people](_URL_4_). The Germans in French are les allemands, which is ultimately likely related to \"[all men](_URL_0_)\". French, for example, comes from the Franks, who were the [free [not servile] ones](_URL_2_). Swede originally either meant [free or kinsmen](_URL_5_). The Navajo word for Navajo is Diné, meaning the People. The Cree either call themselves \"Nēhilawē, those who speak our language, or Eeyou, the people. The Guaraní called themselves Abá, meaning men/people. This pattern is repeated throughout the world, though obviously it doesn't apply to every single group of people. Other names might be like \"those who live by the rapids/in the forest/on the plains/to the north\" or \"those who eat [the thing their neighbors don't eat]/do [what our neighbors don't do]\", etc.\n\nJust as \"who we are\" is distinguished from \"who they are\", \"what we do\" is often distinguished from \"what they do\". The term religion, and particularly in its current meaning, is surprisingly recent, only coming out of the nearly simultaneous events of the European discovery of the Americans and the schism between Catholicism and Protestantism (see J. Z. Smith's \"[Religion, Religions, Religious](_URL_3_)\"). But even though the term is new, what we'd call religion existed much longer. But they were probably differentiated similarly to people, our religion was \"the way of gods\" or \"our path\" or \"the true law\" or \"the original custom\" or \"knowledge of the spirits\" or something like that. One of the problems is that for most groups, writing and contact with one of the great proselytizing religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam) is almost simultaneous, so a lot of the records we get are through non native eyes. I can't remember how the Sumerians and Egyptians talked about their religions, but the Dao Te Jing, a fundamental text in Chinese religion (especially Daoism, of course), says famously, \"The way that is spoken is not the way. The name that can be named is not the constant name.\" But, here \"way\" is literally \"dao\", so another way to translate this line is \"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.\" The word \"veda\", used in Hindusim, means \"knowledge\". \"Torah\" means \"Law\". Dat, the Modern Hebrew for religion, originally meant [\"law\" or \"custom\"](_URL_1_). And so on.\n\nSince I know some groups, even some small scale societies, have more specific names for themselves than \"the people\" or \"the free ones\", I can feel confident that some groups had more specific names for their religions than \"our customs\" or \"the true way\", but I can't think of any off the top of my head." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Alemanni&allowed_in_frame=0", "http://www.balashon.com/2006/03/dat.html", "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Frank&allowed_in_frame=0", "http://www.iupui.edu/~womrel/Rel433%20Readings/SearchableTextFiles/Smith_ReligionReligionsReligious.pdf", "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Dutch&allowed_in_frame=0", "http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Swede&allowed_in_frame=0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9p2mzn", "c9p3osi", "c9p5sq2", "c9pbco5" ], "score": [ 2, 15, 7, 2 ], "text": [ "This book:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nwould seem to indicate that there's basically no historical basis behind Exodus and the book seems to have been favorably reviewed by both Biblical Scholars and archeologists.\n\n", "There is no physical evidence of the Israelites bondage in Egypt nor their 40 years of wandering through the desert. If the biblical numbers are to be believed then a group of 600,000 people wandering the desert would certainly leave some physical trace like pottery or waste or mass graves. When you compare the traces of other cultures left behind, it is rather curious there wouldn't be any traces. So really, we don't know anything about the historical exodus. are best evidence is the religious texts themselves. \n\nOn the other hand - the Israelites don't come into the physical historical record until the time the bible claims they have reached and conquered the land of Israel. Other, later biblical stories like Nebakanezer conquering Jerusalem do have historical veracity. So it is possible they may have happened, and we just haven't found the evidence yet. ", "You may be interested in these previous questions about “[Is the Bible historical?](_URL_1_)” and “[Did the Egyptians use Jewish slaves to help build the pyramid?](_URL_0_)” on our **Popular Questions** page (which is linked at the top of every page in this subreddit, and in the sidebar).", "It seems unlikely to find evidence more than three thousand years after a nomadic people’s wandering in the desert, even if it did last forty years. After all, they built no permanent structures. However, there is evidence that the Hebrew language was well known in ancient Egypt, which is consistent with the biblical claim that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt for a long period of time. In 1887, about 350 clay tablets were found at Amarna, the modern site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten. The tablets are written in the Babylonian language using cuneiform characters. Most of the letters are dated to the reigns of Amenhotep III (also known as Amenophis, 1386-1350 BC) and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten, 1350-1334 BC). They contain correspondence describing the state of international affairs between Egypt and the major powers in Babylon, Assyria, Syria, and Palestine. The Amarna letters contain evidence that the Hebrews were at one time a significant presence in Egypt. Old Testament scholar Robert Dick Wilson explains, “The fact that there are more than one hundred explanations in Hebrew of Babylonian words in the Amarna letters shows that Hebrew was understood at the court of the Egyptian kings, Amenophis III and IV. This confirms the biblical account of the residence of Israelites in Egypt before the time of Moses.”\n\nThere's also evidence that the Hebrews displaced the Canaanites in present-day Israel. Primarily, the very presence and growth of the nation of Israel in Palestine is evidence of them conquering the Canaanites who inhabited the land before them. However, there also is some archaeological evidence of Israel in the land of Canaan around the time of the Exodus: \nSome of the Amarna Letters refer to Israel attacking the Canaanites.\nA collapsed double city wall and a residential area have been discovered at the Jericho excavation site (1400 BC).\nThe Merneptah Stele is a granite inscription by an ancient Egyptian king (1213 to 1203 BC) which mentions Israel and Canaan.\nThe lack of evidence for any particular biblical story should not automatically cause us to doubt the veracity of the account considering the enormous number of ways archaeology has already corroborated the Bible. Scripture has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt many times over. In the case of the Exodus, the very nature of it suggests that physical evidence would be lacking, but we have corroboration at around the right historical time that Israel was at one time in Egypt in great numbers and then later they were in Canaan in great numbers. The Exodus makes perfect sense of how that happened. Check out these books:\n \n1. On the Reliability of the Old Testament by K.A. Kitchen\n2. Archaeology & The Old Testament by Alfred J. Hoerth" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed" ], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/antiquity#wiki_did_the_egyptians_use_jewish_slaves_to_help_build_the_pyramids.3F", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/religion#wiki_is_the_bible_historical.3F" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1ni3ok", "d1nq2xk", "d1nthwt", "d1nvttc" ], "score": [ 979, 31, 23, 8 ], "text": [ "I've never commented on this sub before though I'm a big fan. I don't have any flair and am not an expert or anything, BUT I happen to know the answer to this question and can document it. Please forgive me mods if I break any rules or need to change anything.\n\nIn a nutshell, the British did in fact make plans for the royal family to be evacuated to Canada in the event of an invasion, though there was some pushback from the Americans on making Canada the seat of the government-in-exile, as the Americans were uncomfortable with the prospect of a monarchy operating in North America.\n\nFrom Andrew Roberts' *The Storm of War*,\n\n > Although Britain's gold reserves were transferred to Canada, and plans were made for the royal family, the Cabinet and ultimately whatever was left of the Royal Navy to follow them, it was not even certain that the British Establishment would be universally welcomed by the North Americans. Ever loyal Canada was sound, of course, but on 27 May 1940 Churchill's private secretary, John 'Jock' Colville, noted in his diary that the British Ambassador to Washington, Lord Lothian, had telegraphed that afternoon to say that President Roosevelt had told him that 'provided the Navy remains intact, we could carry on the war from Canada; but he makes the curious suggestion that the seat of Government should be Bermuda and not Ottawa, as the American republics would dislike the idea of monarchy functioning on the American Continent!'\n\nSource:\n\nRoberts, Andrew. *The Storm of War* (2011)\n\nEdit: Addendum: If anybody is interested, the British also discussed the possibility of evacuating large numbers of troops to Canada as well.\n\n > It has been revealed that soon after Dunkirk Anthony Eden and the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir John Dill, convened a secret meeting in a hotel room in York which was attended by the senior officers of formations based in the north of England. The War Secretary asked whether the troops under their command 'could be counted on to continue to fight in all circumstances.' Brigadier Charles Hudson VC recalled that 'There was an almost audible gasp all around the table. To us it seemed incredible, almost an impertinence, that such a question should be asked of us.' Eden explained that in the circumstances the Government were envisaging, 'it would be definitely unwise to throw in, in a futile effort to save a hopeless situation, badly armed men against an enemy firmly lodged in England.' They would have fought on the beaches, it seems, but not so far north as York.\n\n > The subsidiary question that Eden and Dill put to the officers was 'Whether our troops would, if called on, embark at a northern port, say Liverpool, while it was still in our hands, in order to be withdrawn to, say, Canada? Without such a nucleus of trained troops from the Home Country, the Prime Minister's declared policy of carrying on the fight overseas would be infinitely more difficult.' Hudson related that it soon became very apparent that the officers were all of much the same opinion. While the proportion who would respond to the call among Regular officers would be high, and of Regular NCOs and men who were unmarried nearly as high, 'No one dared, however, to estimate any exact proportion amongst those officers and men who had only come forward for the war; a smaller proportion of unmarried men might respond but the very great majority of these would insist on either fighting it out in England, as they would want to do, or on taking their chances whatever the consequences might be.' The upper reaches of the British Army were therefore of the view that the majority of its troops would refuse to embark for Canada to continue the struggle from abroad, just as many French had not embarked for Britain for the same reason earlier that month. It was all the more vital, therefore, to prevent the Germans from landing in the first place.", "As an extension, what would be the likely fate of the royal families if the Nazis captured them?", "In addition to /u/apeman2500's well-written response, one should remember in relation to this question that during WW2, Newfoundland and Labrador were not part of Canada, but were directly governed by the UK.", "To ask a follow up question:\n\nDid the British monarchy consider evacuating to Australia (or any other commonwealth countries)? Was Canada the only consideration, and if so, for what reasons? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c91989m" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "On a macro scale: ours, modern Western society. (Source: Pinker's *Better Angels of our Nature*.) \n\nOn a micro scale: various pacifist cults and intentional communities (e.g. the Shakers) have dedicated themselves to complete non-violence, and would probably win.\n\nThis seems to me to be a [poll-type question](_URL_0_), though, and may not be allowed to remain." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_.22poll.22-type_questions" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cl1zmh2" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "No, they could not. Considering that a US soldier normally served for 12 months, they were given a one-week Rest and Recuperation leave after six months and were only permitted to visit either nearby destinations such as Thailand and Japan or destinations within South Vietnam itself. There was however one destination that was very popular with married soldiers and that was to spend that one week in Hawaii so that they could reunite with their wife and/or family. This was the closest they could get to where they came from and it was for this reason as to why single men also chose it as their destination over the otherwise more exotic choices that were available to them." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyodulx" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ " > Given how little we know about the ancient Maya\n\nAaah, but we know so much. In fact, the Maya may be one of the most well understood cultures of Mesoamerica with the Aztec at a very close second (sorry /u/400-rabbits). I put the Aztec second because we have to rely on post-Contact produced documents to get insight into Aztec culture. The Maya, however, had their own writing and offered insight into their world using their own words which offers you a fantastic emic rather than etic perspective.\n\nAs for what we know about human sacrifice, we know a lot. We know that people were actually sacrificed in a variety of manners and methods befitting a particular ceremony or dedication to a particular god. Human remains have been recovered from archaeological contexts which indicate that the person was killed by another person. And the context of the remains and the kinds of goods the person was buried with further illustrate that it was a sacrifice rather than the internment of an injured person. The ballgame sacrifice is a little bit contentious. There is a lot of imagery related to sacrifice and the ballgame, but nothing explicit. The imagery ties in heavily with the Hero Twin myth and is more of an allusion to the story rather than an actual practice.\n\nSince the topic of sacrifice is so broad and has been debated for so long, I do recommend actually picking up a book and reading about it since the book will do a much better job of explaining sacrifice in the Maya world. There is a fairly new book out which focuses specifically on the topic of Maya sacrifice along with ritual body treatments.\n\n* Tiesler, Vera, and Andrea Cucina, eds. New perspectives on human sacrifice and ritual body treatments in ancient Maya society. Springer Science & Business Media, 2007." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cab4thk" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Fortunately you have all the information you need to find the man and his military records. You might get lucky and find him in the [Soldiers and Sailors database](_URL_1_) which is administered by the National Parks Service. You can also make an account at [_URL_5_](_URL_2_) and run a search on their databases, but I think they just cross reference other official sources. Then there is [_URL_0_](http://_URL_0_/) which has state by state roster listings, and of course the old standby of the [National Archives and Records Administration](_URL_4_)\n\nCivil War records are very well preserved, researched, copied and digitized. With a name and a unit, you'll have no problem at all finding his official military records. Did you take any pictures of the grave? It's possible if it's neglected grave, a fraternal organization like the Sons of Confederate Veterans, or even the State of Virginia or the Federal Government would offer help in restoring it. Good luck with your search!" ] }

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[ [ "civilwarroster.com", "http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm", "http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2322", "http://civilwarroster.com/", "http://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/", "Ancestry.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ddxawwi" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "There is a seeming paradox concerning Vichy and the fate of France's Jewish population during the occupation. On one hand, the survival rate of Jews in France was far higher than that of the Low Countries. Only a quarter of the Jews in France were deported, compared approximately 78% of the Netherlands and 45% of Belgium's Jews. These lower numbers were known at the time and Vichy officialdom seldom met the German quotas for deportation, much to the consternation of the SS and other German officials. Conversely, Vichy was far more proactive in its antisemitic measures than arguably any other German ally or occupied power on the continent. Vichy's justice ministry enacted laws restricting Jewish professional life and citizenship and the Vichy press gave free reign to all sorts of antisemitic invective. Many of the leading intellectual and political lights of Vichy were highly antisemitic and these attitudes seeing Jews as alien and un-French predated 1940 and continued into the postwar period. Additionally, of that 25% of Jews deported, the Vichy police and other French state officials did the majority of the work. Yet, a closer examination of both Vichy and the occupation reveals that this particular paradox is not so mysterious. The relatively high survival rate of Jews in France, both French- and foreign-born, had more to do with a unique constellation of factors ranging from timing, occupation boundaries, and social factors. \n\nFrance was unique among the Third Reich's victims in that it was the sole great power to surrender to German occupation. This immediately set German occupation policies apart from other examples like Belgium or the Netherlands. In those two latter examples, the largely urban and geographically smaller countries were more suited to a more hands-on occupation. Belgium, for example, came under direct military government while the Netherlands became the site of a turf wars between the *Reichskommisar* Seyss-Inquart, local Dutch fascists, the SS, and the bvarious military commands. In both of these cases, as in Denmark and Norway, the native civil service remained roughly intact an there was a small political group of native collaborators willing to be up-jumped into limited political power. But here, Germans remained in executive control, even if it was characterized by the polycratic infighting typical of the Third Reich. \n\nFrance was different. Under Petain, the French possessed a modicum of control both over the state and France's colonies. This relative independence was a byproduct of the confused German response to their total victory in 1940. In short, Germany suffered from a wealth of plans to deal with France in the aftermath of *Fall Gelb*. Some conceived of a fascist France aiding German hegemony, while still other Germans envisioned a partition of France into Aryan sub-states like a Norman state. Between these two poles was a more extemporizing consensus that sought to make occupation policy suit immediate needs off the war effort and German state policy. This middle position, which was far from coherent, meant that there needed to be some form of French executive. Additionally, the size of France and the limits of German manpower meant that there needed to be some native leadership to make the occupation run smoothly. \n\nWhat this meant for Vichy's Jewish policy was that the French was to an extent a master of its domain, even if the threat of German intervention hung like a cloud over Vichy policymaking. The results did not speak well for Vichy's moral standing. The motley of rightists in Vichy such as *Action Française* ideologues constructed a civic order that redrew French citizenship to include Jews and the overall tone of Vichy policies considered Jews to be a foreign body inside France. Foreign-born Jews like the novelist Irène Némirovsky were the early target of French ire as stateless Jews, and were over-represented among the 25% of Jews deported from France. This was of a piece with the Low Countries, which had a higher-concentration of non-indigenous Jews such as Anne Frank's family, who emigrated to the Netherlands in the mid-1930s. Yet French control over the Jewish citizenship meant there was an extra layer of bureaucracy for the Germans to contend with when they began in 1942. Other areas of occupied Europe presented less bureaucratic friction, so it was not surprising that the Germans tried there first before dipping into rendering France Jew-free. \n\nThe size of France also meant that it was much harder for both Vichy and the Germans to get a complete handle on the Jewish question in France. As seen in [this map](_URL_0_), the occupation was a mess of multiple zones adn restrictions ranging from the *Zone libre* of southern France, which was not under direct German occupation to Alsace-Lorraine, which were new *Reichsgaue*. This created different jurisdictions and accentuated the rivalries that were inherent to Nazi rule. The jurisdiction that was to be the savior for many Jews in France was not *Zone libre*, but rather the Italian occupation zone in Provence and Savoy. Although Vichy did much to restrict Jewish movement and resources, it was possible to move to a safer zone. Jews in smaller geographic entities like Belgium did not have this option. \n\nThe comparatively late timing of deportation, ca. 1942, also encouraged a number of Jews to flee to safer areas. Although actual knowledge of genocide was far from concrete, there was a genera sense that bad things were happening in the East and that it would be best for Jews to avoid this fate. The dissolution of the Italian zone after September 1943 removed the last real sanctuary for Jews in France, but it also gave them time to prepare either by going into hiding or forging papers. \n\nThe response of Vichy to Jews disappearing was far from sanguine. Vichy officialdom and various French institutions like the Catholic Church were either hostile or indifferent to the fate of the Jews, but the opening waves of deportations did arouse some resistance among gentile French. This was the excuse many Vichy officials gave to the Germans when deportations fell short. There was an element of truth to these explanations. Try as it might to turn back the clock to a pre-1789 conception of Frenchness, Vichy could not break the concepts of civil society that had characterized much of the Third Republic. French Jews were highly assimilated into French society and although antisemitism was quite strong in many French quarters, French Jews had social connections and capital which aided them in this period. Although French civil society was anemic and suffered from the twin burdens of Vichy and the material dearth of occupation, it still existed. Moreover, by mid-1942 and especially by 1943, there was one salient fact that many Europeans began to appreciate: Germany was going to lose the war. Around this period, for example, the Polish Home Army began issuing declarations that its was in Poles' interests as good Catholics to shelter Jews. This did not necessary mean that waning German fortunes stoked the embers of philosemitism; many Polish leaflets calling for sheltering the Jews also stressed they were a foreign entity that had exploited Poles in the past and would need to find a new home after the Germans had been thrown out. A good many Europeans recognized that saving someone from German aggression was an insurance policy for the postwar period when someone might go poking around in their more than questionable actions during the period of German hegemony. Such actions seldom translated into a mass numbers of Jews being saved from deportation, but rather loosened the net somewhat for the Vichy officials responsible for the *Aktion*s. \n\nIt also needs to be stressed that many Jews themselves took their survival into their own hands. The size and geographic variety of France, especially in the rugged south, lent itself well to disappearing. The relative lateness of the deportation also meant that many Jews found themselves into resistance bands. The French resistance, which had only really started to grow with Barbarossa when French Communists started fighting *en masse*, was accommodating to some Jews fleeing the deportations, especially the adolescents and other youth. Like other elements of the French polity, the resistance (which was also incredibly heterogeneous) was not philosemetic, but secular traditions in French civic society and the assimilation of French Jews meant that Jews were not an automatic other in resistance circles as they were in Eastern and Central Europe. The upsurge in resistance by 1942 thus dovetailed with the deportations. \n\nThis synergy and others like it helped many Jews within France to escape the Holocaust. But of this constellation of converging factors, the collaborationist government in Vichy did not play an active role in lowering the number of Jews murdered by the Third Reich. Vichy's actions made the plight of France's Jews much worse, whether by restricting their professional options or monetary resources and denying Jews the rights of French citizenship. The actions Frenchmen took to save Jews from murder often took place *in spite* of the government's actions, not because of them. The Vichy assault on the Third Republic's definition of citizenship and civil society and its uncoerced antisemitic legislation illustrate that many within the corridors of power in Vichy had a vision of a France that would not include Jews. At best, the Vichy government created a bureaucratic friction that made German deportations late and not as efficient as other zones where German control was more concrete. There were many direct factors that went into Jews' survival in France, collaboration was not one of them. \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Vichy_France_Map.jpg/800px-Vichy_France_Map.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d80f379" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Having the legislature appoint electors for the presidency was the done thing in South Carolina for every presidential election up through 1860. It used to be more common elsewhere, but the increasing acceptance of the white man's popular democracy as the nineteenth century went on made legislative appointments seem increasingly out of step with the times. In a way, that's what SC was going for. They held on to the elite-directed eighteenth century politics style really hard, trying to recapture their dream of the English country gentry (but with slaves) perfected a century later in the New World. I've read SC politicians saying they don't expect their voters to ever think much about politics, just which leading man of the community they preferred. The main exception is that they liberalized the franchise a bit early. \n\nCalhoun's the obvious go-to guy when talking about antebellum anti-majoritarianism, but it's worthwhile to keep in mind that in the SC context Calhoun is frequently a moderate and that the sole minority which concerns him (or really any of these guys) is white slaveholders. Where King Numbers doesn't seem so perilous to slavery, or might be useful in advancing the peculiar institution, principles frequently change. Nor does SC-style anti-majoritarianism often play well outside the state in the later antebellum. The dominant political style is usually Jacksonian herrenvolk (master race) democracy." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cheh2yc" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Since you're in the literary area, as something of an aside please allow me to recommend [Gary Paul Nabhan](_URL_0_)'s [\"Gathering The Desert.\"](_URL_1_) It's beautifully written and illustrated, and goes deeply into the lifeways of the Tohono O'odham people. If you haven't read it already I'm certain you'll find it enjoyable and informative." ] }

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[ [ "http://garynabhan.com/", "http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid327.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d9p5t6l" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "To come at this from a slightly different angle:\n\nDid the Civil War significantly drive westward migration after the war? I'm thinking freed slaves, Confederate veterans, or people who got uprooted by the fighting. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cx39fzn", "cx3zpwk" ], "score": [ 886, 58 ], "text": [ "While I can't answer that question from a historic point of view (which might get this answer deleted, I'm aware of that), I'd like to say a few things about the biochemical/neuroscientific basis of mint flavor.\n\n**TL;DR:** We are not \"conditioned\" to perceive mint flavor as fresh. The responsible molecules in mint actually do evoke a \"fresh\" sensation.\n\nYou see, usually \"flavor\" consists of two different neurochemical components. The first is the activation of taste receptors on your tongue - they are responsible for the five basic tastes: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory/meat-like). But if you ever had food when having a cold, you know that this isn't all. The more complex flavor patterns are the result of the activation of olfactory (smell) receptors in your nose.\n\nBut there's a third class of receptors, which actually aren't considered taste or olfactory receptors. These are called the [TRP channels](_URL_1_), they are a rather large protein family, and they have several functions in the body. Two of these channels are interesting when it comes to taste, and these two are temperature-sensing. \n\nThe first is called [TRPV1](_URL_2_), and one of its functions is to detect heat. When your food's too hot, they activate and tell you it's too hot (in terms of temperature) by sending a pain signal. But the protein does not only get activated by heat, but also by capsaicin, the active ingredient in ~~pepper,~~ chillis, and tear gas. That's why \"hot\" (in terms of taste) is exactly that - a \"hot\" (temperature) sensation (Edit: not in pepper, that's piperine, which also activates TRPV1. Thanks to /u/BloomsdayDevice).\n\nThe other one is called [TRPM8](_URL_0_), and it's the equivalent \"cold receptor\", reacting to low temperatures. Now guess what also activates this receptor? Menthol, the active ingredient in mint. So it's not that at some point a company decided \"let's make mint the \"fresh\" flavor\", and everybody just went with it, but rather that there weren't really common alternatives to mint that activated the (at that point unknown) ~~TRPV8~~ TRPM8 ion channel.\n\nEdit: Spelling.\n\nEdit 2: Mixed up TRPV and TRPM in the last paragraph. Also, is thanking for gold encouraged or discouraged here? Anyway, thanks ;)\n\nEdit 3: Was wrong with pepper.", "Hello everyone, \n\nUnfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compound the issue. In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_0_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. Finally, the only answer that was in any depth did mention the science behind mint, but did not address the historical question OP was asking.\n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_1_), or a [META thread](_URL_2_[META]). Thank you!" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRPM8", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_receptor_potential_channel", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRPV1" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules", "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&title=" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d7021kf" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I want to note from the outset that my answer, due to gaps in my own knowledge as well as a general tendency in the scholarship, is pretty focused on the Northeast, and is entirely focused on the White working class. There are important parts of this story that are about Southern Whites as well as Blacks, both before and after the Civil War. I hope someone can fill in that story.\n\nThe nineteenth century saw the transformation of the American economy from, as you are aware, a largely agricultural focus to a largely industrial one. For a native-born White man at the dawn of industrialization (the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century), the most likely occupation was farm labor, usually on a family-owned farm in the Northeast, Old Northwest, or the South (particularly the Upper South). Gradually, these lands became less viable, due to soil exhaustion and partition of family farms into smaller and smaller chunks as a result of generations of inheritance. For the young men growing up on these farms, there were a couple main options: One was emigration, going either alone or with a young family to the newly-acquired territory in the West (this includes the Louisiana Purchase and all the land acquired from Mexico, plus the sections of the Oregon territory that ended up in the U.S. after the treaty with Britain). The other was to move to the city and join attempt to join the burgeoning middle class by acquiring work as a clerk in a mercantile house, eventually amassing enough money to start one's own business or otherwise join the ranks of the professionals (studying the law and, later in the century, medicine were also options for this route). However, this isn't really the \"working class\" in the industrial sense. \n\nThe working class is a creation of industrial capitalism. Before the widespread introduction of that mode of social organization and production, the urban producing classes were artisans. Organized in a manner very similar to the earliest medieval guilds, each trade would have had its own organization of master craftsmen, journeymen, and apprenticeship, and would have governed its own norms. This includes things like shoemakers, coopers, tailors, etc. Traditional norms would have governed their working lives, including a principal of independence for both shop owners and employees. Importantly, the \"management\" (ie the master artisans) would have closely identified with the workers. In other words, hierarchies were relatively flat, and there was a strong sense of a group of brother tradesmen working together. This included the right to stop working when one felt like it, to drink on the job, and to otherwise organize the day how one saw fit. What happened to this way of life? Industrial capitalism. As machinery increased the efficiency of production of basic goods like shoes, clothes, barrels, etc., it also decreased the skill required to produce them. This proved disastrous to the working class, who found themselves suddenly faced with an influx of immigrants willing to work for much lower wages operating the new machinery, causing severe downward wage pressure. Additionally, the capitalists took this opportunity to begin to assert greater control over the mode of work, requiring longer working hours with less freedom (including the banning of drinking on the job, or of the practice of knocking off for an impromptu holiday). The trade guilds fought back as best they could, forming the kernel of the American labor union movement. \n\nAs for what jobs they did, perhaps an economic historian will have actual numbers, but throughout the nineteenth century most jobs would still have been in farming. Resource extraction (mining, fishing, oil, etc) would have been big ones, as would manufacturing. You also have various labor jobs, like teamsters and longshoremen, supporting the import and export of all this raw material and finished goods. As I mentioned, for the emergent middle class you would have had the professions, like law, as well as accounting and the aspiration to ownership and upward mobility. Finally, there were a class of very low-paying, undesirable jobs like rag- and bone-picker, men who would walk the streets going through rubbish looking for rags (for papermakers) and bones (for soap-making as well as knife handles and the like). These were a group of true underclass, living in absolute penury and making the barest of livings.\n\nI hope this brings some clarity. Immigration levels were very high, and for the men who did not make it to the farms of the Midwest or into the middle and managerial classes, they would have been caught up in the same forces of industrial capitalism that swallowed up all the immigrants, though their relatively higher levels of social and actual capital would have actually helped. But do keep in mind that most labor was still agricultural throughout the nineteenth century. It was a process of urbanization and industrialization, rather than all-at-once.\n\nSources:\n\nWilentz, *Chants Democratic*\n\nBlight, *The Moneyed Metropolis*\n\nTrachtenberg, *The Incorporation of America*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cypv6ap" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "People are going to mention Joseon Korea and Tokugawa Japan. In fact, two people (/u/Shawn_Spenstar and /u/Das_Orakel_vom_Berge) have already:\n\n > This isnt my subject of expertise but it seems like Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate would have been pretty close to what you referring to. Their foreign policy of the time was one in which no foreigner could enter the country and no citizen could leave the country under penalty of death. However they did still trade with foreigners like the Dutch East India Company so it definitely not a perfect parallel.\n\nNow I am no expert on Tokugawa Japan, or any sort of Japan, either, but I do know Tokugawa Japan had extensive contacts with its various neighbors (besides the Dutch). \n\nIn Korea there was the Dongnae Japan House, a Japanese-inhabited outpost that was a locus of trade and interaction between the two countries. As a generalization, before the mid-18th century Korea sold ginseng and Chinese textiles and Japan sold silver, and after the mid-18th century Korea sold things like cow hide (as well as ginseng) and Japan began to sell copper a lot more. Things like samurai swords and Japanese maki spread among Koreans in the environs of the Japan House, and of course the Japanese islands of Tsushima, approximately between mainland Korea and the main islands of Japan, have many Korean cultural elements to this day. \n\nThe people of the tiny Kingdom of Ryukyu were thoroughly under the thumb of the Japanese, and of course there was trade between the Japanese and these southwestern cousins. The Ainu of the north were also increasingly falling under Japanese hegemony and rule, consequently with dramatic events such as Shakushain's War in the late 17th century.\n\nChina. Despite the idea that China and Japan were both secluded from the outside world, Qing China and Tokugawa Japan also had much trade going on between each other. I know really little about this trade (besides how it affected the Japan-Korea trade especially Korea's former position as middleman) but apparently a 1753 Chinese ship headed for Japan carried more than 12,000 books. So yeah, the trade wasn't tiny.\n\n > Korea was known as the Hermit Kingdom for a reason as well. North Korea currently conducts trade with several nations with its citizens themselves having little to no outside interaction, so Tokugawa Japan and Joeseon Korea are actually both very good parallels for what the question asks.\n\nThe Joseon government never in fact viewed itself as the head of an isolated state, so I always have the feeling that it's somewhat biased to call it a Hermit Kingdom and whatnot. Besides it's not necessarily true that the Joseon people had little to no outside interaction relative to other pre-modern, agricultural societies. From an elite perspective it's obviously not true, since there were annual missions to Beijing - more frequent missions than any other country was allowed. On a more private and mercantile level there was a lot of trade with China and rather less (but still more than a little) trade with Japan. Uiju, a fairly large town, appears to have depended almost entirely on the trade with China. The Japan House was probably a big part of the success of Dongnae. Sometimes Koreans were even allowed by Beijing to buy grain in the Jiangnan (the richest part of China).\n\n*The Northern Region of Korea: History, Identity, and Culture* has a chapter on how northern Korea was affected by the trade with China, and there's Schottenhaumer et al's *Trading Networks in Early Modern East Asia*. For Japan/Korea *Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan* is a case study of the Japan House and a good book, for the Ainu see *The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800*, for the Ryukyus I found *Okinawa: The History of an Island People* pretty good. For the Sino-Japanese trade, sorry, I have nothing besides some information that accompanies the Japan-Korea trade. Also *To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions* might be helpful, but I have just read reviews of that one.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "evctluy", "evcy2p0" ], "score": [ 12, 5 ], "text": [ "Follow up question: William the conqueror quickly distributed fiefs and lands to the Norman noblemen who followed him to England. For how long were these new landowners seen as intruding foreigners until they were accepted?", "A previous thread had an answer that essentially said that there was no such thing as the Anglo-Saxon nobility within a relatively short timespan from 1066.\n\nThe response from /u/Vylander can be [found here](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5a59c0/what_happened_to_the_preexisting_anglosaxon/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e1c2swo" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hey!\n\nUnfortunately, we've had to remove your question--\"how realistic would it have been\" demands a speculative answer, which doesn't work. **However**, you have a real question here! Could you please resubmit it as \"How many native French people were in French Algeria? If it was so integrated into France, why did Algeria seek independence?\" or something else concrete along those lines. (That is, ask \"why did\" instead of \"how could it have been different.\"\n\nThanks!" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cikb3z6", "cikfj8x" ], "score": [ 26, 2 ], "text": [ "It should be pointed out that this is a unilateral declaration by a group seeking greater cachet among fervent [Sunni] believers, not a declaration by \"the Muslim world\" as a whole. If you do not control the Holy Places, you can't make much of a claim to Caliphate in the broadest sense; if you are a tiny fraction of the world's Muslims, even less so. There was not, and is not, a single predominant Islamic power that could reliably make the claim to true succession from the Prophet and have it taken seriously. The Ottomans, on the other hand, controlled an enormous percentage of the Islamic world in the 16th and 17th centuries, which is why they could take it on--but whether the Ottoman claim ever carried the weight it had for earlier Caliphates is doubtful.\n\n[edit: As a follow-on question for the Islamic 20th-C. specialists, is this the first time a group or entity has sought to proclaim that connection? I'm not aware of the Saudis ever trying, and I can't imagine they would be happy about anyone else doing it either.]", "Additional question: has anybody ever seriously floated the idea of having a caliph, but having him be more like the equivalent of a pope, with no real power, but acting as a spiritual leader?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dgpsphp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hi, hopefully you'll get some help here, but do also consider x-posting to /r/AcademicBiblical for their input." ] }

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[ "https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ejvk222f6460wt/Translation%20Timeline.png?dl=0" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "c64ysy1", "c64zfzw", "c6500tk", "c651tv1" ], "score": [ 3, 8, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "I believe it was the introduction of aircraft and tanks...", "Mobile warfare of WW2 was inevitable. Multiple factors contributed to this. To name some:\n\n- Military thought has matured enough to utilize the technological advances needed to implement [Blitzkrieg style warfare](_URL_0_)\n- Improved communication and organization afforded to concentrate, coordinate and operate large mechanized groups with relatively low level of battlefield chaos.\n- Maturity of tank and aviation technology vastly improved usefulness of combined arms approach.", "Just to nitpick a little, WWI wasn't entirely about trench warfare. The Eastern Front, for example, didn't really degenerate into trench warfare to the same extent because of its sheer size. Also you could say that by 1918 even the Western Front became mobile again. To a large extent it has to do with innovative tactics used by the Germans. More info here: _URL_0_", "Nobody wanted a repeat of WWI. Everyone tried to make sure such a stalemate did not happen.\n\nThe Germans developed the \"Blitzkrieg\", everyone else used a variation.\n\nArmor and airpower served to make things more fluid than WWI." ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "d3ibpi4" ], "score": [ 116 ], "text": [ "This answer applies to America only, because I am An American Librarian (™) and I only know the historical, professional, and legal situation for libraries here. The answer is kinda yes: publishers routinely oppose some of the work of librarians, [and others](_URL_4_), in this day and age. The modern [problems and restrictions placed on libraries with ebooks](_URL_1_) can be in some ways seen as adversarial, since they for a time believed ebook circulation would reduce sales of ebooks, they have since changed their tune a bit since 2013. [Librarians maybe are even adversarial to publishers... ](_URL_2_) But mostly no, publishers have not been substantially against libraries in any of their historic forms as buildings where people can obtain physical media objects they do not own, either for free through charity, for “free” through public taxation, or through private fee subscriptions. It’s simply not in their best interests - libraries are the single largest purchaser of their products. They sell directly to us and they give us swag at conferences to Facilitate Relationships. [And studies show library use correlates with individual book purchases,](_URL_5_) meaning library users buy more books than non-library users. People who read a lot use the library and people who do not read a lot do not, the public library has a finite budget that cannot meet the exact desires of everyone in town (or have enough copies of Hot New Book for everyone), so really it’s not rocket science that it correlates. Publishers know this. Most books people check out from the library they would have not otherwise purchased. \n\nThey also couldn’t do a darn tooting thing about public libraries (or Blockbuster) in the glorious days between 1908 and digital publishing, because of something called First Sale Doctrine. First Sale Doctrine separates the physical object from copyright basically, and means when you have a copy of an intellectual work, you can do whatever you want with its physical carrier without infringing on the author’s copyright or moral rights. I can rip out pages and literally wipe my butt with your Hot New Bestseller and call it an art project if I want, I can pull out all the tape out of a VHS and pretend it’s spaghetti as my second art project, or I can rent random people either of those objects for $5/week, and you can’t do anything about it. I can’t photocopy it, keep my copy, and give someone else the photocopy though, that’s illegal. But First Sale Doctrine is the backbone of (physical) public libraries in America. (Other countries have different legal understandings for author/publisher rights and libraries.) First Sale was, however, not established for libraries, but actually for booksellers! In the words of Joe Fox in *You’ve Got Mail,* “I sell cheap books, so sue me.” A publisher tried to set a price floor on a book of One Whole Dollar by claiming selling a book for less than they liked violated their copyright, a bookseller undercut at 89 cents, and the publisher [was then righteously smacked down for interfering with the glorious free market system.](_URL_3_) Libraries rode along on this. \n\nNow, of course, libraries existed before 1908, what then? We must look deeper into library history. \n\nThe subscription circulating library is the oldest form of populist circulating library, dating from the 18th century. It’s basically Netflix, back in the old days when Netflix was a DVD mailer primarily. They were popular with upper class women, and stocked a lot of popular fiction. These were put out of business by public libraries, over time. (Though they saw a resurgence in the era of physical A/V rentals, Blockbuster, Netflix, Family Video, all those businesses are just fee libraries.) At the birth of the public libraries movement in America, however, we’re deep in the Progressive Era, and free public libraries are for the Public Good, and the [Slovenly Masses should Bootstrap Themselves Up through Hard Work and Education](_URL_0_) etc. etc. Library collections reflected this, and were not stocking popular fiction. Library trustees were hostile to fiction in general, as it didn’t reflect Progressive values, and it’s hard to justify spending taxpayer money on a new socialist enterprise when you’re buying pulp fiction. So what are these new public libraries buying? Shakespeare, history, engineering manuals, crap like that. They were not meeting the pleasure reader, and had no interest in doing so. So you’ve got a bunch of do-gooders buying up your most expensive and harder to sell books, while totally ignoring the cheap and cheerful things you can sell easily? Why fight that, it’s gravy! The public circulating libraries’ threat to the disposable-reading publishing industry was nonexistent, and by the time libraries got into that game (and later into movies, music, and other fun non-book things), we were well post First Sale Doctrine, and they could do darn tooting about the library cutting into their theoretical *Harry Potter* sales. Not that they’d want to, public libraries are almost universally beloved by Americans, and picking on them is a bad look. \n\nSo teal deer is: no, until it became a bit of a yes when they got to neatly escape that annoying First Sale Doctrine by not having a physical carrier, but now it’s going back to “no” again as they’ve realized that ebooks are just like real books, in that the library is the biggest consumer. \n\nEdit: I am feeling guilty for stomping on the 20 year rule with ebook problems, but then I remembered the first ebook was made in 1971, and it's just the publishing industry's interest in them that's modern. But if you want to talk more about the challenges libraries are facing with ebooks I'd recommend you cross post to /r/Libraries - it's an active community and you can meet some librarians at the water cooler for some real library politics gossip. " ] }

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[ [ "http://imagesearchnew.library.illinois.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/alaposters/id/34/rec/3", "http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/frequently-asked-questions-e-books-us-libraries", "http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/booksanddigitalresources/digital/9780838986981_getting_OA.pdf", "https://writerinlaw.com/2013/07/14/the-first-sale-doctrine-history-through-today/", "http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.002/--google-library-project-both-sides-of-the-story?rgn=main;view=fulltext", "http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publishing-and-marketing/article/49316-survey-says-library-users-are-your-best-customers.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ccf0fv0" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "While the British Empire had it's rivals, it was by far the single global power in the latter half of the 19th century. When the term \"superpower\" was first described, it was used to describe not only the United States and USSR, but also the British Empire, though due to strains of WWII, and anti-colonial uprisings in the following decades, the empire lost this title within a few years of it being defined.\n\nBefore the rise of the industrial Brisitish Empire there was no real global power. What makes a power a superpower is the ability to respond to events around the world and to influence those events to favor the home state.\n\nBefore long range communication, faster transport, and industrial capacity to feed and fuel campaigns, this just wasn't possible. One could argue this predated the full onset of the Industrial Revolution, as the Royal Navy was so well prepared, and the sea lanes were so well known to the British that communication could occur more quickly, but before the rise of the British Empire, there was just no real way or need for a state entity to project its power globally.\n\nThere were \"great powers\" that expressed regional hegemony. You can read more about the concept here: _URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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

{ "a_id": [ "ec0u27x" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "We have removed this question because it is an open-ended question that isn't suited to our normal q-and-a format and rules. But we encourage you to post your question again in our Free-Form Friday thread." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e93rhnw", "e940ohy", "e941vyn", "e9466rr", "e9498br" ], "score": [ 557, 1414, 287, 124, 38 ], "text": [ "Follow-up question: at the time of the American Revolution, was there a social distinction between *recent* immigrants to the colonies compared to those having been there much longer (say, descendants of early Virginia Company or Plymouth/Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers)? In other words, was there a distinction between \"locals\" and \"the British\"?", "I cannot answer your first question, but I can provide insights on the second.\n\nThe idea that America was built on multiculturalism appeared very early. By the 1780s, the term \"melting together\" was a widespread metaphor in use that was meant to positively portray incoming immigrants. Of course, America had just ousted a foreign power from their backs, so nationalism was running high. Hamilton, an immigrant from Nevis, argued vehemently against immigration, arguing that immigrants brought pro-monarchy and ethnic views that would undermine their new, fragile country. He also argued that America's bountiful resources and exploding population meant that America didn't need to rely on newcomers. From the Hamilton Papers, Examination Number VIII, Jan 12th, 1802:\n\n*In the infancy of the country, with a boundless waste to people, it was politic to give a facility to naturalization; but our situation is now changed. It appears from the last census, that we have increased about one third in ten years; after allowing for what we have gained from abroad, it will be quite apparent that the natural progress of our own population is sufficiently rapid for strength, security and settlement.*\n\nAt first, the two dominant parties of the time (Federalists and Democratic-Republicans) mostly agreed on keeping out immigrants. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his *Notes on the State of Virginia* in 1781 that foreigners would be anti-Democracy. However, by the turn of the 19th century, the Democratic-Republicans viewed pro-immigration policies as a great way to undermine the Federalists.\n\nSee, Hamilton and the Federalists were afraid of the French, who were at the time being led by Napoleon after the bloody French Revolution. Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans pursued pro-French policy—and more proactive foreign relations with other countries—which included immigration. Jefferson saw immigrants as future voters for the Democratic-Republican party. As with many of these social issues, divisions in public opinion came from the very top, so voters tended to side with their party's views. So pro-immigration stances tended to saturate more educated Democratic-Republicans. The election of 1800 was a particularly nasty affair, as the battle lines between both sides slung serious vitriol to get their candidates elected. John Adams, the Federalist incumbent, faced off a challenge against Jefferson. Adams was pro-class and cultural hierarchy, while Jefferson wanted to model the country's Democracy on the new post-revolution French model.\n\nIt should be pointed out that both Adams and Jefferson saw the 1800 election as a fight over America's soul—that the election would set in stone the standards for how America would treat the subject of immigration for the rest of time. Jefferson would later write: *The revolution of 1800... was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of '76 was in its form.*\n\nJefferson and his Democratic-Republican allies would use the melting together metaphor extensively in their campaigning, making 1800 probably the biggest pivot on pro-immigrant sentiment for the general public as self-identified D-R party members adopted Jefferson's messages.\n\nFinally, the D-R party wasn't free from bias, and fought internally (and extensively) over what type of immigration was considered acceptable by them:\n\n*The meaning of the recently popularized concept of the melting pot was subject to ongoing debate which centered on the issue of immigration. The debate surrounding the concept of the melting pot centered on how immigration impacted American society and on how immigrants should be approached. The melting pot was equated with either the acculturation of the total assimilation of European immigrants, and the debate centered on the differences between these two ways of approaching immigration: 'Was the idea to melt down the immigrants and then pour the resulting, formless liquid into the preexisting cultural and social molds modeled on Anglo-Protestants like Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson, or was the idea instead that everyone, Mayflower descendants and Sicilians, Ashkenazi and Slovaks, would act chemically upon each other so that all would be changed, and a new compound would emerge?* (Baofu, 21-22)\n\nThe term \"melting together,\" and other various close iterations of the same idea, was solidified in the public's vernacular as \"melting pot\" in 1908, when the play *The Melting Pot* by Israel Zangwill was released and became popular.\n\nEdit: Thank you for correctly pointing out that Hamilton was from Nevis, not Puerto Rico.\n\nSources:\n\n[_URL_3_](_URL_3_)\n\nAlexander Hamilton (Lucius Crassus), *Examination of Jefferson’s Message to Congress of December 7, 1801*, viii, January 7, 1802, in Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Vol. 8 (New York: Putnam’s, 1904)\n\n“Alexander Hamilton on the Naturalization of Foreigners.” *Population and Development Review*, vol. 36, no. 1, 2010, pp. 177–182. *JSTOR*, JSTOR, [_URL_2_](_URL_1_).\n\nBlumenthal, Sidney. \"How the Heated, Divisive Election of 1800 Was the First Real Test of American Democracy.\" *_URL_4_*. Oct 2016. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nBaofu, Peter. *The Future of Post-Human Migration: A Preface to a New Theory of Sameness, Otherness, and Identity.* Aug 2012. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.", "The answer to the question is very related to the follow up question from u/JustZisGuy. No, not all immigrants were the same, and there were lots of tension between immigrants from different countries, different times, different classes, and different religions.\n\n\nAmerica didn’t really start off as an Immigrant country. The first colonies that were formed at Virginia and Massachusetts were formed in 1607 and 1620 respectively. Given that the modern-day USA was born in 1776, that’s 156 years of life in the continent, and enough for your grandchildren to naturalize in any country by today’s standards. Even by 1770 when Massachusetts was declared under martial law instead of more lenient taxing, most of the colonial leaders hoped to “reconcile with the British Government” rather than declare independence. By this time, the colonists weren’t colonists or immigrants anymore, but the people who were born on the east coast who built this country from almost scratch, including all the good and bad things that has happened.\n\n\nThese original colonists didn’t come here for no reason at all though. Catholicism was restricting freedoms throughout Europe and some immigrants came to escape this religious persecution to practice Puritanism (This is a completely different subject that requires a different research). Most of them came as indentured servants, slaves for pay for a predetermined amount of time, because the price to sail was too steep. These servants ranged from white Europeans to black West Africans. By the time of the Civil War, there were a continuous influx of people from across the Atlantic to the states, which all came either as slaves or indentured servants from all walks of life. \n\n\nAll the way until the declaration of independence and the civil war, the US was known in the world as a place with “class mobility”, where you can work your way into the upper class and become rich and elite. The US promised freedom to practice your own religion, your own language. The colonial Pennsylvania is a good example of how it’s founder, William Penn envisioned a utopian society where diversity would beget tolerance. \n\n\nMigration was a part of the colonial American life. Americans themselves migrated every 10 years to different colonies, including people like Bejamin Franklin, so up until the beginning of the 18th century, immigration was considered a part of American life, and even the naturalized born and raised Americans were migrating. As the number of people who came to America on their own slowly diminished, and the slaves and indentured workers were transported accordingly, the states delved into more important matters, like declaring independence and fighting for it, and the age of colonialism in North America came to an end as a baby nation with all the turmoils of making one arose in its stead, full of Protestant and Puritans who were promised liberty and riches, but received varying levels of these promises. These people were in a time where immigration didn’t have the connotations it had today. An immigrant was a self-made man who fought for what he wanted and didn’t take no for an answer. An immigrant was an opportunist, a hard worker, a strongman who took care of his family in the most ideal fashion. \n\n\nYears of life in the states slowly eroded this image of the immigrant as the settlers settled, cities grew and the economy and jobs expanded. With the constitution came law, but not yet order. Americans owned and ran American properties, and new slaves and workers shipped across the Atlantic did the blue collar work. \n\n\nThis was the type of country the US was when the conditions across Europe worsened as the US’s economy grew. Shipment of people to the states were around 60000 for more than 50 years until the famine in Ireland and political turmoil in Germany, which boosted these numbers dramatically. In 1851, there were 380000 people in the US ports of entry, a very dramatic increase in the consistent influx of humans. 2.7 million new prospective citizens entered the country in the next 7 years, and most of these people were Catholic in a time where Catholicism was hated in the US. There were stark opposition to Catholic churches and schools, but these immigrants had bigger problems. They drew hostility because of the diseases they brought with them from the old world. They were poor, just like the original immigrants but instead of improving the forests of Massachusetts into a sprawling city, they diminished its features with the slum housing they stayed in, the increase in crime rates, alcoholism and other misdemeanors. The American-Born protestants thought their English heritage was true Americanism and despised the Irish and the German. These people were called “nativists”, who believed opposition to the Catholics was necessary to protect America. The Know-Nothings, a political organization that was created by these nativists managed to become the second most powerful political organization in the nation, electing 5 senators and 43 representatives. After the civil war, nativist activity declined dramatically.\n\n\nSo to finally answer your question, anti-immigration sentiment arose from immigrants themselves because they viewed new immigrants as fundamentally different from themselves or their families. America undoubtedly was a melting pot, but this did not exclude people from making the distinction between cultures. Blacks were slaves, Irish were poor, Brits were true Americans etc. and anti-immigration is a very broad term for everyone who came to the US. Immigrants were slaves, immigrants were cheap labor, immigrants were Catholics, Immigrants were nation builders, and different groups had different expectations from these immigrants. Given all of these distinctions, it isn’t inherently illogical to say that immigrants are anti-immigration without including themselves. It is important to realize that actions have different consequences in different contexts, and some immigration is inherently more useful than others.\n\n\nAmerica, for most people, is the melting pot of the “correct” cultures. \n_________________________________________________________________________________________________________\n\n\n\nJust as an extra, here are some examples of anti-immigration that happened in the US throughout its history:\n\n\n“Yet as industrial revolution transformed the United States in the postwar years and attracted a vast new influx of immigrants, the antialien animus rose again. In the 1870s more than 2.7 million newcomers arrived at U.S. ports.”\n\n\n“more than eighty thousand immigrants from China arrived between 1870 and 1875, brought to America by companies that had contracted to supply cheap labor to mines, railways, and other enterprises needing unskilled labor. With 30 percent of California’s workforce unemployed following the panic of 1873, many workers attacked these newcomers as “coolies” willing to work for slave wages. Outbreaks of violence against the Chinese spread throughout the West, from Los Angeles to Seattle to Denver. In 1882, Congress responded to anti-Asian nativism with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended immigration from China for ten years.”\n\n\n“A striking number of new nativist fraternal groups were formed, the most important being the American Protective Association (APA). Founded in Iowa in 1887, the APA had attracted a membership of 500,000 by 1895.”\n\n\n“By the end of the nineteenth century, the APA had disappeared. Nativist activism did not flourish in the first decades of the twentieth century, the years of the Progressive Era. It rose again in the form of the post-World War I Red Scare in 1919, and in the powerful but short-lived Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. It was in the nineteenth century that antialien movements had their greatest impact in American history.”\n\n\nSources:\n\n\n_URL_5_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_2_\n_URL_4_\n_URL_3_\n_URL_0_\n\nKettner, James H. The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870. Williamsburg: Omohundro, 1978. Document.\n\n\n", "The earliest exclusion and laws that occurred were focused mainly on the Chinese in the form of the Foreign Miners' Tax Act of 1850. The rise of this was due to the post gold rush economy. \n\nMany of California's new gold rush prospectors arrived to find out there wasn't much in the way left for them to make their fortunes. So while the first arrivals didn't mind the Chinese when there was enough gold to go around for everyone--when it started to run dry, the resentment began to build. The Miners Tax ended up failing and led to the dying of Chinese gold camps which led to an influx of low cost Chinese laborers in cities. \n\nCalifornia Governor John Bigler saw political value in attacking the “coolie” laborers and reinstated the failed tax. The term \"coolie\" was supposed to imply these were low skilled and low wage slave laborers who are taking American jobs for their \"master\" back in China but these people were actually free. The word itself comes from two Chinese words, “koo” meaning to rent, and “lee” meaning muscle.\n\nThis was a tough economic period in part due to the discovery of Australian gold. In 1854 the California Supreme Court declared that the 1850 statute prohibiting Negroes and Indians from testifying for or against a White person applied also to Chinese for the reason that in the days of Columbus all of the countries washed by Chinese waters had been called “Indian.”\n\nMost of the Chinese came on an arrangement similar to some of the first settlers where they pay back the trip fees plus interest with the wages from their first job. Unfortunately, this led to many of them not being able to afford to bring their wives and created an enormous prostitution industry for Asian women and comments by Americans heroes like this. \n\n > While this is being done I invite the attention of Congress to another, though perhaps no less an evil--the importation of Chinese women, but few of whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations.\n\nUlysses S. Grant \n\nThe Page Act of 1875 was the first federal anti immigration law that intended to ban all \"Coolie labor\". Only the restrictions on female Asians were heavily enforced. \n\nThings got economically bad after 1877 and led to Chinese establishments being sacked and burned and Chinese being shot and hung. They saw that the Chinese had monopolized multiple manual labor industries like laundry, construction and landscaping for wages they couldn't beat and reacted poorly. \n\nIn 1882 the government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that banned all Chinese immigration for ten years. \n\nOne of the common themes of these acts and laws that were passed is economic climate. In harsher times people seemed far more likely to lash out at those deemed different enough.\n\nIn the next two decades and in the early 1900's we started to see more of a rise of anti immigration sentiment towards southern and eastern European groups like the Catholics (Irish, Polish, Italians) as well as Jewish people though it would continue to increase after the great depression and around WW2. \n\n[Here's a random story](_URL_1_) about some Irish Orphans who weren't considered the right kind of white until they traveled across the country from NY to AZ to be adopted by Mexican-American families. That's when the fun happened and their white neighbors lost their minds at the sight of white babies adopted by Mexican-Americans.\n\n[Foreign Miners Tax documents, 1850-1867](_URL_2_)\n\n [China's menace to the world : from the forum to the public.](_URL_0_)", "I am on break so I will give an answer quickly and will have to generalize a bit but I will leave a couple sources for further reading that I feel do this question justice.\n\n > How did anti-immigration sentiment arise from a literal nation of immigrants?\n\nBy the 20th century, the United States was culturally monopolized by the descendants of the Anglo-Saxon, Western European \"Old Stock\" originators and immigrants alike. The idea of the \"Melting Pot\" was created as a a way to promote their version of \"American\" culture. They viewed themselves as the progenitors of \"being American\" so all who came after should conform to their form of \"American\" and basically give up the ethnic culture from where they came from. The anti-immigrant sentiment wasn't so much anti *immigrant* so much as it was fear of others who are different. The Melting Pot meant that this diversity would accumulate into one distinct culture, which according to people like Horace Kallen and Randolph Bourne, is just a ridiculous idea. America to them should be a dynamic place that used its diversity (in the rise of a growing nationalism in Europe at the time) as a strength, placing American values above any one culture or ethnicity.\n\nHorace Kallen in his work *Democracy Versus the Melting Pot (1915)* describes the ethnic makeup and its evolution *at length* and does not shy away from calling this \"Old Stock\" group out for its hypocrisy. Combined with Randolph Bourne's *Trans-Nationalism*, both are great reads, delving into the idea of \"American,\" not as an ethnicity, but as a way of being. That being 'American\" was to follow a set of ideals and that retaining ones own culture (cultural pluralism) was not at odds with this. This was directly countering the idea that being \"American\" should be homogeneous culturally. \n\n > How did the idea of America as a melting pot of different cultures develop in spite anti-immigrant sentiment?\n\nPeople tend to live near like groups. As more and more immigrants came to the United States, large communities formed. In Kallen's *Democracy Versus the Melting Pot*, he explains that immigrants ultimately had to conform out of economic necessity (learning English, etc) so of course a base American culture was adhered to, but in the end, it actually allowed for cultural diversity to flourish as all of these new groups interacted and brought their norms to the US and their children and grandchildren became more culturally homogenous.\n\nAn example of this Anglo-Saxon stock forced Melting Pot was Henry Ford. [I'll just leave this here.](_URL_0_)\n\nOverall, the answer to your question is that there was a general disdain of other cultures as inferior or foreign to a large group of people who had been relatively culturally homogeneous with themselves and with western Europe until about the 1880s when America began to industrialize in earnest attracting the masses.\n\n**Sources:** \n\nRandolph Bourne. “Trans-National America (1916),” in The American Intellectual Tradition, Volume II, 7th Ed. David A. Hollinger. NY, Oxford, 2017. \n\n Horace Kallen. “Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot: A Study of American Nationality,” from *The Nation* (February 25, 1915) \n\n & #x200B;" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/election-1800-first-real-test-american-democracy-180960457/", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25699042", "www.jstor.org/stable/25699042", "https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-25-02-0282", "Smithsonian.com" ], [ "http://immigrationtounitedstates.org/548-history-of-immigration-1620-1783.html", "https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/u-s-immigration-before-1965", "https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/declaration", "https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/brief-overview-american-civil-war", "https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/immigration-and-migration-colonial-era/", "https://www.gale.com/binaries/content/assets/gale-us-en/primary-sources/newsvault/gps_newsvault_19thcentury_usnewspapers_immigration_essay.pdf" ], [ "https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t2412/?sp=1&r=-0.842,-0.018,2.685,1.652,0", "https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-irish-orphan-abduction/Content?oid=1087070", "http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;titlesAZ=f;idT=001482545" ], [ "http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Labor/L_Overview/FordEnglishSchool.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyaz5bg", "cyazfc4" ], "score": [ 276, 568 ], "text": [ "Today's Cossacks are descended from bands of escaped and freed serfs from across Russia. They generally existed near the borders of the Russian Empire, such as in Ukraine. They were afforded special privileges by the Russian Imperial government in exchange for military service and guarding the border of the Empire. Generally, an escaped serf was not allowed to be returned to his master if he managed to join a Cossack host. Cossacks are not so much a distinct ethnic group but do have a distinct culture and history. \n\nKazakhs are an ethnic group, and unless a Kazakh joined a Cossack host, the two are pretty much separate despite both existing in the Russian Empire. \n", "Adding to /u/snakeskinjim's brief and clear post, here's the etymology of Cossack:\n\nCossack (n.) 1590s, from Russian kozak, from Turkish kazak \"adventurer, guerilla, nomad,\" from qaz \"to wander.\" The same Turkic root is the source of the people-name Kazakh and the nation of Kazakhstan. \n\nSo they share the same root word but they refer to completely different groups. Kazakh came to denote the warlike nomadic Kazakh people and Cossack became used for rebels in Russia much later on in history." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e64xcic" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "I'll sketch the history of Liberia to 1860 out; the idea of resettling freed American slaves in Africa had its seed in the 1787 establishment of the British colony at Freetown, in what is now Sierra Leone. In 1817, the American Colonization Society was founded; this group was an alliance of free blacks and whites that supported colonization. Some white supporters genuinely wanted black people to have full freedom and equality; others wanted black people to be removed from America entirely, or at least free black people. \n\nThe first 88 emigrants arrived in West Africa in 1820, looking for land to settle on. They got little help from British authorities and open hostility from local tribes. The next year, the emigrants sailed south to meet with representatives of tribes living near what is now Monrovia. The local tribes were hostile to new settlers, especially those that threatened their lucrative part in the slave trade, and the deal they signed to grant the settlers a strip of coastal territory (about 100 square miles for $300 in trade goods) was literally signed at gunpoint. \n\nThe ACS colony was governed from the small town of Christopolis by the white missionary Jehudi Ashmun, and many settlers chafed under his rule, which was sometimes arbitrary and always harshly authoritarian. Several of the black settlers forced him to leave the colony. The ACS sent a representative to negotiate a settlement; Ashmun returned, bound by a constitution and a code of laws, and the black settlers accepted his authority - out of necessity, as they were absolutely dependent on the ACS for trade goods and a flow of new settlers. \n\nOf the 4,600 settlers who landed at Christopolis (now renamed Monrovia) over the next 20 years, fewer than half survived. Disease was rampant, and the six American colonies in the region faced constant conflict with the indigenous nations. Many of the tribes in the area were relatively recent arrivals, and Liberia was contested between them; it was only the diplomatic intervention of other regional powers, and the British at Sierra Leone, that preserved the fragile settlements. The nearby presence of the U.S. Navy's small Africa Squadron prevented the Liberians from losing their control of the coast, and control over the coastal trade was a vital advantage. \n\nEven with this support, the \"black white men\" fought several wars before four of the six colonies coalesced into Liberia in 1841; one was destroyed, and the sixth colony remained under the direct control of the Maryland Colonization Society. Liberia, now under the governance of the black Governor Joseph Jenkins Roberts, declared its independence in 1847 after British traders refused to pay tariffs to the ACS, a private organization. Maryland's colony declared its independence in 1853, but the struggling nation of Maryland in Africa joined [Liberia in 1856](_URL_0_). \n\nThe new Republic of Liberia needed resources desperately, but the most important was manpower. President Roberts had appealed to the U.S. Congress to provide money and weapons so the Liberians could consolidate their control over the coast and end the slave trade in the region, thus fulfilling an important moral mission for Liberia while also breaking the power of the inland tribes, but Congress refused. Congress did direct the U.S. Navy to reinforce the Africa Squadron and turn over any slaves they confiscated to the American Colonization Society, which was still sending settlers and material support to Liberia. In the last year before the Civil War, 4,500 former slaves were resettled in Liberia. The \"Americo-Liberians\" were still a small minority in the land they claimed, numbering perhaps 15,000 at that time against a half-million indigenous Liberians (and they remain a small minority today, about 5 percent of Liberia's population). \n\nNews of the Civil War sent a shockwave through Liberia. The Navy withdrew the Africa Squadron. This had little effect on Liberia, since Britain's Royal Navy had a much larger presence in the region and was much more effective at anti-slavery patrols. \n\nDramatic changes soon came; in September 1862, the United States (after approval by a Congress largely emptied of Southern votes) formally recognized the Republic of Liberia, and signed a trade agreement the following month - but not before President Lincoln had floated, in a meeting with two black ministers, the idea of removing all black people from America entirely, resettling them in Liberia and/or Central America. When reports of the meeting were published, they met swift condemnation from black leaders such as Frederick Douglass and white leaders such as Salmon Chase. Given the private nature of the meeting, Lincoln was quickly able to declare he'd been misunderstood - but by the time the Emancipation Proclamation was announced a few months later, the alternative of deporting all black Americans had already been discussed and dismissed. It's very possible this was Lincoln's intent in the first place. \n\nDuring the war, Liberia was largely consumed with the work of consolidating its control. Fighting a series of guerrilla wars against the indigenous peoples, and gaining a workforce for its fledgling export economy, was the nation's overriding concern. Large villages were set up for \"Receptive Africans,\" mainly those uprooted by the constant state of low-grade war along Liberia's encroaching inland borders. They received instruction in Christianity, the English language, and the art of backbreaking labor to grow sugar and cacao for export. \n\nLiberia's population, of course, followed the Civil War with great interest, but mostly and correctly in self-interested terms. Liberia was delighted to receive an American consul in 1864, and to send an ambassador to the black Republic of Haiti, but it was most interested in gaining the revenues to pay off its debts and expand its infrastructure - and that meant gaining a \"civilized\" population capable of overwhelming the \"aborigines.\" The Emancipation Proclamation seemed to hold out the hope of an America which would recognize black equality - and this was ironically a serious blow to Liberia. As Liberia's President Daniel Bashiel Warner told Liberia's Congress in December 1865:\n\n > Our need of population is immediate and urgent. Our immense resources cannot be developed... simply for the want of minds and hands to engage in the necessary operations. \n > \n > ...We have again and again invited our brethren in the United States to come over and help us fill up the vast solitudes, which for centuries have remained uninhabited... My confidence remains unshaken in the destiny of Liberia. She is yet to be the asylum of the oppressed American negro and a beacon for the guidance of the benighted tribes of this continent.\n\nAfter the Civil War, black Americans did emigrate to Liberia, but in small numbers; of the almost five million black people in America, fewer than a thousand set sail for Liberia in 1866. Not even the collapse of Reconstruction could spur more than a few hundred black Americans to seek refuge in Africa; Haiti and Canada remained the most popular destinations for black emigrants. \n\n**Sources:**\n\n*Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It* by James Ciment \n\n*The Annual Messages of the Presidents of Liberia 1848–2010: State of the Nation Addresses to the National Legislature* edited by D.Elwood Dunn " ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Map_of_Liberian_Republic_1856.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fdnipvl", "fdnmr4x" ], "score": [ 2, 12 ], "text": [ "I'm at work at the moment so I don't have my books to hand so hopefully this doesn't get removed.\n\nI actually wrote my dissertation on this! Or at least the naval arms race prior to WW1 and the development of Dreadnought class warships.\n\n\nBritain had the largest navy in the world and its policy was to ensure the Royal Navy was at least the size of the next two largest navies, known as the \"2 Power Standard\". \n\n(Carl Cavanagh Hodge (2008). Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1914. Greenwood. p. 549. ISBN 9780313043413.)\n\nApologies, I'm posting from my phone so can't really reference properly. \n\nI hope this helps!", "It is called the “two-power standard”.\nThe times of naval superiority at low cost was at an end by growing naval competition from old rivals, such as the French, and new ones such as Imperial Germany and the Japanese. These challenges were reflected by the Naval Defence act of 1889, which received the Royal Assent on May 31 1889, formally adopted the two-power standard and boosted British naval strength. The standard called for the British Royal Navy to maintain a number of battleships at least equal to the collective strength of the next 2 biggest navies on the planet, which then were the French and Russian navies.\n\nExpert naval opinions displayed to the parliament \nin December 1888 and February 1889 provided critical views on the state of the navy. The buildup and expansion of the French and Russian navies was another factor pointing to alleged British weakness. As a result, public support for proposed naval growth grew and placed further pressure on Parliament to support the act.\n\nIn reality, the two-power standard had been informally utilized over the past 70 years and during the 1850s, Britain had briefly met it. Britain already enjoyed international naval superiority. The Act reasserted the standard by its formal adoption and indicated an ambition to bolster British naval supremacy to an even greater level.\n\nThe expansion came in the form of 10 battleships, 42 cruisers and 18 torpedo gunboats. The battleships were the centrepiece of the legislation. 8 first-class battleships of the Royal Sovereign class and 2 second class battleships, HMS Centurion and HMS Barfleur were ordered. The Royal Sovereign class was the most formidable capital ship of its day, fulfilling the role of a larger and faster battleship unrivalled by those of Russia and France. The cruisers were aimed at protecting the British supply lines.\n\n9 first-class cruisers of the Edgar class, 29 second-class cruisers of the Apollo and Astraea classes and 4 third-class cruisers of the Pearl class were provided. The other 18 torpedo gunboats served to assist and defend the main battle fleet.\n\n\nThe major rationales were military and economic. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, argued that the size and scope of the new building programme would deter and discourage the naval ambitions of other powers. By deterring other powers’ naval growth at present, the British would be able to spend less money on shipbuilding in the future." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpoxidp" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "can i tack on a book request for overviews of \"the great game\"?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dtcix4k" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "While there be more to add, I think this answer to an older question by u/commiespaceinvader may be what you are looking for. \n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5799li/did_the_rommel_myth_and_clean_wehrmacht_myth_and/d8suoyk/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ck421pl" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The Roman grain dole was not really a \"poor relief\"--[this paper](_URL_0_) does a really good job covering the basics. Furthermore, I don't believe that the dole would be able to cover the full subsistence of a family. So, that said, they would probably be working. The idea of a slave based urban economy has rapidly fallen out of fashion, and I strongly suspect that the desperately poor of ancient Rome would be doing the same sorts of menial, temporary labor done by desperately poor throughout urban history." ] }

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[ [ "www.jstor.org/stable/20181081" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d119bmz", "cxxxh7a", "cxym77r" ], "score": [ 2, 805, 54 ], "text": [ "\"So, what would an economics student in a communist country, say in the Soviet Union, learn and what would be something that we'd learn in common and somethings that would be different?\"\n\n\nThey learn economy as if it is all only about Marx's theory and as if Capitalism does not exist at all. You learn about classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. You'd learn economy in connection to history and philosophy, you learn this basic concept of \"the plan\" and planning. \n\n\nThey rarely see how things are in capitalists countries, more concentration on \"the right way\" of command administrative system. Actually even now in Russia these views are not entirely gone and many old econ teachers still bring up some soviet things and mix them up with classic capitalism. For example the theory about quality (it's called there - quality management), production theories (pure math in Russia) and other areas have a connection to old USSR economy views. I was lucky to have a chance to compare because i finished University in Russia (econ major) and then i graduated from an american college (finance major) and even now i see a huge difference. Russia is very weak on economy, extremely weak. And it is all going from the way they teach it: super boring, they don't know how it works and how it supposed to work (capitalism), there is no practice at all. This is not true for huge and modern Universities in Moscow but in a province econ education is very week this days, even in modern Russia. Things were much worst in soviet union. No one in USSR in the right mind would choose to study economy, economy was strongly connected to politics. In USSR they studied practical things and concentrated on that, that is why soviet legacy could produce airspace ships and good weapons. But when it comes to \"how to make money\" or \"how economy works\", USSR had no clue. ", "Economics classes in communist countries were generally focused much more on microeconomics and industrial planning, while U.S. courses focused on macroeconomic theory and market forces. \n\nFor example, compare U.S. based microeconomics courses(both graduate and undergraduate levels) to Eastern European microeconomic courses. In the U.S., the general focus is on consumer behavior at a granular level. We apply quantitative methods to individual behavior (e.g. game theory) to understand how individuals behave in a market. We then use these theories (e.g. rational consumer) as a foundation to scale up to market behavior analysis.\n\nHowever, in many eastern European countries, the focus of their curriculum was much more \"business\" oriented. Microeconomics courses in countries such as Russia focused on industrial planning. They used microeconomic tools such as marginal cost and revenue and so forth to determine the most efficient way to produce and price goods. This ideology is very quantitative and we still see artifacts of this skill be necessary in Eastern European and Russian mathematics curriculums (which would be a whole other topic).\n\nSo to keep things short and general, most western economics curriculums focused on market forces, consumer behavior, and demand while communist countries generally focused on industrial planning, microeconomics, and labor economics.\n\nHere is a source telling you a little bit more about the above: _URL_0_\n\nOn an additional point that I can't find a cite on, I had a macroeconomics professor in college named Richard French from George Washington University who told me that he was one of the first economists to be invited over to Russia to teach and help develop a macroeconomics curriculum. He told me that the majority of the courses were much more based on industrial planning and that the universities/governments really didn't concern themselves with the study of market principles and behavior. Again, I don't have a source on that, but I had a lot of conversations with him about the subject so if you'd like to hear more just ask.", "In a rather odd coincidence, I happen to have a copy of a 1920s Soviet political economy textbook which had a syllabus in the pages! Hooray for primary sources!\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) we go!" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/03-4_BrueMacPhee.PDF" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15zq4y/a_russianspeakerstalinist_sovietperiod_person/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1xsir7" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "In the 16th century Albrecht Dürer, one of *the* most celebrated artists of his time, marked his prints with a specifically designed logo of his initials. The logo quickly became internationally synonymous with his name (Dürer was one of the first artists to achieve substantial fame across Europe during his lifetime), and it was widely used to sell forgeries on the back of the \"Dürer brand\".\n\n[This](_URL_1_) is the logo (looking almost disturbingly modern), and you can see it [here]( _URL_2_) in one of his most famous works, *Young Hare* (1509). Neil McGregor's wonderful *Germany - Memories of a Nation* has an [episode](_URL_0_) on Dürer and the \"Dürer brand\", which is well worth a listen!\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04k6scv", "http://www.phaidon.com/resource/albrechtdurerlogo.jpg", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Albrecht_Dürer_-_Young_Hare_-_WGA07362.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7xr6rw", "e7xr9la" ], "score": [ 4, 12 ], "text": [ "Also, weren't artists sponsored by the King or something? How would one go about it? Create something, go to the castle, show it to the King and ask him for a pension? ", "Mozart made a lot of money, and lived a somewhat extravagant life. But he was also swimming in debt as a result of poor money management and various circumstances somewhat out of his control. I answered [a similar question about his finances](_URL_0_) about a year ago, the gist of which is that while he had some periods with a lot of cash flow, he had lean years as well, and didn't necessarily budget or save wisely. It didn't help that he spent most of his time surrounded by wealthy royals and aristocrats, so he developed a pretty expensive taste in clothing. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/65uebo/why_was_mozart_so_financially_unsuccessful_in_his/dgdiior/?context=3" ] ]